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Title: Ziska
       The Problem of a Wicked Soul

Author: Marie Corelli

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5079]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on April 17, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ZISKA ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.






ZISKA

THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED SOUL
BY
MARIE CORELLI




Other Books by the same Author

THE SORROWS OF SATAN BARABBAS A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS THE MIGHTY
ATOM, ETC., ETC.






TO THE PRESENT LIVING RE-INCARNATION OF ARAXES






ZISKA.

THE PROBLEM OF A WICKED SOUL.




PROLOGUE.


Dark against the sky towered the Great Pyramid, and over its apex
hung the moon. Like a wreck cast ashore by some titanic storm, the
Sphinx, reposing amid the undulating waves of grayish sand
surrounding it, seemed for once to drowse. Its solemn visage that
had impassively watched ages come and go, empires rise and fall,
and generations of men live and die, appeared for the moment to
have lost its usual expression of speculative wisdom and intense
disdain--its cold eyes seemed to droop, its stern mouth almost
smiled. The air was calm and sultry; and not a human foot
disturbed the silence. But towards midnight a Voice suddenly arose
as it were like a wind in the desert, crying aloud: "Araxes!
Araxes!" and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the deep
recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb. Moonlight and the Hour wove
their own mystery; the mystery of a Shadow and a Shape that
flitted out like a thin vapor from the very portals of Death's
ancient temple, and drifting forward a few paces resolved itself
into the visionary fairness of a Woman's form--a Woman whose dark
hair fell about her heavily, like the black remnants of a long-
buried corpse's wrappings; a Woman whose eyes flashed with an
unholy fire as she lifted her face to the white moon and waved her
ghostly arms upon the air. And again the wild Voice pulsated
through the stillness.

   "Araxes! ... Araxes! Thou art here,
  --and I pursue thee! Through life into
   death; through death out into life again!
   I find thee and I follow! I follow!
   Araxes!..."

Moonlight and the Hour wove their own mystery; and ere the pale
opal dawn flushed the sky with hues of rose and amber the Shadow
had vanished; the Voice was heard no more. Slowly the sun lifted
the edge of its golden shield above the horizon, and the great
Sphinx awaking from its apparent brief slumber, stared in
expressive and eternal scorn across the tracts of sand and tufted
palm-trees towards the glittering dome of El-Hazar--that abode of
profound sanctity and learning, where men still knelt and
worshipped, praying the Unknown to deliver them from the Unseen.
And one would almost have deemed that the sculptured Monster with
the enigmatical Woman-face and Lion-form had strange thoughts in
its huge granite brain; for when the full day sprang in glory over
the desert and illumined its large features with a burning saffron
radiance, its cruel lips still smiled as though yearning to speak
and propound the terrible riddle of old time; the Problem which
killed!




CHAPTER I.


It was the full "season" in Cairo. The ubiquitous Britisher and
the no less ubiquitous American had planted their differing
"society" standards on the sandy soil watered by the Nile, and
were busily engaged in the work of reducing the city, formerly
called Al Kahira or The Victorious, to a more deplorable condition
of subjection and slavery than any old-world conqueror could ever
have done. For the heavy yoke of modern fashion has been flung on
the neck of Al Kahira, and the irresistible, tyrannic dominion of
"swagger" vulgarity has laid The Victorious low. The swarthy
children of the desert might, and possibly would, be ready and
willing to go forth and fight men with men's weapons for the
freedom to live and die unmolested in their own native land; but
against the blandly-smiling, white-helmeted, sun-spectacled,
perspiring horde of Cook's "cheap trippers," what can they do save
remain inert and well-nigh speechless? For nothing like the cheap
tripper was ever seen in the world till our present enlightened
and glorious day of progress; he is a new-grafted type of nomad,
like and yet unlike a man. The Darwin theory asserts itself
proudly and prominently in bristles of truth all over him--in his
restlessness, his ape-like agility and curiosity, his shameless
inquisitiveness, his careful cleansing of himself from foreign
fleas, his general attention to minutiae, and his always voracious
appetite; and where the ape ends and the man begins is somewhat
difficult to discover. The "image of God" wherewith he, together
with his fellows, was originally supposed to be impressed in the
first fresh days of Creation, seems fairly blotted out, for there
is no touch of the Divine in his mortal composition. Nor does the
second created phase-the copy of the Divineo--namely, the Heroic,-
-dignify his form or ennoble his countenance. There is nothing of
the heroic in the wandering biped who swings through the streets
of Cairo in white flannels, laughing at the staid composure of the
Arabs, flicking thumb and finger at the patient noses of the small
hireable donkeys and other beasts of burden, thrusting a warm red
face of inquiry into the shadowy recesses of odoriferous bazaars,
and sauntering at evening in the Esbekiyeh Gardens, cigar in mouth
and hands in pockets, looking on the scene and behaving in it as
if the whole place were but a reflex of Earl's Court Exhibition.
History affects the cheap tripper not at all; he regards the
Pyramids as "good building" merely, and the inscrutable Sphinx
itself as a fine target for empty soda-water bottles, while
perhaps his chiefest regret is that the granite whereof the
ancient monster is hewn is too hard for him to inscribe his
distinguished name thereon. It is true that there is a punishment
inflicted on any person or persons attempting such wanton work--a
fine or the bastinado; yet neither fine nor bastinado would affect
the "tripper" if he could only succeed in carving "'Arry" on the
Sphinx's jaw. But he cannot, and herein is his own misery.
Otherwise he comports himself in Egypt as he does at Margate, with
no more thought, reflection, or reverence than dignify the
composition of his far-off Simian ancestor.

Taking him all in all, he is, however, no worse, and in some
respects better, than the "swagger" folk who "do" Egypt, or
rather, consent in a languid way to be "done" by Egypt. These are
the people who annually leave England on the plea of being unable
to stand the cheery, frosty, and in every respect healthy winter
of their native country--that winter, which with its wild winds,
its sparkling frost and snow, its holly trees bright with scarlet
berries, its merry hunters galloping over field and moor during
daylight hours, and its great log fires roaring up the chimneys at
evening, was sufficiently good for their forefathers to thrive
upon and live through contentedly up to a hale and hearty old age
in the times when the fever of travelling from place to place was
an unknown disease, and home was indeed "sweet home." Infected by
strange maladies of the blood and nerves, to which even scientific
physicians find it hard to give suitable names, they shudder at
the first whiff of cold, and filling huge trunks with a thousand
foolish things which have, through luxurious habit, become
necessities to their pallid existences, they hastily depart to the
Land of the Sun, carrying with them their nameless languors,
discontents and incurable illnesses, for which Heaven itself, much
less Egypt, could provide no remedy. It is not at all to be
wondered at that these physically and morally sick tribes of human
kind have ceased to give any serious attention as to what may
possibly become of them after death, or whether there IS any
"after," for they are in the mentally comatose condition which
precedes entire wreckage of brain-force; existence itself has
become a "bore;" one place is like another, and they repeat the
same monotonous round of living in every spot where they
congregate, whether it be east, west, north, or south. On the
Riviera they find little to do except meet at Rumpelmayer's at
Cannes, the London House at Nice, or the Casino at Monte-Carlo;
and in Cairo they inaugurate a miniature London "season" over
again, worked in the same groove of dinners, dances, drives,
picnics, flirtations, and matrimonial engagements. But the Cairene
season has perhaps some advantage over the London one so far as
this particular set of "swagger" folk are concerned--it is less
hampered by the proprieties. One can be more "free," you know! You
may take a little walk into "Old" Cairo, and turning a corner you
may catch glimpses of what Mark Twain calls "Oriental simplicity,"
namely, picturesquely-composed groups of "dear delightful" Arabs
whose clothing is no more than primitive custom makes strictly
necessary. These kind of "tableaux vivants" or "art studies" give
quite a thrill of novelty to Cairene-English Society,--a touch of
savagery,--a soupcon of peculiarity which is entirely lacking to
fashionable London. Then, it must be remembered that the "children
of the desert" have been led by gentle degrees to understand that
for harboring the strange locusts imported into their land by
Cook, and the still stranger specimens of unclassified insect
called Upper Ten, which imports itself, they will receive
"backsheesh."

"Backsheesh" is a certain source of comfort to all nations, and
translates itself with sweetest euphony into all languages, and
the desert-born tribes have justice on their side when they demand
as much of it as they can get, rightfully or wrongfully. They
deserve to gain some sort of advantage out of the odd-looking
swarms of Western invaders who amaze them by their dress and
affront them by their manners. "Backsheesh," therefore, has become
the perpetual cry of the Desert-Born,--it is the only means of
offence and defence left to them, and very naturally they cling to
it with fervor and resolution. And who shall blame them? The tall,
majestic, meditative Arab--superb as mere man, and standing naked-
footed on his sandy native soil, with his one rough garment flung
round his loins and his great black eyes fronting, eagle-like, the
sun--merits something considerable for condescending to act as
guide and servant to the Western moneyed civilian who clothes his
lower limbs in straight, funnel-like cloth casings, shaped to the
strict resemblance of an elephant's legs, and finishes the
graceful design by enclosing the rest of his body in a stiff shirt
wherein he can scarcely move, and a square-cut coat which divides
him neatly in twain by a line immediately above the knee, with the
effect of lessening his height by several inches. The Desert-Born
surveys him gravely and in civil compassion, sometimes with a
muttered prayer against the hideousness of him, but on the whole
with patience and equanimity,--influenced by considerations of
"backsheesh." And the English "season" whirls lightly and
vaporously, like blown egg-froth, over the mystic land of the old
gods,--the terrible land filled with dark secrets as yet
unexplored,--the land "shadowing with wings," as the Bible hath
it,--the land in which are buried tremendous histories as yet
unguessed,--profound enigmas of the supernatural,--labyrinths of
wonder, terror and mystery,--all of which remain unrevealed to the
giddy-pated, dancing, dining, gabbling throng of the fashionable
travelling lunatics of the day,--the people who "never think
because it is too much trouble," people whose one idea is to
journey from hotel to hotel and compare notes with their
acquaintances afterwards as to which house provided them with the
best-cooked food. For it is a noticeable fact that with most
visitors to the "show" places of Europe and the East, food,
bedding and selfish personal comfort are the first
considerations,--the scenery and the associations come last.
Formerly the position was reversed. In the days when there were no
railways, and the immortal Byron wrote his Childe Harold, it was
customary to rate personal inconvenience lightly; the beautiful or
historic scene was the attraction for the traveller, and not the
arrangements made for his special form of digestive apparatus.
Byron could sleep on the deck of a sailing vessel wrapped in his
cloak and feel none the worse for it; his well-braced mind and
aspiring spirit soared above all bodily discomforts; his thoughts
were engrossed with the mighty teachings of time; he was able to
lose himself in glorious reveries on the lessons of the past and
the possibilities of the future; the attitude of the inspired
Thinker as well as Poet was his, and a crust of bread and cheese
served him as sufficiently on his journeyings among the then
unspoilt valleys and mountains of Switzerland as the warm, greasy,
indigestible fare of the elaborate table-d'hotes at Lucerne and
Interlaken serve us now. But we, in our "superior" condition,
pooh-pooh the Byronic spirit of indifference to events and scorn
of trifles,--we say it is "melodramatic," completely forgetting
that our attitude towards ourselves and things in general is one
of most pitiable bathos. We cannot write Childe Harold, but we can
grumble at both bed and board in every hotel under the sun; we can
discover teasing midges in the air and questionable insects in the
rooms; and we can discuss each bill presented to us with an
industrious persistence which nearly drives landlords frantic and
ourselves as well. In these kind of important matters we are
indeed "superior" to Byron and other ranting dreamers of his type,
but we produce no Childe Harolds, and we have come to the strange
pass of pretending that Don Juan is improper, while we pore over
Zola with avidity! To such a pitch has our culture brought us!
And, like the Pharisee in the Testament, we thank God we are not
as others are. We are glad we are not as the Arab, as the African,
as the Hindoo; we are proud of our elephant-legs and our dividing
coat-line; these things show we are civilized, and that God
approves of us more than any other type of creature ever created.
We take possession of nations, not by thunder of war, but by
clatter of dinner-plates. We do not raise armies, we build hotels;
and we settle ourselves in Egypt as we do at Homburg, to dress and
dine and sleep and sniff contempt on all things but ourselves, to
such an extent that we have actually got into the habit of calling
the natives of the places we usurp "foreigners." WE are the
foreigners; but somehow we never can see it. Wherever we
condescend to build hotels, that spot we consider ours. We are
surprised at the impertinence of Frankfort people who presume to
visit Homburg while we are having our "season" there; we wonder
how they dare do it! And, of a truth, they seem amazed at their
own boldness, and creep shyly through the Kur-Garten as though
fearing to be turned out by the custodians. The same thing occurs
in Egypt; we are frequently astounded at what we call "the
impertinence of these foreigners," i.e. the natives. They ought to
be proud to have us and our elephant-legs; glad to see such noble
and beautiful types of civilization as the stout parvenu with his
pendant paunch, and his family of gawky youths and maidens of the
large-toothed, long-limbed genus; glad to see the English "mamma,"
who never grows old, but wears young hair in innocent curls, and
has her wrinkles annually "massaged" out by a Paris artiste in
complexion. The Desert-Born, we say, should be happy and grateful
to see such sights, and not demand so much "backsheesh." In fact,
the Desert-Born should not get so much in our way as he does; he
is a very good servant, of course, but as a man and a brother--
pooh! Egypt may be his country, and he may love it as much as we
love England; but our feelings are more to be considered than his,
and there is no connecting link of human sympathy between
Elephant-Legs and sun-browned Nudity!

So at least thought Sir Chetwynd Lyle, a stout gentleman of coarse
build and coarser physiognomy, as he sat in a deep arm-chair in
the great hall or lounge of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, smoking
after dinner in the company of two or three acquaintances with
whom he had fraternized during his stay in Cairo. Sir Chetwynd was
fond of airing his opinions for the benefit of as many people who
cared to listen to him, and Sir Chetwynd had some right to his
opinions, inasmuch as he was the editor and proprietor of a large
London newspaper. His knighthood was quite a recent distinction,
and nobody knew exactly how he had managed to get it. He had
originally been known in Fleet Street by the irreverent sobriquet
of "greasy Chetwynd," owing to his largeness, oiliness and general
air of blandly-meaningless benevolence. He had a wife and two
daughters, and one of his objects in wintering at Cairo was to get
his cherished children married. It was time, for the bloom was
slightly off the fair girl-roses,--the dainty petals of the
delicate buds were beginning to wither. And Sir Chetwynd had heard
much of Cairo; he understood that there was a great deal of
liberty allowed there between men and maids,--that they went out
together on driving excursions to the Pyramids, that they rode on
lilliputian donkeys over the sand at moonlight, that they floated
about in boats at evening on the Nile, and that, in short, there
were more opportunities of marriage among the "flesh-pots of
Egypt" than in all the rush and crush of London. So here he was,
portly and comfortable, and on the whole well satisfied with his
expedition; there were a good many eligible bachelors about, and
Muriel and Dolly were really doing their best. So was their
mother, Lady Chetwynd Lyle; she allowed no "eligible" to escape
her hawk-like observation, and on this particular evening she was
in all her glory, for there was to be a costume ball at the
Gezireh Palace Hotel,--a superb affair, organized by the
proprietors for the amusement of their paying guests, who
certainly paid well,--even stiffly. Owing to the preparations that
were going on for this festivity, the lounge, with its sumptuous
Egyptian decorations and luxurious modern fittings, was well-nigh
deserted save for Sir Chetwynd and his particular group of
friends, to whom he was holding forth, between slow cigar-puffs,
on the squalor of the Arabs, the frightful thievery of the Sheiks,
the incompetency of his own special dragoman, and the mistake
people made in thinking the Egyptians themselves a fine race.

"They are tall, certainly," said Sir Chetwynd, surveying his
paunch, which lolled comfortably, and as it were by itself, in
front of him, like a kind of waistcoated air-balloon. "I grant you
they are tall. That is, the majority of them are. But I have seen
short men among them. The Khedive is not taller than I am. And the
Egyptian face is very deceptive. The features are often fine,--
occasionally classic,--but intelligent expression is totally
lacking."

Here Sir Chetwynd waved his cigar descriptively, as though he
would fain suggest that a heavy jaw, a fat nose with a pimple at
the end, and a gross mouth with black teeth inside it, which were
special points in his own physiognomy, went further to make up
"intelligent expression" than any well-moulded, straight, Eastern
type of sun-browned countenance ever seen or imagined.

"Well, I don't quite agree with you there," said a man who was
lying full length on one of the divans close by and smoking.
"These brown chaps have deuced fine eyes. There doesn't seem to be
any lack of expression in them. And that reminds me, there is at
fellow arrived here to-day who looks for all the world like an
Egyptian, of the best form. He is a Frenchman, though; a
Provencal,--every one knows him,--he is the famous painter, Armand
Gervase."

"Indeed!"--and Sir Chetwynd roused himself at the name--"Armand
Gervase! THE Armand Gervase?"

"The only one original," laughed the other. "He's come here to
make studies of Eastern women. A rare old time he'll have among
them, I daresay! He's not famous for character. He ought to paint
the Princess Ziska."

"Ah, by-the-bye, I wanted to ask you about that lady. Does anyone
know who she is? My wife is very anxious to find out whether she
is--well--er--quite the proper person, you know! When one has
young girls, one cannot be too careful."

Ross Courtney, the man on the divan, got up slowly and stretched
his long athletic limbs with a lazy enjoyment in the action. He
was a sporting person with unhampered means and large estates in
Scotland and Ireland; he lived a joyous, "don't-care" life of
wandering about the world in search of adventures, and he had a
scorn of civilized conventionalities--newspapers and their editors
among them. And whenever Sir Chetwynd spoke of his "young girls"
he was moved to irreverent smiling, as he knew the youngest of the
twain was at least thirty. He also recognized and avoided the wily
traps and pitfalls set for him by Lady Chetwynd Lyle in the hope
that he would yield himself up a captive to the charms of Muriel
or Dolly; and as he thought of these two fair ones now and
involuntarily compared them in his mind with the other woman just
spoken of, the smile that had begun to hover on his lips deepened
unconsciously till his handsome face was quite illumined with its
mirth.

"Upon my word, I don't think it matters who anybody is in Cairo!"
he said with a fine carelessness. "The people whose families are
all guaranteed respectable are more lax in their behavior than the
people one knows nothing about. As for the Princess Ziska, her
extraordinary beauty and intelligence would give her the entree
anywhere--even if she hadn't money to back those qualities up."

"She's enormously wealthy, I hear," said young Lord Fulkeward,
another of the languid smokers, caressing his scarcely perceptible
moustache. "My mother thinks she is a divorcee."

Sir Chetwynd looked very serious, and shook his fat head solemnly.

"Well, there is nothing remarkable in being divorced, you know,"
laughed Ross Courtney. "Nowadays it seems the natural and fitting
end of marriage."

Sir Chetwynd looked graver still. He refused to be drawn into this
kind of flippant conversation. He, at any rate, was respectably
married; he had no sympathy whatever with the larger majority of
people whose marriages were a failure.

"There is no Prince Ziska then?" he inquired. "The name sounds to
me of Russian origin, and I imagined--my wife also imagined,--that
the husband of the lady might very easily be in Russia while his
wife's health might necessitate her wintering in Egypt. The
Russian winter climate is inclement, I believe."

"That would be a very neat arrangement," yawned Lord Fulkeward.
"But my mother thinks not. My mother thinks there is not a husband
at all,--that there never was a husband. In fact my mother has
very strong convictions on the subject. But my mother intends to
visit her all the same."

"She does? Lady Fulkeward has decided on that? Oh, well, in THAT
case!"--and Sir Chetwynd expanded his lower-chest air-balloon. "Of
course, Lady Chetwynd Lyle can no longer have any scruples on the
subject. If Lady Fulkeward visits the Princess there can be no
doubt as to her actual STATUS."

"Oh, I don't know!" murmured Lord Fulkeward, stroking his downy
lip. "You see my mother's rather an exceptional person. When the
governor was alive she hardly ever went out anywhere, you know,
and all the people who came to our house in Yorkshire had to bring
their pedigrees with them, so to speak. It was beastly dull! But
now my mother has taken to 'studying character,' don'cher know;
she likes all sorts of people about her, and the more mixed they
are the more she is delighted with them. Fact, I assure you! Quite
a change has come over my mother since the poor old governor
died!"

Ross Courtney looked amused. A change indeed had come over Lady
Fulkeward--a change, sudden, mysterious and amazing to many of her
former distinguished friends with "pedigrees." In her husband's
lifetime her hair had been a soft silver-gray; her face pale,
refined and serious; her form full and matronly; her step sober
and discreet; but two years after the death of the kindly and
noble old lord who had cherished her as the apple of his eye and
up to the last moment of his breath had thought her the most
beautiful woman in England, she appeared with golden tresses, a
peach-bloom complexion, and a figure which had been so massaged,
rubbed, pressed and artistically corseted as to appear positively
sylph-like. She danced like a fairy, she who had once been called
"old" Lady Fulkeward; she smoked cigarettes; she laughed like a
child at every trivial thing--any joke, however stale, flat and
unprofitable, was sufficient to stir her light pulses to
merriment; and she flirted--oh, heavens!--HOW she flirted!--with a
skill and a grace and a knowledge and an aplomb that nearly drove
Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle frantic. They, poor things, were
beaten out of the field altogether by her superior tact and art of
"fence," and they hated her accordingly and called her in private
a "horrid old woman," which perhaps, when her maid undressed her,
she was. But she was having a distinctly "good time" in Cairo; she
called her son, who was in delicate health, "my poor dear little
boy!" and he, though twenty-eight on his last birthday, was
reduced to such an abject condition of servitude by her
assertiveness, impudent gayety and general freedom of manner, that
he could not open his mouth without alluding to "my mother," and
using "my mother" as a peg whereon to hang all his own opinions
and emotions as well as the opinions and emotions of other people.

"Lady Fulkeward admires the Princess very much, I believe?" said
another lounger who had not yet spoken.

"Oh, as to that!"--and Lord Fulkeward roused himself to some faint
show of energy. "Who wouldn't admire her? By Jove! Only, I tell
you what--there's something I weird about her eyes. Fact! I don't
like her eyes."

"Shut up, Fulke! She has beautiful eyes!" burst out Courtney,
hotly; then flushing suddenly he bit his lips and was silent.

"Who is this that has beautiful eyes?" suddenly demanded a slow,
gruff voice, and a little thin gentleman, dressed in a kind of
academic gown and cap, appeared on the scene.

"Hullo! here's our F.R.S.A.!" exclaimed Lord Fulkeward. "By Jove!
Is that the style you have got yourself up in for tonight? It
looks awfully smart, don'cher know!"

The personage thus complimented adjusted his spectacles and
surveyed his acquaintances with a very well-satisfied air. In
truth, Dr. Maxwell Dean had some reason for self-satisfaction, if
the knowledge that he possessed one of the cleverest heads in
Europe could give a man cause for pride. He was apparently the
only individual in the Gezireh Palace Hotel who had come to Egypt
for any serious purpose. A purpose he had, though what it was he
declined to explain. Reticent, often brusque, and sometimes
mysterious in his manner of speech, there was not the slightest
doubt that he was at work on something, and that he also had a
very trying habit of closely studying every object, small or
great, that came under his observation. He studied the natives to
such an extent that he knew every differing shade of color in
their skins; he studied Sir Chetwynd Lyle and knew that he
occasionally took bribes to "put things" into his paper; he
studied Dolly and Muriel Chetwynd Lyle, and knew that they would
never succeed in getting husbands; he studied Lady Fulkeward, and
thought her very well got up for sixty; he studied Ross Courtney,
and knew he would never do anything but kill animals all his life;
and he studied the working of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, and saw a
fortune rising out of it for the proprietors. But apart from these
ordinary surface things, he studied other matters--"occult"
peculiarities of temperament, "coincidences," strange occurrences
generally. He could read the Egyptian hieroglyphs perfectly, and
he understood the difference between "royal cartouche" scarabei
and Birmingham-manufactured ones. He was never dull; he had plenty
to do; and he took everything as it came in its turn. Even the
costume ball for which he had now attired himself did not present
itself to him as a "bore," but as a new vein of information,
opening to him fresh glimpses of the genus homo as seen in a state
of eccentricity.

"I think," he now said, complacently, "that the cap and gown look
well for a man of my years. It is a simple garb, but cool,
convenient and not unbecoming. I had thought at first of adopting
the dress of an ancient Egyptian priest, but I find it difficult
to secure the complete outfit. I would never wear a costume of the
kind that was not in every point historically correct."

No one smiled. No one would have dared to smile at Dr. Maxwell
Dean when he spoke of "historically correct" things. He had
studied them as he had studied everything, and he knew all about
them.

Sir Chetwynd murmured:

"Quite right--er--the ancient designs were very elaborate--"

"And symbolic," finished Dr. Dean. "Symbolic of very curious
meanings, I assure you. But I fear I have interrupted your talk.
Mr. Courtney was speaking about somebody's beautiful eyes; who is
the fair one in question?"

"The Princess Ziska," said Lord Fulkeward. "I was saying that I
don't quite like the look of her eyes."

"Why not? Why not?" demanded the doctor with sudden asperity.
"What's the matter with them?"

"Everything's the matter with them!" replied Ross Courtney with a
forced laugh. "They are too splendid and wild for Fulke; he likes
the English pale-blue better than the Egyptian gazelle-black."

"No, I don't," said Lord Fulkeward, speaking more animatedly than
was customary with him. "I hate, pale-blue eyes. I prefer soft
violet-gray ones, like Miss Murray's."

"Miss Helen Murray is a very charming young lady," said Dr. Dean.
"But her beauty is quite of an ordinary type, while that of the
Princess Ziska--"

"Is EXTRA-ordinary--exactly! That's just what I say!" declared
Courtney. "I think she is the loveliest woman I have ever seen."

There was a pause, during which the little doctor looked with a
ferret-like curiosity from one man to the other. Sir Chetwynd Lyle
rose ponderously up from the depths of his arm-chair.

"I think," said he, "I had better go and get into my uniform--the
Windsor, you know! I always have it with me wherever I go; it
comes in very useful for fancy balls such as the one we are going
to have tonight, when no particular period is observed in costume.
Isn't it about time we all got ready?"

"Upon my life, I think it is!" agreed Lord Fulkeward. "I am coming
out as a Neapolitan fisherman! I don't believe Neapolitan
fishermen ever really dress in the way I'm going to make up, but
it's the accepted stage-type, don'cher know."

"Ah! I daresay you will look very well in it," murmured Ross
Courtney, vaguely. "Hullo! here comes Denzil Murray!"

They all turned instinctively to watch the entrance of a handsome
young man, attired in the picturesque garb worn by Florentine
nobles during the prosperous reign of the Medicis. It was a
costume admirably adapted to the wearer, who, being grave and
almost stern of feature, needed the brightness of jewels and the
gloss of velvet and satin to throw out the classic contour of his
fine head and enhance the lustre of his brooding, darkly-
passionate eyes. Denzil Murray was a pure-blooded Highlander,--the
level brows, the firm lips, the straight, fearless look, all
bespoke him a son of the heather-crowned mountains and a
descendant of the proud races that scorned the "Sassenach," and
retained sufficient of the material whereof their early Phoenician
ancestors were made to be capable of both the extremes of hate and
love in their most potent forms. He moved slowly towards the group
of men awaiting his approach with a reserved air of something like
hauteur; it was possible he was conscious of his good looks, but
it was equally evident that he did not desire to be made the
object of impertinent remark. His friends silently recognized
this, and only Lord Fulkeward, moved to a mild transport of
admiration, ventured to comment on his appearance.

"I say, Denzil, you're awfully well got up! Awfully well!
Magnificent!"

Denzil Murray bowed with a somewhat wearied and sarcastic air.

"When one is in Rome, or Egypt, one must do as Rome, or Egypt,
does," he said, carelessly. "If hotel proprietors will give fancy
balls, it is necessary to rise to the occasion. You look very
well, Doctor. Why don't you other fellows go and get your
toggeries on? It's past ten o'clock, and the Princess Ziska will
be here by eleven."

"There are other people coming besides the Princess Ziska, are
there not, Mr. Murray?" inquired Sir Chetwynd Lyle, with an
obtrusively bantering air.

Denzil Murray glanced him over disdainfully.

"I believe there are," he answered coolly. "Otherwise the ball
would scarcely pay its expenses. But as the Princess is admittedly
the most beautiful woman in Cairo this season, she will naturally
be the centre of attraction. That's why I mentioned she would be
here at eleven."

"She told you that?" inquired Ross Courtney.

"She did."

Courtney looked up, then down, and seemed about to speak again,
but checked himself and finally strolled off, followed by Lord
Fulkeward.

"I hear," said Dr. Dean then, addressing Denzil Murray, "that a
great celebrity has arrived at this hotel--the painter, Armand
Gervase."

Denzil's face brightened instantly with a pleasant smile.

"The dearest friend I have in the world!" he said. "Yes, he is
here. I met him outside the door this afternoon. We are very old
chums. I have stayed with him in Paris, and he has stayed with me
in Scotland. A charming fellow! He is very French in his ideas;
but he knows England well, and speaks English perfectly."

"French in his ideas!" echoed Sir Chetwynd Lyle, who was just
preparing to leave the lounge. "Dear me! How is that?"

"He is a Frenchman," said Dr. Dean, suavely. "Therefore that his
ideas should be French ought not to be a matter of surprise to us,
my dear Sir Chetwynd."

Sir Chetwynd snorted. He had a suspicion that he--the editor and
proprietor of the Daily Dial--was being laughed at, and he at once
clambered on his high horse of British Morality.

"Frenchman or no Frenchman," he observed, "the ideas promulgated
in France at the present day are distinctly profane and
pernicious. There is a lack of principle--a want of rectitude in--
er--the French Press, for example, that is highly deplorable."

"And is the English Press immaculate?" asked Denzil languidly.

"We hope so," replied Sir Chetwynd. "We do our best to make it
so."

And with that remark he took his paunch and himself away into
retirement, leaving Dr. Dean and young Murray facing each other, a
singular pair enough in the contrast of their appearance and
dress,--the one small, lean and wiry, in plain-cut, loose-flowing
academic gown; the other tall, broad and muscular, clad in the
rich attire of mediaeval Florence, and looking for all the world
like a fine picture of that period stepped out from, its frame.
There was a silence between them for a moment,--then the Doctor
spoke in a low tone:

"It won't do, my dear boy,--I assure you it won't do! You will
break your heart over a dream, and make yourself miserable for
nothing. And you will break your sister's heart as well; perhaps
you haven't thought of that?"

Denzil flung himself into the chair Sir Chetwynd had just vacated,
and gave vent to a sigh that was almost a groan.

"Helen doesn't know anything--yet," he said hoarsely. "I know
nothing myself; how can I? I haven't said a word to--to HER. If I
spoke all that was in my mind, I daresay she would laugh at me.
You are the only one who has guessed my secret. You saw me last
night when I--when I accompanied her home. But I never passed her
palace gates,--she wouldn't let me. She bade me 'good-night'
outside; a servant admitted her, and she vanished through the
portal like a witch or a ghost. Sometimes I fancy she IS a ghost.
She is so white, so light, so noiseless and so lovely!"

He turned his eyes away, ashamed of the emotion that moved him.
Dr. Maxwell Dean took off his academic cap and examined its
interior as though he considered it remarkable.

"Yes," he said slowly; "I have thought the same thing of her
myself--sometimes."

Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of the
military band of the evening, which now crossed the "lounge," each
man carrying his instrument with him; and these were followed by
several groups of people in fancy dress, all ready and eager for
the ball. Pierrots and Pierrettes, monks in drooping cowls,
flower-girls, water-carriers, symbolic figures of "Night" and
"Morning," mingled with the counterfeit presentments of dead-and-
gone kings and queens, began to flock together, laughing and
talking on their way to the ball-room; and presently among them
came a man whose superior height and build, combined with his
eminently picturesque, half-savage type of beauty, caused every
one to turn and watch him as he passed, and murmur whispering
comments on the various qualities wherein he differed from
themselves. He was attired for the occasion as a Bedouin chief,
and his fierce black eyes, and close-curling, dark hair, combined
with the natural olive tint of his complexion, were well set off
by the snowy folds of his turban and the whiteness of his entire
costume, which was unrelieved by any color save at the waist,
where a gleam of scarlet was shown in the sash which helped to
fasten a murderous-looking dagger and other "correct" weapons of
attack to his belt. He entered the hall with a swift and
singularly light step, and made straight for Denzil Murray.

"Ah! here you are!" he said, speaking English with a slight
foreign accent, which was more agreeable to the ear than
otherwise. "But, my excellent boy, what magnificence! A Medici
costume! Never say to me that you are not vain; you are as
conscious of your good looks as any pretty woman. Behold me, how
simple and unobtrusive I am!"

He laughed, and Murray sprang up from the chair where he had been
despondently reclining.

"Oh, come, I like that!" he exclaimed. "Simple and unobtrusive!
Why everybody is staring at you now as if you had dropped from the
moon! You cannot be Armand Gervase and simple and unobtrusive at
the same time!"

"Why not?" demanded Gervase, lightly. "Fame is capricious, and her
trumpet is not loud enough to be heard all over the world at once.
The venerable proprietor of the dirty bazaar where I managed to
purchase these charming articles of Bedouin costume had never
heard of me in his life. Miserable man! He does not know what he
has missed!"

Here his flashing black eyes lit suddenly on Dr. Dean, who was
"studying" him in the same sort of pertinacious way in which that
learned little man studied everything.

"A friend of yours, Denzil?" he inquired.

"Yes," responded Murray readily; "a very great friend--Dr. Maxwell
Dean. Dr. Dean, let me introduce to you Armand Gervase; I need not
explain him further!"

"You need not, indeed!" said the doctor, with a ceremonious bow.
"The name is one of universal celebrity."

"It is not always an advantage--this universal celebrity," replied
Gervase. "Nor is it true that any celebrity is actually universal.
Perhaps the only living person that is universally known, by name
at least, is Zola. Mankind are at one in their appreciation of
vice."

"I cannot altogether agree with you there," said Dr. Dean slowly,
keeping his gaze fixed on the artist's bold, proud features with
singular curiosity. "The French Academy, I presume, are
individually as appreciative of human weaknesses as most men; but
taken collectively, some spirit higher and stronger than their own
keeps them unanimous in their rejection of the notorious Realist
who sacrifices all the canons of art and beauty to the discussion
of topics unmentionable in decent society."

Gervase laughed idly.

"Oh, he will get in some day, you may be sure," he answered.
"There is no spirit higher and stronger than the spirit of
naturalism in man; and in time, when a few prejudices have died
away and mawkish sentiment has been worn threadbare, Zola will be
enrolled as the first of the French Academicians, with even more
honors than if he had succeeded in the beginning. That is the way
of all those 'select' bodies. As Napoleon said, 'Le monde vient a
celui qui sait attendre.'"

The little Doctor's countenance now showed the most lively and
eager interest.

"You quite believe that, Monsieur Gervase? You are entirely sure
of what you said just now?"

"What did I say? I forget!" smiled Gervase, lighting a cigarette
and beginning to smoke it leisurely.

"You said, 'There is no spirit higher or stronger than the spirit
of naturalism in man.' Are you positive on this point?"

"Why, of course! Most entirely positive!" And the great painter
looked amused as he gave the reply. "Naturalism is Nature, or the
things appertaining to Nature, and there is nothing higher or
stronger than Nature everywhere and anywhere."

"How about God?" inquired Dr. Dean with a curious air, as if he
were propounding a remarkable conundrum.

"God!" Gervase laughed loudly. "Pardon! Are you a clergyman?"

"By no means!" and the Doctor gave a little bow and deprecating
smile. "I am not in any way connected with the Church. I am a
doctor of laws and literature,--a humble student of philosophy and
science generally..."

"Philosophy! Science!" interrupted Gervase. "And you ask about
God! Parbleu! Science and philosophy have progressed beyond Him!"

"Exactly!" and Dr. Dean rubbed his hands together pleasantly.
"That is your opinion? Yes, I thought so! Science and philosophy,
to put it comprehensively, have beaten poor God on His own ground!
Ha! ha! ha! Very good--very good! And humorous as well! Ha! ha!"

And a very droll appearance just then had this "humble student of
philosophy and science generally," for he bent himself to and fro
with laughter, and his small eyes almost disappeared behind his
shelving brows in the excess of his mirth. And two crosslines
formed themselves near his thin mouth--such lines as are carven on
the ancient Greek masks which indicate satire.

Denzil Murray flushed uncomfortably.

"Gervase doesn't believe in anything but Art," he said, as though
half apologizing for his friend: "Art is the sole object of his
existence; I don't believe he ever has time to think about
anything else."

"Of what else should I think, mon ami?" exclaimed Gervase
mirthfully. "Of life? It is all Art to me; and by Art I mean the
idealization and transfiguration of Nature."

"Oh. if you do that sort of thing you are a romancist," interposed
Dr. Dean emphatically. "Nature neither idealizes nor transfigures
itself; it is simply Nature and no more. Matter uncontrolled by
Spirit is anything but ideal."

"Precisely," answered Gervase quickly and with some warmth; "but
my spirit idealizes it,--my imagination sees beyond it,--my soul
grasps it."

"Oh, you have a soul?" exclaimed Dr. Dean, beginning to laugh
again. "Now, how did you find that out?"

Gervase looked at him in a sudden surprise.

"Every man has an inward self, naturally," he said. "We call it
'soul' as a figure of speech; it is really temperament merely."

"Oh, it is merely temperament? Then you don't think it is likely
to outlive you, this soul--to take new phases upon itself and go
on existing, an immortal being, when your body is in a far worse
condition (because less carefully preserved) than an Egyptian
mummy?"

"Certainly not!" and Gervase flung away the end of his finished
cigarette. "The immortality of the soul is quite an exploded
theory. It was always a ridiculous one. We have quite enough to
vex us in our present life, and why men ever set about inventing
another is more than I am able to understand. It was a most
foolish and barbaric superstition."

The gay sound of music now floated towards them from the ball-
room,--the strains of a graceful, joyous, half-commanding, half-
pleading waltz came rhythmically beating on the air like the
measured movement of wings,--and Denzil Murray, beginning to grow
restless, walked to and fro, his eyes watching every figure that
crossed and re-crossed the hall. But Dr. Dean's interest in Armand
Gervase remained intense and unabated; and approaching him, he
laid two lean fingers delicately on the white folds of the Bedouin
dress just where the heart of the man was hidden.

"'A foolish and barbaric superstition!'" he echoed slowly and
meditatively. "You do not believe in any possibility of there
being a life--or several lives--after this present death through
which we must all pass inevitably, sooner or later?"

"Not in the least! I leave such ideas to the ignorant and
uneducated. I should be unworthy of the progressive teachings of
my time if I believed such arrant nonsense."

"Death, you consider, finishes all? There is nothing further--no
mysteries beyond? ..." and Dr. Dean's eyes glittered as he
stretched forth one thin, slight hand and pointed into space with
the word "beyond," an action which gave it a curious emphasis, and
for a fleeting second left a weird impression on even the careless
mind of Gervase. But he laughed it off lightly.

"Nothing beyond? Of course not! My dear sir, why ask such a
question? Nothing can be plainer or more positive than the fact
that death, as you say, finishes all."

A woman's laugh, low and exquisitely musical, rippled on the air
as he spoke--delicious laughter, rarer than song; for women as a
rule laugh too loudly, and the sound of their merriment partakes
more of the nature of a goose's cackle than any other sort of
natural melody. But this large, soft and silvery, was like a
delicately subdued cadence played on a magic flute in the
distance, and suggested nothing but sweetness; and at the sound of
it Gervase started violently and turned sharply round upon his
friend Murray with a look of wonderment and perplexity.

"Who is that?" he demanded. "I have heard that pretty laugh
before; it must be some one I know."

But Denzil scarcely heard him. Pale, and with eyes full of
yearning and passion, he was watching the slow approach of a group
of people in fancy dress, who were all eagerly pressing round one
central figure--the figure of a woman clad in gleaming golden
tissues and veiled in the old Egyptian fashion up to the eyes,
with jewels flashing about her waist, bosom and hair,--a woman who
moved glidingly as if she floated rather than walked, and whose
beauty, half hidden as it was by the exigencies of the costume she
had chosen, was so unusual and brilliant that it seemed to create
an atmosphere of bewilderment and rapture around her as she came.
She was preceded by a small Nubian boy in a costume of vivid
scarlet, who, walking backwards humbly, fanned her slowly with a
tall fan of peacock's plumes made after the quaint designs of
ancient Egypt. The lustre radiating from the peacock's feathers,
the light of her golden garments, her jewels and the marvellous
black splendor of her eyes, all flashed for a moment like sudden
lightning on Gervase; something--he knew not what--turned him
giddy and blind; hardly knowing what he did, he sprang eagerly
forward, when all at once he felt the lean, small hand of Dr. Dean
on his arm and stopped short embarrassed.

"Pardon me!" said the little savant, with a delicate, half-
supercilious lifting of his eyebrows. "But--do you know the
Princess Ziska?"




CHAPTER II.


Gervase stared at him, still dazzled and confused.

"Whom did you say? ... the Princess Ziska? ... No, I don't know
her ... Yet, stay! Yes, I think I have seen her ... somewhere,--in
Paris, possibly. Will you introduce me?"

"I leave that duty to Mr. Denzil Murray," said the Doctor, folding
his arms neatly behind his back ... "He knows her better than I
do."

And smiling his little grim, cynical smile, he settled his
academic cap more firmly on his head and strolled off towards the
ballroom. Gervase stood irresolute, his eyes fixed on that
wondrous golden figure that floated before his eyes like an aerial
vision. Denzil Murray had gone forward to meet the Princess and
was now talking to her, his handsome face radiating with the
admiration he made no attempt to conceal. After a little pause
Gervase moved towards him a step or two, and caught part of the
conversation.

"You look the very beau-ideal of an Egyptian Princess," Murray was
saying. "Your costume is perfect."

She laughed. Again that sweet, rare laughter! Gervase thrilled
with the pulsation of it,--it beat in his ears and smote his brain
with a strange echo of familiarity.

"Is it not?" she responded. "I am 'historically correct,' as your
friend Dr. Dean would say. My ornaments are genuine,--they all
came out of the same tomb."

"I find one fault with your attire, Princess," said one of the
male admirers who had entered with her; "part of your face is
veiled. That is a cruelty to us all!"

She waived the compliment aside with a light gesture.

"It was the fashion in ancient Egypt," she said. "Love in those
old days was not what it is now,--one glance, one smile was
sufficient to set the soul on fire and draw another soul towards
it to consume together in the suddenly kindled flame! And women
veiled their faces in youth, lest they should be deemed too
prodigal of their charms; and in age they covered themselves still
more closely, in order not to affront the Sun-God's fairness by
their wrinkles." She smiled, a dazzling smile that drew Gervase
yet a few steps closer unconsciously, as though he were being
magnetized. "But I am not bound to keep the veil always up," and
as she spoke she loosened it and let it fall, showing an exquisite
face, fair as a lily, and of such perfect loveliness that the men
who were gathered round her seemed to lose breath and speech at
sight of it. "That pleases you better, Mr. Murray?"

Denzil grew very pale. Bending down he murmured something to her
in a low tone. She raised her lovely brows with a little touch of
surprise that was half disdain, and looked at him straightly.

"You say very pretty things; but they do not always please me,"
she observed. "However, that is my fault, no doubt."

And she began to move onwards, her Nubian page preceding her as
before. Gervase stood in her path and confronted her as she came.

"Introduce me," he said in a commanding tone to Denzil.

Denzil looked at him, somewhat startled by the suppressed passion
in his voice.

"Certainly. Princess, permit me!" She paused, a figure of silent
grace and attention. "Allow me to present to you my friend, Armand
Gervase, the most famous artist in France--Gervase, the Princess
Ziska."

She raised her deep, dark eyes and fixed them on his face, and as
he looked boldly at her in a kind of audacious admiration, he felt
again that strange dizzying shock which had before thrilled him
through and through. There was something strangely familiar about
her; the faint odors that seemed exhaled from her garments,--the
gleam of the jewel-winged scarabei on her breast,--the weird light
of the emerald-studded serpent in her hair; and more, much more
familiar than these trifles, was the sound of her voice--dulcet,
penetrating, grave and haunting in its tone.

"At last we meet, Monsieur Armand Gervase!" she said slowly and
with a graceful inclination of her head. "But I cannot look upon
you as a stranger, for I have known you so long--in spirit!"

She smiled--a strange smile, dazzling yet enigmatical--and
something wild and voluptuous seemed to stir in Gervase's pulses
as he touched the small hand, loaded with quaint Egyptian gems,
which she graciously extended towards him.

"I think I have known you, too!" he said. "Possibly in a dream,--a
dream of beauty never realized till now!"

His voice sank to an amorous whisper; but she said nothing in
reply, nor could her looks be construed into any expression of
either pleasure or offence. Yet through the heart of young Denzil
Murray went a sudden pang of jealousy, and for the first time in
his life he became conscious that even among men as well as women
there may exist what is called the "petty envy" of a possible
rival, and the uneasy desire to outshine such an one in all points
of appearance, dress and manner. His gaze rested broodingly on the
tall, muscular form of Gervase, and he noted the symmetry and
supple grace of the man with an irritation of which he was
ashamed. He knew, despite his own undeniably handsome personality,
which was set off to such advantage that night by the richness of
the Florentine costume he had adopted, that there was a certain
fascination about Gervase which was inborn, a trick of manner
which made him seem picturesque at all times; and that even when
the great French artist had stayed with him in Scotland and got
himself up for the occasion in more or less baggy tweeds, people
were fond of remarking that the only man who ever succeeded in
making tweeds look artistic was Armand Gervase. And in the white
Bedouin garb he now wore he was seen at his best; a certain
restless passion betrayed in eyes and lips made him look the
savage part he had "dressed" for, and as he bent his head over the
Princess Ziska's hand and kissed it with an odd mingling of
flippancy and reverence, Denzil suddenly began to think how
curiously alike they were, these two! Strong man and fair woman,
both had many physical points in common,--the same dark, level
brows,--the same half wild, half tender eyes,--the same sinuous
grace of form,--the same peculiar lightness of movement,--and yet
both were different, while resembling each other. It was not what
is called a "family likeness" which existed between them; it was
the cast of countenance or "type" that exists between races or
tribes, and had young Murray not known his friend Gervase to be a
French Provencal and equally understood the Princess Ziska to be
of Russian origin, he would have declared them both, natives of
Egypt, of the purest caste and highest breeding. He was so struck
by this idea that he might have spoken his thought aloud had he
not heard Gervase boldly arranging dance after dance with the
Princess, and apparently preparing to write no name but hers down
the entire length of his ball programme,--a piece of audacity
which had the effect of rousing Denzil to assert his own rights.

"You promised me the first waltz, Princess," he said, his face
flushing as he spoke.

"Quite true! And you shall have it," she replied, smiling.
"Monsieur Gervase will have the second. The music sounds very
inviting; shall we not go in?"

"We spoil the effect of your entree crowding about you like this,"
said Denzil, glancing somewhat sullenly at Gervase and the other
men surrounding her; "and, by the way, you have never told us what
character you represent to-night; some great queen of old time, no
doubt?"

"No, I lay no claim to sovereignty," she answered; "I am for to-
night the living picture of a once famous and very improper person
who bore half my name, a dancer of old time, known as 'Ziska-
Charmazel,' the favorite of the harem of a great Egyptian warrior,
described in forgotten histories as 'The Mighty Araxes.'"

She paused; her admirers, fascinated by the sound of her voice,
were all silent. She fixed her eyes upon Gervase; and addressing
him only, continued:

"Yes, I am 'Charmazel,'" she said. "She was, as I tell you, an
'improper' person, or would be so considered by the good English
people. Because, you know, she was never married to Araxes!"

This explanation, given with the demurest naivete, caused a laugh
among her listeners.

"That wouldn't make her 'improper' in France," said Gervase gayly.
"She would only seem more interesting."

"Ah! Then modern France is like old Egypt?" she queried, still
smiling. "And Frenchmen can be found perhaps who are like Araxes
in the number of their loves and infidelities?"

"I should say my country is populated entirely with copies of
him," replied Gervase, mirthfully. "Was he a very distinguished
personage?"

"He was. Old legends say he was the greatest warrior of his time;
as you, Monsieur Gervase, are the greatest artist."

Gervase bowed.

"You flatter me, fair Charmazel!" he said; then suddenly as the
strange name passed his lips he recoiled as if he had been stung,
and seemed for a moment dazed. The Princess turned her dark eyes
on him inquiringly.

"Something troubles you, Monsieur Gervase?" she asked.

His brows knitted in a perplexed frown.

"Nothing ... the heat ... the air ... a trifle, I assure you? Will
you not join the dancers? Denzil, the music calls you. When your
waltz with the Princess is ended I shall claim my turn. For the
moment ... au revoir!"

He stood aside and let the little group pass him by: the Princess
Ziska moving with her floating, noiseless grace, Denzil Murray
beside her, the little Nubian boy waving the peacock-plumes in
front of them both, and all the other enslaved admirers of this
singularly attractive woman crowding together behind. He watched
the little cortege with strained, dim sight, till just at the
dividing portal between the lounge and the ballroom the Princess
turned and looked back at him with a smile. Over all the
intervening heads their eyes met in one flash of mutual
comprehension! then, as the fair face vanished like a light
absorbed into the lights beyond it, Gervase, left alone, dropped
heavily into a chair and stared vaguely at the elaborate pattern
of the thick carpet at his feet. Passing his hand across his
forehead he withdrew it, wet with drops of perspiration.

"What is wrong with me?" he muttered. "Am I sickening for a fever
before I have been forty-eight hours in Cairo? What fool's notion
is this in my brain? Where have I seen her before? In Paris? St.
Petersburg? London? Charmazel! ... Charmazel! ... What has the
name to do with me? Ziska-Charmazel! It is like the name of a
romance or a gypsy tune. Bah! I must be dreaming! Her face, her
eyes, are perfectly familiar; where, where have I seen her and
played the mad fool with her before? Was she a model at one of the
studios? Have I seen her by chance thus in her days of poverty,
and does her image recall itself vividly now despite her changed
surroundings? I know the very perfume of her hair ... it seems to
creep into my blood ... it intoxicates me ... it chokes me! ..."

He sprang up with a fierce gesture, then after a minute's pause
sat down again, and again stared at the floor.

The gay music from the ball-room danced towards him on the air in
sweet, broken echoes,--he heard nothing and saw nothing.

"My God!" he said at last, under his breath. "Can it be possible
that I love this woman?"




CHAPTER III.


Within the ball-room the tide of gayety was rising to its height.
It may be a very trivial matter, yet it is certain that fancy
dress gives a peculiar charm, freedom, and brightness to
festivities of the kind; and men who in the ordinary mournful
black evening-suit would be taciturn of speech and conventional in
bearing, throw off their customary reserve when they find
themselves in the brilliant and becoming attire of some
picturesque period when dress was an art as well as a fashion; and
not only do they look their best, but they somehow manage to put
on "manner" with costume, and to become courteous, witty, and
graceful to a degree that sometimes causes their own relatives to
wonder at them and speculate as to why they have grown so suddenly
interesting. Few have read Sartor Resartus with either
comprehension or profit, and are therefore unaware, as
Teufelsdrockh was, that "Society is founded upon Cloth"--i.e. that
man does adapt his manners very much to suit his clothes; and that
as the costume of the days of Louis Quinze or Louis Seize inspired
graceful deportment and studied courtesy to women, so does the
costume of our nineteenth century inspire brusque demeanor and
curt forms of speech, which, however sincere, are not flattering
to the fair sex.

More love-making goes on at a fancy-dress ball than at an ordinary
one; and numerous were the couples that strolled through the
corridors and along the terraces of the Gezireh Palace Hotel when,
after the first dozen dances were ended, it was discovered that
one of the most glorious of full moons had risen over the turrets
and minarets of Cairo, illumining every visible object with as
clear a lustre as that of day. Then it was that warriors and
nobles of mediaeval days were seen strolling with mythological
goddesses and out-of-date peasants of Italy and Spain; then
audacious "toreadors" were perceived whispering in the ears of
crowned queens, and clowns were caught lingering amorously by the
side of impossible flower-girls of all nations. Then it was that
Sir Chetwynd Lyle, with his paunch discreetly restrained within
the limits of a Windsor uniform which had been made for him some
two or three years since, paced up and down complacently in the
moonlight, watching his two "girls," Muriel and Dolly, doing
business with certain "eligibles"; then it was that Lady
Fulkeward, fearfully and wonderfully got up as the "Duchess of
Gainsborough" sidled to and fro, flirted with this man, flouted
that, giggled, shrugged her shoulders, waved her fan, and
comported herself altogether as if she were a hoyden of seventeen
just let loose from school for the holidays. And then the worthy
Dr. Maxwell Dean, somewhat exhausted by vigorous capering in the
"Lancers," strolled forth to inhale the air, fanning himself with
his cap as he walked, and listening keenly to every chance word or
sentence he could hear, whether it concerned himself or not. He
had peculiar theories, and one of them was, as he would tell you,
that if you overheard a remark apparently not intended for you,
you were to make yourself quite easy, as it was "a point of
predestination" that you should at that particular moment,
consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of
it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your
career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of
themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You
overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance
that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good
for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns
you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends, and it
tones down any overweening conceit you may have had concerning
your own importance or ability. Listen to everything if you are
wise--I always do. I am an old and practised listener. And I have
never listened in vain. All the information I have gained through
listening, though apparently at first disconnected and
unclassified, has fitted into my work like the stray pieces of a
puzzle, and has proved eminently useful. Wherever I am I always
keep my ears well open."

With such views as he thus entertained, life was always enormously
interesting to Dr. Dean--he found nothing tiresome, not even the
conversation of the type known as Noodle. The Noodle was as
curious a specimen of nature to him as the emu or the crocodile.
And as he turned up his intellectual little physiognomy to the
deep, warm Egyptian sky and inhaled the air sniffingly, as though
it were a monster scent-bottle just uncorked for his special
gratification, he smiled as he observed Muriel Chetwynd Lyle
standing entirely alone at the end of the terrace, attired as a
"Boulogne fish-wife," and looking daggers after the hastily-
retreating figure of a "White Hussar,"--no other than Ross
Courtney.

"How extremely droll a 'Boulogne fish-wife' looks in Egypt,"
commented the Doctor to his inward self. "Remarkable! The
incongruity is peculiarly typical of the Chetwynd Lyles. The
costume of the young woman is like the knighthood of her father,--
droll, droll, very droll!" Aloud he said--"Why are you not
dancing, Miss Muriel?"

"Oh, I don't know--I'm tired," she said, petulantly. "Besides, all
the men are after that Ziska woman,--they seem to have lost their
heads about her!"

"Ah!" and Dr. Dean rubbed his hands. "Yes--possibly! Well, she is
certainly very beautiful."

"I cannot see it!" and Muriel Chetwynd Lyle flushed with the
inward rage which could not be spoken. "It's the way she dresses
more than her looks. Nobody knows who she is--but they do not seem
to care about that. They are all raving like lunatics over her,
and that man--that artist who arrived here to-day, Armand
Gervase,--seems the maddest of the lot. Haven't you noticed how
often he has danced with her?"

"I couldn't help noticing that," said the Doctor, emphatically,
"for I have never seen anything more exquisite than the way they
waltz together. Physically, they seem made for one another."

Muriel laughed disdainfully.

"You had better tell Mr. Denzil Murray that; he is in a bad enough
humor now, and that remark of yours wouldn't improve it, I can
tell you!"

She broke off abruptly, as a slim, fair girl, dressed as a Greek
vestal in white, with a chaplet of silver myrtle-leaves round her
hair, suddenly approached and touched Dr. Dean on the arm.

"Can I speak to you a moment?" she asked.

"My dear Miss Murray! Of course!" and the Doctor turned to her at
once. "What is it?"

She paced with him a few steps in silence, while Muriel Chetwynd
Lyle moved languidly away from the terrace and re-entered the
ball-room.

"What is it?" repeated Dr. Dean. "You seem distressed; come, tell
me all about it!"

Helen Murray lifted her eyes--the soft, violet-gray eyes that Lord
Fulkeward had said he admired--suffused with tears, and fixed them
on the old man's face.

"I wish," she said--"I wish we had never come to Egypt! I feel as
if some great misfortune were going to happen to us; I do, indeed!
Oh, Dr. Dean, have you watched my brother this evening?"

"I have," he replied, and then was silent.

"And what do you think?" she asked anxiously. "How can you account
for his strangeness--his roughness--even to me?"

And the tears brimmed over and fell, despite her efforts to
restrain them. Dr. Dean stopped in his walk and took her two hands
in his own.

"My dear Helen, it's no use worrying yourself like this," he said.
"Nothing can stop the progress of the Inevitable. I have watched
Denzil, I have watched the new arrival, Armand Gervase, I have
watched the mysterious Ziska, and I have watched you! Well, what
is the result? The Inevitable,--simply the unconquerable
Inevitable. Denzil is in love, Gervase is in love, everybody is in
love, except me and one other! It is a whole network of mischief,
and I am the unhappy fly that has unconsciously fallen into the
very middle of it. But the spider, my dear,--the spider who wove
the web in the first instance,--is the Princess Ziska, and she is
NOT in love! She is the other one. She is not in love with anybody
any more than I am. She's got something else on her mind--I don't
know what it is exactly, but it isn't love. Excluding her and
myself, the whole hotel is in love--YOU are in love!"

Helen withdrew her hands from his grasp and a deep flush reddened
her fair face.

"I!" she stammered--"Dr. Dean, you are mistaken. ..."

"Dr. Dean was never mistaken on love-matters in his life," said
that self-satisfied sage complacently. "Now, my dear, don't be
offended. I have known both you and your brother ever since you
were left little orphan children together; if I cannot speak
plainly to you, who can? You are in love, little Helen--and very
unwisely, too--with the man Gervase. I have heard of him often,
but I never saw him before to-night. And I don't approve of him."

Helen grew as pale as she had been rosy, and her face as the
moonlight fell upon it was very sorrowful.

"He stayed with us in Scotland two summers ago," she said softly.
"He was very agreeable..."

"Ha! No doubt! He made a sort of love to you then, I suppose. I
can imagine him doing it very well! There is a nice romantic glen
near your house--just where the river runs, and where I caught a
fifteen-pound salmon some five years ago. Ha! Catching salmon is
healthy work; much better than falling in love. No, no, Helen!
Gervase is not good enough for you; you want a far better man. Has
he spoken to you to-night?"

"Oh, yes! And he has danced with me."

"Ha! How often?"

"Once."

"And how many times with the Princess Ziska?"

Helen's fair head drooped, and she answered nothing. All at once
the little Doctor's hand closed on her arm with a soft yet firm
grip.

"Look!" he whispered.

She raised her eyes and saw two figures step out on the terrace
and stand in the full moonlight,--the white Bedouin dress of the
one and the glittering golden robe of the other made them easily
recognizable,--they were Gervase and the Princess Ziska. Helen
gave a faint, quick sigh.

"Let us go in," she said.

"Nonsense! Why should we go in? On the contrary, let us join
them."

"Oh, no!" and Helen shrank visibly at the very idea. "I cannot; do
not ask me! I have tried--you know I have tried--to like the
Princess; but something in her--I don't know what it is--repels
me. To speak truthfully, I think I am afraid of her."

"Afraid! Pooh! Why should you be afraid? It is true one doesn't
often see a woman with the eyes of a vampire-bat; but there is
nothing to be frightened about. I have dissected the eyes of a
vampire-bat--very interesting work, very. The Princess has them--
only, of course, hers are larger and finer; but there is exactly
the same expression in them. I am fond of study, you know; I am
studying her. What! Are you determined to run away?"

"I am engaged for this dance to Mr. Courtney," said Helen,
nervously.

"Well, well! We'll resume our conversation another time," and Dr.
Dean took her hand and patted it pleasantly. "Don't fret yourself
about Denzil; he'll be all right. And take my advice: don't marry
a Bedouin chief; marry an honest, straightforward, tender-hearted
Englishman who'll take care of you, not a nondescript savage
who'll desert you!"

And with a humorous and kindly smile, Dr. Dean moved off to join
the two motionless and picturesque figures that stood side by side
looking at the moon, while Helen, like a frightened bird suddenly
released, fled precipitately back to the ball-room, where Ross
Courtney was already searching for her as his partner in the next
waltz.

"Upon my word," mused the Doctor, "this is a very pretty kettle of
fish! The Gezireh Palace Hotel is not a hotel at all, it seems to
me; it is a lunatic asylum. What with Lady Fulkeward getting
herself up as twenty at the age of sixty; and Muriel and Dolly
Chetwynd Lyle man-hunting with more ferocity than sportsmen hunt
tigers; Helen in love, Denzil in love, Gervase in love--dear me!
dear me! What a list of subjects for a student's consideration!
And the Princess Ziska ..."

He broke off his meditations abruptly, vaguely impressed by the
strange solemnity of the night. An equal solemnity seemed to
surround the two figures to which he now drew nigh, and as the
Princess Ziska turned her eyes upon him as he came, he was, to his
own vexation, aware that something indefinable disturbed his usual
equanimity and gave him an unpleasant thrill.

"You are enjoying a moonlight stroll, Doctor?" she inquired.

Her veil was now cast aside in a careless fold of soft drapery
over her shoulders, and her face in its ethereal delicacy of
feature and brilliant coloring looked almost too beautiful to be
human. Dr. Dean did not reply for a moment; he was thinking what a
singular resemblance there was between Armand Gervase and one of
the figures on a certain Egyptian fresco in the British Museum.

"Enjoying--er--er--a what?--a moonlight stroll? Exactly--er--yes!
Pardon me, Princess, my mind often wanders, and I am afraid I am
getting a little deaf as well. Yes, I find the night singularly
conducive to meditation; one cannot be in a land like this under a
sky like this"--and he pointed to the shining heaven--"without
recalling the great histories of the past."

"I daresay they were very much like the histories of the present,"
said Gervase smiling.

"I should doubt that. History is what man makes it; and the
character of man in the early days of civilization was, I think,
more forceful, more earnest, more strong of purpose, more bent on
great achievements."

"The principal achievement and glory being to kill as many of
one's fellow-creatures as possible!" laughed Gervase--"Like the
famous warrior, Araxes, of whom the Princess has just been telling
me!"

"Araxes was great, but now Araxes is a forgotten hero," said the
Princess slowly, each accent of her dulcet voice chiming on the
ear like the stroke of a small silver bell. "None of the modern
discoverers know anything about him yet. They have not even found
his tomb; but he was buried in the Pyramids with all the honors of
a king. No doubt your clever men will excavate him some day."

"I think the Pyramids have been very thoroughly explored," said
Dr. Dean. "Nothing of any importance remains in them now."

The Princess arched her lovely eyebrows.

"No? Ah! I daresay you know them better than I do!" and she
laughed, a laugh which was not mirthful so much as scornful.

"I am very much interested in Araxes," said Gervase then, "partly,
I suppose, because he is as yet in the happy condition of being an
interred mummy. Nobody has dug him up, unwound his cerements, or
photographed him, and his ornaments have not been stolen. And in
the second place I am interested in him because it appears he was
in love with the famous dancer of his day whom the Princess
represents to-night,--Charmazel. I wish I had heard the story
before I came to Cairo; I would have got myself up as Araxes in
person to-night."

"In order to play the lover of Charmazel?" queried the Doctor.

