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 were capable of taking into solution. One old man in particular interested Paul, a university professor whose pet theory was that Jean-Jacques Rousseau constituted a sort of head waters from which flowed all the streams of present-day literature, art, philosophy, education and national policy. He had written articles tracing Rousseau's influence on Goethe, Byron, Shelley, Danton, Tolstoi, Novalis, Ruskin, Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman, Wagner, and a dozen other men of genius.

Paul accompanied him one day to an exhibition of impressionistic paintings hoping that, for once, the theory would be left in the Garderobe with the walking-sticks, but no sooner were they inside the gallery than the professor began, "All this, lieber Freund, is foreshadowed in Rousseau. These impressionists feel they are unique in their feelings and must express this uniqueness by discarding rules. Jean-Jacques, you'll remember, said,  ' Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j ' ai vu.

The quotation brought Paul up with a start. Ever since he could remember he had been saying something quite like that to himself. Like Rousseau, and a whole world full of tiresome souls, he had been priding himself on the fact that he was unlike everybody else. Suddenly it seemed to him that there was no particular distinction in being unique. Certainly if uniqueness led to nothing more distinguished than the turning out of messy green, yellow and pink canvases there was little to be said for it. His reaction to writers like Nietzsche and Max Stirner had been a revulsion from superegoistic doctrines. Once more he saw the advantages of being a "quite ordinary boy."

On the other hand, he was oppressed by the swarm of people amongst whom he was moving; he often longed to retire into himself and "shut upon his retreat the floodgates of the world." Once, in the crowded, smoky atmosphere of a café, he caught himself under-

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 lining the following verses in Shelley's Julian and Maddalo:

He found he was getting a surfeit of books, a surfeit of discussion. His daily habits became more haphazard. He took longer walks into the suburbs. He fraternized with irresponsible students and returned the glances of still more irresponsible young women. One of these, Lottchen, upon whose favours he was believed to have an option that amounted to a proprietary right, gave him, through a chance remark, a clue to his state of mind. She had asked about his plans for the future, and he had replied half-heartedly that he would probably return to the sea. "Oh," she exclaimed, "you must look a perfect darling in uniform!"

He had a bantering smile for her femininity, and while Lottchen assured him she adored everything that wore a uniform, "even the messenger-boys," his mind wandered on to its own circuitous conclusions. All life was an effort to effect some satisfactory reconciliation between uniformity and one's complex individualism. For all women, and most men, uniformity was an end in itself. For him most varieties of human uniformity ignored or did violence to his passion for self-development, for the broadest sympathy and comprehension. In "that untravelled world" of which he was for ever catching glimpses that lured him on, was a sublime sort of uniformity for which, more and more ardently, he thirsted.

He knew Vienna held nothing further for him. He was not at all reconciled to the thought of a career on

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 the sea; but there one could at least take a dead reckoning of one's progress, and plan some course for the future.

By way of Berlin and Hamburg, the famous old Hamburg—but not at all conspicuously stocked with Bechstein pianos—Paul journeyed to Holland and England. Dwindling funds restricted his movements during the following weeks, as well as preparation for nautical examinations. When the certificate of Master Mariner was handed to him he had little more than enough money for his fare to Liverpool, where he was to join a cargo ship bound for Bombay. A stroke of fortune had brought him face to face in Fenchurch Street with the former apprentice he had known in Hong Kong. This young man was now second officer of a smart passenger liner and had found Paul a berth as third officer in a cargo ship belonging to the same company.

Although Paul cherished a retrospective fondness for his chum tinged with a new goodwill for the friendly assistance, he was at a loss to understand what had brought them, in the beginning, so closely together, and was relieved when the time came for parting. For other reasons, however, the parting left him forlorn.

"You'll be all right now, old man," his friend said in farewell. "You've a good berth, and the company'll do you well if you stick. Good luck and bong voyage and all that sort of thing!"

Paul accepted these good wishes in the spirit in which he had accepted his berth: gratefully, but without elation. For just as he had outgrown his boyish attachment to the debonair apprentice—he recalled now that he had, with a trace of femininity, secretly adored the apprentice's uniform: shades of Gritty and Lottchen!—so, he felt he had outgrown his berth. It seemed absurd to indulge

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 such misgivings before the ink was dry on his Master's papers; but the misgivings were all the more ominous on that account.

They returned with strange emphasis when he boarded his new ship. "Been up to London, have you, Mr. Minas?" began the captain, by way of breaking the ice.

"Yes, sir," replied Paul—then whimsically added the familiar phrase from the ribald sailor song, "To see what I could see."

"Ay—and what did you see at all?"

It was at that moment that the misgivings returned; for how was he to tell a hearty skipper that he had seen a play by Barrie, caricatures by Max Beerbohm, quasilords and ladies bouncing upon tame steeds in Rotten Row, and—God save the mark—the Wallace Collection!

After two years consulting of and catering to a tyrannical set of tastes, desires and principles, Paul found unexpected refreshment in the simple routine of the sea, where superior officers shouldered the burden of making decisions. The sense of freedom he experienced as the Cranmore churned her way out of the Mersey was, in view of his duties, circumscribed, but he concluded that the sense of freedom in any one plane of being was contingent upon imprisonment of faculties in other planes; there was always a string to the kite. Abstract liberty, like the geometrical point, was merely a façon de parler—an unstable sea upon which only Peters were rash enough to walk, and from which only Peters were rescued. Shelley the poet, enamoured of liberty, impersonated a cloud and offered himself to the West Wind, but Shelley the citizen came croppers. Poor old Jean-Jacques, chained worshipper of liberty and reprehensible amateur of morality, while indulging in speculative vertiges, took care to keep his feet on the ground. "J'aime beaucoup

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 ce tournoiement," he confessed, then spoilt—or saved—the situation by stipulating, "Pourvu que je sois en sureté." Paul knew, in short, that he was imbibing an intoxicating draught, and was fully aware of the effect of intoxicants.

On this occasion the effect endured about five days. At the end of that period he saw the coast of Spain, and discovered that Spain, which he had not visited, meant more to him, literally and figuratively, than Bombay, with which he was familiar. He was standing on the main deck, supervising the lashing down of a row of stalls containing polo ponies. The boxes had become insecure during a siege of bad weather in the Bay of Biscay.

His eyes rested on the dim shore-line, and his thoughts, mounted on a leisurely Rosinante, ambled inland. Castles in Spain—Castilian women of an exotic blondness, like blood-oranges—Carmen—Lazarillo—Figaro—amber grapes, bull-rings, acrid cafés where livid, moustached women and tight-trousered men danced to schottisches in which rhythms swished like flaming petticoats under the enveloping skirt of the melody. He pictured John Tanner in the Alhambra, enjoyed Granada with a Shavian relish, then snorted at the incongruity. He was a romanticist despite his Shavianism, and he began to suspect Shaw of the same wretched defection. One must be anti-romantic to be Shavian, and anti-Shavian to be Shawlike!

He turned from the rail with a sigh. As usual the had ended in an intellectual paradox.

And that poor, caged pony! A Lascar deckhand had hit it over the nose to punish it for trying to kick the back out of its box. Why shouldn't it kick the back out of its box!

As a deputy of Providence it was Paul's duty to reprimand the Lascar in sharp pidgin-English for abusing a

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 thousand-guinea horse; that duty done, he proceeded, as a fellow-prisoner, to explain to the pony, in terms of pats and cluckings, that freedom was a relative quantity, not to be attained by vicious hoofs. If the pony had retorted, "Do you call it freedom to be delivered into the hands of some hare-brained cavalry officer whose notion of what conduces to my welfare is to make me gallop over a dusty field after a little ball he merely wants to hit?" Paul would have replied, "On the whole, yes. You'll be better off, for instance, than your ninety-second cousins on Dartmoor. Notwithstanding which, throw the silly ass if you can—and a clean getaway to you!"

As the Cranmore lurched through a bright blue, early-autumn Mediterranean, Paul's spirits reflected the sea's suppressive calm. He had learned the ways of the ship, weighed her crew in the balance, found it wanting, and settled down for the voyage. It was depressing to acknowledge how easily he had established his footing. It meant that during the remainder of the voyage there would be nothing but books, the caprices of the weather, and passing landmarks to provide stimulation. And on subsequent voyages the prospect of slow, monotonous promotion. One day he would be put in command of a ship; then of a bigger ship. By that time his hair would be grey, or gone. And the rest of the men seemed to think—but what mattered what they thought! His mental processes never tallied with those of his neighbours, never had, and never would, on land or on sea, world without end, Amen! Why trouble then to look back or forward, why do anything but accept life as it was, and sleep whenever possible!

At Port Saïd the Cranmore was to coal and unload a marble statue for a pasha's palace. Paul obtained leave, drew some money, dressed in civilian clothes, and went ashore to look for a sextant and other articles which lack of funds had prevented him from buying in England.

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 Down the gangway; into a clumsy bumboat painted red and blue; through hordes of fruit, cigarette and postcard venders; towards the breakwater near which brown-legged fishermen stood up to their knees in water hauling at nets; past a towering Orient liner from Australia; along teeming quays—the red tarbooshes, the Arabic inscriptions on signboards, the solicitations of dirty dragomans—the whole miscellany welded together in a brassy light which sharpened lines and angles, all under a pearl and turquoise sky. Already, at this wicked portal, Paul had recaptured the smell of the East.

As he left the quay a ragged urchin came running up to advertise the attractions of a bawdy house prepared to cater to the most exactingly perverse. The proffered enticements, each more indecent than the last, Paul declined with a shake of the head, but let the boy complete the catalogue. There was something piquant in the contrast between the tender years of the child and his monstrous sapience. "Hi, Mist' Ferguson, you wan' see" and the diminutive tout put forward a final bait.

Ferguson was a generic name for Englishmen, interchangeable with Disraeli and Cornwallis-West. Paul had heard enough.

