“You will be kind to me?” she said, in her childish monosyllables, each word carefully articulated with a long pause between.

I felt I had behaved like a heartless brute, ever since I thrust her into the cab at Waterloo.  I relented and laughed.

“If you are a good girl and do as I tell you,” said I.

“Seer Marcous is my lord and I am his slave,” was her astounding reply.

Then I realised that she had been brought up by Hamdi Effendi.  There is something salutary, after all, in the training of the harem.

“I’m very glad to hear it,” I said.

She closed her eyes.  I saw now she was very tired.  I thought she had gone to sleep and I looked in front of me puzzling out the problem.  Presently the cab-doors were thrust violently open, and if I had net held her back, she would have jumped out of the vehicle.

“Look!” she cried, in great excitement.  “There!  There’s Harry’s name!”

She pointed to a butcher’s cart immediately in front of us, bearing, in large letters, the name of “E.  Robinson.”

“We must stop,” she went on.  “He will tell us about Harry.”

It took me from Oxford Circus to Portman Square to convince her that there were many thousands of Robinsons in London and that the probability of the butcher’s cart being a clue to Harry’s whereabouts was exceedingly remote.

At Baker Street station she asked, wearily:  “Is it still far to your house?”

“No,” said I, encouragingly.  “Not very far.”

“But one can drive for many days through streets in London, and there will be still streets, still houses?  So they tell me in Alexandretta.  London is as big as the moon, not so?”

I felt absurdly pleased.  She was capable of an idea.  I had begun to wonder whether she were not merely half-witted.  The fact of her being able to read had already cheered me.

“Many hours, yes,” I corrected, “not many days.  London seems big to you?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, passing her hand over her eyes.  “It makes all go round in my head.  One day you will take me for a drive through these wonderful streets.  Now I am too tired.  They make my head ache.”

Then she shut her eyes again and did not open them until we stopped at Lingfield Terrace.  I modified my first impression of her animal unimpressionability.  She is quite sane.  If Boadicea were to be brought back to life and be set down suddenly at Charing Cross, her psychological condition would not be far removed from that of an idiot.  Yet in her own environment Boadicea was quite a sane and capable lady.

My admirable man Stenson opened the door and admitted us without moving a muscle.  He would betray no incorrect astonishment if I brought home a hippogriff to dinner.  I have an admiration for the trained serving-man’s imperturbability.  It is the guardian angel of his self-respect.  I ordered him to send Antoinette to me in the drawing-room.