The tribe had wandered to an encampment in the vicinity of Morocco; and one day a missionary and his wife came with a harmonium and tracts.  The scene was so evocative of the civilization from which Mike had fled, that he at once was drawn by a power he could not explain towards them.  He told the woman that he had adopted Arab life; explaining that the barbaric soul of some ancestor lived in him, and that he was happy with these primitive people.  He too was a missionary, and had come to warn and to save them from Christianity and all its corollaries—­silk hats, piano playing, newspapers, and patent medicines.  The English woman argued with him plaintively; the husband pressed a bundle of tracts upon him; and this very English couple hoped he would come and see them when he returned to town.  Mike thanked them, insisting, however, that he would never leave his beloved desert, or desert his friends.  Next day, however, he forgot to fall on his knees at noon, and outside the encampment stood looking in the direction whither the missionaries had gone.  A strange sadness seemed to have fallen upon him; he cared no more for plans for slave-trading in the interior, or plunder in the desert.  The scent of the white woman’s skin and hair was in his nostrils; the nostalgia of the pavement had found him, and he knew he must leave the desert.  One morning he was missed in the Sahara, and a fortnight after he was seen in the Strand, rushing towards Lubini’s.

“My dear fellow,” he said, catching hold of a friend’s arm, “I’ve been living with the Arabs for the last two years.  Fancy, not to have seen a ‘tart’ or drunk a bottle of champagne for two years!  Come and dine with me.  We’ll go on afterwards to the Troc’.”

Mike looked round as if to assure himself that he was back again dining at Lubi’s.  It was the same little white-painted gallery, filled with courtesans, music-hall singers, drunken lords, and sarcastic journalists.  He noticed, however, that he hardly knew a single face, and was unacquainted with the amours of any of the women.  He inquired for his friends.  Muchross was not expected to live, Laura was underground, and her sister was in America.  Joining in the general hilarity, he learnt that as the singer declined the prize-fighter was going up in popular estimation.  A young and drunken lord offered to introduce him “to a very warm member.”

He felt sure, however, that the Royal would stir in him the old enthusiasms, and his heart beat when he saw in a box Kitty Carew, looking exactly the same as the day he had left her; but she insisted on taking credit for recognizing him—­so changed was he.  He felt somewhat provincial, and no woman noticed him, and it was clear that Kitty was no longer interested in him.  The conversation languished, he did not understand the allusions, and he was surprised and a little alarmed, indeed, to find that he did not even desire their attention.