"Ecklahburra!" he cried. "Kaleb!"

And at the sudden menace in his tone the boy scuttled off.

Fascinating, putrid land! Its very babes were born wicked. Paul had a new conception of what was meant by the doctrine of original sin, As a boy he had supposed "original" sin signified some specially ingenious form of iniquity.

The book shops as usual lured him, but he coveted so many objects that he ended by buying none, and wandered on. In two more hours he would be back on board, bound south through the canal, an automaton in the

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 service of automata. A satiric comment, which he had heard sailors repeat on stormy nights, was running through his head, "Who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea!"

A craving for isolation sent him walking away from the central streets, beyond the railway station, down a barren road towards infinite flat stretches of sand. In a grubby shop by the wayside he stopped to drink Turkish coffee and eat sweet Syrian pastries. Then he returned to the glaring waste and continued his aimless walk. He was a small boy again, playing hookey. Outwardly he trembled, but an unwonted inner calm, like that of a top at full spin, was stealing over him. Some conflict was being waged between two parts of his nature. He had no desire to take sides; was not even curious as to the outcome.

At length he sat down for sheer weariness in the shade of a peppercorn tree by the side of a deserted camel track. On all sides the wilderness extended. Far to his left were the only signs of civilization: low walls and a huddle of roofs. At long intervals, a few hundred yards before him, ships passed, as though slowly cutting their way through banks of sand. There was no trace of the ribbon of water that floated them.

The conflict was at an end, and the strange inner calm had enveloped him in a physical numbness that left his mind pellucid. In planes of existence infinitely remote, clocks must be ticking, pens recording, throats laughing and cursing, engines grinding and propelling. Here, inertia reigned, unchallengeably.

An odd procession of young Minases trooped before him: timid, cocksure, lonely, eager, disappointed, ecstatic and morose boys—all authentic versions of himself, and all dead.

A vision of the future succeeded. The boyish Minases were sent scurrying by sadder, wiser ghosts, constitut-

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 ing a less definite and less diversified company. Some suspicion of the futility of their existence characterized and related them, and at the end of the procession trudged a weary old man, shabby, hungry, disdainful.

Paul looked "before and after," but without pining. The emotions which stirred within him seemed as impersonal as the delicate rustling of leaves overhead. His very life he shared with the tree, for he drew it from the same infinite source. The universe was a mint. He was a coin; the tree another. When the right time came each would be withdrawn from currency, to be remelted, restamped and reissued. It little mattered how one were invested, provided one kept in circulation. Even if one stepped out of circulation voluntarily, the resources of life would be none the poorer.

He lay at full length on the sand, and slept. When he awoke, the shadow of the tree extended far beyond his feet. He sat up and shuddered, for in his dreams he had been present at his own funeral. Miss Todd had sung "Abide with Me" and flatted. And the chimes of Fremantle tolled his knell.

The sounds he had heard in his sleep were the siren and bells of a passing ship. He watched her for a few moments, then turned his gaze far down the canal, in the direction of the last warehouses outside the town. There a big black, top-heavy steamer was approaching. His heart beat faster, and he sat back against the trunk of the tree, instinctively straightening his coat and necktie as if in anticipation of an encounter.

Slowly, slowly, the Cranmore advanced. He could hear, across acres of sand, the pulse of her engines, the breathing of her funnel. She was alive; he was fond of her; and she was carrying with her all his old life, carrying it away beyond recall.

On the decks he made out figures and identified them by their positions. Behind the house were the rows of

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 stalls. The restless pony would miss him if none of the men did.

The of his own cabin! His bags were there—his books and music and letters, his clothes and the photographs of six or seven women, mistresses of a night or a week or a month.

The disciplines of the passing life were in their way good—necessary for those simple fellows on deck, but not meant for him. His disciplines must be self-imposed. This very act of running away—instinctive, unpremeditated as it had been—his mates would judge lawless; but it was in reality a stern and imperious duty.

When the ship was a mere speck surmounted by a scarf of smoke, Paul rose and set his face towards the north. The exalted calm had basely deserted him, and there had been tears in his eyes. He felt "like a motherless chile, a long ways from home," and dreaded to reenter the sinister town. Two years ago he would have been heartened by his hoard. But that was gone, and in its place he had a paltry meed of experience gained in the two years which had seen him over the threshold of manhood. One ingredient in that experience was unworldliness; another was doubt; another indifference. Three traitors in the camp!

Twilight overtook him and he reached the streets as they were awakening to their evening gaiety. A cool breeze stole through date palms in parched courts, and life whispered meaningly from shadowy doorways. Snatches of laughter sought him out, and pungent odours. From the inner harbour came the music of a marine band. Some magical agency was conspiring to throw a glamour over the sordidness of his surroundings.

On reaching the he came into view of a liner ablaze with lights. A hundred noisy coolies were passing sacks of coal into her side. Small boats clus-

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 tered about the gangway which swarmed with gayly dressed women and men in dinner jackets—Dutch men and women gleeful at the interruption in their long journey to Java.

The sight caused Paul another swift change of mood. He envied those people on the gangway: envied them their easy camaraderie.

He swung on his heel and walked towards the breakwater, turning to the left when he reached the deserted beach. The brown shallow sea at his feet hissed like water spilt on a stove. To his right the statue of Lesseps stood black against the indigo curtain of night brocaded with stars. Nearer, beyond the breakwater, was a tangle of masts where moored fishing-boats creaked like cradles. To his left the beach and the surf-crested rollers stretched unendingly. From the town behind him came stealthy echoes of civilization: the clanking of chains and winches, the rattle of wheels, the cries of boatmen, the sighing of dry leaves. The evening breeze made him shiver.

If only one had the courage to walk to the end of the breakwater and disappear for ever! Who would even wonder what had become of him? He was "half in love with easeful death." He knew just what Keats had meant.

A white-robed figure was running towards him from the direction of the road. "Hi, hi, Mist' Ferguson—you wan' see hoochie-koochie girl?"

"What! You back, you little blighter!"

The boy gave him a propitiatory grin.

"Here—here's a penny. Now hop it, or I'll bloody well drown you!"

The boy decided to cut his losses and sell out, as Paul turned back once more towards the port which struck him as a sort of overgrown pest-house for lost and infected soulssouls. [sic]

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the station he found that a train was about to leave for Cairo. He boarded it and booked a seat in the dining car. Since breakfast he had had nothing but two Syrian pastries and a tiny cup of coffee. Until dinner was announced he sat staring through the window, as the train sped beside the canal, which was revealed from time to time by the searchlights of lonely steamers feeling their way to or from Suez. The other occupants of his compartment were swarthy, prosperous men, whose noses and eyes reminded Paul of illustrations in the family Bible at Hale's Turning.

When he took his place at the table he found opposite him a robust young man of thirty-two or three with fiery hair and alert blue eyes. His appearance, manner and apparel proclaimed him Irish-American. Paul suspected him of a desire to make talk and addressed himself to his food. Casual conversation could only be built on a foundation of self-confidence. The stranger, having enough and to spare, overrode Paul's reserve.

"I wouldn't eat that if I was you, friend," he began.

Paul, on the point of lifting a slice of tomato to his mouth, paused and looked at the speaker.

"Why not?"

"It ain't safe to eat uncooked vegetables in this part of the world. You're new here, ain't you?"

Paul laughed, and went on eating his salad. "Yes, but hungry enough to take risks." Rh

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 "Then don't ever say I didn't warn you!" The American spoke with his mouth full of baked potato.

"Thanks," said Paul, at a loss to handle the other's abrupt goodwill.

The American read encouragement in Paul's hesitation. Pointing with his fork to an untouched slice of tomato, he announced, in genial tones:

"I fired one o' them at a priest once—in school."

"Good for you!" Paul exclaimed. "Did you hit him?"

"Did I? Say, listen, I can see the juice runnin' down Father Mulligan's neck to this day."

"Did you get caned for it?"

"Caned! I got canned. They kicked me out o' school so hard I'm still goin'!'

"A bit drastic," Paul commented.

"They was tryin' to make priests of us. Can you imagine me bein' a priest?"

"It does take a bit of imagining."

The American was reliving his past. "What didn't hit Father Mulligan kept on goin', see. It was in geography, and there was a map of the world on the blackboard. After bustin' on his jaw the remains of the vegetable landed just about here," and he waved his hand toward the black wilderness outside the window.

"About here?"

"It finally struck the middle of the world—get me? Egypt roughly."

"Oh—I see. So you, being Irish and consequently superstitious, took it as an omen—came here in accordance with that fateful indication? A sort of dickory-dickory-dock decision."

The American's eyes flashed blue. "That's about the size of it. After I'd put Egypt on the map, so to speak, why I felt like I sort of owned it, see, and finally come over."

"Had any luck?"

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 "Well, friend, I been here three year now, and I guess I've livened the old place up some. If you're not busy to-morrow drop around and see my joint. There ain't another like it in the known world."

"I'll bet there's not," said Paul with conviction.

Over coffee and cigars the American talked of his youthful struggle, his experience as grocer's clerk, book agent, and drummer for furniture and hardware. Eventually he had persuaded a syndicate of manufacturers to send him to Egypt.

"I got the agency now for two hundred and forty-nine lines," he exclaimed. "Everything on God's earth from stone-crushers to corn-plasters. I been wearing samples, riding on samples, brushing my teeth with samples, and feeding samples to the dog, see."

"And who buys your wares—natives or Europeans?"

"Both—but natives mostly. I've just sold five hundred pair of rubbers, and it hasn't rained here since Moses was a baby. Soon I'll be sellin' 'em snow-shoes!

"I got a native staff for unpacking and shipping and gettin' me in a mess generally, and an Armenian girl typist and bookkeeper to get me out again. Gee, she's a wonder—talks every known tongue bar Choctaw."

"Don't you find it pretty strenuous?"

