Then had come about a strange scene of transformation.  Confronted by Damaris with a riding-whip in one hand, a special license in the other, and Wellington at her heels, the fox-faced young man had professed a desire to marry the tweeny on the spot.

Then had been granted a seventh-heaven glimpse of what love, real love, can be, to the tweeny maid, changing her into a veritable spitfire, who had turned and rent the fox-faced youth.

“I wouldn’t ’ave you, nohow, no, not if yer were the larst man on earth, not ’alf I wouldn’t.  I’ll get through my trouble, miss, all right, an’ by meself, thanking you kindly for troubling, an’ I’ll wait until Mister Right comes along; that’s what I’ll do, Mister Runaway.”

And when Mr. Runaway had hinted that Mr. Right might kick at being called upon to shoulder the encumbrances of others, she had snatched the special license from her young mistress, torn it into bits, flung it into the foxy face and blazed into a big-hearted, big-minded, all-understanding little tweeny maid of a woman.

“I said Mr. Right, didn’t I, yer bloomin’ chuckhead?  ’E’ll unnerstand that it was all done in mistake, an’ not by preference, so to speak.  An’ unnerstandin’, he’ll forgive.  Lots of them mistakes are made by girls like me”—­thumping of washed but still grimy hand above gallant little heart—­“through swipes like you.  Life’s full of ’em down our way.  But life’s love, and love’s life, and you can’t get away from that, that yer can’t.  And I’d raver die wiv my love shut up ’ere”—­more thumps above gallant little heart—­“than throw it away on a louse like you, that I would, not ’arf!”

Ben Kelham said nothing, and there fell a silence between the two, though the Egyptian night was as full of noise as it ever is in the big cities of the East.

“What did she mean, Ben,” said Damaris at last, “by that love which understanding can forgive even—­even her trouble?”

And to Ben Kelham came the tweeny’s seventh-heaven glimpse of the understanding of real love.

He rose and swept Damaris, a-thrill at the mastery, into his arms, where he held her as he might have held a child.

“That, dear,”—­and he spoke choosing the simplest words, just because he knew no others, “that means that if you said you loved me, and I—­if I ever found you in a—­how shall I put it?—­in—­no matter how compromising a situation—­that I should love you just the same, because I should know that, although to all appearances you—­you might have sinned, yet the real you, the pure, honourable, perfect woman in you, could not show the smallest stain.  Do you understand?”

“Almost,” whispered the girl, as she lay still in the arms that held her as a child.

“You’ve got to understand.  Listen!  It may sound brutal, but you’ve got to understand my love for you.  Supposing you disappeared, as Englishwomen do sometimes in the East.  Supposing I searched, and found you, and you—­you were—­you were like the little tweeny girl.  What should I do?  Why, Damaris, unless you came to me and confessed to sin, I’d marry you, loving you, understanding you, without asking any questions.”