"Exactly!" replied Gervase with flashing eyes; "I daresay I could
have acted the part."

"I should imagine you could act any part," replied the Doctor,
blandly. "The role of love-making comes easily to most men."

The Princess looked at him as he spoke and smiled. The jewelled
scarab, set as a brooch on her bosom, flashed luridly in the moon,
and in her black eyes there was a similar lurid gleam.

"Come and talk to me," she said, laying her hand on his arm; "I am
tired, and the conversation of one's ball-room partners is very
banal. Monsieur Gervase would like me to dance all night, I
imagine; but I am too lazy. I leave such energy to Lady Fulkeward
and to all the English misses and madams. I love indolence."

"Most Russian women do, I think," observed the Doctor.

She laughed.

"But I am not Russian!"

"I know. I never thought you were," he returned composedly; "but
everyone in the hotel has come to the conclusion that you are!"

"They are all wrong! What can I do to put them right?" she
inquired with a fascinating little upward movement of her
eyebrows.

"Nothing! Leave them in their ignorance. I shall not enlighten
them, though I know your nationality."

"You do?" and a curious shadow darkened her features. "But perhaps
you are wrong also!"

"I think not," said the Doctor, with gentle obstinacy. "You are an
Egyptian. Born in Egypt; born OF Egypt. Pure Eastern! There is
nothing Western about you. Is not it so?"

She looked at him enigmatically.

"You have made a near guess," she replied; "but you are not
absolutely correct. Originally, I am of Egypt."

Dr. Dean nodded pleasantly.

"Originally,--yes. That is precisely what I mean--originally! Let
me take you in to supper."

He offered his arm, but Gervase made a hasty step forward.

"Princess," he began--

She waved him off lightly.

"My dear Monsieur Gervase, we are not in the desert, where Bedouin
chiefs do just as they like. We are in a modern hotel in Cairo,
and all the good English mammas will be dreadfully shocked if I am
seen too much with you. I have danced with you five times,
remember! And I will dance with you once more before I leave. When
our waltz begins, come and find me in the upper-room."

She moved away on Dr. Dean's arm, and Gervase moodily drew back
and let her pass. When she had gone, he lit a cigarette and walked
impatiently up and down the terrace, a heavy frown wrinkling his
brows. The shadow of a man suddenly darkened the moonlight in
front of him, and Denzil Murray's hand fell on his shoulder.

"Gervase," he said, huskily, "I must speak to you."

Gervase glanced him up and down, taking note of his pale face and
wild eyes with a certain good-humored regret and compassion.

"Say on, my friend."

Denzil looked straight at him, biting his lips hard and clenching
his hands in the effort to keep down some evidently violent
emotion.

"The Princess Ziska," he began,--

Gervase smiled, and flicked the ash off his cigarette.

"The Princess Ziska," he echoed,--"Yes? What of her? She seems to
be the only person talked about in Cairo. Everybody in this hotel,
at any rate, begins conversation with precisely the same words as
you do,--'the Princess Ziska!' Upon my life, it is very amusing!"

"It is not amusing to me," said Denzil, bitterly. "To me it is a
matter of life and death." He paused, and Gervase looked at him
curiously. "We've always been such good friends, Gervase," he
continued, "that I should be sorry if anything came between us
now, so I think it is better to make a clean breast of it and
speak out plainly." Again he hesitated, his face growing still
paler, then with a sudden ardent light glowing in his eyes he
said--"Gervase, I love the Princess Ziska!"

Gervase threw away his cigarette and laughed aloud with a wild
hilarity.

"My good boy, I am very sorry for you! Sorry, too, for myself! I
deplore the position in which we are placed with all my heart and
soul. It is unfortunate, but it seems inevitable. You love the
Princess Ziska,--and by all the gods of Egypt and Christendom, so
do I!"




CHAPTER IV.


Denzil recoiled a step backward, then with an impulsive movement
strode close up to him, his face unnaturally flushed and his eyes
glittering with an evil fire.

"You--you love her! What!--in one short hour, you--who have often
boasted to me of having no heart, no eyes for women except as
models for your canvas,--you say now that you love a woman whom
you have never seen before to-night!"

"Stop!" returned Gervase somewhat moodily, "I am not so sure about
that. I HAVE seen her before, though where I cannot tell. But the
fire that stirs my pulses now seems to spring from some old
passion suddenly revived, and the eyes of the woman we are both
mad for--well! they do not inspire holiness, my dear friend! No,--
neither in you nor in me! Let us be honest with each other. There
is something vile in the composition of Madame la Princesse, and
it responds to something equally vile in ourselves. We shall be
dragged down by the force of it,--tant pis pour nous! I am sorrier
for you than for myself, for you are a good fellow, au fond; you
have what the world is learning to despise--sentiment. I have
none; for as I told you before, I have no heart, but I have
passions--tigerish ones--which must be humored; in fact, I make it
my business in life to humor them."

"Do you intend to humor them in this instance?"

"Assuredly! If I can."

"Then,--friend as you have been, you can be friend no more," said
Denzil fiercely. "My God! Do you not understand? My blood is as
warm as yours,--I will not yield to you one smile, one look from
Ziska! No!--I will kill you first!"

Gervase looked at him calmly.

"Will you? Pauvre garcon! You are such a boy still, Denzil,--by-
the-bye, how old are you? Ah, I remember now,--twenty-two. Only
twenty-two, and I am thirty-eight! So in the measure of time
alone, your life is more valuable to you than mine is to me. If
you choose, therefore, you can kill me,--now, if you like! I have
a very convenient dagger in my belt--I think it has a point--which
you are welcome to use for the purpose; but, for heaven's sake,
don't rant about it--do it! You can kill me--of course you can;
but you cannot--mark this well, Denzil!--you cannot prevent my
loving the same woman whom you love. I think instead of raving
about the matter here in the moonlight, which has the effect of
making us look like two orthodox villains in a set stage-scene,
we'd better make the best of it, and resolve to abide by the
lady's choice in the matter. What say you? You have known her for
many days,--I have known her for two hours. You have had the first
innings, so you cannot complain."

Here he playfully unfastened the Bedouin knife which hung at his
belt and offered it to Denzil, holding it delicately by the
glittering blade.

"One thrust, my brave boy!" he said. "And you will stop the Ziska
fever in my veins at once and forever. But, unless you deal the
murderer's blow, the fever will go on increasing till it reaches
its extremest height, and then ..."

"And then?" echoed Denzil.

"Then? Oh--God only knows what then!"

Denzil thrust away the offered weapon with a movement of aversion.

"You can jest," he said. "You are always jesting. But you do not
know--you cannot read the horrible thoughts in my mind. I cannot
resolve their meaning even to myself. There is some truth in your
light words; I feel, I know instinctively, that the woman I love
has an attraction about her which is not good, but evil; yet what
does that matter? Do not men sometimes love vile women?"

"Always!" replied Gervase briefly.

"Gervase, I have suffered tortures ever since I saw her face!"
exclaimed the unhappy lad, his self-control suddenly giving way.
"You cannot imagine what my life has been! Her eyes make me mad,--
the merest touch of her hand seems to drag me away invisibly ..."

"To perdition!" finished Gervase. "That is the usual end of the
journey we men take with beautiful women."

"And now," went on Denzil, hardly heeding him, "as if my own
despair were not sufficient, you must needs add to it! What evil
fate, I wonder, sent you to Cairo! Of course, I have no chance
with her now; you are sure to win the day. And can you wonder then
that I feel as if I could kill you?"

"Oh, I wonder at nothing," said Gervase calmly, "except, perhaps,
at myself. And I echo your words most feelingly,--What evil fate
sent me to Cairo? I cannot tell! But here I purpose to remain. My
dear Murray, don't let us quarrel if we can help it; it is such a
waste of time. I am not angry with you for loving la belle Ziska,-
-try, therefore, not to be angry with me. Let the fair one herself
decide as to our merits. My own opinion is that she cares for
neither of us, and, moreover, that she never will care for any one
except her fascinating self. And certainly her charms are quite
enough to engross her whole attention. By the way, let me ask you,
Denzil, in this headstrong passion of yours,--for it is a
headstrong passion, just as mine is,--do you actually intend to
make the Ziska your wife if she will have you?"

"Of course," replied Murray, with some haughtiness.

A fleeting expression of amusement flitted over Gervase's
features.

"It is very honorable of you," he said, "very! My dear boy, you
shall have your full chance. Because I--I would not make the
Princess Madame Gervase for all the world! She is not formed for a
life of domesticity--and pardon me--I cannot picture her as the
contented chatelaine of your grand old Scotch castle in Ross-
shire."

"Why not?"

"From an artistic point of view the idea is incongruous," said
Gervase lazily. "Nevertheless, I will not interfere with your
wooing."

Denzil's face brightened.

"You will not?"

"I will not--I promise! But"--and here Gervase paused, looking his
young friend full in the eyes, "remember, if your chance falls to
the ground--if Madame gives you your conge--if she does not
consent to be a Scottish chatelaine and listen every day to the
bagpipes at dinner,--you cannot expect me then to be indifferent
to my own desires. She shall not be Madame Gervase,--oh, no! She
shall not be asked to attend to the pot-au-feu; she shall act the
role for which she has dressed to-night; she shall be another
Charmazel to another Araxes, though the wild days of Egypt are no
more!"

A sudden shiver ran through him as he spoke, and instinctively he
drew the white folds of his picturesque garb closer about him.

"There is a chill wind sweeping in from the desert," he said, "an
evil, sandy breath tasting of mummy-dust blown through the
crevices of the tombs of kings. Let us go in."

Murray looked at him in a kind of dull despair.

"And what is to be done?" he asked. "I cannot answer for myself--
and--from what you say, neither can you."

"My dear friend--or foe--whichever you determine to be, I can
answer for myself in one particular at any rate, namely, that as I
told you, I shall not ask the Princess to marry me. You, on the
contrary, will do so. Bonne chance! I shall do nothing to prevent
Madame from accepting the honorable position you intend to offer
her. And till the fiat has gone forth and the fair one has
decided, we will not fly at each other's throats like wolves
disputing possession of a lamb; we will assume composure, even if
we have it not." He paused, and laid one hand kindly on the
younger man's shoulder, "Is it agreed?"

Denzil gave a mute sign of resigned acquiescence.

"Good! I like you, Denzil; you are a charming boy! Hot-tempered
and a trifle melodramatic in your loves and hatreds,--yes!--for
that you might have been a Provencal instead of a Scot. Before I
knew you I had a vague idea that all Scotchmen were, or needs must
be, ridiculous,--I don't know why. I associated them with
bagpipes, short petticoats and whisky. I had no idea of the type
you so well represent,--the dark, fine eyes, the strong physique,
and the impetuous disposition which suggests the South rather than
the North; and to-night you look so unlike the accepted cafe
chantant picture of the ever-dancing Highlander that you might in
very truth be a Florentine in more points than the dress which so
well becomes you. Yes,--I like you--and more than you, I like your
sister. That is why I don't want to quarrel with you; I wouldn't
grieve Mademoiselle Helen for the world."

Murray gave him a quick, half-angry side-glance.

"You are a strange fellow, Gervase. Two summers ago you were
almost in love with Helen."

Gervase sighed.

"True. Almost. That's just it. 'Almost' is a very uncomfortable
word. I have been almost in love so many times. I have never been
drawn by a woman's eyes and dragged down, down,--in a mad
whirlpool of sweetness and poison intermixed. I have never had my
soul strangled by the coils of a woman's hair--black hair, black
as night,--in the perfumed meshes of which a jewelled serpent
gleams ... I have never felt the insidious horror of a love like
strong drink mounting through the blood to the brain, and there
making inextricable confusion of time, space, eternity,
everything, except the passion itself; never, never have I felt
all this, Denzil, till to-night! To-night! Bah! It is a wild night
of dancing and folly, and the Princess Ziska is to blame for it
all! Don't look so tragic, my good Denzil,--what ails you now?"

"What ails me? Good Heavens! Can you ask it!" and Murray gave a
gesture of mingled despair and impatience. "If you love her in
this wild, uncontrolled way ..."

"It is the only way I know of," said Gervase. "Love must be wild
and uncontrolled to save it from banalite. It must be a summer
thunderstorm; the heavy brooding of the clouds of thought, the
lightning of desire, then the crash, the downpour,--and the end,
in which the bland sun smiles upon a bland world of dull but
wholesome routine and tame conventionality, making believe that
there never was such a thing known as the past storm! Be consoled,
Denzil, and trust me,--you shall have time to make your honorable
proposal, and Madame had better accept you,--for your love would
last,--mine could not!"

He spoke with a strange fierceness and irritability, and his eyes
were darkened by a sudden shadow of melancholy. Denzil, bewildered
at his words and manner, stared at him in a kind of helpless
indignation.

"Then you admit yourself to be cruel and unprincipled?" he said.

Gervase smiled, with a little shrug of impatience.

"Do I? I was not aware of it. Is inconstancy to women cruelty and
want of principle? If so, all men must bear the brunt of the
accusation with me. For men were originally barbarians, and always
looked upon women as toys or slaves; the barbaric taint is not out
of us yet, I assure you,--at any rate, it is not out of me. I am a
pure savage; I consider the love of woman as my right; if I win
it, I enjoy it as long as I please, but no longer,--and not all
the forces of heaven and earth should bind me to any woman I had
once grown weary of."

"If that is your character," said Murray stiffly, "it were well
the Princess Ziska should know it."

"True," and Gervase laughed loudly. "Tell her, man ami! Tell her
that Armand Gervase is an unprincipled villain, not worth a glance
from her dazzling eyes! It will be the way to make her adore me!
My good boy, do you not know that there is something very
marvellous in the attraction we call love? It is a pre-ordained
destiny,--and if one soul is so constituted that it must meet and
mix with another, nothing can hinder the operation. So that,
believe me, I am quite indifferent as to what you say of me to
Madame la Princesse or to anyone else. It will not be for either
my looks or my character that she will love me if, indeed, she
ever does love me; it will be for something indistinct,
indefinable but resistless in us both, which no one on earth can
explain. And now I must go, Denzil, and claim the fair one for
this waltz. Try and look less miserable, my dear fellow,--I will
not quarrel with you on the Princess's account, nor on any other
pretext if I can help it,--for I don't want to kill you, and I am
convinced your death and not mine would be the result of a fight
between us!"

His eyes flashed under his straight, fierce brows with a sudden
touch of imperiousness, and his commanding presence became
magnetic, almost over-powering. Tormented with a dozen cross-
currents of feeling, young Denzil Murray was mute;--only his
breath came and went quickly, and there was a certain silently-
declared antagonism in his very attitude. Gervase saw it and
smiled; then turning away with his peculiarly noiseless step and
grace of bearing, he disappeared.




CHAPTER V.


Ten minutes later the larger number of dancers in the ball-room
came to a sudden pause in their gyrations and stood looking on in
open-mouthed, reluctantly-admiring wonderment at the exquisite
waltz movements of the Princess Ziska as she floated past them in
the arms of Gervase, who, as a "Bedouin chief," was perhaps only
acting his part aright when he held her to him with so passionate
and close a grip and gazed down upon her fair face with such a
burning ardor in his eyes. Nothing in the dancing world was ever
seen like the dancing of these two--nothing so languorously
beautiful as the swaying grace of their well-matched figures
gliding to the music in as perfectly harmonious a measure as a
bird's two wings beat to the pulsations of the air. People noticed
that as the Princess danced a tiny tinkling sound accompanied her
every step; and the more curious observers, peeping downwards as
she flew by, saw that she had kept to the details of ancient
Egyptian costume so exactly that she even wore sandals, and that
her feet, perfectly shaped and lovely as perfectly shaped and
lovely hands, were bare save for the sandal-ribbons which crossed
them, and which were fastened with jewels. Round the slim ankles
were light bands of gold, also glittering with gems, and
furthermore adorned by little golden bells which produced the
pretty tinkling music that attracted attention.

"What a delightful creature she is!" said Lady Fulkeward, settling
her "Duchess of Gainsborough" hat on her powdered wig more
becomingly and smiling up in the face of Ross Courtney, who
happened to be standing close by. "So sweetly unconventional!
Everybody here thinks her improper; she may be, but I like her.
I'm not a bit of a prude."

Courtney smiled irreverently at this. Prudery and "old" Lady
Fulkeward were indeed wide apart. Aloud he said:

"I think whenever a woman is exceptionally beautiful she generally
gets reported as 'improper' by her own sex; especially if she has
a fascinating manner and dresses well."

"So true," and Lady Fulkeward simpered. "Exactly what I find
wherever I go! Poor dear Ziska! She has to pay the penalty for
captivating all you men in the way she does. I'm sure YOU have
lost your heart to her quite as much as anybody else, haven't
you?"

Courtney reddened.

"I don't think so," he answered; "I admire her very much, but I
haven't lost my heart ..."

"Naughty boy! Don't prevaricate!" and Lady Fulkeward smiled in the
bewitching pearly manner her admirably-made artificial teeth
allowed her to do. "Every man in the hotel is in love with the
Princess, and I'm sure I don't blame them. If I belonged to your
sex I should be in love with her too. As it is, I am in love with
the new arrival, that glorious creature, Gervase. He is superb! He
looks like an untamed savage. I adore handsome barbarians!"

"He's scarcely a barbarian, I think," said Courtney, with some
amusement; "he is the great French artist, the 'lion' of Paris
just now,--only secondary to Sarah Bernhardt."

"Artists are always barbarians," declared Lady Fulkeward
enthusiastically. "They paint naughty people without any clothes
on; they never have any idea of time; they never keep their
appointments; and they are always falling in love with the wrong
person and getting into trouble, which is so nice of them! That's
why I worship them all. They are so refreshingly unlike OUR set!"

Courtney raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

"You know what I mean by our set," went on the vivacious old
"Gainsborough," "the aristocrats whose conversation is limited to
the weather and scandal, and who are so frightfully dull! Dull! My
dear Ross you know how dull they are!"

"Well, upon my word, they are," admitted Courtney. "You are right
there. I certainly agree with you."

"I'm sure you do! They have no ideas. Now, artists have ideas,--
they live on ideas and sentiment. Sentiment is such a beautiful
thing--so charming! I believe that fierce-looking Gervase is a
creature of sentiment--and how delightful that is! Of course,
he'll paint the Princess Ziska--he MUST paint her,--no one else
could do it so well. By the way, have you been asked to her great
party next week?"

"Yes."

"And are you going?"

"Most assuredly."

"So am I. That absurd Chetwynd Lyle woman came to me this evening
and asked me if I really thought it would be proper to take her
'girls' there," and Lady Fulkeward laughed shrilly. "Girls indeed!
I should say those two long, ugly women could go anywhere with
safety. 'Do you consider the Princess a proper woman?' she asked,
and I said, 'Certainly, as proper as you are.'"

Courtney laughed outright, and began to think there was some fun
in Lady Fulkeward.

"By Jove! Did you tell her that?"

"I should think I did! Oh, I know a thing or two about the
Chetwynd Lyles, but I keep my mouth shut till it suits me to open
it. I said I was going, and then, of course, she said she would."

"Naturally."

And Courtney gave the answer vaguely, for the waltz was ended, and
the Princess Ziska, on the arm of Gervase, was leaving the ball-
room.

"She's going," exclaimed Lady Fulkeward. "Dear creature! Excuse
me--I must speak to her for a moment."

And with a swish of her full skirts and a toss of her huge hat and
feathers, the lively flirt of sixty tripped off with all the
agility of sixteen, leaving Courtney to follow her or remain where
he was, just as he chose. He hesitated, and during that undecided
pause was joined by Dr. Maxwell Dean.

"A very brilliant and interesting evening!" said that individual,
smiling complacently. "I don't remember any time when I have
enjoyed myself so thoroughly."

"Really! I shouldn't have thought you a man to care for fancy-
dress balls," said Courtney.

"Shouldn't you? Ha! Well, some fancy-dress balls I might not care
for, but this one has been highly productive of entertainment in
every way, and several incidents connected with it have opened up
to me a new vista of research, the possibilities of which are--er-
-very interesting and remarkable."

"Indeed!" murmured Courtney indifferently, his eyes fixed on the
slim, supple figure of the Princess Ziska as she slowly moved amid
her circle of admirers out of the ball-room, her golden skirts
gleaming sun-like against the polished floor, and the jewels about
her flashing in vivid points of light from the hem of her robe to
the snake in her hair.

"Yes," continued the Doctor, smiling and rubbing his hands, "I
think I have got the clue to a very interesting problem. But I see
you are absorbed--and no wonder! A charming woman, the Princess
Ziska--charming! Do you believe in ghosts?"

This question was put with such unexpected abruptness that
Courtney was quite taken aback.

"Ghosts?" he echoed. "No, I cannot say I do. I have never seen
one, and I have never heard of one that did not turn out a bogus."

"Oh! I don't mean the usual sort of ghost," said the Doctor,
drawing his shelving brows together in a meditative knot of criss-
cross lines over his small, speculative eyes. "The ghost that is
common to Scotch castles and English manor-houses, and that
appears in an orthodox night-gown, sighs, screams, rattles chains
and bangs doors ad libitum. No, no! That kind of ghost is composed
of indigestion, aided by rats and a gust of wind. No; when I say
ghosts, I mean ghosts--ghosts that do not need the midnight hour
to evolve themselves into being, and that by no means vanish at
cock-crow. My ghosts are those that move about among us in social
intercourse for days, months--sometimes years--according to their
several missions; ghosts that talk to us, imitate our customs and
ways, shake hands with us, laugh and dance with us, and altogether
comport themselves like human beings. Those are my kind of ghosts-
-'scientific' ghosts. There are hundreds, aye, perhaps thousands
of them in the world at this very moment."

An uncomfortable shudder ran through Courtney's veins; the
Doctor's manner seemed peculiar and uncanny.

"By Jove! I hope not!" he involuntarily exclaimed. "The orthodox
ghost is an infinitely better arrangement. One at least knows what
to expect. But a 'scientific' ghost that moves about in society,
resembling ourselves in every respect, appearing to be actually
human and yet having no humanity at all in its composition, is a
terrific notion indeed! You don't mean to say you believe in the
possibility of such an appalling creature?"

"I not only believe it," answered the Doctor composedly, "I know
it!"

Here the band crashed out "God save the Queen," which, as a witty
Italian once remarked, is the De Profundis of every English
festivity.

"But--God bless my soul!" began Courtney ...

"No, don't say that!" urged the Doctor. "Say 'God save the Queen.'
It's more British."

"Bother 'God save the Queen,'" exclaimed Courtney impatiently.--
"Look here, you don't mean it seriously, do you?"

"I always mean everything seriously," said Dr. Dean,--"even my
jokes."

"Now come, no nonsense, Doctor," and Courtney, taking his arm, led
him towards one of the windows opening out to the moonlit garden,-
-"can you, as an honest man, assure me in sober earnest that there
are 'scientific ghosts' of the nature you describe?"

The little Doctor surveyed the scenery, glanced up at the moon,
and then at his companion's pleasant but not very intelligent
face.

"I would rather not discuss the matter," he said at last, with
some brusqueness. "There are certain subjects connected with
psychic phenomena on which it is best to be silent; besides, what
interest can such things have for you? You are a sportsman,--keep
to your big game, and leave ghost-hunting to me."

"That is not a fair answer to my question," said Courtney, "I'm
sure I don't want to interfere with your researches in any way; I
only want to know if it is a fact that ghosts exist, and that they
are really of such a nature as to deserve the term 'scientific.'"

Dr. Dean was silent a moment. Then, stretching out his small, thin
hand, he pointed to the clear sky, where the stars were almost
lost to sight in the brilliance of the moon.

"Look out there!" he said, his voice thrilling with sudden and
solemn fervor. "There in the limitless ether move millions of
universes--vast creations which our finite brains cannot estimate
without reeling,--enormous forces always at work, in the mighty
movements of which our earth is nothing more than a grain of sand.
Yet far more marvellous than their size or number is the
mathematical exactitude of their proportions,--the minute
perfection of their balance,--the exquisite precision with which
every one part is fitted to another part, not a pin's point awry,
not a hair's breadth astray. Well, the same exactitude which rules
the formation and working of Matter controls the formation and
working of Spirit; and this is why I know that ghosts exist, and,
moreover, that we are COMPELLED by the laws of the phenomena
surrounding us to meet them every day."

"I confess I do not follow you at all," said Courtney bewildered.

"No," and Dr. Dean smiled curiously. "I have perhaps expressed
myself obscurely. Yet I am generally considered a clear exponent.
First of all, let me ask you, do you believe in the existence of
Matter?"

"Why, of course!"

"You do. Then you will no doubt admit that there is Something--an
Intelligent Principle or Spiritual Force--which creates and
controls this Matter?"

Courtney hesitated.

"Well, I suppose there must be," he said at last. "I'm not a
church-goer, and I'm rather a free-thinker, but I certainly
believe there is a Mind at work behind the Matter."

"That being the case," proceeded the Doctor, "I suppose you will
not deny to this Invisible Mind the same exactitude of proportion
and precise method of action already granted to Visible Matter?".

"Of course, I could not deny such a reasonable proposition," said
Courtney.

"Very good! Pursuing the argument logically, and allowing for an
exactly-moving Mind behind exactly-working Matter, it follows that
there can be no such thing as injustice anywhere in the universe?
"

"My dear Socrates redivivus," laughed Courtney, "I fail to see
what all this has to do with ghosts."

"It has everything to do with them," declared the Doctor
emphatically, "I repeat that if we grant these already stated
premises concerning the composition of Mind and Matter, there can
be no such thing as injustice. Yet seemingly unjust things are
done every day, and seemingly go unpunished. I say 'seemingly'
advisedly, because the punishment is always administered. And here
the 'scientific ghosts' come in. 'Vengeance is mine,' saith the
Lord,--and the ghosts I speak of are the Lord's way of doing it."

"You mean ..." began Courtney.

"I mean," continued the Doctor with some excitement, "that the
sinner who imagines his sins are undiscovered is a fool who
deceives himself. I mean that the murderer who has secretly torn
the life out of his shrieking victim in some unfrequented spot,
and has succeeded in hiding his crime from what we call 'justice,'
cannot escape the Spiritual law of vengeance. What would you say,"
and Dr. Dean laid his thin fingers on Courtney's coat-sleeve with
a light pressure,--"if I told you that the soul of a murdered
creature is often sent back to earth in human shape to dog its
murderer down? And that many a criminal undiscovered by the police
is haunted by a seeming Person,--a man or a woman,--who is on
terms of intimacy with him,--who eats at his table, drinks his
wine, clasps his hand, smiles in his face, and yet is truly
nothing but the ghost of his victim in human disguise, sent to
drag him gradually to his well-deserved, miserable end; what would
you say to such a thing?"

"Horrible!" exclaimed Courtney, recoiling. "Beyond everything
monstrous and horrible!"

The Doctor smiled and withdrew his hand from his companion's arm.

"There are a great many horrible things in the universe as well as
pleasant ones," he observed dryly. "Crime and its results are
always of a disagreeable nature. But we cannot alter the psychic
law of equity any more than we can alter the material law of
gravitation. It is growing late; I think, if you will excuse me, I
will go to bed."

Courtney look at him puzzled and baffled.

"Then your 'scientific ghosts' are positive realities?" he began;
here he gave a violent start as a tall white figure suddenly moved
out of the shadows in the garden and came slowly towards them.
"Upon my life, Doctor, you have made me quite nervous!"

"No, no, surely not," smiled the Doctor pleasantly--"not nervous!
Not such a brave killer of game as you are! No, no! You don't take
Monsieur Armand Gervase for a ghost, do you? He is too
substantial,--far too substantial! Ha! ha! ha!"

And he laughed quietly, the wrinkled smile still remaining on his
face as Gervase approached.

"Everybody is going to bed," said the great artist lazily. "With
the departure of the Princess Ziska, the pleasures of the evening
are ended."

"She is certainly the belle of Cairo this season," said Courtney,
"but I tell you what,--I am rather sorry to see young Murray has
lost his head about her."

"Parbleu! So am I," said Gervase imperturbably; "it seems a pity."

"He will get over it," interposed Dr. Dean placidly. "It's an
illness,--like typhoid,--we must do all we can to keep down the
temperature of the patient, and we shall pull him through."

"Keep him cool, in short!" laughed Gervase.

"Exactly!" The little Doctor smiled shrewdly. "You look feverish,
Monsieur Gervase."

Gervase flushed red under his dark skin.

"I daresay I am feverish," he replied irritably,--"I find this
place hot as an oven. I think I should go away to-morrow if I had
not asked the Princess Ziska to sit to me."

"You are going to paint her picture?" exclaimed Courtney. "By
Jove! I congratulate you. It will be the masterpiece of the next
salon"

Gervase bowed.

"You flatter me! The Princess is undoubtedly an attractive
subject. But, as I said before, this place stifles me. I think the
hotel is too near the river,--there is an oozy smell from the Nile
that I hate, and the heat is perfectly sulphureous. Don't you find
it so, Doctor?"

"N-n-o! I cannot say that I do. Let me feel your pulse; I am not a
medical man--but I can easily recognize any premonitions of
illness."

Gervase held out his long, brown, well-shaped hand, and the
savant's small, cool fingers pressed lightly on his wrist.

"You are quite well, Monsieur Gervase," he said after a pause,--
"You have a little sur-excitation of the nerves, certainly,--but
it is not curable by medicine." He dropped the hand he held, and
looked up--"Good-night!"

"Good-night!" responded Gervase.

"Good-night!" added Courtney.

And with an amiable salutation the Doctor went his way. The ball-
room was now quite deserted, and the hotel servants were
extinguishing the lights.

"A curious little man, that Doctor," observed Gervase, addressing
Courtney, to whom as yet he had not been formally introduced.

"Very curious!" was the reply, "I have known him for some years,--
he is a very clever man, but I have never been able quite to make
him out. I think he is a bit eccentric. He's just been telling me
he believes in ghosts."

"Ah, poor fellow!" and Gervase yawned as, with his companion, he
crossed the deserted ball-room. "Then he has what you call a screw
loose. I suppose it is that which makes him interesting. Good-
night!"

"Good-night!"

And separating, they went their several ways to the small, cell-
like bedrooms, which are the prime discomfort of the Gezireh
Palace Hotel, and soon a great silence reigned throughout the
building. All Cairo slept,--save where at an open lattice window
the moon shone full on a face up-turned to her silver radiance,--
the white, watchful face, and dark, sleepless eyes of the Princess
Ziska.




CHAPTER VI.


Next day the ordinary course of things was resumed at the Gezireh
Palace Hotel, and the delights and flirtations of the fancy-ball
began to vanish into what Hans Breitmann calls "the ewigkeit". Men
were lazier than usual and came down later to breakfast, and girls
looked worn and haggard with over-much dancing, but otherwise
there was no sign to indicate that the festivity of the past
evening had left "tracks behind," or made a lasting impression of
importance on any human life. Lady Chetwynd Lyle, portly and pig-
faced, sat on the terrace working at an elaborate piece of cross-
stitch, talking scandal in the civilest tone imaginable, and
damning all her "dear friends" with that peculiar air of entire
politeness and good breeding which distinguishes certain ladies
when they are saying nasty things about one another. Her
daughters, Muriel and Dolly, sat dutifully near her, one reading
the Daily Dial, as befitted the offspring of the editor and
proprietor thereof, the other knitting. Lord Fulkeward lounged on
the balustrade close by, and his lovely mother, attired in quite a
charming and girlish costume of white foulard exquisitely cut and
fitting into a waist not measuring more than twenty-two inches,
reclined in a long deck-chair, looking the very pink of painted
and powdered perfection.

"You are so very lenient," Lady Chetwynd Lyle was saying, as she
bent over her needlework. "So very lenient, my dear Lady
Fulkeward, that I am afraid you do not read people's characters as
correctly as I do. I have had, owing to my husband's position in
journalism, a great deal of social experience, and I assure you I
do NOT think the Princess Ziska a safe person. She may be
perfectly proper--she MAY be--but she is not the style we are
accustomed to in London."