"You said it! I been up to Port Saïd to tell the American Consul to watch out for a good man. Englishmen won't peddle chewing gum round the native quarters. I like 'em, mind you—but I can't work with 'em. They want to sell goods like thermometers and spy-glasses, which don't pay like chewing-gum. Gum's infra dig, but it brings in the kale."

"I suppose Cairo is full of human oddities," Paul remarked. "Strange minglings of tribes?"

"Most of 'em don't know their own selves what the devil they are."

"Then I ought to fit somewhere."

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 "Staying for good?"

"It's time I stayed somewhere permanently. I've been nearly everywhere, you know, temporarily."

"Then that'll account for your accent."

"It accounts for many things. Or, to put it the other way round, many things account for it—for my nomadism." He felt he was being too precious for his audience, but went on. "I mean that accidents of birth, circumstance, and temperament send one roaming over the world." He had almost said, under the influence of the other's idiom, "the known world."

"What's your line?"

"I haven't decided yet. I'm looking for ideas."

The American puffed hard at his cigar, then leaned forward impulsively. "Say, listen!" he exclaimed. "Mebbe you and me could join forces!"

Paul wondered whether he had enough strength of character to peddle chewing gum.

The American accompanied him back to his compartment and expatiated upon social and commercial conditions in Egypt.

"Where are you stayin'?" he asked, as the train drew into the terminus.

Paul briefly explained the situation.

His companion pursed his lips, slapped Paul on the shoulders, then said:

"Listen here, son, you're comin' right along with papa, see. I got two rooms at Shepheard's. I only live there because it's good for trade. Got to keep up the bluff, you know. I'll sleep you on a sofa. My name's Coyle—Patrick Coyle."

Paul gratefully took the hand extended to him. "Mine's Minas," he said. "I'm sure it's most awfully decent of you to"

"Aw, keep the change," briskly interposed his new friend.

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Paul was awakened next morning by a cold nose and a pair of clumsy paws. He was being earnestly smelt and he could hear an unwieldy tail, somewhere near the floor, thudding forth the time to an inward scherzo. He pulled the puppy on the sofa beside him, dodging its familiar tongue.

Encouraged by this reception, Aïda, by means of sniffs and writhings, sudden rigidities, sudden collapses, and a crescendo of tail-waggings, descanted on the joys of outdoor life. She had already roused her master, and there were sounds of rushing water from the direction of the bathroom.

Paul sprang up and went to the open window, shivering at the chill of the morning air. The thin November sunlight had splashed its way into the garden at the back of the hotel, casting lacy shadows on the orange sand and picking out gay colours in the flower-beds.

Breakfast, consisting of coffee, rolls, shredded wheat—in sample cakes—and cream, was brought into the sitting-room half an hour later, and Aïda, with a deep, explosive sigh of resignation, collapsed before the closed door.

"What's her nationality? She looks a mut like everybody and everything else in this land, where even the breakfasts are Turkish-American."

"She is," Patrick assented. "A lady that was staying here for her health had a prize female cocker spaniel which got loose one day. The old dame hoped for the best, see, but the worst happened, and the spaniel up and had Ada—I named her after the opera. Mrs. Thingamatite was mad as a hatter and ordered the litter drowned. I happened along as the guy was takin' 'em to the Nile in a bag, and rescued this one, not realizing it was a her. I had nothin' to feed her with but a

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Rh Aramaic translation (Targum Onkelos) of the Pentateuch was ascribed. Aramaic versions of the Bible were made at a very early period, and the Targum Onkelos may contain ancient elements, but in its present form it is not earlier than the fifth century.

Meir, whom we take as representative of the third generation of Tannaim, was filled with the widest sympathies. In his conception of truth, everything that men can know belonged to the Torah. Not that the Torah superseded or absorbed all other knowledge, but that the Torah needed, for its right study, all the aids which science and secular information could supply. In this way Jewish literature was to some extent saved from the danger of becoming a merely religious exercise, and in later centuries, when the mass of Jews were disposed to despise and even discourage scientific and philosophical culture, a minority was always prepared to resist this tendency and, on the ground of the views of some


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 sample fountain-pen filler. One night she got rambunctious and bit the glass, and I near strangled her tryin' to make her spit it out, see. After that I put rubber over it and all was well.

"You're a homely hound, ain't you, Ada? Just a plain she-dog, just nothing, see."

Aïda had constructed this as an invitation to breakfast, and came towards the table, to be affectionately mauled.

Paul was touched by this domesticity. "There's a great deal to be said for internationalism, even in dogs," he philosophized. "Aïda may be impossible socially, but she's very human—probably more so than her prize mamma. Lines of racial demarcation will gradually get blurred as the world goes on. They'll have to, or the world won't go on. It's a pet theory of mine that we'll all end by being a family."

"You wouldn't like your grandchildren being half Chinese, would you?"

"I shouldn't mind. As far as that goes, there's no telling what our great-to-the-nth-power grandfathers may have been. It's highly probable that you and I and your Arab servant are related, if one could trace back far enough."

"Thanks be to God we can't then, for I'd brain that nigger if I found he was a relative of mine. He nearly started an Egyptian revolt when Ada stepped on his prayer-rug. She makes Abdul, my chief clerk's, life a merry hell with her poor wet nose. Don't you, old girl? Yes—we're going day-days now."

They called at a neighbouring garage for Patrick's most practical sample, a motor-cycle with a passenger seat at the rear and a basket attachment in front for Aïda, who was grovelling and baying her ecstasy in tones which, had her mother been there to hear, would have served as a mortifying reminder of her guilt.

"I'll ride you round the old burg," said Patrick, when

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 his guest was safely perched behind and Aïda's tail had been tucked in.

"Everybody's used to me and Ada now," said Patrick. "At first the natives collected in crowds. It was free publicity for the byke. Not that I ride it for that. I'm just naturally odd. I'm me own trade-mark; I got a commercial personality."

By this time the engine was in an uproar, and two minutes later the trio were speeding past the deserted terrace of the hotel.

True to his word, Patrick whizzed the length and breadth of Cairo, past mosques and palaces, bearing down on groups of red-slippered natives, for the fun of seeing them scatter. "It amuses the child," he sang back after one close shave.

At the summit of the Mohattam Hill they paused. Paul looked down at the huddle of roofs and streets surmounted by a hundred minarets, and thought of the biblical illustration of the temptation on the mount. Far away beyond the valley of the river, the pyramids were silhouetted like tents against the sky.

The world before his eyes resembled an iridescent bubble. For the incomparable panorama, for the boundless spaciousness of earth and sky, for the living antiquity of it all, the solidity of the stone and the delicacy of pale lights and colours that played over it, he felt emotions too deep for utterance. The prosaic commentaries of his companion he scarcely heard. Relieved from the immediate care of having to find a livelihood, he was free to absorb impressions. Every object, every colour and sonndsound [sic], were registering themselves on the sensitive plate of his mind, and he had to make an effort to respond to the other man's announcement that it was time to turn back.

Patrick made straight for the heart of the native quarter.

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 "They said I was a fool to think of coming down here," he explained as he steered a precarious course through the narrow, swarming Mouski. "So I just clowned around to let 'em keep on thinkin' I was one, see. I even half thought so myself, till some of the wise guys from the European quarter come down and tried to buy me out. Then my shares went up in me own eyes. It pays to think big, believe me. Well, this here's the joint."

They entered a narrow doorway and mounted dark stairs, past store-rooms filled with packing cases, to a dapper office furnished in mahogany and brightened by flowers. Patrick introduced Abdul and Mademoiselle Arzoumanian, the typist, a pallid young woman of thirty-odd, with a flat white nose, disconcertingly large black eyes, and a mop of rust-coloured hair. She wore a black frock and high-heeled shoes. Her hands were as broad as they were long, and her fan-shaped nails showed traces of having been bitten. Paul had the sensation of being in the presence of a moral dwarf.

He wandered forth to inspect the unparalleled assortment of commodities, while his friend dictated contracts couched in grandiloquent terms, gave instructions in bad Arabic and bad French, and interviewed prospective buyers—Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Armenians, Arabs—Mademoiselle acting as interpreter. At 1.30 Abdul closed the office door, and Patrick leaned back in his swivel chair. Mademoiselle had gone into an improvised kitchen to cook luncheon, and Abdul was producing linen, crockery, and silver.

Places were laid for four, and Paul, who had just left a ship on which the Lascar crew were regarded as some species of lower animal, was a little shocked when Abdul sat down with them. But he covered his surprise as successfully as Abdul concealed his horror at the pork chops the three infidels were preparing to devour. There

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 were great slabs of unleavened bread and a variety of sample pickles and jams. Abdul was encouraged to talk, and waxed eloquent in weird English. He spoke of a riot in the streets which had made his legs tremble. "It was very shame!" he concluded, with tragic eyes. By "shame" he meant "terrifying," just as by "famous" he meant "agreeable to the palate." The divergence of his vocabulary from the English norm was as wide as that of journeymen from that of metaphysicians; yet, Paul mused, one could with a little imagination reconcile any verbal discrepancies, One listened to a specialized vocabulary until one had heard it in a sufficient number of connotations to commence transposing. If this sort of thing were conscientiously done, one might end by discovering that every human being was saying exactly the same thing as every other. Every utterance, when balanced by the sum of circumferences which had brought it into formulation, was simply part of the One utterance, the eternal verity, just as every colour was simply a part of the spectrum that constituted light. Once we were intelligent enough to take this fact into reckoning, we should enter for the first time in history upon an era of civilization. He was sure Babel was the stumbling block in the way of human progress.

After luncheon they mounted to the dazzling white roof. The old city sent up a thousand muffled sounds. Against patches of light and shade moved a living kaleidoscope: olive and copper faces under scarlet tarbooches; flowing gallabias of purple and garnet; vermilion and lemon-coloured slippers; lilac cotton tunics and jade silk scarfs; pasty black-gowned women with coquettishly transparent white veils. And through the tortuous thoroughfares passed donkeys laden with emerald-green fodder. Paul was lazy-minded enough to wonder how the beasts dared eat it uncooked.

