The moon plays havoc with the strongest-minded, out yonder!

Anyway, love-sick, he left Heliopolis, placing the panacea of sport like a poultice upon his hurt.

Shortly after, one day during the noon hours, in the cool shadows of his great palace in Cairo, there came to Hugh Carden Ali an overpowering desire to see the girl he loved amongst her own people.

She was his at dawn in the desert, although miles of sand stretched between them; his in the rush of the wind, the glory of the sky and the thunder of the horses’ hoofs; but to whom did she turn at night; in the maze of the dance; the hothouse atmosphere of the hotel; the crush of the winter visitors?

So, giving a twist to the dagger of love in his heart, he tucked the dogs of Billi in beside him and drove as the sun set to Heliopolis, and, guessing that the duchess would have a table near the window, chose one on the opposite side of the dining-room, so that his presence should not be thrust upon the girl or the old woman who had known his mother.

He sat there, indifferent to or oblivious of the interest his presence aroused, unconsciously counting the vertebrae of the lady at the next table, who had evidently forgotten some essential part of her bodice.

He counted the vertebrae in the back of the lady who was dying to turn round, until the duchess and Damaris entered the room; then he clenched his hands under the table with an involuntary shudder of disgust.

It was the first time he had seen the girl he loved in evening dress, and every instinct of the Oriental in him was outraged at the sight of the gleaming neck and shoulders and hint of lace-shrouded virgin form.

She was not in full decolletage by any means, but the waiter’s sleeve was but an inch from her satin skin when he bent over her, so that, although he had long grown accustomed in Europe to the undraping of woman o’ nights, yet, because he loved the beautiful girl, he longed for the right to walk across the room, pick her up in his arms, and, smothering her in a barku, hide her forever from all male eyes but his own.

Later, as he sat alone in a far corner of the ball-room, he twisted the dagger of love this way and that in his tormented heart, whilst the dogs of Billi worried the life out of the hall-porter as they fretted and moaned for their master who tarried.  He had never danced, himself, loathing the idea of the propinquity of a stranger’s body so close to his own; of a stranger’s mouth so near his own; of the animal odour of the naked body, which no perfume can hide, within his nostrils; just as he loathed the idea of a woman passing from one man’s arms to another’s throughout the best part of a night.

He had no desire whatever to dance with Damaris, but all the Eastern in him longed to make her dance for him; in the desert for preference; under the light of the moon; with the insistent throbbing of the drum keeping time to the rhythm of the slender feet upon the warm sand.