“And may that be the last of them,” said Billy B. Hill, in fervent thanksgiving.  “Except Kerissen.  I’ve got to meet him again—­just once.”

* * * * *

Perhaps it was the hairpins.  Perhaps it was the bathed face and the sleep-brightened eyes and the rearranged gown.  But certainly Burroughs stared in amazement at the slim little figure that issued from the entrance, and a queer, a very queer confusion seized upon him.  Not even outrageous sunburn and pathetic blisters could hide Arlee’s young loveliness.  They only added an utterly upsetting tenderness to the beholder, and a most dangerous compassion.

And just as each man is smitten with madness after the manner of his kind, so Burroughs, the taciturn, was struck into amazing volubility.  As they sat about a cracker box of a table at an early supper, he became a perfect fount of information, pouring out to this girl an account of his diggings that would have astounded any of his intimates, and would surely have amazed Billy B. Hill if that young man had been in a condition to notice his friend’s performances.  But he was wrapped in a personal gloom that had descended on him like a cloud of unreason.  The escapade was nearly over.  The little girl comrade was gone, the little girl whose face he had so tenderly scrubbed of its grimy sand.  A very self-possessed young lady was sitting beside him, drinking her coffee, an utterly lovely and gracious young lady—­but unfathomably remote—­elusive....

Perhaps, again, it was the hairpins.

Off to town on donkey back the three Americans rode slowly, a native escort filing after, and there in town the bazaars yielded a long pongee dust coat and a straw hat and a white veil, “to escape detection,” Arlee gaily said, and a satchel which she filled with mysterious purchases, and then, clad once more in the semblance of her traveling world, safe and sound and undiscovered, she stood upon the station platform, awaiting the train to Luxor.

Beside her, two very quiet young men responded but feebly to the flow of spirits that had amazingly succeeded her exhaustion.  Burroughs was suddenly suffering from a depression most unfamiliar to his practical mind, which caused him to moon about his work for days and made his depleted jar of cold cream a wincing memory, and Billy was increasingly glum.

It was all over now.  The girl, who for two winged days had been so magically his gypsy comrade, was returning to her own world, the world in which he played so infinitesimal a part.  For very pride’s sake now he could never force himself upon her ... as he might before ...

He stared down at her eagerly, hopefully, for a sign of regret at the ending of this strange companionship, much as a big Newfoundland might watch for a caress from a cherished but tyrannic hand, but not a scrap of regret was evidenced.  She was as blithe as a cricket.  Her only pang was for discovery.