"We got to celebrate," said Patrick, "seeing it's your

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 first visit," and he called out in Arabic to a dirty little girl behind a dirty Nottingham curtain.

One by one the windows of neighbouring houses filled with the faces of women and children who showed a deep indulgent interest in the proceedings.

After a whispered consultation with her family the little girl thrust her brown legs over the sill and dropped to the roof, advancing half boldly, half diffidently while Aïda went forward with an official air to smell her. Abdul fetched boxes for the two men to sit on, and the girl tossed back her hair, pulled at her greasy pink frock, wriggled her bare toes, and over her shoulder exchanged pleasantries with her sisters.

Then from the window, Mamma began to beat a tom-tom, which had an automatic effect upon the girl. Her little flat stomach and flat lips swayed; her slender arms rippled from shoulder to finger-tips.

The festive spirit spread beyond the windows and rooftops to the street, and a blind, strolling nut-vender, singing topical ditties to attract custom, was induced to mount the stairs with his boy guide and contribute his talent. Abdul procured additional performers, and soon an assortment of Arabs, Turks, and hulking Sudanese niggers were performing strange dances whilst others chanted strange tunes, and all old Cairo rested from loafing to watch.

The nut-vender sang of a notorious fat beauty of the town. Patrick, his hat pulled over his eyes, sat bolt upright on his box, earnestly bossing the show. "Quaeesh!" was his expression for approval, sparingly vouchsafed. By way of honorarium he distributed samples of chewing-gum and toothpaste from a large open box. From time to time he tossed packages to the thronged windows and balconies, and the "celebration" became, in true Irish-American fashion, a capital "ad."

Paul courted the midday sun, felt his nose getting red

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 under it. His box was tilted back, and he was lost in an indolent dream. He saw Aïda striving to scale a wall and "adjust" a cat who merely blinked at her efforts. He thought, what a privilege to have been born a Sudanese nigger with gigantic hands and steel thighs, unable to think or even be distressed by the vague weight of unthinkability, unable to do anything but work and grovel and grin, with a flash of white teeth and husky gurgle, and do it from morning to night. He recalled the image of Becky States, and in imagination heard her melodious, growling baritone. Becky and that enormous coon! She would straightway have behaved like the prize spaniel.

The tom-tom beat unceasingly. The little flat stomach never flagged. A toothless Turk pranced around the girl, uttering ribaldries that sent a rustle of merriment from window to window, and the niggers, lithe and powerful under their dingy pinafores, capered with unbelievable grace, to the droning accompaniment of cracked old throats.

Paul was losing all hold of fact. His body was anæsthetized. His faculties had been distilled into an essence which pervaded the scene. He was the scene; he was the blind nut-vender, the dirty little girl, the puppy staring covetously at the cat, the gold and turquoise of air and sky, the pearly sheen of a minaret; their identity was his

Until a voice said in his ear, "Say, listen, Minas, what do you think of Mademoiselle?"

Paul came slowly out of his trance. For a moment he could attach no meaning to the words, and had to piece them together. What did he think of the Armenian typist?

"I've barely made her acquaintance," he temporized. "Why?"

"She's my fiancée," announced Patrick.

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 Paul sat up with a start and involuntarily cried, "No!"

Then he realized he had wounded his friend, and set about to transform the implied protest of the exclamation into mere surprised interest. Patrick accepted this, along with Paul's perfunctory congratulations, and loudly praised the young woman's qualities.

"She's a wonder," was the refrain. "Speaks every known tongue."

Paul had observed that Aïda avoided Mademoiselle. That told him more than Pat's loquacious eulogies. His next mission then loomed before him. He must prevent Patrick Coyle from running untrue to type.

Within a few days Paul was appointed salesman, with a small salary and liberal commission. It was decided he should occupy himself with dealers of European origin, leaving his employer free to concentrate his attention on the natives. From the first Paul felt hostility behind the ingenuous smiles of Mademoiselle Arzoumanian, and knew his appointment had been made in defiance of her counsels. He concluded that Pat counted on him to win the confidence of merchants who were put off by brusque Irish-American methods, and he smiled at the thought that he should be chosen to beguile the conventional: he whose whole life had been an ode to vagrancy! Yet it flattered him that the man of business had detected, through the welter of the mariner's personality, some guiding current, some consistency definite enough to warrant his being placed in the category of men capable of meeting conventionality on its own ground.

His new status obliged him to take stock of his qualifications. Business experience was lacking, but his knowledge of men was fairly sound. He had discovered that the best way to gratify one's curiosity about people

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 was to catch them off their guard; consequently he had cultivated disarming manners. His life at sea had not blunted the eminent presentability of his starched and combed childhood.

He was conscious of the favourable impression he made during his first weeks in Cairo. When he had come to terms with Patrick Coyle he had ordered a wardrobe and engaged a small room at Shepheard's. Lounging in company with his friend, he noticed that acquaintances of Coyle's lingered to be introduced, and that their manner towards himself was an appreciable shade more deferential than toward the Irishman. This bred in him a slight contempt towards strangers that served to increase his prestige. Pat, swallowing his pride one evening, made an admission which confirmed Paul's observation.

"Say, listen, sonny," said Patrick, when a prominent official had stopped to chat with them in the foyer of the opera house, after a performance of Carmen. "That guy used to cut me till you turned up. Gee, the way you got 'em all guessing is a treat. The more I try to be classy, the more of a low-life bum I look, and I guess I'll never learn any different."

Paul laughed and linked his arm in that of his employer. "Rot," he said consolingly, though he was glowingly aware of the glances cast upon him by beautiful women. "It's all humbug. That ass who stopped to talk just now hasn't a warm drop of blood in his veins however blue it may be. He's a nabob because he has a title and a diplomatic post; but he has the soul of a remittance man. It's no credit to me that I'm able to meet wasters like Lord Henry Shroton and women like his wife on their own terms. There's not a man here whose friendship I should consider half as much a privilege as I consider yours. And to prove it, I'm going to avenge you. So far I've warded off their overtures on

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 your account. If they didn't invite you, they couldn't have me. But to-night I've a new idea. Lady Henry S. has asked me to call. Quite regardless of my estate. For that matter she wouldn't be bothered with a crown prince who squinted. But she's intrigued by your humble assistant's 'dark hair and lovesome mien.' Eh bien, mon vieux, I'll grace her bally tea table! She's the thin end of the wedge. Before I'm through with her, his lordship will have dropped a potent word in the ear of that climbing draper man, Markwick, and if Markwick, via Lord Henry, via Lady ditto, via me, doesn't send you a thumping order, then I'll forfeit my salary for the next six months. We'll make them pay through the nose for their snubs. I'm no hand at sticking up posters in the bazaars; that's American publicity, and your pidgin. I'm beginning to see the English idea of business through connexions. We're Jack Spratt and his wife—and betwixt us both, by God, we'll lick the platter clean."

Pat's imagination was kindled, and his eves flashed nervously. "Listen here, sonny," he said. "If you can land a thousand-pound order from Markwick's as a starter, I'll make you a partner."

"Pooh—a paltry thousand! I thought you thought big!"

Pat looked dubious. "Markwick's the kind of a mean son-of-a-gun who'd look in your mouth to see if your back teeth were filled with zinc. He's conservative and has always done his buying in England, like his old man before him."

"Mrs. Markwick would give an eye-tooth, though, to be invited to one of Lady Henry's crushes."

Pat stared. "I don't get you. Are you going to make love to her too?"

"God forfend! Besides I can't tackle her direct, for she wouldn't even condescend to put up her lorgnette to

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 look at me. Being a mere bourgeoise she has to be particular whom she knows."

"Then how the devil"

"But when she finds out that I have the entrée to Lady Henry's"

"How did you get the entrée?"

"Just because I didn't seem to want it—as I didn't."

Pat was exasperated, as well as bewildered, and Paul explained. "This afternoon I dropped into the Savoy. The Shrotons were there with some people who were on their way inland to shoot big game. One of the ladies noticed me, and by and by old Henry strolled over. Wouldn't I come and be presented to his wife? So I had to. She asked me a few test questions. Did I shoot? Did I play polo? What did I think of the new American dances? Then somebody wondered: what the orchestra were playing, and I said they had all but given the coup de grâce to Schubert's Unfinished Symphony."

"Unfinished?"

"Yes, it's all right. Don't interrupt. Lady Henry—Cora, as they call her—at this sign of intelligence on my part, felt justified in having picked me up, and said, 'I suppose you are very musical, Mr. Minas; you look musical; do you play the piano?'"

"Do you?"

"Naturally."

"Well, I'm damned!"

"So she asked if I'd play for her some day; she adored music—'really good music.' That's what they all say."

"But whoa your horses. That's a long ways from Markwick's order."

"Not nearly so long as you imagine. You didn't see Cora's eyelids when she said I looked musical."

"Murder!"

They had made their way back to the hotel. Another idea had leapt into Paul's head.

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 "What a pity you're so happily engaged to be married," he threw out, with a feeling of guilt at the insincerity of the remark.

"Why?"

"Because Lucia and Beatrice and Ivy Markwick have all to go off. Lucia's overdue."

"There's your chance, then," said Pat irritably. "You once told me you were an adventurer."

"I am, but a most quixotic one, and young women aren't my game just now."

"What the devil is your game?"

"My game is rushing into places where even you fear to tread, old fellow, and rushing in to get bacon for you."

"God knows I don't want Lucia Markwick."

"Nor Beatrice, nor yet Ivy," asserted Paul. "I merely said, what a pity you're so happily engaged."

"I didn't like the way you said it."

"I'm sorry."

Patrick was still ruffled when Paul accepted an offer of whisky and soda in his rooms, where they were rapturously received by the imprisoned Aïda.

