“I’m like darling old Aunt Olivia; she refuses to be parted from hers, once she has sighted Port Said.  By Jove, Carden, you’ve absolutely got to meet her, if you haven’t met her already.  She knew your mother well.  But of course you stayed at the Castle—­no! you didn’t though; you had measles.  Well, you’ve got to meet——­”

He stopped suddenly as the thought of the abominable anonymous letter flashed across his mind; turned a dull red under his tan, and looked round the strange tent, and then at the man who sat on the opposite end of the wooden couch, dressed in all the picturesque simplicity of the East, with the stars and the far-reaching desert as a background.

He sat quite silent, staring at his friend, who yet in some indefinable way seemed such a total stranger.

“By Jove, Carden,” he said at last, “I didn’t know you had------”  He
stopped, confused, horrified at the words which had almost escaped him.

“Turned native, Kelham?  I haven’t.  I am an Arab, a Mohammedan by birth.  This”—­he looked quickly at the leather curtain at the back of his friend—­“This is my natural environment.  Harrow was a—­a loving thought on the part of my honoured mother, and------” He paused, and raising his voice ever so slightly, looked steadily at the curtain which seemed to move, perchance blown by the night wind—­“and a great, a terrible mistake.  Yes, Kelham, a terrible mistake.  Did you ever think of the risk I ran, I, an Arab, of meeting some white woman, whom I might love?  Supposing I had met such an one, and had loved her, and had wanted to marry her, tell me, you, all white as you are,—­could I have done so?”

He took a simple wooden cigarette-case from his cummerbund and held it out to his friend; they lit their cigarettes and sat smoking in an intolerable silence.

There was no real need to ask the question, because it had been answered even whilst the Englishman had swung himself from the saddle.  In a searing flash, by the sound of his friend’s voice, the way he moved, the whole Western look of him, Carden Ali had understood that this man, born of the moors, the bracing climate, the cold skies, the snows and springs of England, was the true mate for beautiful English Damaris.

But, to turn the knife in the wound in his heart, he repeated the question, and Kelham, who knew it could be answered only in one way, wrenched at his collar and got to his feet, and crossed to the wall, to finger the throwing-spear with his back to his friend.

“Well, you know, old man, I—­well, don’t you think it’s best—­as your father is an Arab—­well!—­well, you know what—­who was it said--something about East and West?--I--don’t------” He passed his hand over the wall, then exclaimed, in an effort to change the subject, “By Jove! it’s leather!  Why, I thought the wall was velvet.”

Carden laughed and lit another cigarette as he watched Kelham out of the corner of his eye as he walked slowly round the tent.