That night after dinner the music was already sounding in the ball-room of the great hotel adjacent to the palm-gardens when Mrs. Gerald found Lester smoking on one of the verandas with Jennie by his side. The latter was in white satin and white slippers, her hair lying a heavy, enticing mass about her forehead and ears. Lester was brooding over the history of Egypt, its successive tides or waves of rather weak-bodied people; the thin, narrow strip of soil along either side of the Nile that had given these successive waves of population sustenance; the wonder of heat and tropic life, and this hotel with its modern conveniences and fashionable crowd set down among ancient, soul-weary, almost despairing conditions. He and Jennie had looked this morning on the pyramids. They had taken a trolley to the Sphinx! They had watched swarms of ragged, half-clad, curiously costumed men and boys moving through narrow, smelly, albeit brightly coloured, lanes and alleys.

“It all seems such a mess to me,” Jennie had said at one place. “They are so dirty and oily. I like it, but somehow they seem tangled up, like a lot of worms.”

Lester chuckled. “You’re almost right. But climate does it. Heat. The tropics. Life is always mushy and sensual under these conditions. They can’t help it.”

“Oh, I know that. I don’t blame them. They’re just queer.”

To-night he was brooding over this, the moon shining down into the grounds with an exuberant, sensuous luster.

“Well, at last I’ve found you!” Mrs. Gerald exclaimed. “I couldn’t get down to dinner, after all. Our party was so late getting back. I’ve made your husband agree to dance with me, Mrs. Kane,” she went on smilingly. She, like Lester and Jennie, was under the sensuous influence of the warmth, the spring, the moonlight. There were rich odours abroad, floating subtly from groves and gardens; from the remote distance camel-bells were sounding and exotic cries, “Ayah!” and “oosh! oosh!” as though a drove of strange animals were being rounded up and driven through the crowded streets.

“You’re welcome to him,” replied Jennie pleasantly. “He ought to dance. I sometimes wish I did.”

“You ought to take lessons right away then,” replied Lester genially. “I’ll do my best to keep you company. I’m not as light on my feet as I was once, but I guess I can get around.”

“Oh, I don’t want to dance that badly,” smiled Jennie. “But you two go on, I’m going upstairs in a little while, anyway.”

“Why don’t you come sit in the ball-room? I can’t do more than a few rounds. Then we can watch the others,” said Lester rising.

“No. I think I’ll stay here. It’s so pleasant. You go. Take him, Mrs. Gerald.”

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