"You don't approve of Mademoiselle," Pat ventured bluntly.

Paul weighed the answer. "I approve of her as a shrewd little Armenian."

"But not as my future wife? I thought you didn't believe in drawing the line between nationalities."

"It's a question not of nationality but of personal quality. An ambitious man has to make his way in society as well as in business, and society judges him through the front his wife is able to put up. Would Mademoiselle feel at home at a reception given, say, by the American Consul-General? And could Mrs. Consul-General invite your in-laws?" Paul felt the thrusts cruel and found a way to mitigate them. "My attitude may

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 be influenced by the fact that Mademoiselle distrusts me."

"What makes you think so?"

"Well, she does, Pat—as you must know. If it weren't so damned nosy of me, I'd ask you to make a compact."

Pat waited.

"That you refrain from making any definite arrangements towards getting married till I prove Mademoiselle's distrust of my capacities unfounded. Give me time to do that, then I'll have a better right to butt into your private affairs."

Pat reflected deeply. His irritability had gone, and a depression quite foreign to him taken its place. "Done!" he finally surprised Paul by announcing.

As Paul was leaving the room, Pat made a further admission. "I've been awful lonesome in this burg." Then with a whimsical, lugubrious humour he added, "I had to propose to somebody, didn't I?"

Paul just prevented himself from saying, "And Mademoiselle saw to it that she was the somebody." He waited silently for more, and Pat, holding open the door, went on:

"Do you think you can stay in with that crowd?"

"The Shrotons? I have no such intention. From them I'm going on to the really useful nabobs—the commercial ones—the Jews and the Beys and the Pashas."

"How for the love of Mike?"

"I don't know."

"It's easier said than done, believe me!"

"Of course—otherwise it wouldn't be worth attempting."

"You're ambitious too."

"In a quixotic way."

"Listen here, sonny, do you realize what makin' up to frivolous women involves?'involves?" [sic]

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 Flippancy, Paul felt, was what his friend needed to bring him out of his despondency. "A sailor doesn't set a very high value on his virtue," he laughed.

Pat, he knew, did—but Paul could respect a point of view he didn't share.

"Well, I don't want to cramp your style any—only don't get yourself talked about."

"That—from you! What about your antics, the topic of the town!"

"It's a different kind of antics and a different kind of talk, see. My reputation's A-one."

Paul was tickled at the literalness of Pat's interpretations. "I promise that the firm won't get into bad odour through me," he said.

"Don't go losing your head, then."

"Nor my heart nor my money—at bridge. I'll try to make on all three scores: head, heart, and pocket. You'll see."

At last Pat rallied, and suddenly laughed. "Doggone, I half believe you," he confessed.

"I should hope you did! This time next year you and Aïda will be dashing around in a shiny car, fairly smelling the poor people."

"It'll be a partnership car."

"I've told you I'm not out for a partnership."

"What the devil are you out for?"

"I don't quite know. Certainly you wouldn't understand if I tried to tell you—even though you are a romantic Irishman."

"Then good night, and to hell with you," growled Patrick.

"Ditto to that," said Paul. "May I take Aïda to bed with me to-night?"

"No, you got a damn sight too many Fraus as it is," and the door closed with a snap.

In his own room Paul recalled the old Viennese quan-

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 dary: his eternal suspense between a romantic and realistic attitude toward life. For the moment, he mused, he was pursuing a quixotic goal, making his way towards it by an avenue paved with solid realities.

An air from the fortune-telling scene in the evening's opera came into his head, and as he undressed he softly hummed it:

"Et maintenant, parlez mes belles; de l'avenir donnez-nous des nouvelles. Dites-nous qui nous trahira; dites-nous qui nous aimera."

He was buoyed up with youthful confidence. Why consult cards to ascertain who would fall in love with one, and who betray? Every creature was a potential lover and a potential traitor. One had only to inspire the love and forestall the treachery as the case might require. An unfair game? Not unless one deliberately cheated. There were well-recognized rules, with a certain margin allowed for insidious graces. Besides, if the end were a good end, one gave oneself the benefit of the doubt where means were concerned. Paul was convinced that the end, in this case—which consisted in helping to solidify the welfare of a man who had gone out of his way to rescue him—was an end worth attaining by any means at his disposal.

In bed the music of the card scene kept running in his head:

"Dans le livre d'en haut si ta page est heureuse, mêle et coupe sans peur; la carte sous tes doigts se tournera joyeuse, t'annonçant le bonheur.

"Mais si tu dois mourir, si le mot redoutable est écrit par le sort, recommence vingt fois, la carte impitoyable répètera la mort."

It was grim. Now that the lights were turned out and the resplendent dress suit put aside, he felt less sanguine. What could a single man's fanciful darts avail against the stone walls of worldliness! And when that

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 man was—of all the indeterminate men in the world—Paul Minas!

Mais si tu dois mourir—why should that phrase come back again and again, with its accompaniment of solemn, muffled chords!

He thrust it from him and snuggled his head on the pillow. After all, everything was on the cards. Let them reveal what they might. If one was doomed, one was doomed.

It took Paul three months to break down the Markwick defences. The period was a nerve-racking one, for apart from the delicacy of the negotiations he had to breast the undercurrent of Mademoiselle's enmity and keep reassuring Pat that the time he spent out of the office was not being dissipated. To catch glimpses of his salesman, elegantly garbed, setting out for gymkhanas, or to hear from his lips chit-chat brought back from clubs and drawing-rooms, was a drastic test of Pat's faith. A tension marked their relationship until the letter arrived containing a big order from the refractory merchant. Paul stood with his hands on Patrick's shoulders while they read it through to the paragraph which ran: "If you can deliver the above in satisfactory condition by May fifteenth, at the latest, we shall be pleased to confer with your representative regarding orders for autumn and winter stock."

"Well?" inquired Paul, with suppressed triumph.

Pat rose with a smile of relief. "Congratulations!" he said. "You put it over great. How you done it I don't know."

"But I did," said Paul, like a child claiming full credit for having been good.

"What's the next move?"

"Alexandria," Paul unexpectedly announced.

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 "Why, have you cleaned out Cairo already?"

"By no means. But there's a conclave in Alexandria next week, and I've scared up some useful letters of introduction. And incidentally some cotton tips."

A little piqued, he decided not to explain his plans in detail. But he was amply avenged three weeks later when he was able to walk into the office with a bunch of contracts which surpassed the total orders obtained by his three predecessors. Pat was won over. "Say, sonny," he concluded, "I guess I got to hand it to you this time."

Thereafter Paul decided to forego a regular salary that he might feel free to absent himself from the office whenever the mood seized him. Its atmosphere was becoming distasteful. His first success had made Mademoiselle realize the necessity of changing her tactics. Distrustful glances had given place to glances of a propitiatory nature, and her smiles had grown more disarmingly naïve. On one occasion, when Paul had driven a splinter into his finger whilst helping to open a packing case, she had held his hand in hers far longer than necessary. And to add to his disgust, he knew Pat had observed her.

For a year he solicited orders in his own devious ways. From time to time he journeyed up the river, often as a guest, and disregarded no opportunity to foregathcr with influential groups. For the first time in his life he was playing a definite social game, and, while he chafed at its insincerity, he found it instructive.

Although it was a game of blandishments, it required pertinacity. Along with the diversion, there was a vast amount of annoyance and boredom. He played the game within the rules of his own standards of honour, even though it involved occasional intrigues which violated the tenets of a strict morality. Conventional morality, he concluded, was an ideal beyond the attain-

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 ment of the most conventional of men. Certainly he had met no perfect exemplar of it. Compared with the illicit traffickings of those with whom he competed, his own intrigues seemed childlike and straightforward. His whole policy had been to obtain, for himself and his friend, as high a price as possible for whatever he could persuade people they needed. He studied the idiosyncrasies and ambitions of utilizable men and women, then set about gratifying them; for which service he induced them to buy, or constrain their sycophants to buy, Patrick Coyle's reputable commodities.

During the second year of his association with Patrick Coyle, notwithstanding the impetus given to their activities by the acquisition of a car and other tangible signs of prosperity, Paul found the social round growing irksome. The exhilaration of being sought after by fashionable hostesses gave place to ennui. The pleasure of knowing himself able to cut a dash gave place to disgust at the pettiness of dash-cutting. Wide acquaintanceship involved myriad obligations and drew his energies into silly channels. Fate had ordained for him a life of meditation, and he began to resent the daily incursions on his privacy. Not even in Vienna had his environment been so cumbered with people. From a source of stimulation, the multitude became a source of confusion. He was losing sight of truth under the stress of play-acting, and only the determination to fulfil his compact kept him in his rôle.

Whenever the babel became too insistent, he fled from the city, hired a donkey, ferried it across the river, and took refuge in the desert. There, after an hour's riding, he would rest, and by yielding his soul over to the desert, which like the sea symbolized eternity, achieve a sense of his own puniness compensated by an exalted sense of relationship with the cosmic intelligence. Then his life, and all forms of life, took on the aspect of reflections

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 passing across the face of a mirror; and he captured a sense of permanence in the thought that the reflections were inextricably related to some vague source which, like a spiritual sun, was responsible for their projection.

After excursions of this sort he came back with renewed energy and a clarified focus. But more exhaustive analyses of the social amalgam revealed hitherto unsuspected proportions of hypocrisy, and as the months went on he found it necessary to inoculate himself with correspondingly increased doses of cynical wisdom. His contempt for worldliness grew with his skill in handling the world's weapons. He became taciturn. With Pat alone could he throw off restraint, and from time to time let himself be borne along by the American's infallible common sense, just as in days gone by, he had ridden on Otto's broad shoulders.

