“Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to dinner?” she offered pacificably.  “It’s our last night, you know, till we come back from the Nile.”

“I wish I could.”  Ryder stopped short.  Now, why didn’t he?  Certainly he didn’t intend—­

But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation’s hands.  “Fact is, I’ve an engagement.”  He added, appeasingly, “That’s why I was so keen on getting you for tea.”  And Jinny told him appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view.

“We’re going to be at the hotel, I expect,” she threw out, carelessly, “and if you get through in time—­”

Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in time—­

She was a nice girl, was Jinny.  A pretty girl, with just the right amount of red in her hair.  Sanity would have sent him to the hotel to dine with her.

Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean.

Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons, and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek cafe where he dined very badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava.

Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and One Nights.  Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the red fezes and turbans that topped the cross-legged audiences the dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl.

Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle.

It was quite dark now.  The last pale gleam of the afterglow had faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced with the thronging stars.  It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful stirring in the tops of the feathery palms.

The streets were growing still.  Only from some of the hotels came the sound of music from lighted, open windows.

Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel.  He could, of course, drop in for a few minutes since he was so near....  He walked past the hotel....  Jinny would be packing—­or ought to be.  A pity to disturb her....  And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no calling costume....

He walked past again.  And this time he paused, on the brink of a dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with bougainvillea.