Miss Warriner made an error of analysis in regard to Mr. Corbin in judging his brain by his topics of conversation.  His conversation was limited to the A B C’s of life, with which, up to the time of his meeting her, his brain had been fed.  When, however, she began to cram it full with all the other letters of the alphabet, it showed itself just as capable of digesting the economic conditions of Egypt as it had previously succeeded in mastering the chess-like problems of the game of football.

Young Corbin had not considered the Home Beautiful, nor Municipal Government, nor How the Other Half Lives as topics that were worth his while; but when Miss Warriner showed her interest in them, her doing so made them worth his while, and he fell upon them greedily.  He even went much further than she had gone, and was not content merely to theorize and to discuss social questions from the safe distance of the deck of a dahabiyeh on the Nile, but proposed to at once put her theories into practice.  To this end he offered her a house in the slums of Boston, rent free, where she could start her College Settlement.  He made out lists of the men he thought would like to teach there, and he volunteered to pay the expenses of the experiment until it failed or succeeded.  When her interest changed to the Tombs of the Rameses, and the succession of the ancient dynasties, he spent hours studying his Baedeker that he might keep in step with her; and when she abandoned ancient for modern Egypt and became deeply charmed with the intricacies of the dual control and of the Mixed Courts, he interviewed subalterns, Pashas, and missionaries in a gallant effort to comprehend the social and political difficulties of the white men who had occupied the land of the Sphinx, who had funded her debt, irrigated her deserts, and “made a mummy fight.”

One night, as the dahabiyeh lay moored beneath a group of palms in the moonlight, Miss Warriner gave him praise for offering her the house in the slums for her experiment.  He assured her that he was entirely selfish—­that he did so because he believed her settlement would be a benefit to the neighborhood, in which he owned some property.  When she then accused him of giving sordid reasons for what was his genuine philanthropy he told her flatly that he neither cared for the higher education of the slums nor the increased value of his rents, but for her, and to please her, and that he loved her and would love her always.  In answer to this, Miss Warriner told him gently but firmly that she could not love him, but that she liked him and admired him, even though she was disappointed to find that his sudden interest in matters more serious than polo had been assumed to please her.  She added that she would always be his friend.  This, she thought, ended the matter; it was unfortunate that they should be shipbound on the Nile; but she trusted to his tact and good sense to save them both from embarrassment.  She was not prepared, however, to see him come on deck very late the next morning, after, apparently, a long sleep, as keen, as cheerful, and as smiling as he had been before the blow had fallen.  It piqued her a little, and partly because of that, and partly because she really was relieved to find him in such a humor, she congratulated him on his most evident happiness.