As in the case of his other quixotic tilts with the world, he had had to face disillusionment. It had been unreasonable to assume that Pat would rise superbly to the openings he was able to make for him, yet he could not deny that Pat's matter-of-factness was discouraging. Imagination of a kind Pat had in abundance, but he was not given to ascending pinnacles for the sake of picturesque views. He was a true friend and a staunch bargainer, but not an artist; and Paul, in spite of himself, exacted of his friends that they should be artists. Vaguely he had expected that Pat would develop under his guidance, and acquire some of his own sublime disdain for the world, as his business waxed. Instead of which Pat's respect for the world increased with his deposits in the bank.

But Paul played on, for lack of grander games. His nomadic nature had begun to reassert itself, goaded by a conscience which reminded him that he was neglecting the deep, unknown message he had been put into the universe to deliver.

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 Once more he buried himself in wise books; once more he delved into his mind for some clue to his mission. Solitary trips to the desert became more frequent; and every day he sought poise and direction by suspending all thought for a half-hour in a sort of waking trance—a trick he had learned, after long practice, through contact with the followers of adepts in ancient religions.

For some months his only definite aim had been to make his friend see, by subtle contrasts, the unwisdom of linking himself irrevocably to the Armenian "dactylo." After a good deal of scheming, he had introduced Pat into the houses of most of the people whom it was to Pat's advantage to cultivate. In these houses Pat had dined and danced with English, American and French girls with whom he must inevitably have compared his clever but unpresentable little fiancée. The subject of his marriage was never discussed, but Paul had intuitively known that the plans were not going forward smoothly.

Then one day he arrived at the office to find Pat bearing the brunt of a stormy scene. Mademoiselle was sitting pale, hard-eyed, silent, unhappy, while Pat, in his most unbridled American, parried thrusts levelled at him in broken English by Mademoiselle's exasperated father and brother and uncle—an unappetizing crew.

Paul withdrew hastily to the domain of Abdul and the Sudanese porters, but remained in the building until he heard the angry visitors descending the stairs. To his surprise Mademoiselle followed them. In her little black dress and coquettish high-heeled slippers, she looked old and defeated. Paul pitied her, but still resented her hold over his friend. Except for the hat she wore, she might have been mistaken for a venturesome Turkish woman abroad without a veil. The flabby white skin, the coal-black brows setting off her unpleasantly large eyes, the childlike steps and bearing, were suggestive of a harem.

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 Paul hurried back to the office. Pat was standing by the swivel chair, his hands in his pockets, gloomy and disgusted. Aïda looked towards the intruder for an explanation.

"The bastards!" exclaimed Patrick finally.

"What did they want?"

"Want! They had the nerve to try and bone me for more money, on account of postponing the wedding."

"More?"

Pat paced the floor. "You see I had to pay the old son-of-a-gun a lump sum, to get his consent in the first place."

Paul refrained from exclaiming that the old man ought to have been glad to subsidize the marriage. He was reputed to be well off.

"Did you pay up?"

"Not on your tin-type. They tried bluffin', threatened to sue me."

"And Mademoiselle?"

Pat came to a halt, his blue eyes blazing with indignation. "Would you believe it, Paul, she stuck up for 'em—for them mangy sons-o'-bitches! She wouldn't actually accuse me of wanting to get out of it, see, but she backed 'em up by noddin' her head—like a frightened kid. That's what finished me."

"Finished?"

"Finished! I gave her a month's salary on the spot and fired her. To hell with 'em."

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mild fragrant evening in April, Paul was seated on the terrace of Shepheard's making idle talk with an army officer. At the wicker tables were groups of men in regimentals and women in flimsy frocks. The Saturday night dance was enlivened by the presence of two hundred Americans who had arrived the previous day from Alexandria, one of the principal stops in a superbly vulgar "MediteranneanMediterranean [sic] cruise."

Whilst the dining-rooms were being cleared for dancing, the terrace overflowed with tourists comparing notes on their impressions of the pyramids and the price of amber. Paul and his friend exchanged smiles at incongruous remarks which floated toward them in eager, transatlantic tones. "Well, what is the caliph?" inquired one dauntless debutante. "Darned if I know. Besides I despise tombs. Gee! I can hardly wait till to-morrow to see the snaps; I know I looked like I'd been shot at and missed."

From another direction came less flippant sentiments, voiced by a dowager out of the west. "Our dragoman's name was Moses," she was saying. "The poor fellah, I felt s' sorry for him. His dotter died only yesterday and he told me about the funeral. It was something pitiful. He showed us where she was buried and all, and you should have seen that poor man's eyes! We all gave him a little extra. I s'pose it was silly, but you just couldn't help it." Rh

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 Paul listened with lazy amusement, when suddenly his friend touched his arm and exclaimed:

"Gad, there's a stunner!"

Paul looked towards the door and saw a slender young woman of twenty-three or four daringly gowned in pale orange and deep daffodil hued velvets and tulles. Her arms were bare. A long row of pearls gave employment to one over-manicured hand, while the other held a fan of yellow feathers and tortoise-shell which reached nearly to the ground. There was a specious sheen from the waves of her hair to the slippers that peeked from under trailing draperies. She was not beautiful, but there was a glint of pert humour in her wide eyes and tilted nose, a hint of generosity in her mouth, a self-assurance in her carriage that gave her a striking attractiveness. She had, in an amazing degree, the faculty of making other women appear dowdy, and it was obvious to Paul that she was boycotted. This was partly explained by the presence at her side of a fat, gouty-looking German-American Jew whose pearl shirt-stud and expensive cigar, while super-excellent of their kind, seemed to add vague injury to his companion's vague insult.

The young woman glanced nonchalantly but deliberately at the tables, and then turned toward the door again, displaying a low-cut bodice which created a silence on the terrace—half shocked, half admiring. She struck Paul as being splendidly but a little pathetically isolated; splendid, because she was so incongruously harmless. He was sure of that. He knew that type of face—it was the face of a "damn good sport." He seemed almost to know that particular face; it aroused some vague recollection. At any rate he meant to see it again, at closer range. He was all the more interested in her on account of the boycott; he entertained a perverse partiality for people who were snubbed.

Before the young woman disappeared through the

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 doorway, Paul had time to notice that all the men, English as well as American, had rejoiced in the sight of her—whether they were willing to admit it or not. Two young Americans of a pattern which he supposed to be "Yale" or "Harvard" had covertly watched her, and he guessed that their mothers and sisters alone had restrained them from flocking about her on the cruise.

He became restless, and found an excuse for leaving the terrace. Inside he searched the corridors. The vague recollection was growing insistent. In the inner lounge he caught a glimpse of her and advanced. She and her companion had found chairs in the centre of the room.

Her wide blue eyes rested on him just as she had finished adjusting a scarf of tulle. The pertness disappeared from her expression, which changed to a puzzled stare. Then her lips parted slightly, and her hands strayed tentatively outward.

Recognition was simultaneous. Paul stepped forward with an exclamation of delight and, without a thought for the scores of onlookers, took her violently into his arms as she sprang up from the seat.

"Paul Minas!" she cried, holding him off for a better view.

"Gritty! As I live and breathe!"

She glanced up and down for joy, with a return of the old tomboy spontaneity.

"Why Paul, you great big huge man! I've never been so floored in all my life."

"Nor I. Good Lord, old Gritty! Who would have believed it?"

"I know—in Egyp'—and everything!"

"Tell me all about it this instant!"

Gritty's companion was languidly interested. She turned to him and said: "Joe, I've discovered a long-lost cousin." Her eyes threw Paul a glance which he

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 took as a signal to observe the cousinship, and he advanced to be introduced to Mr. Krauss.

When Paul looked at Gritty again, his eyes told her that he accepted the situation as unquestioningly as Mr. Krauss had accepted the "cousin," but that he would not be answerable for his private conclusions. Gritty covered the awkwardness with a frank, ringing laugh.

"We can't talk here," said Paul. "Let's find a sitting-room."

He included Mr. Krauss in the invitation, and the three moved off, Gritty hanging on Paul's arm with an eagerness that warmed his heart.

In a deserted corner the trio found chairs. Mr. Krauss ordered drinks and offered Paul a cigar. As briefly and sketchily as possible, Paul satisfied Gritty's curiosity as to his activities during the last twelve years, then demanded an account from her.

"But I don't even know where to begin!" she exclaimed.

"Begin at Hale's Turning. When did you leave?"

"As soon as I was able to bully my folks into letting me go to Boston."

"What did you do there?"

"Made cocoa and dusted the mantlepiece every day for a cousin of Ma's who kept telling me what things were like when she was a little girl. Gee! They were terrible! Then I went out and got a job in a dry-goods store—cash-girl, Cash! Cash! And was never around when they wanted me!"

"Then what?"

"Ran away to New York."

"Why?"

"I was lured there, dearie." She peeked up at him and laughed.

"And then?"

"I worked for a dressmaker who made clothes for a

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 actress who got me a job in the chorus of a musical show that was playing in a great big theatre, and that's the house that Jack built—this is Jack!' She pointed to Krauss. "He's what you call a magnate, he is. Wouldn't you adore being a magnate, Paul, with a profile like that?" Gritty let the tip of her finger alight upon the older man's waistcoat.

"And then?"

Gritty drew back with simulated ladylikeness. "My darling," she reproved, "I can't tell you everything; I don't know you well enough."

Paul laughed. "To make a long story short, then?"

"Well, after many vicissitudes, as the story-books say—vicissitude upon vicissitude—I got a really-truly part, and then bigger parts—and one fine day Joe Krauss here, who runs a dozen theatres—by the way, it was me that taught him not to say theayter; I'm bringing him up that genteel!—what was I saying? Oh yes, Joe, he decided that my light didn't ought to be under a bushel any longer, so he blazed it out into the middle of Broadway—bingo!—and there you are!"

Paul was duly impressed. "But Cairo is a long way from Broadway," he finally commented.

She explained that Krauss had been ordered abroad for his health, and she had come along to nurse him.

"A most resplendent nurse!" Paul commented with a significant smile.

