And the mother fell at her son’s feet and bowed her head to the ground, and he swept her up into his arms, raining kisses upon the piteous face.

“I don’t blame you, sweetheart-mother,” he said in English, whilst she sobbed on his heart.  “Am I not the fruit of a brave woman’s great love?  Could there be anything finer than that?  But my father in me made my whole body clamour for the desert when I was in England; my mother in me makes my heart throb in the desert for just one hour of her cool, misty country, one hour on a hill-top in which to watch the pearl-gray dawn.  Dearest, dearest, don’t sob so.  It is a case of two affirmatives making a negative; two great nationalities decried, derided, rendered null and void in their offspring through the dictates of those who, in religion, prate that we are all brothers.  I have just got to stick it, my mother, and life is not very long.  But I shall never marry.”  And as he spoke, Fate flicked a page of an illustrated paper, which was but the volume of the Book of Life, and perhaps only a mother’s eyes would have noticed the sudden tightening of the hand upon the marble of the balustrade as the man looked down into the pictured beauty of the woman he loved.

And, having read what had been written, he knelt to receive his mother’s blessing.

“To the Tents of Purple and Gold, my darling?” she asked, smiling so bravely to hide her breaking heart.

“Not just yet, dear; a bit further North first, I think.”

“For long?”

“I do not know, dear.  Bless me, O my mother.”

She blessed him and called to him as he stood at the head of the marble stairway: 

“Come back to me, my son!”

“That, O woman, is in the hands of Allah, who is God.”

And he turned and left her, and she, having wept her heart out and her beautiful eyes dim, took up the illustrated paper which was a volume of the Book of Life, and turned the pages.

“Ah!” she said.  “How beautiful!”

It was just a simple photograph of Damaris at a tennis tournament, and underneath the information that the most popular and beautiful visitor in Cairo would celebrate her birthday in a week’s time, that in honour of the occasion her god-mother, the Duchess of Longacres, had issued invitations for a fancy-dress ball, after which social event she and her god-daughter would proceed to the Desert Palace Hotel, Heliopolis.

“I wonder,” whispered Jill, “I wonder if she would come to see me.  She was always such a wise old woman.  I wonder if there is a way out”—­and she stretched her arms out towards the desert.  “Hahmed!” she called, “Beloved, I love you, and my heart is breaking,”—­and she lifted her head and listened to the sound of many horses running; then bowed her head and wept.

The dawn was nigh to breaking, and yet the parade of horses was not finished; whilst the trainer, the head groom, the stud groom, the under-grooms and the rank and file of the stables tore their beards or their hair as they endeavoured to please their master, whilst they waited anxiously for the return of the man who had been hurriedly sent to fetch in the mare, Pi-Kay, who was out to grass, and as wild as a bird on the wing.