"I should rather think not!" interrupted Lord Fulkeward, hastily.
"By Jove! She wouldn't have a hair left on her head in London,
don'cher know!"

"What do you mean?" inquired Muriel Chetwynd Lyle, simpering. "You
really do say such funny things, Lord Fulkeward!"

"Do I?" and the young nobleman was so alarmed and embarrassed at
the very idea of his ever saying funny things that he was rendered
quite speechless for a moment. Anon he took heart and resumed:
"Er--well--I mean that the society women would tear her to bits in
no time. She'd get asked nowhere, but she'd get blackguarded
everywhere; she couldn't help herself with that face and those
eyes."

His mother laughed.

"Dear Fulke! You are such a naughty boy! You shouldn't make such
remarks before Lady Lyle. She never says anything against anyone!"

"Dear Fulke" stared. Had he given vent to his feelings he would
have exclaimed: "Oh, Lord!--isn't the old lady a deep one!" But as
it was he attended to his young moustache anxiously and remained
silent. Lady Chetwynd Lyle meanwhile flushed with annoyance; she
felt that Lady Fulkeward's remark was sarcastic, but she could not
very well resent it, seeing that Lady Fulkeward was a peeress of
the realm, and that she herself, by the strict laws of heraldry,
was truly only "Dame" Chetwynd Lyle, as wife of an ordinary
knight, and had no business to be called "her ladyship" at all.

"I should, indeed, be sorry," she said, primly, "if I were
mistaken in my private estimate of the Princess Ziska's character,
but I must believe my own eyes and the evidence of my own senses,
and surely no one can condone the extremely fast way in which she
behaved with that new man--that French artist, Armand Gervase--
last night. Why, she danced six times with him! And she actually
allowed him to walk home with her through the streets of Cairo!
They went off together, in their fancy dresses, just as they were!
I never heard of such a thing!"

"Oh, there was nothing remarkable at all in that," said Lord
Fulkeward. "Everybody went about the place in fancy costume last
night. I went out in my Neapolitan dress with a girl, and I met
Denzil Murray coming down a street just behind here--took him for
a Florentine prince, upon my word! And I bet you Gervase never got
beyond the door of the Princess's palace; for that blessed old
Nubian she keeps--the chap with a face like a mummy--bangs the
gate in everybody's face, and says in guttural French: 'La
Princesse ne voit per-r-r-sonne!' I've tried it. I tell you it's
no go!"

"Well, we shall all get inside the mysterious palace next
Wednesday evening," said Lady Fulkeward, closing her eyes with a
graceful air of languor, "It will be charming, I am sure, and I
daresay we shall find that there is no mystery at all about it."

"Two months ago," suddenly said a smooth voice behind them, "the
Ziska's house or palace was uninhabited."

Lady Fulkeward gave a little scream and looked round.

"Good gracious, Dr. Dean! How you frightened me!"

The Doctor made an apologetic bow.

"I am very sorry. I forgot you were so sensitive; pray pardon me!
As I was saying, two months ago the palace of the Princess Ziska
was a deserted barrack. Formerly, so I hear, it used to be the
house of some great personage; but it had been allowed to fall
into decay, and nobody would rent it, even for the rush of the
Cairene season, till it was secured by the Nubian you were
speaking of just now--the interesting Nubian with the face like a
mummy; he took it and furnished it, and when it was ready Madame
la Princesse appeared on the scene and has resided there every
since."

"I wonder what that Nubian has to do with her?" said Lady Chetwynd
Lyle, severely.

"Nothing at all," replied the Doctor, calmly. "He is the merest
servant--the kind of person who is 'told off' to attend on the
women of a harem."

"Ah, I see you have been making inquiries concerning the princess,
Doctor," said Lady Fulkeward, with a smile.

"I have."

"And have you found out anything about her?"

"No; that is, nothing of social importance, except, perhaps, two
items--first, that she is not a Russian; secondly, that she has
never been married."

"Never been married!" exclaimed Lady Chetwynd Lyle, then suddenly
turning to her daughters she said blandly: "Muriel, Dolly, go into
the house, my dears. It is getting rather warm for you on this
terrace. I will join you in a few minutes."

The "girls" rose obediently with a delightfully innocent and
juvenile air, and fortunately for them did not notice the
irreverent smile that played on young Lord Fulkeward's face, which
was immediately reflected on the artistically tinted countenance
of his mother, at the manner of their dismissal.

"There is surely nothing improper in never having been married,"
said Dr. Dean, with a mock serious air. "Consider, my dear Lady
Lyle, is there not something very chaste and beautiful in the
aspect of an old maid?"

Lady Lyle looked up sharply. She had an idea that both she and her
daughters were being quizzed, and she had some difficulty to
control her rising temper.

"Then do you call the Princess an old maid?" she demanded.

Lady Fulkeward looked amused; her son laughed outright. But the
Doctor's face was perfectly composed.

"I don't know what else I can call her," he said, with a
thoughtful air. "She is no longer in her teens, and she has too
much voluptuous charm for an ingenue. Still, I admit, you would
scarcely call her 'old' except in the parlance of the modern
matrimonial market. Our present-day roues, you know, prefer their
victims young, and I fancy the Princess Ziska would be too old and
perhaps too clever for most of them. Personally speaking, she does
not impress me as being of any particular age, but as she is not
married, and is, so to speak, a maid fully developed, I am
perforce obliged to call her an old maid."

"She wouldn't thank you for the compliment," said Lady Lyle with a
spiteful grin.

"I daresay not," responded the Doctor blandly, "but I imagine she
has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with
something more important than the consideration of her own good
looks."

"And what is that?" inquired Lady Fulkeward, with some curiosity.

"Ah! there is the difficulty! What is it that engrosses our fair
friend more than the looking-glass? I should like to know--but I
cannot find out. It is an enigma as profound as that of the
sphinx. Good-morning, Monsieur Gervase!"--and, turning round, he
addressed the artist, who just then stepped out on the terrace
carrying a paintbox and a large canvas strapped together in
portable form. "Are you going to sketch some picturesque corner of
the city?"

"No," replied Gervase, listlessly raising his white sun-hat to the
ladies present with a courteous, yet somewhat indifferent grace.
"I'm going to the Princess Ziska's. I shall probably get the whole
outline of her features this morning."

"A full-length portrait?" inquired the Doctor.

"I fancy not. Not the first attempt, at any rate--head and
shoulders only."

"Do you know where her house is?" asked Lord Fulkeward. "If you
don't, I'll walk with you and show you the way."

"Thanks--you are very good. I shall be obliged to you."

And raising his hat again he sauntered slowly off, young Fulkeward
walking with him and chatting to him with more animation than that
exhausted and somewhat vacant-minded aristocrat usually showed to
anyone.

"It is exceedingly warm," said Lady Lyle, rising then and putting
away her cross-stitch apparatus, "I thought of driving to the
Pyramids this afternoon, but really ..."

"There is shade all the way," suggested the Doctor, "I said as
much to a young woman this morning who has been in the hotel for
nearly two months, and hasn't seen the Pyramids yet."

"What has she been doing with herself?" asked Lady Fulkeward,
smiling.

"Dancing with officers," said Dr. Dean. "How can Cheops compare
with a moustached noodle in military uniform! Good-bye for the
present; I'm going to hunt for scarabei."

"I thought you had such a collection of them already," said Lady
Lyle.

"So I have. But the Princess had a remarkable one on last night,
and I want to find another like it. It's blue--very blue--almost
like a rare turquoise, and it appears it is the sign-manual of the
warrior Araxes, who was a kind of king in his way, or desert
chief, which was about the same thing in those days. He fought for
Amenhotep, and seemed from all accounts to be a greater man than
Amenhotep himself. The Princess Ziska is a wonderful Egyptologist;
I had a most interesting conversation with her last night in the
supper-room."

"Then she is really a woman of culture and intelligence?" queried
Lady Lyle.

The Doctor smiled.

"I should say she would be a great deal too much for the
University of Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes," he said.
"She can read the Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can
decipher anything on any of the monuments. I only wish I could
persuade her to accompany me to Thebes and Karnak."

Lady Fulkeward unfurled her fan and swayed it to and fro with an
elegant languor.

"How delightful that would be!" she sighed. "So romantic and
solemn--all those dear old cities with those marvellous figures of
the Egyptians carved and painted on the stones! And Rameses--dear
Rameses! He really has good legs everywhere! Haven't you noticed
that? So many of these ancient sculptures represent the Egyptians
with such angular bodies and such frightfully thin legs, but
Rameses always has good legs wherever you find him. It's so
refreshing! DO make up a party, Dr. Dean!--we'll all go with you;
and I'm sure the Princess Ziska will be the most charming
companion possible. Let us have a dahabeah! I'm good for half the
expenses, if you will only arrange everything."

The Doctor stroked his chin and looked dubious, but he was
evidently attracted by the idea.

"I'll see about it," he said at last. "Meanwhile I'll go and have
a hunt for some traces of Amenhotep and Araxes."

He strolled down the terrace, and Lady Chetwynd Lyle, turning her
back on "old" Lady Fulkeward, went after her "girls," while the
fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in
her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking
man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside
her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was
the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then
stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he
had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress
who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not
be a "half bad" arrangement for him. So he determined to do the
agreeable, and as he was a perfect adept in the art of making love
without feeling it, he got on very well, and his prospects
brightened steadily hour by hour.

Meanwhile young Fulkeward was escorting Armand Gervase through
several narrow by-streets, talking to him as well as he knew how
and trying in his feeble way to "draw him out," in which task he
met with but indifferent success.

"It must be awfully jolly and--er--all that sort of thing to be so
famous," he observed, glancing up at the strong, dark, brooding
face above him. "They had a picture of yours over in London once;
I went to see it with my mother. It was called 'Le Poignard,' do
you remember it?"

Gervase shrugged his shoulders carelessly.

"Yes, I remember. A poor thing at its best. It was a woman with a
dagger in her hand."

"Yes, awfully fine, don'cher know! She was a very dark woman--too
dark for my taste,--and she'd got a poignard clasped in in her
right hand. Of course, she was going to murder somebody with it;
that was plain enough. You meant it so, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did."

"She was in a sort of Eastern get-up," pursued Fulkeward, "one of
your former studies in Egypt, perhaps."

Gervase started, and passed his hand across his forehead with a
bewildered air.

"No, no! Not a former study, by any means. How could it be? This
is my first visit to Egypt. I have never been here before."

"Haven't you? Really! Well, you'll find it awfully interesting and
all that sort of thing. I don't see half as much of it as I should
like. I'm a weak chap--got something wrong with my lungs,--awful
bother, but can't be helped. My mother won't let me do too much.
Here we are; this is the Princess Ziska's."

They were standing in a narrow street ending in a cul-de-sac, with
tall houses on each side which cast long, black, melancholy
shadows on the rough pavement below. A vague sense of gloom and
oppression stole over Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the
particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him--a square,
palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its
exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had
fallen into somewhat melancholy decay. The sombre portal,
fantastically ornamented with designs copied from some of the
Egyptian monuments, rather resembled the gateway of a tomb than an
entrance to the private residence of a beautiful living woman, and
Fulkeward, noting his companion's silence, added:

"Not a very cheerful corner, is it? Some of these places are
regular holes, don'cher know; but I daresay it's all right
inside."

"You have never been inside?"

"Never." And Fulkeward lowered his voice: "Look up there; there's
the beast that keeps everybody out!"

Gervase followed his glance, and perceived behind the projecting
carved lattice-work of one of the windows a dark, wrinkled face
and two gleaming eyes which, even at that distance, had, or
appeared to have, a somewhat sinister expression.

"He's the nastiest type of Nubian I have ever seen," pursued
Fulkeward. "Looks just like a galvanized corpse."

Gervase smiled, and perceiving a long bell-handle at the gateway,
pulled it sharply. In another moment the Nubian appeared, his
aspect fully justifying Lord Fulkeward's description of him. The
parchment-like skin on his face was yellowish-black, and wrinkled
in a thousand places; his lips were of a livid blue, and were
drawn up and down above and below the teeth in a kind of fixed
grin, while the dense brilliance of his eyes was so fierce and
fiery as to suggest those of some savage beast athirst for prey.

"Madame la Princesse Ziska" began Gervase, addressing his
unfascinating object with apparent indifference to his
hideousness.

The Nubian's grinning lips stretched themselves wider apart as, in
a thick, snarling voice he demanded:

"Votre nom?"

"Armand Gervase."

"Entrez!"

"Et moi?" queried Fulkeward, with a conciliatory smile.

"Non! Pas vous. Monsieur Armand Gervase, seul!"

Fulkeward gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders; Gervase looked
round at him ere he crossed the threshold of the mysterious
habitation.

"I'm sorry you have to walk back alone."

"Don't mention it," said Fulkeward affably. "You see, you have
come on business. You're going to paint the Princess's picture;
and I daresay this blessed old rascal knows that I want nothing
except to look at his mistress and wonder what she's made of."

"What she's made of?" echoed Gervase in surprise. "Don't you think
she's made like other women?"

"No; can't say I do. She seems all fire and vapor and eyes in the
middle, don'cher know. Oh, I'm an ass--always was--but that's the
feeling she gives me. Ta-ta! Wish you a pleasant morning!"

He nodded and strolled away, and Gervase hesitated yet another
moment, looking full at the Nubian, who returned him stare for
stare.

"Maintenant?" he began.

"Oui, maintenant" echoed the Nubian.

"La Princesse, ou est elle?"

"La!" and the Nubian pointed down a long, dark passage beyond
which there seemed to be the glimmer of green palms and other
foliage. "Elle vous attend, Monsieur Armand Gervase! Entrez!
Suivez!"

Slowly Gervase passed in, and the great tomb-like door closed upon
him with a heavy clang. The whole long, bright day passed, and he
did not reappear; not a human foot crossed the lonely street and
nothing was seen there all through the warm sunshiny hours save
the long, black shadows on the pavement, which grew longer and
darker as the evening fell.




CHAPTER VII.


Within the palace of the Princess Ziska a strange silence reigned.
In whatever way the business of her household was carried on, it
was evidently with the most absolute noiselessness, for not a
sound disturbed the utter stillness environing her. She herself,
clad in white garments that clung about her closely, displaying
the perfect outlines of her form, stood waiting for her guest in a
room that was fairly dazzling to the eye in its profusion of
exquisitely assorted and harmonized colors, as well as impressive
to the mind in its suggestions of the past rather than of the
present. Quaint musical instruments of the fashion of thousands of
years ago hung on the walls or lay on brackets and tables, but no
books such as our modern time produces were to be seen; only tied-
up bundles of papyri and curious little tablets of clay inscribed
with mysterious hieroglyphs. Flowers adorned every corner--many of
them strange blossoms which a connoisseur would have declared to
be unknown in Egypt,--palms and ferns and foliage of every
description were banked up against the walls in graceful
profusion, and from the latticed windows the light filtered
through colored squares, giving a kind of rainbow-effect to the
room, as though it were a scene in a dream rather than a reality.
And even more dream-like than her surroundings was the woman who
awaited the approach of her visitor, her eyes turned towards the
door--fiery eyes filled with such ardent watchfulness as seemed to
burn the very air. The eyes of a hawk gleaming on its prey,--the
eyes of a famished tiger in the dark, were less fraught with
terrific meaning than the eyes of Ziska as she listened
attentively to the on-coming footsteps through the outside
corridor which told her that Gervase was near.

"At last!" she whispered, "at last!" The next moment the Nubian
flung the door wide open and announced "Monsieur Armand Gervase!"

She advanced with all the wonderful grace which distinguished her,
holding out both her slim, soft hands. Gervase caught them in his
own and kissed them fervently, whereupon the Nubian retired,
closing the door after him.

"You are very welcome, Monsieur Gervase," said the Princess then,
speaking with a measured slowness that was attractive as well as
soothing to the ear. "You have left all the dear English people
well at the Gezireh Palace? Lady Fulkeward was not too tired after
her exertions at the ball? And you?"

But Gervase was gazing at her in a speechless confusion of mind
too great for words. A sudden, inexplicable emotion took
possession of him,--an emotion to which he could give no name, but
which stupefied him and held him mute. Was it her beauty which so
dazzled his senses? Was it some subtle perfume in the room that
awoke a dim haunting memory? Or what was it that seemed so
strangely familiar? He struggled with himself, and finally spoke
out his thought:

"I have seen you before, Princess; I am quite sure I have! I
thought I had last night; but to-day I am positive about it.
Strange, isn't it? I wonder where we really met?"

Her dark eyes rested on him fully.

"I wonder!" she echoed, smiling. "The world is so small, and so
many people nowadays make the 'grand tour,' that it is not at all
surprising we should have passed each other en route through our
journey of life."

Gervase still hesitated, glancing about him with a singularly
embarrassed air, while she continued to watch him intently.
Presently his sensations, whatever they were, passed off, and
gradually recovering his equanimity, he became aware that he was
quite alone with one of the most fascinating women he had ever
seen. His eyes flashed, and he smiled.

"I have come to paint your picture," he said softly. "Shall I
begin?"

She had seated herself on a silken divan, and her head rested
against a pile of richly-embroidered cushions. Without waiting for
her answer, he threw himself down beside her and caught her hand
in his.

"Shall I paint your picture?" he whispered. "Or shall I make love
to you?"

She laughed,--the sweet, low laugh that somehow chilled his blood
while it charmed his hearing.

"Whichever you please," she answered. "Both performances would no
doubt be works of art!"

"What do you mean?"

"Can you not understand? If you paint my picture it will be a work
of art. If you make love to me it will equally be a work of art:
that is, a composed thing--an elaborate study."

"Bah! Love is not a composed thing," said Gervase, leaning closer
to her. "It is wild, and full of libertinage as the sea."

"And equally as fickle," added the Princess composedly, taking a
fan of feathers near her and waving it to and fro. "Man's idea of
love is to take all he can get from a woman, and give her nothing
in return but misery sometimes, and sometimes death."

"You do not,--you cannot think that!" said Gervase, looking at her
dazzling face with a passion of admiration he made no attempt to
conceal. "Men on the whole are not as cruel or as treacherous as
women. I would swear, looking at you, that, beautiful as you are,
you are cruel, and that is perhaps why I love you! You are like a
splendid tigress waiting to be tamed!"

"And you think you could tame me?" interposed Ziska, looking at
him with an inscrutable disdain in her black eyes.

"Yes, if you loved me!"

"Ah, possibly! But then it happens that I do not love you. I love
no one. I have had too much of love; it is a folly I have grown
weary of!"

Gervase fixed his eyes on her with an audacious look which seemed
to hint that he might possibly take advantage of being alone with
her to enforce his ideas of love more eloquently than was in
accordance with the proprieties. She perceived his humor, smiled,
and coldly gave him back glance for glance. Then, rising from the
divan, she drew herself up to her full height and surveyed him
with a kind of indulgent contempt.

"You are an uprincipled man, Armand Gervase," she said; "and do
you know I fear you always will be! A cleansing of your soul
through centuries of fire will be necessary for you in the next
world,--that next world which you do not believe in. But it is
perhaps as well to warn you that I am not without protection in
this place ... See!" and as she spoke she clapped her hands.

A clanging noise as of brazen bells answered her,--and Gervase,
springing up from his seat, saw, to his utter amazement, the
apparently solid walls of the room in which they were, divide
rapidly and form themselves in several square openings which
showed a much larger and vaster apartment beyond, resembling a
great hall. Here were assembled some twenty or thirty gorgeously-
costumed Arab attendants,--men of a dark and sinister type, who
appeared to be fully armed, judging from the unpleasant-looking
daggers and other weapons they carried at their belts. The
Princess clapped her hands again, and the walls closed in the same
rapid fashion as they had opened, while the beautiful mistress of
this strange habitation laughed mirthfully at the complete
confusion of her visitor and would-be lover.

"Paint me now!" she said, flinging herself in a picturesque
attitude on one of the sofas close by; "I am ready."

"But _I_ am not ready!" retorted Gervase, angrily. "Do you take me
for a child, or a fool?"

"Both in one," responded the Princess, tranquilly; "being a man!"

His breath came and went quickly.

"Take care, beautiful Ziska!" he said. "Take care how you defy
me!"

"And take care, Monsieur Gervase; take care how you defy ME!" she
responded, with a strange, quick glance at him. "Do you not
realize what folly you are talking? You are making love to me in
the fashion of a brigand, rather than a nineteenth-century
Frenchman of good standing,--and I--I have to defend myself
against you also brigand-wise, by showing you that I have armed
servants within call! It is very strange,--it would frighten even
Lady Fulkeward, and I think she is not easily frightened. Pray
commence your work, and leave such an out-of-date matter as love
to dreamers and pretty sentimentalists, like Miss Helen Murray."

He was silent, and busied himself in unstrapping his canvas and
paint-box with a great deal of almost vicious energy. In a few
moments he had gained sufficient composure to look full at her,
and taking his palette in hand, he began dabbing on the colors,
talking between whiles.

"Do you suppose," he said, keeping his voice carefully subdued,
"that you can intimidate me by showing me a score of wretched
black rascals whom you have placed on guard to defend you out
there? And why did you place them on guard? You must have been
afraid of me! Pardieu! I could snatch you out of their midst, if I
chose! You do not know me; if you did, you would understand that
not all the world, armed to the teeth should balk me of my
desires! But I have been too hasty--that I own,--I can wait." He
raised his eyes and saw that she was listening with an air of
amused indifference. "I shall have to mix strange tints in your
portrait, ma belle! It is difficult to find the exact hue of your
skin--there is rose and brown in it; and there is yet another
color which I must evolve while working,--and it is not the hue of
health. It is something dark and suggestive of death; I hope you
are not destined to an early grave! And yet, why not? It is better
that a beautiful woman should die in her beauty than live to
become old and tiresome ..."

"You think that?" interrupted the Ziska suddenly, smiling somewhat
coldly.

"I do, most honestly. Had I lived in the early days of
civilization, when men were allowed to have as many women as they
could provide for, I would have mercifully killed any sweet
favorite as soon as her beauty began to wane. A lovely woman, dead
in her first exquisite youth,--how beautiful a subject for the
mind to dwell upon! How it suggests all manner of poetic fancies
and graceful threnodies! But a woman grown old, who has outlived
all passion and is a mere bundle of fat, or a mummy of skin and
bone,--what poetry does her existence suggest? How can she appeal
to art or sentiment? She is a misery to herself and an eyesore to
others. Yes, Princess, believe me,--Love first, and Death
afterwards, are woman's best friends."

"You believe in Death?" ask the Princess, looking steadily at him.

"It is the only thing I do believe in," he answered lightly. "It
is a fact that will bear examination, but not contradiction. May I
ask you to turn your head slightly to the left--so! Yes, that will
do; if I can catch the look in your eyes that gleams there now,--
the look of intense, burning, greedy cruelty which is so
murderously fascinating, I shall be content."

He seated himself opposite to her, and, putting down his palette,
took up his canvas, and posing it on his knee, began drawing the
first rough outline of his sketch in charcoal. She, meanwhile,
leaning against heaped-up cushions of amber satin, remained
silent.

"You are not a vain woman," he pursued, "or you would resent my
description of your eyes. 'Greedy cruelty' is not a pretty
expression, nor would it be considered complimentary by the
majority of the fair sex. Yet, from my point of view, it is the
highest flattery I can pay you, for I adore the eyes of savage
animals, and the beautiful eye of the forest-beast is in your
head,--diableresse charmante comme vous etes! I wonder what gives
you such an insatiate love of vengeance?"

He looked up and saw her eyes glistening and narrowing at the
corners, like the eyes of an angry snake.

"If I have such a feeling," she replied slowly, "it is probably a
question of heritage."

"Ah! Your parents were perhaps barbaric in their notions of love
and hatred?" he queried, lazily working at his charcoal sketch
with growing admiration for its result.

"My parents came of a race of kings!" she answered. "All my
ancestors were proud, and of a temper unknown to this petty day.
They resented a wrong, they punished falsehood and treachery, and
they took a life for a life. YOUR generation tolerates every sin
known in the calendar with a smile and a shrug,--you have arrived
at the end of your civilization, even to the denial of Deity and a
future life."

"That is not the end of our civilization, Princess," said Gervase,
working away intently, with eyes fixed on the canvas as he talked.
"That is the triumphal apex, the glory, the culmination of
everything that is great and supreme in manhood. In France, man
now knows himself to be the only God; England--good, slow-pacing
England--is approaching France in intelligence by degrees, and I
rejoice to see that it is possible for a newspaper like the
Agnostic to exist in London. Only the other day that excellent
journal was discussing the possibility of teaching monkeys to
read, and a witty writer, who adopts the nom de plume of
'Saladin,' very cleverly remarked 'that supposing monkeys were
able to read the New Testament, they would still remain monkeys;
in fact, they would probably be greater monkeys than ever.' The
fact of such an expression being allowed to pass muster in once
pious London is an excellent sign of the times and of our progress
towards the pure Age of Reason. The name of Christ is no longer
one to conjure with."

A dead silence followed his words, and the peculiar stillness and
heaviness of the atmosphere struck him with a vague alarm. He
lifted his eyes,--the Princess Ziska met his gaze steadily, but
there was something in her aspect that moved him to wonderment and
a curious touch of terror. The delicate rose-tint of her cheeks
had faded to an ashy paleness, her lips were pressed together
tightly and her eyes seemed to have gained a vivid and angry
lustre which Medusa herself might have envied.

"Did you ever try to conjure with that name?" she asked.

"Never," he replied, forcing a smile and remonstrating with
himself for the inexplicable nature of his emotions.

She went on slowly:

"In my creed--for I have a creed--it is believed that those who
have never taken the sacred name of Christ to their hearts, as a
talisman of comfort and support, are left as it were in the vortex
of uncertainties, tossed to and fro among many whirling and mighty
forces, and haunted forever by the phantoms of their own evil
deeds. Till they learn and accept the truth of their marvellous
Redemption, they are the prey of wicked spirits who tempt and lead
them on to divers miseries. But when the great Name of Him who
died upon the Cross is acknowledged, then it is found to be of
that transfiguring nature which turns evil to good, and sometimes
makes angels out of fiends. Nevertheless, for the hardened
reprobate and unbeliever the old laws suffice."

Gervase had stopped the quick movement of his "fusin," and looked
at her curiously.

"What old laws?" he asked.

"Stern justice without mercy!" she answered; then in lighter
accents she added: "Have you finished your first outline?"

In reply, he turned his canvas round to her, showing her a head
and profile boldly presented in black and white. She smiled.

"It is clever; but it is not like me," she said. "When you begin
the coloring you will find that your picture and I have no
resemblance to each other."

He flushed with a sense of wounded amour propre.

"Pardon, madame!--I am no novice at the art of painting," he said;
"and much as your charms dazzle and ensnare me, they do not
disqualify my brain and hand from perfectly delineating them upon
my canvas. I love you to distraction; but my passion shall not
hinder me from making your picture a masterpiece."

She laughed.

"What an egoist you are, Monsieur Gervase!" she said. "Even in
your professed passion for me you count yourself first,--me
afterwards!"

"Naturally!" he replied. "A man must always be first by natural
creation. When he allows himself to play second fiddle, he is a
fool!"

"And when he is a fool--and he often is--he is the first of
fools!" said the Princess. "No ape--no baboon hanging by its tail
to a tree--looks such a fool as a man-fool. For a man-fool has had
all the opportunities of education and learning bestowed upon him;
this great universe, with its daily lessons of the natural and the
supernatural, is his book laid open for his reading, and when he
will neither read it nor consider it, and, moreover, when he
utterly denies the very Maker of it, then there is no fool in all
creation like him. For the ape-fool does at least admit that there
may be a stronger beast somewhere,--a creature who may suddenly
come upon him and end his joys of hanging by his tail to a tree
and make havoc of his fruit-eating and chattering, while man
thinks there is nothing anywhere superior to himself."

Gervase smiled tolerantly.

"I am afraid I have ruffled you, Princess," he said. "I see you
have religious ideas: I have none."

Once again she laughed musically.

"Religious ideas! I! Not at all. I have a creed as I told you, but
it is an ugly one--not at all sentimental or agreeable. It is one
I have adopted from ancient Egypt."

"Explain it to me," said Gervase; "I will adopt it also, for your
sake."

"It is too supernatural for you," she said, paying no heed to the
amorous tone of his voice or the expressive tenderness of his
eyes.

"Never mind! Love will make me accept an army of ghosts, if
necessary."

"One of the chief tenets of my faith," she continued, "is the
eternal immortality of each individual Soul. Will you accept
that?"

"For the moment, certainly!"

Her eyes glowed like great jewels as she proceeded:

"The Egyptian cult I follow is very briefly explained. The Soul
begins in protoplasm without conscious individuality. It
progresses through various forms till individual consciousness is
attained. Once attained, it is never lost, but it lives on,
pressing towards perfection, taking upon itself various phases of
existence according to the passions which have most completely
dominated it from the first. That is all. But according to this
theory, you might have lived in the world long ago, and so might
I: we might even have met; and for some reason or other we may
have become re-incarnated now. A disciple of my creed would give
you that as the reason why you sometimes imagine you have seen me
before."

As she spoke, the dazed and troubled sensation he had once
previously experienced came upon him; he laid down the canvas he
held and passed his hand across his forehead bewilderedly.

"Yes; very curious and fantastic. I've heard a great deal about
the doctrine of reincarnation. I don't believe in it,--I can't
believe in it! But if I could: if I could imagine I had ever met
you in some bygone time, and you were like what you are at this
moment, I should have loved you,--I MUST have loved you! You see I
cannot leave the subject of love alone; and your re-incarnation
idea gives my fancy something to work upon. So, beautiful Ziska,
if your soul ever took the form of a flower, I must have been its
companion blossom; if it ever paced the forest as a beast of prey,
I must have been its mate; if it ever was human before, then I
must have been its lover! Do you like such pretty follies? I will
talk them by the hour."

Here he rose, and with a movement that was half fierce and half
tender, he knelt beside her, taking her hands in his own.

"I love you, Ziska! I cannot help myself. I am drawn to you by
some force stronger than my own will; but you need not be afraid
of me--not yet! As I said, I can wait. I can endure the mingled
torture and rapture of this sudden passion and make no sign, till
my patience tires, and then--then I will win you if I die for it!"

He sprang up before she could speak a word in answer, and seizing
his canvas again, exclaimed gayly:

"Now for the hues of morning and evening combined, to paint the
radiance of this wicked soul of love that so enthralls me! First,
the raven-black of midnight for the hair,--the lustre of the
coldest, brightest stars for eyes,--the blush-rose of early dawn
for lips and cheeks. Ah! How shall I make a real beginning of this
marvel?"

"It will be difficult, I fear," said Ziska slowly, with a faint,
cold smile; "and still more difficult, perchance, will be the
end!"




CHAPTER VIII.


The table d'hote at the Gezireh Palace Hotel had already begun
when Gervase entered the dining-room and sat down near Lady
Fulkeward and Dr. Dean.

"You have missed the soup," said her ladyship, looking up at him
with a sweet smile. "All you artists are alike,--you have no idea
whatever of time. And how have you succeeded with that charming
mysterious person, the Princess Ziska?"

Gervase kept his gaze steadily fixed on the table-cloth. He was
extremely pale, and had the air of one who has gone through some
great mental exhaustion.

"I have not succeeded as well as I expected," he answered slowly.
"I think my hand must have lost its cunning. At any rate, whatever
the reason may be, Art has been defeated by Nature."

He crumbled up the piece of bread near his plate in small portions
with a kind of involuntary violence in the action, and Dr. Dean,
deliberately drawing out a pair of spectacles from their case,
adjusted them, and surveyed him curiously.

"You mean to say that you cannot paint the Princess's picture?"

Gervase glanced up at him with a half-sullen, half-defiant
expression.