"If I knew what you meant," rebuked Gritty, "I'd leave the room!"

There was much to talk about, but both felt constrained in the presence of the silent, ailing Jew, and Paul decided to postpone further questions. The dancing had commenced, and Gritty's head was keeping time to the distant strains.

"Come along," Paul invited. "You'll excuse us if we dance won't you, Mr. Krauss?"

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 "Go ahead, go ahead—don't mind me. I think I'll go up to bed. Order what you want and put it on my bill."

Paul bristled, but Gritty seemed not to notice the man's crudeness. She left Krauss at the door of the lift and accompanied Paul to the ball-room.

"Oh, Paul!" she squealed. "Isn't it the most exciting old world that ever was!"

He patted her arm and made a passage for her through the throng. He remembered the day when Gritty would have elbowed a way through for him. In the doorway he met Pat, recently returned from a much-needed vacation in Luxor, and introduced him as his "boss." Gritty granted the astonished and delighted Irishman the "dance after next."

Public interest in Gritty had been enhanced by the scene in the lounge, and Paul suddenly realized that he was dancing with a woman whose name must be well known in the theatrical world, a woman, moreover, who, knowing she would be recognized, had been defiant enough of public opinion to travel abroad with her manager. How like Gritty! The same old tomboy at heart. Now he understood the boycott, and chuckled. He thought of some exclusive functions that were to be held within the next few days, and resolved to take Gritty to them. What a pat gesture for his farewell to Cairo! He revolved his plans quite in the spirit in which he and Gritty, twelve years previously, had waggled their fingers at the parson's back.

He had never danced with a woman who moved so easily. Her body was compact and flexible, like a sheet of steel. She was obviously a professional dancer, and he thrilled at his privilege. Here and there he caught faintly derisive glances from ladies of his acquaintance who would never have bared their own backs.

To punish them and to punish the transatlantic

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 dowagers who were at a loss to find partners for their "dotters," the dowagers who had boycotted Gritty on the boat but were ready to squander pity and piastres on syphilitic dragomans snivelling about fictitious bereavements; to teach the lesson to them and to the college youths who had not dared to cut their apron-strings, Paul collected three or four officers in especially ornate uniforms and an Earl, Freddy, a nephew of Henry Shroton, and brought them to Gritty's side, while the pretty little American debutantes looked on.

Gritty was transformed from the mannequin who had stood on the terrace into an agile doll. She radiated jollity. When Paul presented the bashful Freddy—with pompous emphasis on his title—Gritty clapped a hand to her forehead and exclaimed in mock dismay, "My God!" Then she extended her hand. "Shake on it, old top. I been dying to know a honest-to-God nobleman all my life but never have, not one. I was afraid they'd be terribly up-stage!" Gritty smiled with an odd grimace, her frank eyes fixed on the young man as if to sympathize with him for the embarrassment she was causing him.

"At least," he stammered good-naturedly, "I'm glad I'm not that, whatever it is!"

"Oh, you're just too sweet for words," she assured him. "I hope to goodness you're going to ask me to dance, for I just gotta make a entry in my diary—April 10th: rode on a camel and danced with a Earl!"

The others pressed nearer, and the youth, overcoming his shyness in the friendly throng, ventured a further suggestion, "What about another entry, on April 11th or 12th: had luncheon with Freddy?"

"Mercy, no!" exclaimed Gritty. "My diary would never stand for such goings on as that!" And the others slapped the discomfited Freddy on the back and laughed as heartily as though Gritty had told a naughty story.

Suddenly Paul looked over his shoulder. He had

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 heard a precise little voice say, "No, I'm afraid I don't!" He caught in it a hint of adverse criticism directed against the who had taken the army under her wing, and who at this moment was saying, "Hey, don't bother me, can't you see I'm talkin' to a Earl!" The precise little voice had belonged to Beatie Markwick, and she was skilfully steering Pat Coyle away from the American Circe.

"Ça colle!" said Paul to himself exultantly. "Ça colle!" Pat's future was in safe hands.

Gritty Kestrell exemplified an attitude towards life which compelled Paul's admiration. At sea he had lived amongst men for whom morality was a mere question of lack of opportunity. In Vienna he had rubbed shoulders with Bohemians whose conventionality consisted in conscientiously damning morality. In Cairo men and women wore their morality in public as Moslem women wore veils. As for Gritty she seemed sublimely and refreshingly immune from moral cares. She could be dainty and she could be gross, Her acts were the reflex expression of whatever urge happened to be in the ascendancy. The subtle standard of expediency that served most women in lieu of a code formed a quite negligible part of her impedimenta. She had apparently come to the conclusion that honesty was the best policy, and she had the strength of character without which an honest policy is suicidal. She was immoral, but not frail.

If Gritty had glossed over certain phases of her career on the first evening of her reunion with Paul, she made no bones of it during the pleasant days that followed. She accepted the superficial philosophy summed up by the heroine of a smart play she had seen: "A girl is not a sinner just because she's not a saint." But for that mat-

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 ter, if you had conclusively proved to Gritty that she was a sinner, she would merely have smiled with one of her odd grimaces, levelled her eyes at you, and said, "Well, dearie, what you going to do about it?" Womanhood had put a fine edge on her juvenile heartiness and it was the contrast that gave her her most piquant charm. She was too tender to be diabolic; too vulgar to be elvish; but her quality was both mischievous and elusive. She was a pagan, and a "fetching" one.

Out of regard for her companion's health, Gritty had foregone the sight-seeing trips arranged by Cook's man for two hundred "cruisers," as she called them, and had taken rooms at the Mena House, far away from the noisy city. There Paul found the pair on the eve of their departure to join the holiday ship, which was returning to America by way of Greece and Italy. He was to spend the night in the hotel.

"I just hate going," Gritty wailed, when the tea-things were taken away. Through the open window of her sitting-room she and Paul were watching groups seated at tables on the lawn. In the road beyond, a straggling party of tourists, trying to look as though camels were their customary means of locomotion, were ascending the hill towards the pyramids.

"I was plumb disgusted with those things," Gritty rambled on, "when we first come out here. They were so bare and hard, and I'd always thought of 'em in connection with moonlight and palm trees and Oriental music off-stage, like in a Sothern and Marlowe production of Antony and Cleopatra. When we motored across the Nile on a steel bridge I darn near bawled—honest I did. Naturally I thought it was gonna be Nile-green, like my new négligé! I felt like I'd been had. I could no more picture Cleopatra glidin' down that stream of cold tea than I could picture her crossin' to Hoboken from Thirty-Fourth Street. But since then the whole place's kind of

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 got me—an' now I know we're going I'm sorry. You can't help but feel leery to think that, when you have been planted as long as Cleopatra has, people will still be trapesing up that doggone hill to stare and wonder. Joe says it's mental cruelty to bring a invalid out here and put him in a room overlookin' tombstones. His dad wasn't a undertaker like mine. Joe just hates the fleshpots of Egyp'. He can't get used to not being in his office with people runnin' in to tell him the star's drunk and the theatre's on fire. It was killing him, but he's crazy to get back. Gee, life's funny!"

Paul had watched Gritty's change of mood during the past ten days, and was pleased to discover her capacity for being chastened by a grandeur of which she had only the dimmest conception.

"I'm glad you like it," he said. "Have you been out there at night—by moonlight?" He pointed towards the eastern horizon.

Gritty looked up with an eager appeal in her eyes. "No, will you take me—to-night—my last night here?"

"Will Mr. Krauss let you come?"

"This is the twentieth century, darling—A.D.—not B.C., and I'm me own boss."

They dined in Gritty's sitting-room because Mr. Krauss was disinclined to dress. The privacy suited Paul, for Mr. Krauss had an inelegant way with a fork. Halfway through the meal a note was brought in for Miss Kestrell. Gritty read it in silence, borrowed a pencil from the waiter, scribbled a reply, got up to fetch an envelope, sealed the missive and sent it forth while Paul kept up a patter with his host.

"Who was it from?" asked Mr. Krauss when the waiter had left the room.

Gritty had returned to her food with the unconcern of a child. "From a very nice boy," she replied, as if to close the discussion.

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 "Another one?" Mr. Krauss seemed mildly amused.

"No, the same. Eat your nice fish, darling. It's rude to ask personal questions, isn't it, Paul? Say yes."

"Yes. But I'd try to find out in other ways what I wished to know. Is it rude to wish to know?"

"Fierce and rude!"

"What I'd like to know, if it wasn't rude," Paul teased, "is what you replied to the nice boy, also what Mr. Krauss would have said if it hadn't been the same one but another."

Gritty dashed off at a new tangent. "Out here he only lets me have one at a time. Home he brings them to my dressing-room in legions and cohorts."

Paul looked up for an explanation, but none was forthcoming. "Oh, well," he remarked. "There's safety in numbers."

"Not where Gritty's concerned," interposed Mr. Krauss.

"No," she retorted, "but there's money in numbers, and Joe Krauss engages us poor girls for what we can lure into the house. He's got box-office morals."

"What kind have you?" Paul inquired.

"None, thank God!"

"You say it vindictively."

"I got a right to, dearie. If you only knew how I'd had morals drummed into me as a kid." She suddenly remembered whom she was addressing. "But you do know!"

"Don't I just!"

Gritty laughed and explained to Mr. Krauss. "Hale's Turning, where me and Paul was born, is the home of the original moral germ. You'd never believe what a innocent, dear, sweet little lamb he was, Joe—Gee, when I think of him with his Eton collar and patent-leather hair heading the Lily Class at Sunday-school concerts! Lordy, what ages and ages ago it seems!"

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 "Do you remember the night we fled the wrath to come, Gritty—down the hill from the revival tent?"

Gritty put down her knife and fork and burst into a fresh peal of laughter. "I'd clean forgot!" she cried, then gave the older man an account of her frustrated conversion.

"After that we went on strike and refused to go to Sunday-school ever again," she concluded. "Ma hasn't got over it yet."

