“May I present a very old woman to youth?” she said simply.

“Darling,” cried Damaris as she ran forward and, pushing the yashmak to one side, kissed the jewelled hand.  “You are too beautiful—­too beautiful!  Promise me never, never, never to wear it again.”

“I’m too old to get rid of bad habits, cherie,” said her godmother.  “And we had better go down.  By the way, what is Ben coming as?”

“I really don’t know,” came the muffled reply from behind the yashmak, “if he comes at all.”

As Cairo entire had accepted the invitation, the place was packed, but nowhere was the crowd so suffocating as round the entrance to the Winter Garden.

“Per-fect-ly wonderful,” gasped a rotund Ouled Nail to a masked dancer of the same sex and size.  “He told me about that terrible time when I lost so much at bridge—­you remember, dear, when I had to—­er—­to raise money on my diamonds.  How could he have seen it in my hand?”

He hadn’t; he had been a guest at Hurdley Castle with her.

“What’s he like?”

“Oh, I couldn’t see his face, on account of the handkerchief thing, but I think he’s quite common; his clothes are quite poor.  I believe he is one of the waiters dressed up.  I seem to recognise his voice.  Have you long to wait?”

“I’m twenty-fifth down the list.  Who’s in now?”

“Some woman in black.  There are four of them, and I can’t tell t’other from which.”

The hand of the woman who was twenty-fifth down the list was never told.

Damaris lifted the curtain, and walked into the corner of the Winter Garden, which had been temporarily given the appearance of an Arab’s tent.

“Salaam aley,” she said gently, giving the word of peace.

The fortune-teller salaamed with hands to forehead, mouth and heart, in the beautiful Eastern gesture.

“Aleykoum es-Salaam!” he replied as gently, which is the sacrament of lips.

There was the fortune-teller’s regulation small table, with a chart of the stars and a silver tray covered in sand upon it; on either side was a chair; but it was upon a cushion on the floor that Damaris seated herself, with her back against the canvas drapery of the wall, motioning the Arab to a cushion near her, whilst her eyes swept the loose cotton tunic, the kaleelyah or head-kerchief, which almost completely hid the face, the great white mantle and the sandals upon the naked feet.

Oh! the game of make-believe they played, those two with the jewel-hilted, razor-edged dagger of love between them.

There fell a silence.

And then the fortune-teller spoke in his own tongue, and too absorbed were they in the game of make-believe to notice that he made use of neither sand nor stars nor the lines upon her hands, which were clasped above her heart, as he read her future in her eyes.

“Two paths lie before thee, O woman, and both stretch, through the kingdom of love.