"I don't say that," he replied; "I can paint something--something
which you can call a picture if you like,--but there is no
resemblance to the Princess Ziska in it. She is beautiful, and I
can get nothing of her beauty,--I can only get the reflection of a
face which is not hers."

"How very curious!" exclaimed Lady Fulkeward. "Quite
psychological, is it not, Doctor? It is almost creepy!" and she
managed to produce a delicate shudder of her white shoulders
without cracking the blanc de perle enamel. "It will be something
fresh for you to study."

"Possibly it will--possibly," said the Doctor, still surveying
Gervase blandly through his round glasses; "but it isn't the first
time I have heard of painters who unconsciously produce other
faces than those of their sitters. I distinctly remember a case in
point. A gentleman, famous for his charities and general
benevolence, had his portrait painted by a great artist for
presentation to the town-hall of his native place, and the artist
was quite unable to avoid making him unto the likeness of a
villain. It was quite a distressing affair; the painter was
probably more distressed than anybody about it, and he tried by
every possible means in his power to impart a truthful and noble
aspect to the countenance of the man who was known and admitted to
be a benefactor to his race. But it was all in vain: the portrait
when finished was the portrait of a stranger and a scoundrel. The
people for whom it was intended declared they would not have such
a libel on their generous friend hung up in their town-hall. The
painter was in despair, and there was going to be a general
hubbub, when, lo and behold the 'noble' personage himself was
suddenly arrested for a brutal murder committed twelve years back.
He was found guilty and hanged, and the painter kept the portrait
that had so remarkably betrayed the murderer's real nature, as a
curiosity ever afterwards."

"Is that a fact?" inquired a man who was seated at the other side
of the table, and who had listened with great interest to the
story.

"A positive fact," said the Doctor. "One of those many singular
circumstances which occur in life, and which are beyond all
explanation."

Gervase moved restlessly; then filling for himself a glass of
claret, drained it off thirstily.

"Something of the same kind has happened to me," he said with a
hard, mirthless laugh, "for out of the most perfect beauty I have
only succeeded in presenting an atrocity."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Lady Fulkeward. "What a disappointing day you
must have had! But of course, you will try again; the Princess
will surely give you another sitting?"

"Oh, yes! I shall certainly try again and yet again, and ever so
many times again," said Gervase, with a kind of angry obstinacy in
his tone, "the more so as she has told me I will never succeed in
painting her."

"She told you that, did she?" put in Dr. Dean, with an air of
lively interest.

"Yes."

Just then the handing round of fresh dishes and the clatter of
knives and forks effectually put a stop to the conversation for
the time, and Gervase presently glancing about him saw that Denzil
Murray and his sister were dining apart at a smaller table with
young Lord Fulkeward and Ross Courtney. Helen was looking her
fairest and best that evening--her sweet face, framed in its angel
aureole of bright hair had a singular look of pureness and truth
expressed upon it rare to find in any woman beyond her early
teens. Unconsciously to himself, Gervase sighed as he caught a
view of her delicate profile, and Lady Fulkeward's sharp ears
heard the sound of that sigh.

"Isn't that a charming little party over there?" she asked. "Young
people, you know! They always like to be together! That very sweet
girl, Miss Murray, was so much distressed about her brother to-
day,--something was the matter with him--a touch of fever, I
believe,--that she begged me to let Fulke dine with them in order
to distract Mr. Denzil's mind. Fulke is a dear boy, you know--very
consoling in his ways, though he says so little. Then Mr. Courtney
volunteered to join them, and there they are. The Chetwynd Lyles
are gone to a big dinner at the Continental this evening."

"The Chetwynd Lyles--let me see. Who are they?" mused Gervase
aloud, "Do I know them?"

"No,--that is, you have not been formally introduced," said Dr.
Dean." Sir Chetwynd Lyle is the editor and proprietor of the
London Daily Dial, Lady Chetwynd Lyle is his wife, and the two
elderly-youthful ladies who appeared as 'Boulogne fishwives' last
night at the ball are his daughters."

"Cruel man!" exclaimed Lady Fulkeward with a girlish giggle. "The
idea of calling those sweet girls, Muriel and Dolly, 'elderly-
youthful!'"

"What are they, my dear madam, what are they?" demanded the
imperturbable little savant. "'Elderly-youthful' is a very
convenient expression, and applies perfectly to people who refuse
to be old and cannot possibly be young."

"Nonsense! I will not listen to you!" and her ladyship opened her
jewelled fan and spread it before her eyes to completely screen
the objectionable Doctor from view. "Don't you know your theories
are quite out of date? Nobody is old,--we all utterly refuse to be
old! Why," and she shut her fan with a sudden jerk, "I shall have
you calling ME old next."

"Never, madam!" said Dr. Dean gallantly laying his hand upon his
heart. "You are quite an exception to the rule. You have passed
through the furnace of marriage and come out unscathed. Time has
done its worst with you, and now retreats, baffled and powerless;
it can touch you no more!"

Whether this was meant as a compliment or the reverse it would
have been difficult to say, but Lady Fulkeward graciously accepted
it as the choicest flattery, and bowed, smiling and gratified.
Dinner was now drawing to its end, and people were giving their
orders for coffee to be served to them on the terrace and in the
gardens, Gervase among the rest. The Doctor turned to him.

"I should like to see your picture of the Princess," he said,--
"that is if you have no objection."

"Not the least in the world," replied Gervase,--"only it isn't the
Princess, it is somebody else."

A faint shudder passed over him. The Doctor noticed it.

"Talking of curious things," went on that irrepressible savant, "I
started hunting for a particular scarabeus to-day. I couldn't find
it, of course,--it generally takes years to find even a trifle
that one especially wants. But I came across a queer old man in
one of the curiosity-shops who told me that over at Karnak they
had just discovered a large fresco in one of the tombs describing
the exploits of the very man whose track I'm on--Araxes ..."

Gervase started,--he knew not why.

"What has Araxes to do with you?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing! But the Princess Ziska spoke of him as a great
warrior in the days of Amenhotep,--and she seems to be a great
Egyptologist, and to know many things of which we are ignorant.
Then you know last night she adopted the costume of a dancer of
that period, named Ziska-Charmazel. Well, now it appears that in
one part of this fresco the scene depicted is this very Ziska-
Charmazel dancing before Araxes."

Gervase listened with strained attention,--his heart beat thickly,
as though the Doctor were telling him of some horrible
circumstance in which he had an active part; whereas he had truly
no interest at all in the matter, except in so far as events of
history are more or less interesting to everyone.

"Well?" he said after a pause.

"Well," echoed Dr. Dean. "There is really nothing more to say
beyond that I want to find out everything I can concerning this
Araxes, if only for the reason that the charming Princess chose to
impersonate his lady-love last night. One must amuse one's self in
one's own fashion, even in Egypt, and this amuses ME."

Gervase rose, feeling in his pocket for his cigarette-case.

"Come," he said briefly, "I will show you my picture."

He straightened his tall, fine figure and walked slowly across the
room to the table where Denzil Murray sat with his sister and
friends.

"Denzil," he said,--"I have made a strange portrait of the
Princess Ziska, and I'm going to show it to Dr. Dean. I should
like you to see it too. Will you come?"

Denzil looked at him with a dark reproach in his eyes.

"If you like," he answered shortly.

"I do like!" and Gervase laid his hand on the young fellow's
shoulder with a kind pressure. "You will find it a piece of
curious disenchantment, as well as a proof of my want of skill.
You are all welcome to come and look at it except ..." here he
hesitated,--"except Miss Murray. I think--yes, I think it might
possibly frighten Miss Murray."

Helen raised her eyes to his, but said nothing.

"Oh, by Jove!" murmured Lord Fulkeward, feeling his moustache as
usual. "Then don't you come, Miss Murray. We'll tell you all about
it afterwards."

"I have no curiosity on the subject," she said a trifle coldly.
"Denzil, you will find me in the drawing-room. I have a letter to
write home."

With a slight salute she left them, Gervase watching the
disappearance of her graceful figure with a tinge of melancholy
regret in his eyes.

"It is evident Mademoiselle Helen does not like the Princess
Ziska," he observed.

"Oh, well, as to that," said Fulkeward hastily, "you know you
can't expect women to lose their heads about her as men do.
Beside, there's something rather strange in the Princess's manner
and appearance, and perhaps Miss Murray doesn't take to her any
more than I do."

"Oh, then you are not one of her lovers?" queried Dr. Dean
smiling.

"No; are you?"

"I? Good heavens, my dear young sir, I was never in love with a
woman in my life! That is, not what YOU would call in love. At the
age of sixteen I wrote verses to a mature young damsel of forty,--
a woman with a remarkably fine figure and plenty of it; she
rejected my advances with scorn, and I have never loved since!"

They all laughed,--even Denzil Murray's sullen features cleared
for the moment into the brightness of a smile.

"Where did you paint the Princess's picture?" inquired Ross
Courtney suddenly.

"In her own house," replied Gervase. "But we were not alone, for
the fascinating fair one had some twenty or more armed servants
within call." There was a movement of surprise among his
listeners, and he went on: "Yes; Madame is very well protected, I
assure you,--as much so as if she were the first favorite in a
harem. Come now, and see my sketch."

He led the way to a private sitting-room which he had secured for
himself in the hotel at almost fabulous terms. It was a small
apartment, but it had the advantage of a long French window which
opened out into the garden. Here, on an easel, was a canvas with
its back turned towards the spectator.

"Sit down," said Gervase abruptly addressing his guests, "and be
prepared for a curiosity unlike anything you have ever seen
before!" He paused a moment, looking steadily at Dr. Dean.
"Perhaps, Doctor, as you are interested in psychic phenomena, you
may be able to explain how I got such a face on my canvas, for I
cannot explain it to myself."

He slowly turned the canvas round, and, scarcely heeding the
exclamation of amazement that broke simultaneously from all the
men present, stared at it himself, fascinated by a singular
magnetism more potent than either horror or fear.




CHAPTER IX.


What a strange and awful face it was!--what a thing of distorted
passion and pain! What an agony was expressed in every line of the
features!--agony in which the traces of a divine beauty lingered
only to render the whole countenance more repellent and terrific!
A kind of sentient solemnity, mingled with wrath and terror,
glared from the painted eyes,--the lips, slightly parted in a
cruel upward curve, seemed about to utter a shriek of menace,--the
hair, drooping in black, thick clusters low on the brow, looked
wet as with the dews of the rigor mortis,--and to add to the
mysterious horror of the whole conception, the distinct outline of
a death's-head was seen plainly through the rose-brown flesh-
tints. There was no real resemblance in this horrible picture to
the radiant and glowing loveliness of the Princess Ziska, yet, at
the same time, there was sufficient dim likeness to make an
imaginative person think it might be possible for her to assume
that appearance in death. Several minutes passed in utter
silence,--then Lord Fulkeward suddenly rose.

"I'm going!" he said. "It's a beastly thing; it makes me sick!"

"Grand merci!" said Gervase with a forced smile.

"I really can't help it," declared the young man, turning his back
to the picture. "If I am rude, you must excuse it. I'm not very
strong--my mother will tell you I get put out very easily,--and I
shall dream of this horrid face all night if I don't give it a
wide berth."

And, without any further remark he stepped out through the open
window into the garden, and walked off. Gervase made no comment on
his departure; he turned his eyes towards Dr. Dean who, with
spectacles on nose, was staring hard at the picture with every
sign of the deepest interest.

"Well, Doctor," he said, "you see it is not at all like the
Princess."

"Oh, yes it is!" returned the Doctor placidly. "If you could
imagine the Princess's face in torture, it would be like her. It
is the kind of expression she might wear if she suddenly met with
a violent end."

"But why should I paint her so?" demanded Gervase. "She was
perfectly tranquil; and her attitude was most picturesquely
composed. I sketched her as I thought I saw her,--how did this
tortured head come on my canvas?"

The Doctor scratched his chin thoughtfully. It was certainly a
problem. He stared hard at Gervase, as though searching for the
clue to the mystery in the handsome artist's own face. Then he
turned to Denzil Murray, who had not stirred or spoken.

"What do you think of it, eh, Denzil?" he asked.

The young man started as from a dream.

"I don't know what to think of it."

"And you?" said the Doctor, addressing Ross Courtney.

"I? Oh, I am of the same opinion as Fulkeward,--I think it is a
horrible thing. And the curious part of the matter is that it is
like the Princess Ziska, and yet totally unlike. Upon my word, you
know, it is a very unpleasant picture."

Dr. Dean got up and paced the room two or three times, his brows
knitted in a heavy frown. Suddenly he stopped in front of Gervase.

"Tell me," he said, "have you any recollection of ever having met
the Princess Ziska before?"

Gervase looked puzzled, then answered slowly:

"No, I have no actual recollection of the kind. At the same time,
I admit to you that there is something about her which has always
struck me as being familiar. The tone of her voice and the
peculiar cadence of her laughter particularly affect me in this
way. Last night when I was dancing with her, I wondered whether I
had ever come across her as a model in one of the studios in Paris
or Rome."

The Doctor listened to him attentively, watching him narrowly the
while. But he shook his head incredulously at the idea of the
Princess ever having posed as a model.

"No, no, that won't do!" he said. "I do not believe she was ever
in the model business. Think again. You are now a man in the prime
of life, Monsieur Gervase, but look back to your early youth,--the
period when young men do wild, reckless, and often wicked things,-
-did you ever in that thoughtless time break a woman's heart?"

Gervase flushed, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Pardieu! I may have done! Who can tell? But if I did, what would
that have to do with this?" and he tapped the picture impatiently.

The Doctor sat down and smacked his lips with a peculiar air of
enjoyment.

"It would have a great deal to do with it," he answered, "that is,
psychologically speaking. I have known of such cases. We will
argue the point out systematically thus:--Suppose that you, in
your boyhood, had wronged some woman, and suppose that woman had
died. You might imagine you had got rid of that woman. But if her
love was very strong and her sense of outrage very bitter, I must
tell you that you have not got rid of her by any means, moreover,
you never will get rid of her. And why? Because her Soul, like all
Souls, is imperishable. Now, putting it as a mere supposition, and
for the sake of the argument, that you feel a certain admiration
for the Princess Ziska, an admiration which might possibly deepen
into something more than platonic, ... "--here Denzil Murray
looked up, his eyes glowing with an angry pain as he fixed them on
Gervase,--"why then the Soul of the other woman you once wronged
might come between you and the face of the new attraction and
cause you to unconsciously paint the tortured look of the injured
and unforgiving Spirit on the countenance of the lovely fascinator
whose charms are just beginning to ensnare you. I repeat, I have
known of such cases." And, unheeding the amazed and incredulous
looks of his listeners, the little Doctor folded both his short
arms across his chest, and hugged himself in the exquisite delight
of his own strange theories." The fact is, "he continued," you
cannot get rid of ghosts! They are all about us--everywhere!
Sometimes they take forms, sometimes they are content to remain
invisible. But they never fail to make their presence felt. Often
during the performance of some great piece of music they drift
between the air and the melody, making the sounds wilder and more
haunting, and freezing the blood of the listener with a vague
agony and chill. Sometimes they come between us and our friends,
mysteriously forbidding any further exchange of civilities or
sympathies, and occasionally they meet us alone and walk and talk
with us invisibly. Generally they mean well, but sometimes they
mean ill. And the only explanation I can offer you, Monsieur
Gervase, as to the present picture problem is that a ghost must
have come between you and your canvas!"

Gervase laughed loudly.

"My good friend, you are an adept in the art of pleading the
impossible! You must excuse me; I am a sceptic; and I hope I am
also in possession of my sober reason,--therefore, you can hardly
wonder at my entirely refusing to accept such preposterous
theories as those you appear to believe in."

Dr. Dean gave him a civil little bow.

"I do not ask you to accept them, my dear sir! I state my facts,
and you can take them or leave them, just as you please. You
yourself can offer no explanation of the singular way in which
this picture has been produced; I offer one which is perfectly
tenable with the discoveries of psychic science,--and you dismiss
it as preposterous. That being the case, I should recommend you to
cut up this canvas and try your hand again on the same subject."

"Of course, I shall try again," retorted Gervase. "But I do not
think I shall destroy this first sketch. It is a curiosity in its
way; and it has a peculiar fascination for me. Do you notice how
thoroughly Egyptian the features are? They are the very contour of
some of the faces on the recently-discovered frescoes."

"Oh, I noticed that at once," said the Doctor; "but that is not
remarkable, seeing that you yourself are quite of an Egyptian
type, though a Frenchman,--so much so, in fact, that many people
in this hotel have commented on it."

Gervase said nothing, but slowly turned the canvas round with its
face to the wall.

"You have seen enough of it, I suppose?" he inquired of Denzil
Murray.

"More than enough!"

Gervase smiled.

"It ought to disenchant you," he said in a lower tone.

"But it is a libel on her beauty,--it is not in the least like
her," returned Murray coldly.

"Not in the very least? Are you sure? My dear Denzil, you know as
well as I do that there IS a likeness, combined with a dreadful
unlikeness; and it is that which troubles both of us. I assure
you, my good boy, I am as sorry for you as I am for myself,--for I
feel that this woman will be the death of one or both of us!"

Denzil made no reply, and presently they all strolled out in the
garden and lit their cigars and cigarettes, with the exception of
Dr. Dean who never smoked and never drank anything stronger than
water.

"I am going to get up a party for the Nile," he said as he turned
his sharp, ferret-like eyes upwards to the clear heavens; "and I
shall take the Princess into my confidence. In fact, I have
written to her about it to-day. I hear she has a magnificent
electric dahabeah, and if she will let us charter it. ..."

"She won't," said Denzil hastily, "unless she goes with it
herself."

"You seem to know a great deal about her," observed Dr. Dean
indulgently, "and why should she not go herself? She is evidently
well instructed in the ancient history of Egypt, and, as she reads
the hieroglyphs, she will be a delightful guide and a most
valuable assistant to me in my researches."

"What researches are you engaged upon now?" inquired Courtney.

"I am hunting down a man called Araxes," answered the Doctor. "He
lived, so far as I can make out, some four or five thousand years
ago, more or less; and I want to find out what he did and how he
died, and when I know how he died, then I mean to discover where
he is buried. If possible, I shall excavate him. I also want to
find the remains of Ziska-Charmazel, the lady impersonated by our
charming friend the Princess last night,--the dancer, who, it
appears from a recently-discovered fresco, occupied most of her
time in dancing before this same Araxes and making herself
generally agreeable to him."

"What an odd fancy!" exclaimed Denzil. "How can a man and woman
dead five thousand years ago be of any interest to you?"

"What interest has Rameses?" demanded the Doctor politely, "or any
of the Ptolemies? Araxes, like Rameses, may lead to fresh
discoveries in Egypt, for all we know. One name is as good as
another,--and each odoriferous mummy has its own mystery."

They all came just then to a pause in their walk, Gervase stopping
to light a fresh cigarette. The rays of the rising moon fell upon
him as he stood, a tall and stately figure, against a background
of palms, and shone on his dark features with a touch of grayish-
green luminance that gave him for the moment an almost spectral
appearance. Dr. Dean glanced at him with a smile.

"What a figure of an Egyptian, is he not!" he said to Courtney and
Denzil Murray. "Look at him! What height and symmetry! What a
world of ferocity in those black, slumbrous eyes! Yes, Monsieur
Gervase, I am talking about you. I am admiring you!"

"Trop d'honneur!" murmured Gervase, carefully shielding with one
hand the match with which he was kindling his cigarette.

"Yes," continued the Doctor, "I am admiring you. Being a little
man myself, I naturally like tall men, and as an investigator of
psychic forms I am immensely interested when I see a finely-made
body in which the soul lies torpid. That is why you unconsciously
compose for me a wonderful subject of study. I wonder now, how
long this torpidity in the psychic germ has lasted in you? It
commenced, of course, originally in protoplasm; but it must have
continued through various low forms and met with enormous
difficulties in attaining to individual consciousness as man,--
because even now it is scarcely conscious."

Gervase laughed.

"Why, that beginning of the soul in protoplasm is part of a creed
which the Princess Ziska was trying to teach me to-day," he said
lightly. "It's all no use. I don't believe in the soul; if I did,
I should be a miserable man."

"Why?" asked Murray.

"Why? Because, my dear fellow, I should be rather afraid of my
future. I should not like to live again; I might have to remember
certain incidents which I would rather forget. There is your
charming sister, Mademoiselle Helen! I must go and talk to her,--
her conversation always does me good; and after that picture which
I have been unfortunate enough to produce, her presence will be as
soothing as the freshness of morning after an unpleasant
nightmare."

He moved away; Denzil Murray with Courtney followed him. Dr. Dean
remained behind, and presently sitting down in a retired corner of
the garden alone, he took out a small pocket-book and stylographic
pen and occupied himself for more than half an hour in busily
writing till he had covered two or three pages with his small,
neat caligraphy.

"It is the most interesting problem I ever had the chance of
studying!" he murmured half aloud when he had finished, "Of
course, if my researches into the psychic spheres of action are
worth anything, it can only be one case out of thousands.
Thousands? Aye, perhaps millions! Great heavens! Among what
terrific unseen forces we live! And in exact proportion to every
man's arrogant denial of the 'Divinity that shapes our ends, so
will be measured out to him the revelation of the invisible.
Strange that the human race has never entirely realized as yet the
depth of meaning in the words describing hell: 'Where the worm
dieth not, and where the flame is never quenched. The 'worm' is
Retribution, the 'flame' is the immortal Spirit,--and the two are
forever striving to escape from the other. Horrible! And yet there
are men who believe in neither one thing nor the other, and reject
the Redemption that does away with both! God forgive us all our
sins,--and especially the sins of pride and presumption!"

And with a shade of profound melancholy on his features, the
little Doctor put by his note-book, and, avoiding all the hotel
loungers on the terrace and elsewhere, retired to his own room and
went to bed.




CHAPTER X.


The next day when Armand Gervase went to call on the Princess
Ziska he was refused admittance. The Nubian attendant who kept
watch and ward at her gates, hearing the door-bell ring, contented
himself with thrusting his ugly head through an open upper window
and shouting--

"Madame est sortie!"

"Ou donc?" called Gervase in answer.

"A la campagne--le desert--les pyramides!" returned the Nubian, at
the same time banging the lattice to in order to prevent the
possibility of any further conversation. And Gervase, standing in
the street irresolutely for a moment, fancied he heard a peal of
malicious laughter in the distance.

"Beast!" he muttered, "I must try him with a money bribe next time
I get hold of him. I wonder what I shall do with myself now?--
haunted and brain-ridden as I am by this woman and her picture?"

The hot sun glared in his eyes and made them ache,--the rough
stones of the narrow street were scorching to his feet. He began
to move slowly away with a curious faint sensation of giddiness
and sickness upon him, when the sound of music floating from the
direction of the Princess Ziska's palace brought him to a sudden
standstill. It was a strange, wild melody, played on some
instrument with seemingly muffled strings. A voice with a deep,
throbbing thrill of sweetness in it began to sing:

  Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!
   It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,
     With its leaves unfurled
     To the wondering world,
   Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless pain
   That burns and tortures the human brain;
   Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!

  Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!
   Bared to the moon on the waters dark and chilly.
     A star above
     Is its only love,
   And one brief sigh of its scented breath
   Is all it will ever know of Death;
   Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!

When the song ceased, Gervase raised his eyes from the ground on
which he had fixed them in a kind of brooding stupor, and stared
at the burning blue of the sky as vaguely and wildly as a sick man
in the delirium of fever.

"God! What ails me!" he muttered, supporting himself with one hand
against the black and crumbling wall near which he stood. "Why
should that melody steal away my strength and make me think of
things with which I have surely no connection! What tricks my
imagination plays me in this city of the Orient--I might as well
be hypnotized! What have I to do with dreams of war and triumph
and rapine and murder, and what is the name of Ziska-Charmazel to
me?"

He shook himself with the action of a fine brute that has been
stung by some teasing insect, and, mastering his emotions by an
effort, walked away. But he was so absorbed in strange thoughts,
that he stumbled up against Denzil Murray in a side street on the
way to the Gezireh Palace Hotel without seeing him, and would have
passed him altogether had not Denzil somewhat fiercely said:

"Stop!"

Gervase looked at him bewilderedly.

"Why, Denzil, is it you? My dear fellow, forgive me my brusquerie!
I believe I have got a stroke of the sun, or something of the
sort; I assure you I hardly know what I am doing or where I am
going!"

"I believe it!" said Denzil, hoarsely. "You are as mad as I am--
for love!"

Gervase smiled; a slight incredulous smile.

"You think so? I am not sure! If love makes a man as thoroughly
unstrung and nervous as I am to-day, then love is a very bad
illness."

"It is the worst illness in the world," said Denzil, speaking
hurriedly and wildly. "The most cruel and torturing! And there is
no cure for it save death. My God, Gervase! You were my friend but
yesterday! I never should have thought it possible to hate you!"

"Yet you do hate me?" queried Gervase, still smiling a little.

"Hate you? I could kill you! You have been with HER!"

Quietly Gervase took his arm.

"My good Denzil, you are mistaken! I confess to you frankly I
should have been with HER--you mean the Princess Ziska, of course-
-had it been possible. But she has fled the city for the moment--
at least, according to the corpse-like Nubian who acts as porter."

"He lies!" exclaimed Denzil, hotly. "I saw her this morning."

"I hope you improved your opportunity," said Gervase,
imperturbably. "Anyway, at the present moment she is not visible."

A silence fell between them for some minutes; then Denzil spoke
again.

"Gervase, it is no use, I cannot stand this sort of thing. We must
have it out. What does it all mean?"

"It is difficult to explain, my dear boy," answered Gervase, half
seriously, half mockingly. "It means, I presume, that we are both
in love with the same woman, and that we both intend to try our
chances with her. But, as I told you the other night, I do not see
why we should quarrel about it. Your intentions towards the
Princess are honorable--mine are dishonorable, and I shall make no
secret of them. If you win her, I shall ..."

He paused, and there was a sudden look in his eyes which gave them
a sombre darkness, darker than their own natural color.

"You shall--what?" asked Denzil.

"Do something desperate," replied Gervase. "What the something
will be depends on the humor of the moment. A tiger balked of his
prey is not an agreeable beast; a strong man deprived of the woman
he passionately desires is a little less agreeable even than the
tiger. But let us adopt the policy of laissez-faire. Nothing is
decided; the fair one cares for neither of us; let us be friends
until she makes her choice."

"We cannot be friends," said Denzil, sternly.

"Good! Let us be foes then, but courteous, even in our quarrel,
dear boy. If we must kill each other, let us do it civilly. To fly
at each other's throats would be purely barbaric. We owe a certain
duty to civilization; things have progressed since the days of
Araxes."

Denzil stared at him gloomily.

"Araxes is Dr. Dean's fad," he said. "I don't know anything about
Egyptian mummies, and don't want to know. My matter is with the
present, and not with the past."

They had reached the hotel by this time, and turned into the
gardens side by side.

"You understand?" repeated Denzil. "We cannot be friends!"

Gervase gave him a profoundly courteous salute, and the two
separated.

Later on in the afternoon, about an hour before dinner-time,
Gervase, strolling on the terrace of the hotel alone, saw Helen
Murray seated at a little distance under some trees, with a book
in her hand which she was not reading. There were tears in her
eyes, but as he approached her she furtively dashed them away and
greeted him with a poor attempt at a smile.

"You have a moment to spare me?" he asked, sitting down beside
her.

She bent her head in acquiescence.

"I am a very unhappy man, Mademoiselle Helen," he began, looking
at her with a certain compassionate tenderness as he spoke. "I
want your sympathy, but I know I do not deserve it."

Helen remained silent. A faint flush crimsoned her cheeks, but her
eyes were veiled under the long lashes--she thought he could not
see them.

"You remember," he went on, "our pleasant times in Scotland? Ah,
it is a restful place, your Highland home, with the beautiful
purple hills rolling away in the distance, and the glorious moors
covered with fragrant heather, and the gurgling of the river that
runs between birch and fir and willow, making music all day long
for those who have the ears to listen, and the hearts to
understand the pretty love tune it sings! You know Frenchmen
always have more or less sympathy with the Scotch--some old
association, perhaps, with the romantic times of Mary Queen of
Scots, when the light and changeful fancies of Chastelard and his
brother poets and lutists made havoc in the hearts of many a
Highland maiden. What is that bright drop on your hand, Helen?--
are you crying?" He waited a moment, and his voice was softer and
more tremulous. "Dear girl, I am not worthy of tears. I am not
good enough for you."

He gave her time to recover her momentary emotion and then went
on, still softly and tenderly:

"Listen, Helen. I want you to believe me and forgive me, if you
can. I know--I remember those moonlight evenings in Scotland--holy
and happy evenings, as sweet as flower-scented pages in a young
girl's missal; yes, and I did not mean to play with you, Helen, or
wound your gentle heart. I almost loved you!" He spoke the words
passionately, and for a moment she raised her eyes and looked at
him in something of fear as well as sorrow. "'Yes,' I said to my
self, 'this woman, so true and pure and fair, is a bride for a
king; and if I can win her--if!' Ah, there my musings stopped. But
I came to Egypt chiefly to meet you again, knowing that you and
your brother were in Cairo. How was I to know, how was I to guess
that this horrible thing would happen?"

Helen gazed at him wonderingly.

"What horrible thing?" she asked, falteringly, the rich color
coming and going on her face, and her heart beating violently as
she put the question.

His eyes flashed.

"This," he answered. "The close and pernicious enthralment of a
woman I never met till the night before last; a woman whose face
haunts me; a woman who drags me to her side with the force of a
magnet, there to grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her
for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen,
Helen! You do not understand--you will never understand! Here, in
the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she shakes
from her garments as she moves; something indescribably
fascinating yet terrible attracts me to her; it is an evil
attraction, I know, but I cannot resist it. There is something
wicked in every man's nature; I am conscious enough that there is
something detestably wicked in mine, and I have not sufficient
goodness to overbalance it. And this woman,--this silent, gliding,
glittering-eyed creature that has suddenly taken possession of my
fancy--she overcomes me in spite of myself; she makes havoc of all
the good intentions of my life. I admit it--I confess it!"

"You are speaking of the Princess Ziska?" asked Helen,
tremblingly.

"Of whom else should I speak?" he responded, dreamily. "There is
no one like her; probably there never was anyone like her, except,
perhaps, Ziska-Charmazel!"

As the name passed his lips, he sprang hastily up and stood
amazed, as though some sudden voice had called him. Helen Murray
looked at him in alarm.

"Oh, what is it?" she exclaimed.

He forced a laugh.

"Nothing--nothing--but a madness! I suppose it is all a part of my
strange malady. Your brother is stricken with the same fever.
Surely you know that?"

"Indeed I do know it," Helen answered, "to my sorrow!"

He regarded her intently. Her face in its pure outline and quiet
sadness of expression touched him more than he cared to own even
to himself.

"My dear Helen," he said, with an effort at composure, "I have
been talking wildly; you must forgive me! Don't think about me at
all; I am not worth it! Denzil has taken it into his head to
quarrel with me on account of the Princess Ziska, but I assure you
I will not quarrel with him. He is infatuated, and so am I. The
best thing for all of us to do would be to leave Egypt instantly;
I feel that instinctively, only we cannot do it. Something holds
us here. You will never persuade Denzil to go, and I--I cannot
persuade myself to go. There is a clinging sweetness in the air
for me; and there are vague suggestions, memories, dreams,
histories--wonderful things which hold me spell-bound! I wish I
could analyze them, recognize them, or understand them. But I
cannot, and there, perhaps, is their secret charm. Only one thing
grieves me, and that is, that I have, perhaps, unwittingly, in
some thoughtless way, given you pain; is it so, Helen?"

She rose quickly, and with a quiet dignity held out her hand.