"The beginning of the end," Mr. Krauss commented.

"Don't you believe it!" Paul corrected. "Gritty's end began the day she was born."

"It never did," she defended, with an air of contentment. "You made me what I am to-day, by preventing me from getting religion—and you know you did, you bad boy. Besides, the moon's up and I gotta see the sphinx."

"What about the nice boy?" Paul inquired.

"He minds his own business," she threw back, as she went away to change her shoes.

A few minutes later she returned, enveloped in a woolly cape. She made Mr. Krauss comfortable before the fire in his bedroom, then followed Paul downstairs.

The night air had a nip in it and Gritty snuggled into the high collar of her cape, passing a hand through a slit to take Paul's arm. They drew away from the hotel gate and walked up the long hill towards the desert, leaving the murmurs and lights of civilization to fade slowly into the distance.

At the top of the hill, where the road spread out and lost itself in the desert, they paused. The first pyramid towered before them, one jagged angle palely silvered by the rising moon, the other side merged into a shadow that extended over acres of sand. Far away, on their left, were tiny points of light leading towards the distant city. On their right was an indigo wilderness of low hills

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 and hollows, over which the moon cast a ghostly sheen.

"It's the very same moon," whispered Gritty. "It thinks I'm Cleopatra and you're Marc Antony."

Paul hummed Omar's words:

Gritty was holding his hand tightly. Finally she turned her back on the moon and pointed toward the empty horizon. "I want to go that way," she said. She had forgotten the sphinx.

They made their way over hubbles of rock and sand, skirting the edge of the black shadow cast by the pyramid, until they had left even the shadow behind. From time to time they paused to rest. Paul was thinking of Thaïs and Paphnuce.

"It's awful spooky," Gritty whispered. "Aren't you scared?"

Paul shook his head.

"I am—a little," she confessed.

Suddenly she withdrew her arm. "I'm going on alone to see how far I can get without dying of fright. I'll hold up my arm when I want you to come and get me and you'll see it against the sky. Do you remember the story Miss Hornby read us about Rumpelstilskin, the boy who knew no fear?"

Paul tried to dissuade her, but she eluded him.

"Don't you dare budge," she called back.

For some time he stood, watching her figure get smaller and smaller. Once, when she descended a depression, he lost sight of-it, but it reappeared on the next ridge. Then it vanished, and he waited, his nerves uncomfortably tense.

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 In the end he could not bear the suspense. There was nothing against which to press one's back. He began to follow in her path, with anxious haste. Once he thought of calling out to her, to command her to stop, but he dreaded to hear his own voice reverberate through the silence.

Then from a deep hollow he saw her form, a tiny blot against the sky. Her arms were raised, and he stumbled on towards her with relief, though still unable to dispel a clutching apprehension. He was afraid she could not make out his figure from the higher ground on which she was standing, and his fears redoubled when he saw her arms frantically waving. He paused to shout, but in the act of putting his hands to his mouth he caught a faint cry, and strained his ears. She was calling to him, and he sang out, in tones which had pierced through many a blast, "Coming!"

Suddenly the little figure crumpled, and there was only a faint dark hump to indicate Gritty's position. He hurried on, trying to fix his gaze on the point where he had seen her stand, afraid he might arrive to find the hump merely a boulder. His heart was pounding and his eyes smarted from the strain of peering into the darkness.

Finally he caught sight of her, only a few yards away, huddled on the sand. He gave a shout and she looked up.

"It's a fizzle," she said laconically. "I ain't a bit scared."

"Gritty, you little madcap!" he scolded in tones that made him realize what a fright she had given him. He was trembling and perspiring.

"I would of been scared if I hadn't known you were there," she complained.

He was furious, "Well, I'll see that you come alone next time."

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 She caught his tone and rose to her feet. "Why, did you get scared?"

"Damn scared!"

"Oh, goody-goody!"

"Don't be silly. Come on back." He took her hand and they turned toward the three monuments—now more than ever like sinister tents. For a long while they kept silence. Then Gritty said, with a sigh:

"I'm glad I came, anyway."

Paul had regained control of himself. "Why?"

"It was wonderful. Just the feeling of being alone, of going toward nothing—oh, of just being. Don't you ever forget yourself and just be?"

With a shock Paul realized that Gritty had intuitively attained experiences for which he had had to strive. In the sense that Gritty meant, he had never "just been." He had come near it a few times at sea, and on the day when he had sat and watched his ship pass through the canal without him. But these occasions were acutely exceptional. As a rule his sensations were described to him by a watching and recording faculty whilst he was in the act of experiencing them, whereas Gritty, by virtue of some spontaneity of soul, untroubled by an analytic mind, "just was," as a matter of course, a good portion of the time. He supposed it was part and parcel of her femininity, and said as much, to belittle her. But Gritty had already outlived her interest in the matter.

"I'm tired now," she plaintively announced.

"You would be," he retorted.

"And cold," she added, to reinforce her claim for sympathy.

"And thirsty, no doubt," he suggested.

"Yes."

"Well, you must have patience."

"But I don't want to have patience."

"What do you want to have?"

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 She stopped. "A kiss, please, mister."

He gave it to her. "Now stop being perverse, or I'll run away and leave you to just be to your heart's content."

She shuddered, and took a new grip of his arm. The mere threat intimidated her.

Paul had food for thought during the rest of the journey. He could have roamed all over the desert alone without being afraid, because alone he could imagine himself unhuman. In the desert with Gritty just beyond reach, he had been terror-stricken. On the other hand, Gritty, provided he were in the vicinity, could not experience a fear she had courted, whereas alone she would have collapsed. He concluded that he was not as weak as he had been on the point of believing.

When they reached the hotel the lounge was deserted, but voices came from the direction of the card and billiard-rooms. Paul gave an order for coffee and sandwiches, and they sank into deep chairs.

"Now play something," Gritty begged.

"It's too late."

"But it's my last night. I want to hear some nice Oriental music to complete everything. Why, I haven't heard a bit since I been here. That's another way I feel I been had. At Shepheard's they played things like 'Alexander's Rag-time Band'—and it's old at that!"

Paul opened the piano. At least, he mused, if he couldn't just be in the routine of life he could in terms of music. Left to himself he would have chosen music which would have conveyed very little emotion to Gritty Kestrell. But to-night Gritty must be humoured. He began to play a piece by Emile Blanchet: "Au Jardin du Vieux Serail."

"That's it," Gritty murmured, in response to the weird opening cadences, and she sank deeper into her arm-chair, tired and contented, as the music went on, muffled,

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1. is no one, I imagine, who, after a careful examination of the question, will not perceive how blessed would be the condition of Christian kingdoms and states if they were supplied with schools of the kind that we desire. We must therefore see what is necessary in order that these speculations may not remain speculations, but may be realised in some definite form. Not without reason does John Cæcilius Frey express his surprise and indignation that throughout so many centuries no one has ventured to reform the barbarous customs of our schools and universities.

2. For more than a hundred years much complaint has been made of the unmethodical way in which schools areconducted, but it is only within the last thirty that any serious attempt has been made to find a remedy for this state of things. And with what result? Schools remain exactly as they were. If any scholar, either privately or in school, embarked on a course of study, he found himself a butt for the mockery of the ignorant or the malevolence of the ill-disposed, or finally, being unable to obtain any assistance, found his endeavour too laborious, and gave it up. Thus all efforts have hitherto been in vain.

3. We must therefore seek and find some way by which, with God’s assistance, motive power may be supplied to


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Page:Chapters on Jewish literature (IA chaptersonjewish00abra).pdf/32

28 of the Tannaim like Meir, claimed the right to study what we should now term secular sciences. The width of Meir's sympathies may be seen in his tolerant conduct towards his friend Elisha, the son of Abuya. When the latter forsook Judaism, Meir remained true to Elisha. He devoted himself to the effort to win back his old friend, and, though he failed, he never ceased to love him. Again, Meir was famed for his knowledge of fables, in antiquity a branch of the wisdom of all the Eastern world. Meir's large-mindedness was matched by his large-heartedness, and in his wife Beruriah he possessed a companion whose tender sympathies and fine toleration matched his own.

The fourth generation of Tannaim is overshadowed by the fame of Judah the Prince, Rabbi, as he was simply called. He lived from 150 to 210, and with his name is associated the compilation of the Mishnah. A man of genial manners, strong intellec-


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Page:Solo (1924).pdf/248

 tranquil, melancholy, working up a strident climax, and falling away again, whimpering, sighing. It was as though some gorgeous pageant had passed beyond the garden walls, with a din of barbaric trappings. There was in it the sound of high-pitched, exotic flutes, and the monotonous thud of camels' hoofs.

"You're a funny old dear," Gritty acknowledged, by way of thanking him.

Paul went on playing. The music attracted members of a bridge party who were dispersing for the evening. A tall, grey-haired woman in black velvet looked into the room, recognized Paul, and advanced slowly with a faint smile on her drooping lips.

Without interrupting his performance, Paul bowed, and the intruder came trailing across the room. Then she caught sight of Gritty curled up like a kitten, one hand hanging limp over the arm of the chair, a filament of smoke rising from her cigarette. Paul watched from the tail of his eye. After a graceful, elaborate feint, the intruder turned to address a waiter who was bringing the laden tray.

"Oh, waiter—I was just looking for my book. Have you seen it? It's a green book."

The waiter searched in vain, and the lady slowly retreated, saying that she might have left it upstairs after all. Paul went on playing.

Cora, he reflected, had never "just been" in her life. She was doomed to go through life trying to be. And she was putting up such a good bluff, as Pat would say, that she could afford to contemn anomalies like Gritty.

When Lady Henry was out of earshot Gritty sent him a muted, tomboyish whistle between her teeth, and he turned to see her jerk a thumb toward the departing figure.

"Who's she?"

"Why?"

title: Page:Solo (1924).pdf/248