Clad in orange satin a-shine with jewels, with tight-fitting Eastern trousers ending in perfect riding-boots, with diamond osprey glittering in the white turban and falcon, with jesse to match the orange coat, on gauntleted wrist, he rode serenely in the cheering throng.

His falconers with their underlings walked on either side of the roan, which fretted and fidgeted at the slowness of the pace; the dogs of Billi walked sedately and by themselves; grooms of the kennels led greyhounds on the leash; behind them, almost bursting with importance, came a Persian deftly carrying the cadge, which is a kind of padded stand upon which, hooded and fastened by leashes, the favourite birds are carried to and fro.

At the rear was the birds’ van, in which are carted the birds which may or may not be required, also spare parts of the paraphernalia upon which depends the success of this sport, the sport, in truth, of kings!  In the “days that are past” the favourite sport of our own monarchs, especially in the “spacious days of great Elizabeth.”

The bag was good considering the district, the poles on the servants’ shoulders bending under the weight of two gazelle and countless birds of all sizes and plumage.

A couple of siyas waving the customary horsehair fly-whisk ran shouting before their master; servants surrounded the cortege, armed with sticks which they rattled with good effect upon the shins of the more venturesome among the spectators as the procession moved slowly, as move all things in the East.

Shouting fiercely, the siyas stopped suddenly in front of her grace’s car, arms uplifted, mouths open, then turned in their tracks and sped back to the master who had called them.

The old lady and the girl beside her interchanged never a word as they watched Hugh Carden Ali urge the mare who picked a dainty path through the wondering crowds which opened a way before her.  The sun caught the jewels on the man’s breast and above his turban and upon the saddle-cloth of the roan mare, and struck fiercely slantwise into the proud, handsome face with the set mouth and the eyes which never once looked in the Englishwomen’s direction.

For a full minute he sat immovable, whilst the mare, freed from the fret of the crowd, stood stock-still.  In his bearing, in the magnificent picture he made under the flaming skies, there seemed a subtle challenge to the two Englishwomen.  All his English nature rose in revolt against the barriers that rose between himself and Damaris, daughter of his mother’s race; but, curbing his passion with the self-control he had learned in British fields of sport, he remembered that he belonged primarily to his father’s land, whose people had three thousand years before held the keys of civilisation in their powerful hands, whilst the people of his mother’s land were just about emerging from the primitiveness of the Stone Age.

“I am the East!” he seemed to cry in his utter immobility.