"No, Monsieur Gervase," she said, "it is not so. I am not one of
those women who take every little idle word said by men in jest au
grand serieux! You have always been a kind and courteous friend,
and if you ever fancied you had a warmer feeling for me, as you
say, I am sure you were mistaken. We often delude ourselves in
these matters. I wish, for your sake, I could think the Princess
Ziska worthy of the love she so readily inspires. But,--I cannot!
My brother's infatuation for her is to me terrible. I feel it will
break his heart,--and mine!" A little half sob caught her breath
and interrupted her; she paused, but presently went on with an
effort at calmness: "You talk of our leaving Egypt; how I wish
that were possible! But I spoke to Denzil about it on the night of
the ball, and he was furious with me for the mere suggestion. It
seems like an evil fate."

"It IS an evil fate," said Gervase gloomily. "Enfin, my dear
Helen, we cannot escape from it,--at least, _I_ cannot. But I
never was intended for good things, not even for a lasting love. A
lasting love I feel would bore me. You look amazed; you believe in
lasting love? So do many sweet women. But do you know what symbol
I, as an artist, would employ were I asked to give my idea of Love
on my canvas?"

Helen smiled sadly and shook her head.

"I would paint a glowing flame," said Gervase dreamily. "A flame
leaping up from the pit of hell to the height of heaven, springing
in darkness, lost in light; and flying into the centre of that
flame should be a white moth--a blind, soft, mad thing with
beating, tremulous wings,--that should be Love! Whirled into the
very heart of the ravening fire,--crushed, shrivelled out of
existence in one wild, rushing rapture--that is what Love must be
to me! One cannot prolong passion over fifty years, more or less,
of commonplace routine, as marriage would have us do. The very
notion is absurd. Love is like a choice wine of exquisite bouquet
and intoxicating flavor; it is the most maddening draught in the
world, but you cannot drink it every day. No, my dear Helen; I am
not made for a quiet life,--nor for a long one, I fancy."

His voice unconsciously sank into a melancholy tone, and for one
moment Helen's composure nearly gave way. She loved him as true
women love, with that sublime self-sacrifice which only desires
the happiness of the thing beloved; yet a kind of insensate rage
stirred for once in her gentle soul to think that the mere sight
of a strange woman with dark eyes,--a woman whom no one knew
anything about, and who was by some people deemed a mere
adventuress,--should have so overwhelmed this man whose genius she
had deemed superior to fleeting impressions. Controlling the tears
that rose to her eyes and threatened to fall, she said gently,

"Good-bye, Monsieur Gervase!"

He started as from a reverie.

"Good-bye, Helen! Some day you will think kindly of me again?"

"I think kindly of you now," she answered tremulously; then, not
trusting herself to say any more, she turned swiftly and left him.

"The flame and the moth!" he mused, watching her slight figure
till it had disappeared. "Yes, it is the only fitting symbol. Love
must be always so. Sudden, impetuous, ungovernable, and then--the
end! To stretch out the divine passion over life-long breakfasts
and dinners! It would be intolerable to me. Lord Fulkeward could
do that sort of thing; his chest is narrow, and his sentiments are
as limited as his chest. He would duly kiss his wife every morning
and evening, and he would not analyze the fact that no special
thrill of joy stirred in him at the action. What should he do with
thrills of joy--this poor Fulkeward? And yet it is likely he will
marry Helen. Or will it be the Courtney animal,--the type of man
whose one idea is 'to arise, kill, and eat?' "Ah, well!" and he
sighed. "She is not for me, this maiden grace of womanhood. If I
married her, I should make her miserable. I am made for passion,
not for peace."

He started as he heard a step behind him, and turning, saw Dr.
Dean. The worthy little savant looked worried and preoccupied.

"I have had a letter from the Princess Ziska," he said, without
any preliminary. "She has gone to secures rooms at the Mena House
Hotel, which is situated close to the Pyramids. She regrets she
cannot enter into the idea of taking a trip up the Nile. She has
no time, she says, as she is soon leaving Cairo. But she suggests
that we should make up a party for the Mena House while she is
staying there, as she can, so she tells me, make the Pyramids much
more interesting for us by her intimate knowledge of them. Now, to
me this is a very tempting offer, but I should not care to go
alone."

"The Murrays will go, I am sure," murmured Gervase lazily. "At any
rate, Denzil will."

The Doctor looked at him narrowly.

"If Denzil goes, so will you go," he said. "Thus there are two
already booked for company. And I fancy the Fulkewards might like
the idea."

"The Princess is leaving Cairo?" queried Gervase presently, as
though it were an after thought.

"So she informs me in her letter. The party which is to come off
on Wednesday night is her last reception."

Gervase was silent a moment. Then he said:

"Have you told Denzil?"

"Not yet."

"Better do so then," and Gervase glanced up at the sky, now
glowing red with a fiery sunset. "He wants to propose, you know."

"Good God!" cried the Doctor, sharply, "If he proposes to that
woman. ..."

"Why should he not?" demanded Gervase. "Is she not as ripe for
love and fit for marriage as any other of her sex?"

"Her sex!" echoed the Doctor grimly. "Her sex!--There!--for
heaven's sake don't talk to me!--leave me alone! The Princess
Ziska is like no woman living; she has none of the sentiments of a
woman,--and the notion of Denzil's being such a fool as to think
of proposing to her--Oh, leave me alone, I tell you! Let me worry
this out!"

And clapping his hat well down over his eyes, he began to walk
away in a strange condition of excitement, which he evidently had
some difficulty in suppressing. Suddenly, however, he turned, came
back and tapped Gervase smartly on the chest.

"YOU are the man for the Princess," he said impressively. "There
is a madness in you which you call love for her; you are her
fitting mate, not that poor boy, Denzil Murray. In certain men and
women spirit leaps to spirit,--note responds to note--and if all
the world were to interpose its trumpery bulk, nothing could
prevent such tumultuous forces rushing together. Follow your
destiny, Monsieur Gervase, but do not ruin another man's life on
the way. Follow your destiny,--complete it,--you are bound to do
so,--but in the havoc and wildness to come, for God's sake, let
the innocent go free!"

He spoke with extraordinary solemnity, and Gervase stared at him
in utter bewilderment and perplexity, not understanding in the
least what he meant. But before he could interpose a word or ask a
question, Dr. Dean had gone.




CHAPTER XI.


The next two or three days passed without any incident of interest
occurring to move the languid calm and excite the fleeting
interest of the fashionable English and European visitors who were
congregated at the Gezireh Palace Hotel. The anxious flirtations
of Dolly and Muriel Chetwynd Lyle afforded subjects of mirth to
the profane,--the wonderfully youthful toilettes of Lady Fulkeward
provided several keynotes from which to strike frivolous
conversation,--and when the great painter, Armand Gervase,
actually made a sketch of her ladyship for his own amusement, and
made her look about sixteen, and girlish at that, his popularity
knew no bounds. Everyone wanted to give him a commission,
particularly the elderly fair, and he could have made a fortune
had he chosen, after the example set him by the English
academicians, by painting the portraits of ugly nobodies who were
ready to pay any price to be turned out as handsome somebodies.
But he was too restless and ill at ease to apply himself steadily
to work,--the glowing skies of Egypt, the picturesque groups of
natives to be seen at every turn,--the curious corners of old
Cairo--these made no impression upon his mind at all, and when he
was alone, he passed whole half hours staring at the strange
picture he had made of the Princess Ziska, wherein the face of
death seemed confronting him through a mask of life. And he
welcomed with a strong sense of relief and expectation the long-
looked-for evening of the Princess's "reception," to which many of
the visitors in Cairo had been invited since a fortnight, and
which those persons who always profess to be "in the know," even
if they are wallowing in ignorance, declared would surpass any
entertainment ever given during the Cairene season.

The night came at last. It was exceedingly sultry, but bright and
clear, and the moon shone with effective brilliance on the gayly-
attired groups of people that between nine and ten o'clock began
to throng the narrow street in which the carved tomb-like portal
of the Princess Ziska's residence was the most conspicuous object.
Lady Chetwynd Lyle, remarkable for bad taste in her dress and the
disposal of her diamonds, stared in haughty amazement at the
Nubian, who saluted her and her daughters with the grin peculiar
to his uninviting cast of countenance, and swept into the
courtyard attended by her husband with an air as though she
imagined her presence gave the necessary flavor of "good style" to
the proceedings. She was followed by Lady Fulkeward, innocently
clad in white and wearing a knot of lilies on her prettily-
enamelled left shoulder, Lord Fulkeward, Denzil Murray and his
sister. Helen also wore white, but though she was in the twenties
and Lady Fulkeward was in the sixties, the girl had so much
sadness in her face and so much tragedy in her soft eyes that she
looked, if anything, older than the old woman. Gervase and Dr.
Dean arrived together, and found themselves in a brilliant,
crushing crowd of people, all of different nationalities and all
manifesting a good deal of impatience because they were delayed a
few minutes in an open court, where a couple of stone lions with
wings were the only spectators of their costumes.

"Most singular behavior!" said Lady Chetwynd Lyle, snorting and
sniffing, "to keep us waiting outside like this! The Princess has
no idea of European manners!"

As she spoke, a sudden blaze of light flamed on the scene, and
twenty tall Egyptian servants in white, with red turbans, carrying
lighted torches and marching two by two crossed the court, and by
mute yet stately gestures invited the company to follow. And the
company did follow in haste, with scramble and rudeness, as is the
way of "European manners" nowadays; and presently, having been
relieved of their cloaks and wrappings, stood startled and
confounded in a huge hall richly adorned with silk and cloth of
gold hangings, where, between two bronze sphinxes, the Princess
Ziska, attired wonderfully in a dim, pale rose color, with flecks
of jewels flashing from her draperies here and there, waited to
receive her guests. Like a queen she stood,--behind her towered a
giant palm, and at her feet were strewn roses and lotus-lilies. On
either side of her, seated on the ground, were young girls
gorgeously clad and veiled to the eyes in the Egyptian fashion,
and as the staring, heated and impetuous swarm of "travelling"
English and Americans came face to face with her in her marvellous
beauty, they were for the moment stricken spellbound, and could
scarcely summon up the necessary assurance to advance and take the
hand she outstretched to them in welcome. She appeared not to see
the general embarrassment, and greeted all who approached her with
courteous ease and composure, speaking the few words which every
graceful hostess deems adequate before "passing on" her visitors.
And presently music began,--music wild and fantastic, of a
character unknown to modern fashionable ears, yet strangely
familiar to Armand Gervase, who started at the first sound of it,
and seemed enthralled.

"That is not an ordinary orchestra," said Dr. Dean in his ear.
"The instruments are ancient, and the form of melody is barbaric."

Gervase answered nothing, for the Princess Ziska just then
approached them.

"Come into the Red Saloon," she said. "I am persuading my guests
to pass on there. I have an old bas-relief on the walls which I
would like you to see,--you, especially, Dr. Dean!--for you are so
learned in antiquities. I hear you are trying to discover traces
of Araxes?"

"I am," replied the Doctor. "You interested me very much in his
history."

"He was a great man," said the Princess, slowly piloting them as
she spoke, without hurry and with careful courtesy, through the
serried ranks of the now freely chattering and animated company.
"Much greater than any of your modern heroes. But he had two
faults; faults which frequently accompany the plentitude of
power,--cruelty and selfishness. He betrayed and murdered the only
woman that ever loved him, Ziska-Charmazel."

"Murdered her!" exclaimed Dr. Dean. "How?"

"Oh, it is only a legend!" and the Princess smiled, turning her
dark eyes with a bewitching languor on Gervase, who, for some
reason or other which he could not explain, felt as if he were
walking in a dream on the edge of a deep chasm of nothingness,
into which he must presently sink to utter destruction. "All these
old histories happened so long ago that they are nothing but myths
now to the present generation."

"Time does not rob any incident of its interest to me," said Dr.
Dean. "Ages hence Queen Victoria will be as much a doubtful
potentate as King Lud. To the wise student of things there is no
time and no distance. All history from the very beginning is like
a wonderful chain in which no link is ever really broken, and in
which every part fits closely to the other part,--though why the
chain should exist at all is a mystery we cannot solve. Yet I am
quite certain that even our late friend Araxes has his connection
with the present, if only for the reason that he lived in the
past."

"How do you argue out that theory!" asked Gervase with sudden
interest.

"How do you argue it? The question is, how can you argue at all
about anything that is so plain and demonstrated a fact? The
doctrine of evolution proves it. Everything that we were once has
its part in us now. Suppose, if you like, that we were originally
no more than shells on the shore,--some remnant of the nature of
the shell must be in us at this moment. Nothing is lost,--nothing
is wasted,--not even a thought. I carry my theories very far,"
pursued the Doctor, looking keenly from one to the other of his
silent companions as they walked beside him through a long
corridor towards the Red Saloon, which could be seen, brilliantly
lit up and thronged with people. "Very far indeed, especially in
regard to matters of love. I maintain that if it is decreed that
the soul of a man and the soul of a woman must meet,--must rush
together,--not all the forces of the universe can hinder them;
aye, even if they were, for some conventional cause or
circumstance themselves reluctant to consummate their destiny, it
would nevertheless, despite them, be consummated. For mark you,--
in some form or other they have rushed together before! Whether as
flames in the air, or twining leaves on a tree, or flowers in a
field, they have felt the sweetness and fitness of each other's
being in former lives,--and the craving sense of that sweetness
and fitness can never be done away with,--never! Not as long as
this present universe lasts! It is a terrible thing," continued
the Doctor in a lower tone, "a terrible fatality,--the desire of
love. In some cases it is a curse; in others, a divine and
priceless blessing. The results depend entirely on the
temperaments of the human creatures possessed by its fever. When
it kindles, rises and burns towards Heaven in a steady flame of
ever-brightening purity and faith, then it makes marriage the most
perfect union on earth,--the sweetest and most blessed
companionship; but when it is a mere gust of fire, bright and
fierce as the sudden leaping light of a volcano, then it withers
everything at a touch,--faith, honor, truth,--and dies into dull
ashes in which no spark remains to warm or inspire man's higher
nature. Better death than such a love,--for it works misery on
earth; but who can tell what horrors it may not create Hereafter!"

The Princess looked at him with a strange, weird gleam in her dark
eyes.

"You are right," she said. "It is just the Hereafter that men
never think of. I am glad you, at least, acknowledge the truth of
the life beyond death."

"I am bound to acknowledge it," returned the Doctor; "inasmuch as
I know it exists."

Gervase glanced at him with a smile, in which there was something
of contempt.

"You are very much behind the age, Doctor," he remarked lightly.

"Very much behind indeed," agreed Dr. Dean composedly. "The age
rushes on too rapidly for me, and gives no time to the
consideration of things by the way. I stop,--I take breathing
space in which to think; life without thought is madness, and I
desire to have no part in a mad age."

At that moment they entered the Red Saloon, a stately apartment,
which was entirely modelled after the most ancient forms of
Egyptian architecture. The centre of the vast room was quite clear
of furniture, so that the Princess Ziska's guests went wandering
up and down, to and fro, entirely at their ease, without crush or
inconvenience, and congregated in corners for conversation; though
if they chose they could recline on low divans and gorgeously-
cushioned benches ranged against the walls and sheltered by tall
palms and flowering exotics. The music was heard to better
advantage here than in the hall where the company had first been
received; and as the Princess moved to a seat under the pale green
frondage of a huge tropical fern and bade her two companions sit
beside her, sounds of the wildest, most melancholy and haunting
character began to palpitate upon the air in the mournful,
throbbing fashion in which a nightingale sings when its soul is
burdened with love. The passionate tremor that shakes the bird's
throat at mating-time seemed to shake the unseen instruments that
now discoursed strange melody, and Gervase, listening dreamily,
felt a curious contraction and aching at his heart and a sense of
suffocation in his throat, combined with an insatiate desire to
seize in his arms the mysterious Ziska, with her dark fathomless
eyes and slight, yet voluptuous, form,--to drag her to his breast
and crush her there, whispering:

"Mine!--mine! By all the gods of the past and present--mine! Who
shall tear her from me,--who dispute my right to love her--ruin
her--murder her, if I choose? She is mine!"

"The bas-relief I told you of is just above us," said the Princess
then, addressing herself to the Doctor; "would you like to examine
it? One of the servants shall bring you a lighted taper, and by
passing it in front of the sculpture you will be able to see the
design better. Ah, Mr. Murray!" and she smiled as she greeted
Denzil, who just then approached. "You are in time to give us your
opinion. I want Dr. Dean to see that very old piece of stone
carving on the wall above us,--it will serve as a link for him in
the history of Araxes."

"Indeed!" murmured Denzil, somewhat abstractedly.

The Princess glanced at his brooding face and laughed.

"You, I know, are not interested at all in old history," she went
on. "The past has no attraction for you."

"No. The present is enough," he replied, with a glance of mingled
hope and passion.

She smiled, and signing to one of her Egyptian attendants, bade
him bring a lighted taper. He did so, and passed it slowly up and
down and to the right and left of the large piece of ancient
sculpture that occupied more than half the wall, while Dr. Dean
stood by, spectacles on nose, to examine the carving as closely as
possible. Several other people, attracted by what was going on,
paused to look also, and the Princess undertook to explain the
scene depicted.

"This piece of carving is of the date of the King Amenhotep or
Amenophis III., of the Eighteenth Dynasty. It represents the
return of the warrior Araxes, a favorite servant of the king's,
after some brilliant victory. You see, there is the triumphal car
in which he rides, drawn by winged horses, and behind him are the
solar deities--Ra, Sikar, Tmu, and Osiris. He is supposed to be
approaching his palace in triumph; the gates are thrown open to
receive him, and coming out to meet him is the chief favorite of
his harem, the celebrated dancer of that period--Ziska-Charmazel."

"Whom he afterwards murdered, you say?" queried Dr. Dean
meditatively.

"Yes. He murdered her simply because she loved him too well and
was in the way of his ambition. There was nothing astonishing in
his behavior, not even if you consider it in the light of modern
times. Men always murder--morally, if not physically--the women
who love them too well."

"You truly think that?" asked Denzil Murray in a low tone.

"I not only truly think it, I truly know it!" she answered, with a
disdainful flash of her eyes. "Of course, I speak of strong men
with strong passions; they are the only kind of men women ever
worship. Of course, a weak, good-natured man is different; he
would probably not harm a woman for the world, or give her the
least cause for pain if he could help it, but that sort of man
never becomes either an adept or a master in love. Araxes was
probably both. No doubt he considered he had a perfect right to
slay what he had grown weary of; he thought no more than men of
his type think to-day, that the taking of a life demands a life in
exchange, if not in this world, then in the next."

The group of people near her were all silent, gazing with an odd
fascination at the quaint and ancient-sculptured figures above
them, when all at once Dr. Dean, taking the taper from the hands
of the Egyptian servant, held the flame close to the features of
the warrior riding in the car of triumph, and said slowly:

"Do you not see a curious resemblance, Princess, between this
Araxes and a friend of ours here present? Monsieur Armand Gervase,
will you kindly step forward? Yes, that will do, turn your head
slightly,--so! Yes! Now observe the outline of the features of
Araxes as carven in this sculpture thousands of years ago, and
compare it with the outline of the features of our celebrated
friend, the greatest French artist of his day. Am I the only one
who perceives the remarkable similarity of contour and
expression?"

The Princess made no reply. A smile crossed her lips, but no word
escaped them. Several persons, however, pressed eagerly forward to
look at and comment upon what was indeed a startling likeness. The
same straight, fierce brows, the same proud, firm mouth, the same
almond-shaped eyes were, as it seemed, copied from the ancient
entablature and repeated in flesh and blood in the features of
Gervase. Even Denzil Murray, absorbed though he was in conflicting
thoughts of his own, was struck by the coincidence.

"It is really very remarkable!" he said. "Allowing for the
peculiar style of drawing and design common to ancient Egypt, the
portrait of Araxes might pass for Gervase in Egyptian costume."

Gervase himself was silent. Some mysterious emotion held him mute,
and he was only aware of a vague irritation that fretted him
without any seemingly adequate cause. Dr. Dean meanwhile pursued
his investigations with the lighted taper, and presently, turning
round on the assembled little group of bystanders, he said:

"I have just discovered another singular thing. The face of the
woman here--the dancer and favorite--is the face of our charming
hostess, the Princess Ziska!"

Exclamations of wonder greeted this announcement, and everybody
craned their necks to see. And then the Princess spoke, slowly and
languidly.

"Yes," she murmured, "I was hoping you would perceive that. I
myself noticed how very like me is the famous Ziska-Charmazel, and
that is just why I dressed in her fashion for the fancy ball the
other evening. It seemed to me the best thing to do, as I wanted
to choose an ancient period, and then, you know, I bear half her
name."

Dr. Dean looked at her keenly, and a somewhat grim smile wrinkled
his lips.

"You could not have done better," he declared. "You and the
dancing-girl of Araxes might be twin sisters."

He lowered the taper he held that it might more strongly illumine
her face, and as the outline of her head and throat and bust was
thrown into full relief, Gervase, staring at her, was again
conscious of that sudden, painful emotion of familiarity which had
before overwhelmed him, and he felt that in all the world he had
no such intimate knowledge of any woman as he had of Ziska. He
knew her! Ah!--how did he NOT know her? Every curve of that pliant
form was to him the living memory of something once possessed and
loved, and he pressed his hand heavily across his eyes for a
moment to shut out the sight of all the exquisite voluptuous grace
which shook his self-control and tempted him almost beyond man's
mortal endurance.

"Are you not well, Monsieur Gervase?" said Dr. Dean, observing him
closely, and handing back the lighted taper to the Egyptian
servant who waited to receive it. "The portraits on this old
carving have perhaps affected you unpleasantly? Yet there is
really nothing of importance in such a coincidence."

"Nothing of importance, perhaps, but surely something of
singularity," interrupted Denzil Murray, "especially in the
resemblance between the Princess and the dancing-girl of that
ancient period,--their features are positively line for line
alike."

The Princess laughed.

"Yes, is it not curious?" she said, and, taking the taper from her
servant, she sprang lightly on one of the benches near the wall
and leaned her beautiful head on the entablature, so that her
profile stood out close against that of the once reputed Ziska-
Charmazel. "We are, as Dr. Dean says, twins!"

Several of the guests had now gathered together in that particular
part of the room, and they all looked up at her as she stood thus,
in silent and somewhat superstitious wonderment. The fascinating
dancer, famed in ages past, and the lovely, living charmeresse of
the present were the image of each other, and so extraordinary was
the resemblance that it was almost what some folks would term
"uncanny." The fair Ziska did not, however, give her acquaintances
time for much meditation or surprise concerning the matter, for
she soon came down from her elevation near the sculptured frieze
and, extinguishing the taper she held, she said lightly:

"As Dr. Dean has remarked, there is really nothing of importance
in the coincidence. Ages ago, in the time of Araxes, roses must
have bloomed; and who shall say that a rose in to-day's garden is
not precisely the same in size, scent and color as one that Araxes
himself plucked at his palace gates? Thus, if flowers are born
alike in different ages, why not women and men?"

"Very well argued, Princess," said the Doctor. "I quite agree with
you. Nature is bound to repeat some of her choicest patterns, lest
she should forget the art of making them."

There was now a general movement among the guests, that particular
kind of movement which means irritability and restlessness, and
implies that either supper must be immediately served, or else
some novel entertainment be brought in to distract attention and
prevent tedium. The Princess, turning to Gervase, said smilingly:

"Apropos of the dancing-girl of Araxes and the art of dancing
generally, I am going to entertain the company presently by
letting them see a real old dance of Thebes. If you will excuse me
a moment I must just prepare them and get the rooms slightly
cleared. I will return to you presently."

She glided away with her usual noiseless grace, and within a few
minutes of her departure the gay crowds began to fall back against
the walls and disperse themselves generally in expectant groups
here and there, the Egyptian servants moving in and out and
evidently informing them of the entertainment in prospect.

"Well, I shall stay here," said Dr. Dean, "underneath this
remarkable stone carving of your warrior-prototype, Monsieur
Gervase. You seem very much abstracted. I asked you before if you
were not well; but you never answered me."

"I am perfectly well," replied Gervase, with some irritation. "The
heat is rather trying, that is all. But I attach no importance to
that stone frieze. One can easily imagine likenesses where there
are really none."

"True!" and the Doctor smiled to himself, and said no more. Just
then a wild burst of music sounded suddenly through the apartment,
and he turned round in lively anticipation to watch the
proceedings.

The middle of the room was now quite clear, and presently, moving
with the silent grace of swans on still water, came four girls
closely veiled, carrying quaintly-shaped harps and lutes. A Nubian
servant followed them, and spread a gold-embroidered carpet upon
the ground, whereon they all sat down and began to thrum the
strings of their instruments in a muffled, dreamy manner, playing
a music which had nothing of melody in it, and which yet vaguely
suggested a passionate tune. This thrumming went on for some time
when all at once from a side entrance in the hall a bright,
apparently winged thing bounded from the outer darkness into the
centre of the hall,--a woman clad in glistening cloth of gold and
veiled entirely in misty folds of white, who, raising her arms
gleaming with jewelled bangles high above her head, remained
poised on tiptoe for a moment, as though about to fly. Her bare
feet, white and dimpled, sparkled with gems and glittering
anklets; her skirts as she moved showed fluttering flecks of white
and pink like the leaves of May-blossoms shaken by a summer
breeze; the music grew louder and wilder, and a brazen clang from
unseen cymbals prepared her as it seemed for flight. She began her
dance slowly, gliding mysteriously from side to side, anon turning
suddenly with her head lifted, as though listening for some word
of love which should recall her or command; then, bending down
again, she seemed to float lazily like a creature that was dancing
in a dream without conscious knowledge of her actions. The brazen
cymbals clashed again, and then, with a wild, beautiful movement,
like that of a hunted stag leaping the brow of a hill, the dancer
sprang forward, turned, pirouetted and tossed herself round and
round giddily with a marvellous and exquisite celerity, as if she
were nothing but a bright circle of gold spinning in clear ether.
Spontaneous applause broke forth from every part of the hall; the
guests crowded forward, staring and almost breathless with
amazement. Dr. Dean got up in a state of the greatest excitement,
clapping his hands involuntarily; and Gervase, every nerve in his
body quivering, advanced one or two steps, feeling that he must
stop this bright, wild, wanton thing in her incessant whirling, or
else die in the hunger of love which consumed his soul. Denzil
Murray glanced at him, and, after a pause, left his side and
disappeared. Suddenly, with a quick movement, the dancer loosened
her golden dress and misty veil, and tossing them aside like
falling leaves, she stood confessed--a marvellous, glowing vision
in silvery white-no other than the Princess Ziska!

Shouts echoed from every part of the hall:

"Ziska! Ziska!"

And at the name Lady Chetwynd Lyle rose in all her majesty from
the seat she had occupied till then, and in tones of virtuous
indignation said to Lady Fulkeward:

"I told you the Princess was not a proper person! Now it is proved
I am right! To think I should have brought Dolly and Muriel here!
I shall really never forgive myself! Come, Sir Chetwynd,--let us
leave this place instantly!"

And stout Sir Chetwynd, gloating on the exquisite beauty of the
Princess Ziska's form as she still danced on in her snowy white
attire, her lovely face alight with mirth at the surprise she had
made for her guests, tried his best to look sanctimonious and
signally failed in the attempt as he answered:

"Certainly! Certainly, my dear! Most improper ... most
astonishing!"

While Lady Fulkeward answered innocently:

"Is it? Do you really think so? Oh, dear! I suppose it is
improper,--it must be, you know; but it is most delightful and
original!"

And while the Chetwynd Lyles thus moved to depart in a cloud of
outraged propriety, followed by others who likewise thought it
well to pretend to be shocked at the proceeding, Gervase, dizzy,
breathless, and torn by such conflicting passions as he could
never express, was in a condition more mad than sane.

"My God!" he muttered under his breath. "This--this is love! This
is the beginning and end of life! To possess her,--to hold her in
my arms--heart to heart, lips to lips ... this is what all the
eternal forces of Nature meant when they made me man!"

And he watched with strained, passionate eyes the movements of the
Princess Ziska as they grew slower and slower, till she seemed
floating merely like a foam-bell on a wave, and then ... from some
unseen quarter of the room a rich throbbing voice began to sing:--

  "Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!
   It floats in a waking dream on the waters chilly,
     With its leaves unfurled
     To the wondering world,
   Knowing naught of the sorrow and restless pain
   That burns and tortures the human brain;
   Oh, for the passionless peace of the Lotus-Lily!
   Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!
   Bared to the moon on the waters dark and chilly.
     A star above
     Is its only love,
   And one brief sigh of its scented breath
   Is all it will ever know of Death;
   Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!"

As the sound died away in a sigh rather than a note, the Princess
Ziska's dancing ceased altogether. A shout of applause broke from
all assembled, and in the midst of it there was a sudden commotion
and excitement, and Dr. Dean was seen bending over a man's
prostrate figure. The great French painter, Armand Gervase, had
suddenly fainted.




CHAPTER XII.


A curious yet very general feeling of superstitious uneasiness and
discomfort pervaded the Gezireh Palace Hotel the day after the
Princess Ziska's reception. Something had happened, and no one
knew what. The proprieties had been outraged, but no one knew why.
It was certainly not the custom for a hostess, and a Princess to
boot, to dance like a wild bacchante before a crowd of her invited
guests, yet, as Dr. Dean blandly observed,--

"Where was the harm? In London, ladies of good birth and breeding
went in for 'skirt-dancing,' and no one presumed to breathe a word
against their reputations; why in Cairo should not a lady go in
for a Theban dance without being considered improper?"

Why, indeed? There seemed no adequate reason for being either
surprised or offended; yet surprised and offended most people
were, and scandal ran rife, and rumor wagged all its poisonous
tongues to spread evil reports against the Princess Ziska's name
and fame, till Denzil Murray, maddened and furious, rushed up to
his sister in her room and swore that he would marry the Princess
if he died for it.

"They are blackguarding her downstairs, the beasts!" he said
hotly. "They are calling her by every bad name under the sun! But
I will make everything straight for her; she shall be my wife! If
she will have me, I will marry her to-morrow!"

Helen looked at him in speechless despair.

"Oh, Denzil!" she faltered, and then could say no more, for the
tears that blinded her eyes.

"Oh, yes, of course, I know what you mean!" he continued, marching
up and down the room excitedly. "You are like all the others; you
think her an adventuress. I think her the purest, the noblest of
women! There is where we differ. I spoke to her last night,--I
told her I loved her."

"You did?" and Helen gazed at him with wet, tragic eyes,--"And she
..."

"She bade me be silent. She told me I must not speak--not yet. She
said she would give me her answer when we were all together at the
Mena House Hotel."

"You intend to be one of the party there then?" said Helen
faintly.

"Of course I do. And so do you, I hope."

"No, Denzil, I cannot. Don't ask me. I will stay here with Lady
Fulkeward. She is not going, nor are the Chetwynd Lyles. I shall
be quite safe with them. I would rather not go to the Mena House,-
-I could not bear it ..."

Her voice gave way entirely, and she broke out crying bitterly.

Denzil stood still and regarded her with a kind of sullen shame
and remorse.

"What a very sympathetic sister you are!" he observed. "When you
see me madly in love with a woman--a perfectly beautiful, adorable
woman--you put yourself at once in the way and make out that my
marriage with her will be a misery to you. You surely do not
expect me to remain single all my life, do you?"

"No, Denzil," sobbed Helen, "but I had hoped to see you marry some
sweet girl of our own land who would be your dear and true
companion,--who would be a sister to me,--who ... there! don't
mind me! Be happy in your own way, my dear brother. I have no
business to interfere. I can only say that if the Princess Ziska
consents to marry you, I will do my best to like her, for your
sake."

"Well, that's something, at any rate," said Denzil, with an air of
relief. "Don't cry, Helen, it bothers me. As for the 'sweet girl'
you have got in view for me, you will permit me to say that 'sweet
girls' are becoming uncommonly scarce in Britain. What with
bicycle riders and great rough tomboys generally, with large hands
and larger feet, I confess I do not care about them. I like a
womanly woman,--a graceful woman,--a fascinating, bewitching
woman, and the Princess is all that and more. Surely you consider
her beautiful?"

