And have you seen the wild storm breaking from a black cloud and suddenly making that quiet expanse nothing but a tourbillon of furious elements, in which the very sea-gull’s cry is whelmed and lost in the thunder of the billows?  Such a storm as that may be compared to the ‘fancy’ you suppose I feel for the woman who has dragged us both here to die at her feet—­for that, I believe, is what it will come to.  Life is not possible under the strain of emotion with which we two are living it. ...”

He broke off, then resumed in quieter tones: 

“I say to you:  Use your opportunities while you have them.  After dinner I will leave you alone with the Princess.  I will go out for a stroll with Dr. Dean.  Take your chance, Denzil, for, as I live, it is your last!  It will be my turn next!  Give me credit for to-night’s patience!”

He turned quickly away, and in a moment was gone.  Denzil Murray stood still for a while, thinking deeply, and trying to review the position in which he found himself.  He was madly in love with a woman for whom his only sister had the most violent antipathy; and that sister, who had once been all in all to him, had now become almost less than nothing in the headstrong passion which consumed him.  No consideration for her peace and ultimate happiness affected him, though he was sensible of a certain remorseful pity when thinking of her gentle ways and docile yielding to his often impatient and impetuous humors; but, after all, she was only his sister,—­she could not understand his present condition of mind.  Then there was Gervase, whom he had for some years looked upon as one of his most admired and intimate friends; now he was nothing more or less than a rival and an enemy, notwithstanding his seeming courtesy and civil self-restraint.  As a matter of fact, he, Denzil, was left alone to face his fate:  to dare the brilliant seduction of the witching eyes of Ziska,—­to win her or to lose her forever!  And consider every point as he would, the weary conviction was borne in upon him that, whether he met with victory or defeat, the result would bring more misery than joy.

When he entered the Princess’s salon that evening, he found Dr. Dean and Gervase already there.  The Princess herself, attired in a dinner-dress made with quite a modern Parisian elegance, received him in her usual graceful manner, and expressed with much sweetness her hope that the air of the desert would prove beneficial to him after the great heats that had prevailed in Cairo.  Nothing but conventionalities were spoken.  Oh, those conventionalities!  What a world of repressed emotions they sometimes cover!  How difficult it is to conceive that the man and woman who are greeting each other with calm courtesy in a crowded drawing-room are the very two, who, standing face to face in the moonlit silence of some lonely grove of trees or shaded garden, once in their lives suddenly realized the wild passion that neither dared confess!  Tragedies lie deepest under conventionalities—­such secrets are buried beneath them as sometimes might make the angels weep!  They are safeguards, however, against stronger emotions; and the strange bathos of two human creatures talking politely about the weather when the soul of each is clamoring for the other, has sometimes, despite its absurdity, saved the situation.