"Very beautiful indeed!" sighed poor Helen.--"Too beautiful!"

"Nonsense! As if any woman can be too beautiful! I am sorry you
won't come to the Mena House. It would be a change for you,--and
Gervase is going."

"Is he better to-day?" inquired Helen timidly.

"Oh, I believe he is quite well again. It was the heat or the
scent of the flowers, or something of that sort, that made him
faint last night. He is not acclimatized yet, you know. And he
said that the Princess's dancing made him giddy."

"I don't wonder at that," murmured Helen.

"It was marvellous--glorious!" said Denzil dreamily. "It was like
nothing else ever seen or imagined!"

"If she were your wife, would you care for her to dance before
people?" inquired Helen tremblingly.

Denzil turned upon her in haughty wrath.

"How like a woman that is! To insinuate a nasty suggestion--to
imply an innuendo without uttering it! If she were my wife, she
would do nothing unbecoming that position."

"Then you did think it a little unbecoming?" persisted Helen.

"No, I did NOT!" said Denzil sharply. "An independent woman may do
many things that a married woman may not. Marriage brings its own
duties and responsibilities,--time enough to consider them when
they come."

He turned angrily on his heel and left her, and Helen, burying her
fair face in her hands, wept long and unrestrainedly. This
"strange woman out of Egypt" had turned her brother's heart
against her, and stolen away her almost declared lover. It was no
wonder that her tears fell fast, wrung from her with the pain of
this double wound; for Helen, though quiet and undemonstrative,
had fine feelings and unsounded depths of passion in her nature,
and the fatal attraction she felt for Armand Gervase was more
powerful than she had herself known. Now that he had openly
confessed his infatuation for another woman, it seemed as though
the earth had opened at her feet and shown her nothing but a grave
in which to fall. Life--empty and blank and bare of love and
tenderness, stretched before her imagination; she saw herself
toiling along the monotonously even road of duty till her hair
became gray and her face thin and wan and wrinkled, and never a
gleam again of the beautiful, glowing, romantic passion that for a
short time had made her days splendid with the dreams that are
sweeter than all realities.

Poor Helen! It was little marvel that she wept as all women weep
when their hearts are broken. It is so easy to break a heart;
sometimes a mere word will do it. But the vanishing of the winged
Love-god from the soul is even more than heart-break,--it is utter
and irretrievable loss,--complete and dominating chaos out of
which no good thing can ever be designed or created. In our days
we do our best to supply the place of a reluctant Eros by the
gilded, grinning Mammon-figure which we try to consider as
superior to any silver-pinioned god that ever descended in his
rainbow car to sing heavenly songs to mortals; but it is an
unlovely substitute,--a hideous idol at best; and grasp its golden
knees and worship it as we will, it gives us little or no comfort
in the hours of strong temptation or trouble. We have made a
mistake--we, in our progressive generation,--we have banished the
old sweetnesses, triumphs and delights of life, and we have got in
exchange steam and electricity. But the heart of the age clamors
on unsatisfied,--none of our "new" ideas content it--nothing
pacifies its restless yearning; it feels--this great heart of
human life--that it is losing more than it gains, hence the
incessant, restless aching of the time, and the perpetual longing
for something Science cannot teach,--something vague, beautiful,
indefinable, yet satisfying to every pulse of the soul; and the
nearest emotion to that divine solace is what we in our higher and
better moments recognize as Love. And Love was lost to Helen
Murray; the choice pearl had fallen in the vast gulf of Might-
have-been, and not all the forces of Nature would ever restore to
her that priceless gem.

And while she wept to herself in solitude, and her brother Denzil
wandered about in the gardens of the hotel, encouraging within
himself hopes of winning the bewitching Ziska for a wife, Armand
Gervase, shut up in his room under plea of slight indisposition,
reviewed the emotions of the past night and tired to analyze them.
Some men are born self-analysts, and are able to dissect their
feelings by some peculiar form of mental surgery which finally
leads them to cut out tenderness as though it were a cancer, love
as a disease, and romantic aspirations as mere uncomfortable
growths injurious to self-interest, but Gervase was not one of
these. Outwardly he assumed more or less the composed and careless
demeanor of the modern French cynic, but inwardly the man was a
raging fire of fierce passions which were sometimes too strong to
be held in check. At the present moment he was prepared to
sacrifice everything, even life itself, to obtain possession of
the woman he coveted, and he made no attempt whatever to resist
the tempest of desire that was urging him on with an invincible
force in a direction which, for some strange and altogether
inexplicable reason, he dreaded. Yes, there was a dim sense of
terror lurking behind all the wild passion that filled his soul--a
haunting, vague idea that this sudden love, with its glowing ardor
and intoxicating delirium, was like the brilliant red sunset which
frequently prognosticates a night of storm, ruin and death. Yet,
though he felt this presentiment like a creeping shudder of cold
through his blood, it did not hold him back, or for a moment
impress him with the idea that it might be better to yield no
further to this desperate love-madness which enthralled him.

Once only, he thought, "What if I left Egypt now--at once--and saw
her no more?" And then he laughed scornfully at the impossibility
proposed. "Leave Egypt!" he muttered, "I might as well leave the
world altogether! She would draw me back with those sweet wild
eyes of hers,--she would drag me from the uttermost parts of the
earth to fall at her feet in a very agony of love. My God! She
must have her way and do with me as she will, for I feel that she
holds my life in her hands!"

As he spoke these last words half aloud, he sprang up from the
chair in which he had been reclining, and stood for a moment lost
in frowning meditation.

"My life in her hands!" he repeated musingly. "Yes, it has come to
that! My life!" A great sigh broke from him. "My life--my art--my
work--my name! In all these things I have taken pride, and she--
she can trample them under her feet and make of me nothing more
than man clamoring for woman's love! What a wild world it is! What
a strange Force must that be which created it!--the Force that
some men call God and others Devil! A strange, blind, brute
Force!--for it makes us aspire only to fall; it gives a man dreams
of ambition and splendid attainment only to fling him like a mad
fool on a woman's breast, and bid him find there, and there only,
the bewildering sweetness which makes everything else in existence
poor and tame in comparison. Well, well--my life! What is it? A
mere grain of sand dropped in the sea; let her do with it as she
will. God! How I felt her power upon me last night,--last night
when her lithe figure swaying in the dance reminded me ..."

He paused, startled at the turn his own thoughts were taking.

"Of what? Let me try and express to myself now what I could not
express or realize last night. She--Ziska--I thought was mine,--
mine from her dimpled feet to her dusky hair,--and she danced for
me alone. It seemed that the jewels she wore upon her rounded arms
and slender ankles were all love-gifts from me--every circlet of
gold, every starry, shining gem on her fair body was the symbol of
some secret joy between us--joy so keen as to be almost pain. And
as she danced, I thought I was in a vast hall of a majestic
palace, where open colonnades revealed wide glimpses of a burning
desert and deep blue sky. I heard the distant sound of rolling
drums, and not far off I saw the Sphinx--a creature not old but
new--resting upon a giant pedestal and guarding the sculptured
gate of some great temple which contained, as I then thought, all
the treasures of the world. I could paint the picture as I saw it
then! It was a fleeting impression merely, conjured up by the
dance that dizzied my brain. And that song of the Lotus-lily! That
was strange--very strange, for I thought I had heard it often
before,--and I saw myself in the vague dream, a prince, a warrior,
almost a king, and far more famous in the world than I am now!"

He looked about him uneasily, with a kind of nervous terror, and
his eyes rested for a moment on the easel where the picture he had
painted of the Princess was placed, covered from view by a fold of
dark cloth.

"Bah!" he exclaimed at last with a forced laugh, "What stupid
fancies fool me! It is all the vague talk of that would-be learned
ass, Dr. Dean, with his ridiculous theories about life and death.
I shall be imagining I am his fad, Araxes, next! This sort of
thing will never do. Let me reason out the matter calmly. I love
this woman,--love her to absolute madness. It is not the best kind
of love, maybe, but it is the only kind I am capable of, and such
as it is, she possesses it all. What then? Well! We go to-morrow
to the Pyramids, and we join her at the Mena House, I and the poor
boy Denzil. He will try his chance--I mine. If he wins, I shall
kill him as surely as I myself live,--yes, even though he is
Helen's brother. No man shall snatch Ziska from my arms and
continue to breathe. If I win, it is possible he may kill me, and
I shall respect him for trying to do it. But I shall satisfy my
love first; Ziska will be mine--mine in every sense of
possession,--before I die. Yes, that must be--that will have to
be. And afterwards,--why let Denzil do his worst; a man can but
die once."

He drew the cloth off his easel and stared at the strange picture
of the Princess, which seemed almost sentient in its half-
watchful, half-mocking expression.

"There is a dead face and a living one on this canvas," he said,
"and the dead face seems to enthral me as much as the living. Both
have the same cruel smile,--both the same compelling magnetism of
eye. Only it is a singular thing that I should know the dead face
even more intimately than the living--that the tortured look upon
it should be a kind of haunting memory--horrible--ghastly. ..."

He flung the cloth over the easel again impatiently, and tried to
laugh at his own morbid imagination.

"I know who is responsible for all this nonsense," he said. "It is
that ridiculous little half-mad faddist, Dr. Dean. He is going to
the Mena House, too. Well!--he will be the witness of a comedy or
a tragedy there,--and Heaven alone knows which it will be!"

And to distract his thoughts from dwelling any longer on the
haunting ideas that perplexed him, he took up one of the latest
and frothiest of French novels and began to read. Some one in a
room not far off was singing a French song,--a man with a rich
baritone voice,--and unconsciously to himself Gervase caught the
words as they rang out full and clearly on the quiet, heated air--

    O toi que j'ai tant aimee
   Songes-tu que je t'aime encor?
     Et dans ton ame alarmee,
   Ne sens-tu pas quelque remord?
     Viens avec moi, si tu m'aimes,
     Habiter dans ces deserts;
   Nous y vivrons pour nous memes,
     Oublies de tout l'univers!

And something like a mist of tears clouded his aching eyes as he
repeated, half mechanically and dreamily--

    O toi que j'ai tant aimee,
   Songes-tu que je t'aime encor?




CHAPTER XIII.


For the benefit of those among the untravelled English who have
not yet broken a soda-water bottle against the Sphinx, or eaten
sandwiches to the immortal memory of Cheops, it may be as well to
explain that the Mena House Hotel is a long, rambling, roomy
building, situated within five minutes' walk of the Great Pyramid,
and happily possessed of a golfing-ground and a marble swimming-
bath. That ubiquitous nuisance, the "amateur photographer," can
there have his "dark room" for the development of his more or less
imperfect "plates"; and there is a resident chaplain for the
piously inclined. With a chaplain and a "dark room," what more can
the aspiring soul of the modern tourist desire? Some of the rooms
at the Mena House are small and stuffy; others large and furnished
with sufficient elegance: and the Princess Ziska had secured a
"suite" of the best that could be obtained, and was soon installed
there with befitting luxury. She left Cairo quite suddenly, and
without any visible preparation, the morning after the reception
in which she had astonished her guests by her dancing: and she did
not call at the Gezireh Palace Hotel to say good-bye to any of her
acquaintances there. She was perhaps conscious that her somewhat
"free" behavior had startled several worthy and sanctimonious
persons; and possibly she also thought that to take rooms in an
hotel which was only an hour's distance from Cairo, could scarcely
be considered as absenting herself from Cairene society. She was
followed to her desert retreat by Dr. Dean, Armand Gervase, and
Denzil Murray, who drove to the Mena House together in one
carriage, and were more or less all three in a sober and
meditative frame of mind. They arrived in time to see the Sphinx
bathed in the fierce glow of an ardent sunset, which turned the
golden sands to crimson, and made the granite monster look like a
cruel idol surrounded by a sea of blood. The brilliant red of the
heavens flamed in its stony eyes, and gave them a sentient look as
of contemplated murder,--and the same radiance fitfully playing on
the half-scornful, half-sensual lips caused them to smile with a
seeming voluptuous mockery. Dr. Dean stood transfixed for a while
at the strange splendor of the spectacle, and turning to his two
silent companions, said suddenly:

"There is something, after all, in the unguessed riddle of the
Sphinx. It is not a fable; it is a truth. There is a problem to be
solved, and that monstrous creature knows it! The woman's face,
the brute's body--Spiritualism and Materialism in one! It is life,
and more than life; it is love. Forever and forever it teaches the
same wonderful, terrible mystery. We aspire, yet we fall; love
would fain give us wings wherewith to fly; but the wretched body
lies prone--supine; it cannot soar to the Light Eternal."

"What IS the Light Eternal?" queried Gervase, moodily. "How do we
know it exists? We cannot prove it. This world is what we see; we
have to do with it and ourselves. Soul without body could not
exist. ..."

"Could it not?" said the Doctor. "How, then, does body exist
without soul?"

This was an unexpected but fair question, and Gervase found
himself curiously perplexed by it. He offered no reply, neither
did Denzil, and they all three slowly entered the Mena House
Hotel, there to be met with deferential salutations by the urbane
and affable landlord, and to be assured that they would find their
rooms comfortable, and also that "Madame la Princesse Ziska"
expected them to dine with her that evening. At this message,
Denzil Murray made a sign to Gervase that he wished to speak to
him alone. Gervase move aside with him.

"Give me my chance!" said Denzil, fiercely.

"Take it!" replied Gervase listlessly. "Let to-night witness the
interchange of hearts between you and the Princess; I shall not
interfere."

Denzil stared at him in sullen astonishment.

"You will not interfere? Your fancy for her is at an end?"

Gervase raised his dark, glowing eyes and fixed them on his would-
be rival with a strange and sombre expression.

"My 'fancy' for her? My good boy, take care what you say! Don't
rouse me too far, for I am dangerous! My 'fancy' for her! What do
you know of it? You are hot-blooded and young; but the chill of
the North controls you in a fashion, while I--a man in the prime
of manhood--am of the South, and the Southern fire brooks no
control. Have you seen a quiet ocean, smooth as glass, with only a
dimple in the deep blue to show that perhaps, should occasion
serve, there might arise a little wave? And have you seen the wild
storm breaking from a black cloud and suddenly making that quiet
expanse nothing but a tourbillon of furious elements, in which the
very sea-gull's cry is whelmed and lost in the thunder of the
billows? Such a storm as that may be compared to the 'fancy' you
suppose I feel for the woman who has dragged us both here to die
at her feet--for that, I believe, is what it will come to. Life is
not possible under the strain of emotion with which we two are
living it. ..."

He broke off, then resumed in quieter tones:

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

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

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

At dinner, the Princess Ziska devoted herself almost entirely to
the entertainment of Dr. Dean, and awakened his interest very
keenly on the subject of the Great Pyramid.

"It has never really been explored," she said. "The excavators who
imagine they have fathomed its secrets are completely in error.
The upper chambers are mere deceits to the investigator; they were
built and planned purposely to mislead, and the secrets they hide
have never even been guessed at, much less discovered."

"Are you sure of that?" inquired the Doctor, eagerly. "If so,
would you not give your information. ..."

"I neither give my information nor sell it," interrupted the
Princess, smiling coldly. "I am only a woman--and women are
supposed to know nothing. With the rest of my sex, I am judged
illogical and imaginative; you wise men would call my knowledge of
history deficient, my facts not proven. But, if you like, I will
tell you the story of the construction of the Great Pyramid, and
why it is unlikely that anyone will ever find the treasures that
are buried within it. You can receive the narrative with the usual
incredulity common to men; I shall not attempt to argue the pros
and cons with you, because I never argue. Treat it as a fairy-
tale--no woman is ever supposed to know anything for a fact,--she
is too stupid. Only men are wise!"

Her dark, disdainful glance flashed on Gervase and Denzil; anon
she smiled bewitchingly, and added:

"Is it not so?"

"Wisdom is nothing compared to beauty," said Gervase. "A beautiful
woman can turn the wisest man into a fool."

The Princess laughed lightly.

"Yes, and a moment afterwards he regrets his folly," she said. "He
clamors for the beautiful woman as a child might cry for the moon,
and when he at last possesses her, he tires. Satisfied with having
compassed her degradation, he exclaims: 'What shall I do with this
beauty, which, because it is mine, now palls upon me? Let me kill
it and forget it; I am aweary of love, and the world is full of
women!' That is the way of your sex, Monsieur Gervase; it is a
brutal way, but it is the one most of you follow."

"There is such a thing as love!" said Denzil, looking up quickly,
a pained flush on his handsome face.

"In the hearts of women, yes!" said Ziska, her voice growing
tremulous with strange and sudden passion. "Women love--ah!--with
what force and tenderness and utter abandonment of self! But their
love is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred utterly wasted; it
is a largesse flung to the ungrateful, a jewel tossed in the mire!
If there were not some compensation in the next life for the ruin
wrought on loving women, the Eternal God himself would be a
mockery and a jest."

"And is he not?" queried Gervase, ironically. "Fair Princess, I
would not willingly shake your faith in things unseen, but what
does the 'Eternal God,' as you call Him, care as to the destiny of
any individual unit on this globe of matter? Does He interfere
when the murderer's knife descends upon the victim? And has He
ever interfered? He it is who created the sexes and placed between
them the strong attraction that often works more evil and misery
than good; and what barrier has He ever interposed between woman
and man, her natural destroyer? None!--save the trifling one of
virtue, which is a flimsy thing, and often breaks down at the
first temptation. No, my dear Princess; the 'Eternal God,' if
there is one, does nothing but look on impassively at the
universal havoc of creation. And in the blindness and silence of
things, I cannot recognize an Eternal God at all; we were
evidently made to eat, drink, breed and die--and there an end."

"What of ambition?" asked Dr. Dean. "What of the inspiration that
lifts a man beyond himself and his material needs, and teaches him
to strive after the Highest?"

"Mere mad folly!" replied Gervase impetuously. "Take the Arts. I,
for example, dream of painting a picture that shall move the world
to admiration,--but I seldom grasp the idea I have imagined. I
paint something,--anything,--and the world gapes at it, and some
rich fool buys it, leaving me free to paint another something; and
so on and so on, to the end of my career. I ask you what
satisfaction does it bring? What is it to Raphael that thousands
of human units, cultured and silly, have stared at his 'Madonnas'
and his famous Cartoons?"

"Well, we do not exactly know what it may or may not be to
Raphael," said the Doctor, meditatively. "According to my
theories, Raphael is not dead, but merely removed into another
form, on another planet possibly, and is working elsewhere. You
might as well ask what it is to Araxes now that he was a famous
warrior once?"

Gervase moved uneasily.

"You have got Araxes on the brain, Doctor," he said, with a forced
smile, "and in our conversation we are forgetting that the
Princess has promised to tell us a fairytale, the story of the
Great Pyramid."

The Princess looked at him, then at Denzil Murray, and lastly at
Dr. Dean.

"Would you really care to hear it?" she asked.

"Most certainly!" they all three answered.

She rose from the dinner-table.

"Come here to the window," she said. "You can see the great
structure now, in the dusky light,--look at it well and try, if
you can, to realize that deep, deep down in the earth on which it
stands is a connected gallery of rocky caves wherein no human foot
has ever penetrated since the Deluge swept over the land and made
a desert of all the old-time civilization!"

Her slight figure appeared to dilate as she spoke, raising one
slender hand and arm to point at the huge mass that towered up
against the clear, starlit sky. Her listeners were silent, awed
and attentive.

"One of the latest ideas concerning the Pyramids is, as you know,
that they were built as towers of defence against the Deluge. That
is correct. The wise men of the old days foretold the time when
'the waters should rise and cover the earth,' and these huge
monuments were prepared and raised to a height which it was
estimated would always appear above the level of the coming flood,
to show where the treasures of Egypt were hidden for safety. Yes,-
-the treasures of Egypt, the wisdom, the science of Egypt! They
are all down there still! And there, to all intents and purposes,
they are likely to remain."

"But archaeologists are of the opinion that the Pyramids have been
thoroughly explored," began Dr. Dean, with some excitement.

The Princess interrupted him by a slight gesture.

"Archaeologists, my dear Doctor, are like the rest of this world's
so-called 'learned' men; they work in one groove, and are
generally content with it. Sometimes an unusually brilliant brain
conceives the erratic notion of working in several grooves, and is
straightway judged as mad or fanatic. It is when these comet-like
intelligences sweep across the world's horizon that we hear of a
Julius Caesar, a Napoleon, a Shakespeare. But archaeologists are
the narrowest and dryest of men,--they preconceive a certain
system of work and follow it out by mathematical rule and plan,
without one touch of imagination to help them to discover new
channels of interest or historical information. As I told you
before I began to speak, you are welcome to entirely disbelieve my
story of the Great Pyramid,--but as I have begun it, you may as
well hear it through." She paused a moment, then went on:
"According to my information, the building of the Pyramids was
commenced three hundred years before the Deluge, in the time of
Saurid, the son of Sabaloc, who, it is said, was the first to
receive a warning dream of the coming flood. Saurid, being
convinced by his priests, astrologers and soothsayers that the
portent was a true one, became from that time possessed of one
idea, which was that the vast learning of Egypt, its sciences,
discoveries and strange traditions should not be lost,--and that
the exploits and achievements of those who were great and famous
in the land should be so recorded as never to be forgotten. In
those days, here where you see these measureless tracts of sand,
there were great mountainous rocks and granite quarries, and
Saurid utilized these for the hollowing out of deep caverns in
which to conceal treasure. When these caverns were prepared to his
liking, he caused a floor to be made, portions of which were
rendered movable by means of secret springs, and then leaving a
hollow space of some four feet in height, he started foundations
for another floor above it. This upper floor is what you nowadays
see when you enter the Pyramid,--and no one imagines that under it
is an open space with room to walk in, and yet another floor
below, where everything of value is secreted."

Dr. Dean drew a long breath of wonderment.

"Astonishing, if true!"

The Princess smiled somewhat disdainfully, and went on:

"Saurid's work was carried on after his death by his successors,
and with thousands of slaves toiling night and day the Pyramids
were in the course of years raised above the caverns which
concealed Egypt's mysteries. Everything was gradually accumulated
in these underground store-houses,--the engraved talismans, the
slabs of stone on which were deeply carved the geometrical and
astronomical sciences; indestructible glass chests containing
papyri, on which were written the various discoveries made in
beneficial drugs, swift poisons, and other medicines. And among
these many things were thirty great jars full of precious stones,
some of which were marvels of the earth. They are there still! And
some of the great men who died were interred in these caves, every
one in a separate chamber inlaid with gold and gems, and I think,"
here the Princess turned her dark eyes full on Dr. Dean, "I think
that if you knew the secret way of lifting the apparently
immovable floor, which is like the solid ground, and descending
through the winding galleries beneath, it is more than probable
you would find in the Great Pyramid the tomb of Araxes!"

Her eyes glistened strangely in the evening light with that
peculiar fiery glow which had made Dr. Dean once describe them as
being like the eyes of a vampire-bat, and there was something
curiously impressive in her gesture as she once more pointed to
the towering structure which loomed against the heavens, with one
star flashing immediately above it. A sudden involuntary shudder
shook Gervase as with icy cold; he moved restlessly, and presently
remarked:

"Well, it is a safe tomb, at any rate! Whoever Araxes was, he
stands little chance of being exhumed if he lies two floors below
the Great Pyramid in a sealed-up rocky cavern! Princess, you look
like an inspired prophetess!--so much talk of ancient and musty
times makes me feel uncanny, and I will, with your permission,
have a smoke with Dr. Dean in the garden to steady my nerves. The
mere notion of thirty vases of unclaimed precious stones hidden
down yonder is enough to upset any man's equanimity!"

"The papyri would interest me more than the jewels," said Dr.
Dean. "What do you say, Denzil?"

Denzil Murray woke up suddenly from a fit of abstraction.

"Oh, I don't know anything about it," he answered. "I never was
very much interested in those old times,--they seem to me all
myth. I could never link past, present and future together as some
people can; they are to me all separate things. The past is done
with,--the present is our own to enjoy or to detest, and the
future no man can look into."

"Ah, Denzil, you are young, and reflection has not been very hard
at work in that headstrong brain of yours," said Dr. Dean with an
indulgent smile, "otherwise you would see that past, present and
future are one and indissoluble. The past is as much a part of
your present identity as the present, and the future, too, lies in
you in embryo. The mystery of one man's life contains all
mysteries, and if we could only understand it from its very
beginning we should find out the cause of all things, and the
ultimate intention of creation."

"Well, now, you have all had enough serious talk," said the
Princess Ziska lightly, "so let us adjourn to the drawing-room.
One of my waiting-women shall sing to you by and by; she has a
very sweet voice."

"Is it she who sings that song about the lotus-lily?" asked
Gervase, suddenly.

The Princess smiled strangely.

"Yes,--it is she."

Dr. Dean chose a cigar from a silver box on the table; Gervase did
the same.

"Won't you smoke, Denzil?" he asked carelessly.

"No, thanks!" Denzil spoke hurriedly and hoarsely. "I think--if
the Princess will permit me--I will stay and talk with her in the
drawing-room while you two have your smoke together."

The Princess gave a charming bow of assent to this proposition.
Gervase took the Doctor somewhat roughly by the arm and led him
out through the open French window into the grounds beyond,
remarking as he went:

"You will excuse us, Princess? We leave you in good company!"

She smiled.

"I will excuse you, certainly! But do not be long!"

And she passed from the dining-room into the small saloon beyond,
followed closely by Denzil.

Once out in the grounds, Gervase gave vent to a boisterous fit of
wild laughter, so loud and fierce that little Dr. Dean came to an
abrupt standstill, and stared at him in something of alarm as well
as amazement.

"Are you going mad, Gervase?" he asked.

"Yes!" cried Gervase, "that is just it,--I am going mad,--mad for
love, or whatever you please to call it! What do you think I am
made of? Flesh and blood, or cast-iron? Heavens! Do you think if
all the elements were to combine in a war against me, they should
cheat me out of this woman or rob me of her? No, no! A thousand
times no! Satisfy yourself, my excellent Doctor, with your musty
records of the past,--prate as you choose of the future,--but in
the immediate, burning, active present my will is law! And the
fool Denzil thinks to thwart me,--I, who have never been thwarted
since I knew the meaning of existence!"

He paused in a kind of breathless agitation, and Dr. Dean grasped
his arm firmly.

"Come, come, what is all this excitement for?" he said. "What are
you saying about Denzil?"

Gervase controlled himself with a violent effort and forced a
smile.

"He has got his chance,--I have given it to him! He is alone with
the Princess, and he is asking her to be his wife!"

"Nonsense!" said the Doctor sharply. "If he does commit such a
folly, it will be no use. The woman is NOT HUMAN!"

"Not human?" echoed Gervase, his black eyes dilating with a sudden
amazement--"What do you mean?"

The little Doctor rubbed his nose impatiently and seemed sorry he
had spoken.

"I mean--let me see! What do I mean?" he said at last
meditatively--"Oh, well, it is easy enough of explanation. There
are plenty of people like the Princess Ziska to whom I would apply
the words 'not human.' She is all beauty and no heart. Again--if
you follow me--she is all desire and no passion, which is a
character 'like unto the beasts which perish.' A large majority of
men are made so, and some women,--though the women are
comparatively few. Now, so far as the Princess Ziska is
concerned," continued the Doctor, fixing his keen, penetrative
glance on Gervase as he spoke, "I frankly admit to you that I find
in her material for a very curious and complex study. That is why
I have come after her here. I have said she is all desire and no
passion. That of itself is inhuman; but what I am busy about now
is to try and analyze the nature of the particular desire that
moves her, controls her, keeps her alive,--in short. It is not
love; of that I feel confident; and it is not hate,--though it is
more like hate than love. It is something indefinable, something
that is almost occult, so deep-seated and bewildering is the
riddle. You look upon me as a madman--yes! I know you do! But mad
or sane, I emphatically repeat, the Princess is NOT HUMAN, and by
this expression I wish to imply that though she has the outward
appearance of a most beautiful and seductive human body, she has
the soul of a fiend. Now, do you understand me?"

"It would take Oedipus himself all his time to do that,"--said
Gervase, forcing a laugh which had no mirth in it, for he was
conscious of a vaguely unpleasant sensation--a chill, as of some
dark presentiment, which oppressed his mind. "When you know I do
not believe in the soul, why do you talk to me about it? The soul
of a fiend,--the soul of an angel,--what are they? Mere empty
terms to me, meaning nothing. I think I agree with you though, in
one or two points concerning the Princess; par exemple, I do not
look upon her as one of those delicately embodied purities of
womanhood before whom we men instinctively bend in reverence, but
whom, at the same time, we generally avoid, ashamed of our
vileness. No; she is certainly not one of the

    "'Maiden roses left to die
   Because they climb so near the sky,
   That not the boldest passer-by
   Can pluck them from their vantage high.'

And whether it is best to be a solitary 'maiden-rose' or a
Princess Ziska, who shall say? And human or inhuman, whatever
composition she is made of, you may make yourself positively
certain that Denzil Murray is just now doing his best to persuade
her to be a Highland chatelaine in the future. Heavens, what a
strange fate it will be for la belle Egyptienne!"

"Oh, you think she IS Egyptian then?" queried Dr. Dean, with an
air of lively curiosity.

"Of course I do. She has the Egyptian type of form and
countenance. Consider only the resemblance between her and the
dancer she chose to represent the other night--the Ziska-Charmazel
of the antique sculpture on her walls!"

"Ay, but if you grant one resemblance, you must also admit
another," said the Doctor quickly. "The likeness between yourself
and the old-world warrior, Araxes, is no less remarkable!" Gervase
moved uneasily, and a sudden pallor blanched his face, making it
look wan and haggard in the light of the rising moon. "And it is
rather singular," went on the imperturbable savant, "that
according to the legend or history--whichever you please to
consider it,--for in time, legends become histories and histories
legends--Araxes should have been the lover of this very Ziska-
Charmazel, and that you, who are the living portrait of Araxes,
should suddenly become enamored of the equally living portrait of
the dead woman! You must own, that to a mere onlooker and observer
like myself, it seems a curious coincidence!"

Gervase smoked on in silence, his level brows contracted in a
musing frown.

"Yes, it seems curious," he said at last, "but a great many
curious coincidences happen in this world--so many that we, in our
days of rush and turmoil, have not time to consider them as they
come or go. Perhaps of all the strange things in life, the sudden
sympathies and the headstrong passions which spring up in a day or
a night between certain men and certain women are the strangest. I
look upon you, Doctor, as a very clever fellow with just a little
twist in his brain, or let us say a 'fad' about spiritual matters;
but in one of your more or less fantastic and extravagant theories
I am half disposed to believe, and that is the notion you have of
the possibility of some natures, male and female, having met
before in a previous state of existence and under different forms,
such as birds, flowers, or forest animals, or even mere
incorporeal breaths of air and flame. It is an idea which I
confess fascinates me. It seems fairly reasonable too, for, as
many scientists argue that you cannot destroy matter, but only
transform it, there is really nothing impossible in the
suggestion."

He paused, then added slowly as he flung the end of his cigar
away:

"I have felt the force of this odd fancy of yours most strongly
since I met the Princess Ziska."

"Indeed! Then the impression she gave you first is still upon you-
-that of having known her before?"

Gervase waited a minute or two before replying; then he answered:

"Yes. And not only of having known her before, but of having loved
her before. Love!--mon Dieu!--what a tame word it is! How poorly
it expresses the actual emotion! Fire in the veins--delirium in
the brain--reason gone to chaos! And this madness is mildly
described as 'love?'"

"There are other words for it," said the Doctor. "Words that are
not so poetic, but which, perhaps, are more fitting."

"No!" interrupted Gervase, almost fiercely. "There are no words
which truly describe this one emotion which rules the world. I
know what YOU mean, of course; you mean evil words, licentious
words, and yet it has nothing whatever to do with these. You
cannot call such an exalted state of the nerves and sensations by
an evil name."

Dr. Dean pondered the question for a few moments.

"No, I am not sure that I can," he said, meditatively. "If I did,
I should have to give an evil name to the Creator who designed man
and woman and ordained the law of attraction which draws, and
often DRAGS them together. I like to be fair to everybody, the
Creator included; yet to be fair to everybody I shall appear to
sanction immorality. For the fact is that our civilization has
upset all the original intentions of nature. Nature evidently
meant Love, or the emotion we call Love, to be the keynote of the
universe. But apparently Nature did not intend marriage. The
flowers, the birds, the lower animals, mate afresh every spring,
and this is the creed that the disciples of Naturalism nowadays
are anxious to force upon the attention of the world. It is only
men and women, they say, that are so foolish as to take each other
for better or worse till death do them part. Now, I should like,
from the physical scientist's point of view, to prove that the men
and women are wrong, and that the lower animals are right; but
spiritual science comes in and confutes me. For in spiritual
science I find this truth, which will not be gainsaid--namely,
that from time immemorial, certain immortal forms of Nature have
been created solely for one another; like two halves of a circle,
they are intended to meet and form the perfect round, and all the
elements of creation, spiritual and material, will work their
hardest to pull them together. Such natures, I consider, should
absolutely and imperatively be joined in marriage. It then becomes
a divine decree. Even grant, if you like, that the natures so
joined are evil, and that the sympathy between them is of a more
or less reprehensible character, it is quite as well that they
should unite, and that the result of such an union should be seen.
The evil might come out of them in a family of criminals which the
law could exterminate with advantage to the world in general.
Whereas on the other hand, given two fine and aspiring natures
with perfect sympathy between them, as perfect as the two notes of
a perfect chord, the children of such a marriage would probably be
as near gods as humanity could bring them. I speak as a scientist
merely. Such consequences are not foreseen by the majority, and
marriages as a rule take place between persons who are by no means
made for each other. Besides, a kind of devil comes into the
business, and often prevents the two sympathetic natures
conjoining. Love-matters alone are quite sufficient to convince me
that there IS a devil as well as a divinity that 'shapes our
ends.'"

"You speak as if you yourself had loved, Doctor," said Gervase,
with a half smile.

"And so I have," replied the Doctor, calmly. "I have loved to the
full as passionately and ardently as even you can love. I thank
God the woman I loved died,--I could never have possessed her, for
she was already wedded,--and I would not have disgraced her by
robbing her from her lawful husband. So Death stepped in and gave
her to me--forever!" and he raised his eyes to the solemn starlit
sky. "Yes, nothing can ever come between us now; no demon tears
her white soul from me; she died innocent of evil, and she is
mine--mine in every pulse of her being, as we shall both know
hereafter!"

His face, which was not remarkable for any beauty of feature, grew
rapt and almost noble in its expression, and Gervase looked at him
with a faint touch of ironical wonder.

"Upon my word, your morality almost outreaches your mysticism!" he
said. "I see you are one of those old-fashioned men who think
marriage a sacred sort of thing and the only self-respecting form
of love."

"Old-fashioned I may be," replied Dr. Dean; "but I certainly
believe in marriage for the woman's sake. If the license of men
were not restrained by some sort of barrier it would break all
bounds. Now I, had I chosen, could have taken the woman I loved to
myself; it needed but a little skilful persuasion on my part, for
her husband was a drink-sodden ruffian..."

"And why, in the name of Heaven, did you not do so?" demanded
Gervase impatiently.

"Because I know the end of all such liaisons," said the Doctor
sadly. "A month or two of delirious happiness, then years of
remorse to follow. The man is lowered in his own secret estimation
of himself, and the woman is hopelessly ruined, socially and
morally. No, Death is far better; and in my case Death has proved
a good friend, for it has given me the spotless soul of the woman
I loved, which is far fairer than her body was."

"But, unfortunately, intangible!" said Gervase, satirically.

The Doctor looked at him keenly and coldly.

"Do not be too sure of that, my friend! Never talk about what you
do not understand; you only wander astray. The spiritual world is
a blank to you, so do not presume to judge of what you will never
realize TILL REALIZATION IS FORCED UPON YOU!"

He uttered the last words with slow and singular emphasis.

"Forced upon me?" began Gervase. "What do you mean? ..."

He broke off abruptly, for at that moment Denzil Murray emerged
from the doorway of the hotel, and came towards them with an
unsteady, swaying step like that of a drunken man.

"You had better go in to the Princess," he said, staring at
Gervase with a wild smile; "she is waiting for you!"

"What's the matter with you, Denzil?" inquired Dr. Dean, catching
him by the arm as he made a movement to go on and pass them.

Denzil stopped, frowning impatiently.

"Matter? Nothing! What should be the matter?"

"Oh, no offence; no offence, my boy!" and Dr. Dean at once
loosened his arm. "I only thought you looked as if you had had
some upset or worry, that's all."

"Climate! climate!" said Denzil, hoarsely. "Egypt does not agree
with me, I suppose!--the dryness of the soil breeds fever and a
touch of madness! Men are not blocks of wood or monoliths of
stone; they are creatures of flesh and blood, of nerve and muscle;
you cannot torture them so..."

He interrupted himself with a kind of breathless irritation at his
own speech. Gervase regarded him steadily, slightly smiling.

"Torture them how, Denzil?" asked the Doctor, kindly. "Dear lad,
you are talking nonsense. Come and stroll with me up and down; the
air is quite balmy and delightful; it will cool your brain."

"Yes, it needs cooling!" retorted Denzil, beginning to laugh with
a sort of wild hilarity. "Too much wine,--too much woman,--too
much of these musty old-world records and ghastly pyramids!"

Here he broke off, adding quickly:

"Doctor, Helen and I will go back to England next week, if all is
well."

"Why, certainly, certainly!" said Dr. Dean, soothingly. "I think
we are all beginning to feel we have had enough of Egypt. I shall
probably return home with you. Meanwhile, come for a stroll and
talk to me; Monsieur Armand Gervase will perhaps go in and excuse
us for a few minutes to the Princess Ziska."

"With pleasure!" said Gervase; then, beckoning Denzil Murray
aside, he whispered:

"Tell me, have you won or lost?"

"Lost!" replied Denzil, fiercely, through his set teeth. "It is
your turn now! But, if you win, as sure as there is a God above
us, I will kill you!"

"SOIT! But not till I am ready for killing! AFTER TO-MORROW NIGHT
I shall be at your service, not till then!"

And smiling coldly, his dark face looking singularly pale and
stern in the moonlight, Gervase turned away, and, walking with his
usual light, swift, yet leisurely tread, entered the Princess's
apartment by the French window which was still open, and from
which the sound of sweet music came floating deliciously on the
air as he disappeared.




CHAPTER XIV.


In a half-reclining attitude of indolently graceful ease, the
Princess Ziska watched from beneath the slumbrous shadow of her
long-fringed eyelids the approach of her now scarcely-to-be
controlled lover. He came towards her with a certain impetuosity
of movement which was so far removed from ordinary conventionality
as to be wholly admirable from the purely picturesque point of
view, despite the fact that it expressed more passion and
impatience than were in keeping with nineteenth-century customs
and manners. He had almost reached her side before he became aware
that there were two other women in the room besides the Princess,-
-silent, veiled figures that sat, or rather crouched, on the
floor, holding quaintly carved and inlaid musical instruments of
some antique date in their hands, the only sign of life about them
being their large, dark, glistening almond-shaped eyes, which were
every now and then raised and fixed on Gervase with an intense and
searching look of inquiry. Strangely embarrassed by their glances,
he addressed the Princess in a low tone:

"Will you not send away your women?"

She smiled.

"Yes, presently; if you wish it, I will. But you must hear some
music first. Sit down there," and she pointed with her small
jewelled hand to a low chair near her own. "My lutist shall sing
you something,--in English, of course!--for all the world is being
Anglicized by degrees, and there will soon be no separate nations
left. Something, too, of romantic southern passion is being
gradually grafted on to English sentiment, so that English songs
are not so stupid as they were once. I translated some stanzas
from one of the old Egyptian poets into English the other day,
perhaps you will like them. Myrmentis, sing us the 'Song of
Darkness.'"

An odd sensation of familiarity with the name of "Myrmentis"
startled Gervase as he heard it pronounced, and he looked at the
girl who was so called in a kind of dread. But she did not meet
his questioning regard,--she was already bending over her lute and
tuning its strings, while her companion likewise prepared to
accompany her on a similar though larger instrument, and in an-
other moment her voice, full and rich, with a sobbing passion in
it which thrilled him to the inmost soul, rang out on the warm
silence:

  In the darkness what deeds are done!
     What wild words spoken!
   What joys are tasted, what passion wasted!
     What hearts are broken!
   Not a glimpse of the moon shall shine,
     Not a star shall mark
   The passing of night,--or shed its light
     On my Dream of the Dark!

  On the scented and slumbrous air,
     Strange thoughts are thronging;
   And a blind desire more fierce than fire
     Fills the soul with longing;
   Through the silence heavy and sweet
     Comes the panting breath
   Of a lover unseen from the Might-Have-Been,
     Whose loving is Death!

  In the darkness a deed was done,
     A wild word spoken!
   A joy was tasted,--a passion wasted,--
     A heart was broken!
   Not a glimpse of the moon shall shine,
     Not a star shall mark
   The passing of night,--or shed its light
     On my Dream of the Dark!

The song died away in a shuddering echo, and before Gervase had
time to raise his eyes from their brooding study of the floor the
singer and her companion had noiselessly disappeared, and he was
left alone with the Princess Ziska. He drew along breath, and
turning fully round in his chair, looked at her steadily. There
was a faint smile on her lips--a smile of mingled mockery and
triumph,--her beautiful witch-like eyes glittered. Leaning towards
her, he grasped her hands suddenly in his own.

"Now," he whispered, "shall I speak or be silent?"

"Whichever you please," she responded composedly, still smiling.
"Speech or silence rest equally with yourself. I compel neither."

"That is false!" he said passionately. "You do compel! Your eyes
drag my very soul out of me--your touch drives me into frenzy! You
temptress! You force me to speak, though you know already what I
have to say! That I love you, love you! And that you love me! That
your whole life leaps to mine as mine to yours! You know all this;
if I were stricken dumb, you could read it in my face, but you
will have it spoken--you will extort from me the whole secret of
my madness!--yes, for you to take a cruel joy in knowing that I AM
mad--mad for the love of you! And you cannot be too often or too
thoroughly assured that your own passion finds its reflex in me!"

He paused, abruptly checked in his wild words by the sound of her
low, sweet, chill laughter. She withdrew her hands from his
burning grasp.

"My dear friend," she said lightly, "you really have a very
excellent opinion of yourself--excuse me for saying so! 'My own
passion!' Do you actually suppose I have a 'passion' for you?" And
rising from her chair, she drew up her slim supple figure to its
full height and looked at him with an amused and airy scorn. "You
are totally mistaken! No one man living can move me to love; I
know all men too well! Their natures are uniformly composed of the
same mixture of cruelty, lust and selfishness; and forever and
forever, through all the ages of the world, they use the greater
part of their intellectual abilities in devising new ways to
condone and conceal their vices. You call me 'temptress';--why?
The temptation, if any there be, emanates from yourself and your
own unbridled desires; I do nothing. I am made as I am made; if my
face or my form seems fair in your eyes, this is not my fault.
Your glance lights on me, as the hawk's lights on coveted prey;
but think you the prey loves the hawk in response? It is the
mistake all men make with all women,--to judge them always as
being of the same base material as themselves. Some women there
are who shame their womanhood; but the majority, as a rule,
preserve their self-respect till taught by men to lose it."

Gervase sprang up and faced her, his eyes flashing dangerously.

"Do not make any pretence with me!" he said half angrily. "Never
tell me you cannot love! ..."

"I HAVE loved!" she interrupted him. "As true women love,--once,
and only once. It suffices; not for one lifetime, but many. I
loved; and gave myself ungrudgingly and trustingly to the man my
soul worshipped. I was betrayed, of course!--it is the usual
story--quite old, quite commonplace! I can tell it to you without
so much as a blush of pain! Since then I have not loved,--I have
HATED; and I live but for one thing--Revenge."

Her face paled as she spoke, and a something vague, dark, spectral
and terrible seemed to enfold her like a cloud where she stood.
Anon she smiled sweetly, and with a bewitching provocativeness.

"Your 'passion,' you see, my friend awakens rather a singular
'reflex' in me!--not quite of the nature you imagined!"

He remained for a moment inert; then, with an almost savage
boldness, threw his arm about her.

"Have everything your own way, Ziska!" he said in quick, fierce
accents. "I will accept all your fancies, and humor all your
caprices. I will grant that you do not love me--I will even
suppose that I am repellent to you,--but that shall make no
difference to my desire! You shall be mine!--willing or unwilling!
If every kiss I take from your lips be torn from you with
reluctance, yet those kisses I will have!--you shall not escape
me! You--you, out of all women in the world, I choose..."

"As your wife?" said Ziska slowly, her dark eyes gleaming with a
strange light as she dexterously withdrew herself from his
embrace.

He uttered an impatient exclamation.

"My wife! Dieu! What a banalite! You, with your exquisite, glowing
beauty and voluptuous charm, you would be a 'wife'--that tiresome
figure-head of utterly dull respectability? You, with your
unmatched air of wild grace and freedom, would submit to be tied
down in the bonds of marriage,--marriage, which to my thinking and
that of many other men of my character, is one of the many curses
of this idiotic nineteenth century! No, I offer you love, Ziska!--
ideal, passionate love!--the glowing, rapturous dream of ecstasy
in which such a thing as marriage would be impossible, the merest
vulgar commonplace--almost a profanity."

"I understand!" and the Princess Ziska regarded him intently, her
breath coming and going, and a strange smile quivering on her
lips. "You would play the part of an Araxes over again!"

He smiled; and with all the audacity of a bold and determined
nature, put his arms round her and drew her close up to his
breast.

"Yes," he said, "I would play the part of an Araxes over again!"

As he uttered the words, an indescribable sensation of horror
seized him--a mist darkened his sight, his blood grew cold, and a
tremor shook him from head to foot. The fair woman's face that was
lifted so close to his own seemed spectral and far off; and for a
fleeting moment her very beauty grew into something like
hideousness, as if the strange effect of the picture he had
painted of her was now becoming actual and apparent--namely, the
face of death looking through the mask of life. Yet he did not
loosen his arms from about her waist; on the contrary he clasped
her even more closely, and kept his eyes fixed upon her with such
pertinacity that it seemed as if he expected her to vanish from
his sight while he still held her.

"To play the part of an Araxes aright," she murmured then in slow
and dulcet accents, "you would need to be cruel and remorseless,
and sacrifice my life--or any woman's life--to your own clamorous
and selfish passion. But you,--Armand Gervase,--educated,
civilized, intellectual, and totally unlike the barbaric Araxes,
could not do that, could you? The progress of the world, the
increasing intelligence of humanity, the coming of the Christ,
these things are surely of some weight with you, are they not? Or
are you made of the same savage and impenitent stuff as composed
the once famous yet brutal warrior of old time? Do you admire the
character and spirit of Araxes?--he who, if history reports him
truly, would snatch a woman's life as though it were a wayside
flower, crush out all its sweetness and delicacy, and then fling
it into the dust withered and dead? Do you think that because a
man is strong and famous, he has a right to the love of woman?--a
charter to destroy her as he pleases? If you remember the story I
told you, Araxes murdered with his own hand Ziska-Charmazel the
woman who loved him."

"He had perhaps grown weary of her," said Gervase, speaking with
an effort, and still studying the exquisite loveliness of the
bewitching face that was so close to his own, like a man in a
dream.

At this she laughed, and laid her two hands on his shoulders with
a close and clinging clasp which thrilled him strangely.

"Ah, there is the difficulty!" she said.

"What cure shall ever be found for love-weariness? Men are all
like children--they tire of their toys; hence the frequent trouble
and discomfort of marriage. They grow weary of the same face, the
same caressing arms, the same faithful heart! You, for instance,
would grow weary of me!"

"I think not," answered Gervase. And now the vague sense of
uncertainty and pain which had distressed him passed away, leaving
him fully self-possessed once more. "I think you are one of those
exceptional women whom a man never grows weary of: like a
Cleopatra, or any other old-world enchantress, you fascinate with
a look, you fasten with a touch, and you have a singular freshness
and wild attraction about you which makes you unlike any other of
your sex. I know well enough that I shall never get the memory of
you out of my brain; your face will haunt me till I die!"

"And after death?" she queried, half-closing her eyes, and
regarding him languorously through her silky black lashes.

"Ah, ma belle, after that there is nothing to be done even in the
way of love. Tout est fini! Considering the brevity of life and
the absolute certainty of death, I think that the men and women
who are so foolish as to miss any opportunities of enjoyment while
they are alive deserve more punishment than those who take all
they can get, even in the line of what is called wickedness.
Wickedness is a curious thing: it takes different shapes in
different lands, and what is called 'wicked' here, is virtue in,
let us say, the Fiji Islands. There is really no strict rule of
conduct in the world, no fixed law of morality."

"There is honor!" said the Princess, slowly;--"A code which even
savages recognize."

He was silent. For a moment he seemed to hesitate; but his
indecision soon passed. His face flushed, and anon grew pale, as
closing his arms more victoriously round the fair woman who just
then appeared voluntarily to yield to his embrace, he bent down
and whispered a few words in the tiny ear, white and delicate as a
shell, which was half-hidden by the rich loose clusters of her
luxuriant hair. She heard, and smiled; and her eyes flashed with a
singular ferocity which he did not see, otherwise it might have
startled him.

"I will answer you to-morrow," she said. "Be patient till then."

And as she spoke, she released herself determinedly from the clasp
of his arms and withdrew to a little distance, looking at him with
a fixed and searching scrutiny.

"Do not preach patience to me!" he exclaimed with a laugh. "I
never had that virtue, and I certainly cannot begin to cultivate
it now."

"Had you ever any virtues?" she asked in a playful tone of
something like satire.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I do not know what you consider virtues," he answered lightly:
"If honesty is one, I have that. I make no pretence to be what I
am not. I would not pass off somebody else's picture as my own,
for instance. But I cannot sham to be moral. I could not possibly
love a woman without wanting her all to myself, and I have not the
slightest belief in the sanctimonious humbug of a man who plays
the Platonic lover only. But I don't cheat, and I don't lie. I am
what I am. ..."

"A man!" said Ziska, a lurid and vindictive light dilating and
firing her wonderful eyes. "A man!--the essence of all that is
evil, the possibility of all that is good! But the essence is
strong and works; the possibility is a dream which dissolves in
the dreaming!"

"Yes, you are right, ma chere!" he responded carelessly.
"Goodness--as the world understands goodness--never makes a career
for itself worth anything. Even Christ, who has figured as a
symbol of goodness for eighteen hundred years, was not devoid of
the sin of ambition: He wanted to reign over all Judaea."

"You view Him in that light?" inquired Ziska with a keen look.
"And as man only?"

"Why, of course! The idea of an incarnate God has long ago been
discarded by all reasoning thinkers."

"And what of an incarnate devil?" pursued Ziska, her breath coming
and going quickly.

"As impossible as the other fancy!" he responded almost gayly.
"There are no gods and no devils, ma belle! The world is ruled by
ourselves alone, and it behoves us to make the best of it. How
will you give me my answer to-morrow? When shall I see you? Speak
low and quickly,--Dr. Dean is coming in here from the garden:
when--when?"

"I will send for you," she answered.

"At what hour?"

"The moon rises at ten. And at ten my messenger shall come for
you."

"A trustworthy messenger, I hope? One who knows how to be silent?"

"As silent as the grave!" she said, looking at him fixedly. "As
secret as the Great Pyramid and the hidden tomb of Araxes!"

And smiling, she turned to greet Dr. Dean, who just then entered
the saloon.

"Denzil has gone to bed," he announced. "He begged me to excuse
him to you, Princess. I think the boy is feverish. Egypt doesn't
agree with him."

"I am sorry he is ill," said the Princess with a charming air of
sympathy.

"Oh, he isn't exactly ill," returned the Doctor, looking sharply
at her beautiful face as he spoke. "He is simply unnerved and
restless. I am a little anxious about him. I think he ought to go
back to England--or Scotland."

"I think so, too," agreed Gervase. "And Mademoiselle Helen with
him."

"Mademoiselle Helen you consider very beautiful?" murmured the
Princess, unfurling her fan and waving it indolently to and fro.

"No, not beautiful," answered the Doctor quickly. "But very
pretty, sweet and lovable--and good."

"Ah then, of course some one will break her heart!" said the
Princess calmly. "That is what always happens to good women."

And she smiled as she saw Gervase flush, half with anger, half
with shame. The little Doctor rubbed his nose crossly.

"Not always, Princess," he said. "Sometimes it does; in fact
pretty often. It is an unfortunate truth that virtue is seldom
rewarded in this world. Virtue in a woman nowadays---"

"Means no lovers and no fun!" said Gervase gayly. "And the
possibility of a highly decorous marriage with a curate or a
bankclerk, followed by the pleasing result of a family of little
curates or little bank-clerks. It is not a dazzling prospect!"

The Doctor smiled grimly; then after a wavering moment of
indecision, broke out into a chuckling laugh.

"You have an odd way of putting things," he said. "But I'm afraid
you may be right in your estimate of the position. Quite as many
women are as miserably sacrificed on the altar of virtue as of
vice. It is 'a mad world,' as Shakespeare says. I hope the next
life we pass into after this one will at least be sane."

"Well, if you believe in Heaven, you have Testament authority for
the fact that there will be 'neither marriage nor giving in
marriage' there, at any rate," laughed Gervase. "And if we wish to
follow that text out truly in our present state of existence and
become 'as the angels of God' we ought at once to abolish
matrimony."

"Have done! Have done!" exclaimed the Doctor, still smiling,
however, notwithstanding his protest. "You Southern Frenchmen are
half barbarians,--you have neither religion nor morality."

"Dieu merci!" said Gervase, irreverently; then turning to the
Princess Ziska, he bowed low and with a courtly grace over the
hand she extended towards him in farewell. "Good-night,
Princess!"--then in a whisper he added: "To-morrow I shall await
your summons."

"It will come without fail, never fear!" she answered in equally
soft tones. "I hope it may find you ready."

He raised his eyes and gave her one long, lingering, passionate
look; then with another "Good-night," which included Dr. Dean,
left the room. The Doctor lingered a moment, studying the face and
form of the Princess with a curiously inquisitive air; while she
in her turn confronted him haughtily, and with a touch of defiance
in her aspect.

"Well," said the savant presently, after a pause: "Now you have
got him, what are you going to do with him?"

She smiled coldly, but answered nothing.

"You need not flash your beautiful eyes at me in that eminently
unpleasant fashion," pursued the Doctor, easily. "You see I KNOW
YOU, and I am not afraid of you. I only make a stand against you
in one respect: you shall not kill the boy Denzil."

"He is nothing to me!" she said, with a gesture of contempt.

"I know he is nothing to you; but you are something to him. He
does not recognize your nature as I do. I must get him out of the
reach of your spell--"

"You need not trouble yourself," she interrupted him, a sombre
melancholy darkening her face; "I shall be gone to-morrow."

"Gone altogether?" inquired the Doctor calmly and without
surprise,--"Not to come back?"

"Not in this present generation!" she answered.

Still Dr. Dean evinced no surprise.

"Then you will have satisfied yourself?" he asked.

She bent her head.

"For the time being--yes! I shall have satisfied myself."

There followed a silence, during which the little Doctor looked at
his beautiful companion with all the meditative interest of a
scientist engaged in working out some intricate and deeply
interesting problem.

"I suppose I may not inquire how you propose to obtain this
satisfaction?" he said.

"You may inquire, but you will not be answered!" she retorted,
smiling darkly.

"Your intentions are pitiless?"

Still smiling, she said not a word.

"You are impenitent?"

She remained silent.

"And, worst of all, you do not desire redemption! You are one of
those who forever and ever cry, 'Evil, be thou my good!' Thus for
you, Christ died in vain!"

A faint tremor ran through her, but she was still mute.

"So you and creatures like you, must have their way in the world
until the end," concluded the Doctor, thoughtfully. "And if all
the philosophers that ever lived were to pronounce you what you
are, they would be disbelieved and condemned as madmen! Well,
Princess, I am glad I have never at any time crossed your path
till now, or given you cause of offence against me. We part
friends, I trust? Good-night! Farewell!"

She held out her hand. He hesitated before taking it.

"Are you afraid?" she queried coldly. "It will not harm you!"

"I am afraid of nothing," he said, at once clasping the white
taper fingers in his own, "except a bad conscience."

"That will never trouble you!" and the Princess looked at him full
and steadily. "There are no dark corners in your life--no mean
side-alleys and trap-holes of deceit; you have walked on the open
and straight road. You are a good man and a wise one. But though
you, in your knowledge of spiritual things, recognize me for what
I am, take my advice and be silent on the matter. The world would
never believe the truth, even if you told it, for the time is not
yet ripe for men and women to recognize the avengers of their
wicked deeds. They are kept purposely in the dark lest the light
should kill!"

And with her sombre eyes darkening, yet glowing with the inward
fire that always smouldered in their dazzling depths, she saluted
him gravely and gracefully, watching him to the last as he slowly
withdrew.




CHAPTER XV.


The next day broke with a bright, hot glare over the wide desert,
and the sky in its cloudless burning blue had more than its usual
appearance of limitless and awful immensity. The Sphinx and the
Pyramids alone gave a shadow and a substance to the dazzling and
transparent air,--all the rest of the visible landscape seemed
naught save a far-stretching ocean of glittering sand, scorched by
the blazing sun. Dr. Maxwell Dean rose early and went down to the
hotel breakfast in a somewhat depressed frame of mind; he had
slept badly, and his dreams had been unpleasant, when not actually
ghastly, and he was considerably relieved, though he could not
have told why, when he saw his young friend Denzil Murray, seated
at the breakfast table, apparently enjoying an excellent meal.

"Hullo, Denzil!" he exclaimed cheerily, "I hardly expected you
down yet. Are you better?"

"Thanks, I am perfectly well," said Denzil, with a careless air.
"I thought I would breakfast early in order to drive into Cairo
before the day gets too sultry."

"Into Cairo!" echoed the Doctor. "Why, aren't you going to stay
here a few days?"

"No, not exactly," answered Denzil, stirring his coffee quickly
and beginning to swallow it in large gulps. "I shall be back to-
night, though. I'm only going just to see my sister and tell her
to prepare for our journey home. I shan't be absent more than a
few hours."

"I thought you might possibly like to go a little further up the
Nile?" suggested the Doctor.

"Oh, no, I've had enough of it! You see, when a man proposes to a
woman and gets refused, he can't keep on dangling round that woman
as if he thought it possible she might change her mind." And he
forced a smile. "I've got an appointment with Gervase to-morrow
morning, and I must come back to-night in order to keep it--but
after that I'm off."

"An appointment with Gervase?" repeated the Doctor, slowly. "What
sort of an appointment?"

Denzil avoided his keen look.

"Really, Doctor, you are getting awfully inquisitive!" he
exclaimed with a hard laugh. "You want to know altogether too
much!"

"Yes, I always do; it is a habit of mine," responded Dr. Dean,
calmly. "But in the present case, it doesn't need much perspicuity
to fathom your mystery. The dullest clod-hopper will tell you he
can see through a millstone when there's a hole in it. And I was
always a good hand at putting two and two together and making four
out of them. You and Gervase are in love with the same woman; the
woman has rejected you and is encouraging Gervase; Gervase, you
think, will on this very night be in the position of the accepted
lover, for which successful fortune, attending him, you, the
rejected one, propose to kill him to-morrow morning if you can,
unless he kills you. And you are going to Cairo to get your
pistols or whatever weapons you have arranged to fight with, and
also to say good-bye to your sister."

Denzil kept his eyes fixed studiously on the table-cloth and made
no answer.

"However," continued the Doctor complacently, "you can have it all
your own way as far as I am concerned. I never interfere in these
sort of matters. I should do no good if I attempted it. Besides, I
haven't the slightest anxiety on your behalf--not the slightest.
Waiter, some more coffee, please?"

"Upon my word!" exclaimed Denzil, with a fretful laugh, "you are a
most extraordinary man, Doctor!"

"I hope I am!" retorted the Doctor. "To be merely ordinary would
not suit my line of ambition. This is very excellent coffee"--here
he peered into the fresh pot of the fragrant beverage just set
before him. "They make it better here than at the Gezireh Palace.
Well, Denzil, my boy, when you get into Cairo, give my love to
Helen and tell her we'll all go home to the old country together;
I, myself, have got quite enough out of Egypt this time to satisfy
my fondness for new experiences. And let me assure you, my good
fellow, that your proposed duel with Gervase will not come off!"

"It will come off!" said Denzil, with sudden fierceness. "By
Heaven, it shall!--it must!"

"More wills than one have the working out of our destinies,"
answered Dr. Dean with some gravity. "Man is not by any means
supreme. He imagines he is, but that is only one of his many
little delusions. You think you will have your way; Gervase thinks
he will have his way; I think I will have my way; but as a matter
of fact there is only one person in this affair whose 'way' will
be absolute, and that person is the Princess Ziska. Ce que femme
veut Dieu veut."

"She has nothing whatever to do with the matter," declared Denzil.

"Pardon! She has everything to do with it. She is the cause of it
and she knows it. And as I have already told you, your proposed
fight will not come off." And the little Doctor smiled serenely.
"There is your carriage at the door, I suppose. Off with you, my
boy!--be off like a whirlwind, and return here armed to the teeth
if you like! You have heard the expression 'fighting the air'?
That is what you will do tomorrow morning!"

And apparently in the best of all possible humors, Dr. Dean
accompanied his young friend to the portico of the hotel and
watched him drive off down the stately avenue of palm-trees which
now cast their refreshing shade on the entire route from the
Pyramids to Cairo. When he had fairly gone, the thoughtful savant
surveyed the different tourists who were preparing to ascend the
Pyramids under the escort of their Arab guides, regardless of the
risks they ran of dislocated arms and broken shoulder-bones,--and
in the study of the various odd types thus presented to him, he
found himself fairly well amused.

"Protoplasm--mere protoplasm!" he murmured. "The germ of soul has
not yet attained to individual consciousness in any one of these
strange bipeds. Their thoughts are as jelly,--their reasoning
powers in embryo,--their intellectual faculties barely
perceptible. Yet they are interesting, viewed in the same light
and considered on the same scale as fish or insects merely. As men
and women of course they are misnomers,--laughable
impossibilities. Well, well!--in the space of two or three
thousand years, the protoplasm may start into form out of the
void, and the fibres of a conscious Intellectuality may sprout,--
but it will have to be in some other phase of existence--certainly
not in this one. And now to shut myself up and write my memoranda-
-for I must not lose a single detail of this singular Egyptian
psychic problem. The whole thing I perceive is rounding itself
towards completion and catastrophe--but in what way? How will it--
how CAN it end?"

And with a meditative frown puckering his brows, Dr. Dean folded
his hands behind his back and retired to his own room, from whence
he did not emerge all day.

Armand Gervase in the meanwhile was making himself the life and
soul of everything at the Mena House Hotel. He struck up an easy
acquaintance with several of the visitors staying there,--said
pretty things to young women and pleasant things to old,--and in
the course of a few hours succeeded in becoming the most popular
personage in the place. He accepted invitations to parties, and
agreed to share in various' excursions, till he engaged himself
for every day in the coming week, and was so gay and gallant and
fascinating in manner and bearing that fair ladies lost their
hearts to him at a glance, and what amusement or pleasure there
was at the Mena House seemed to be doubly enhanced by the mere
fact of his presence. In truth Gervase was in a singular mood of
elation and excitation; a strong inward triumph possessed him and
filled his soul with an imperious pride and sense of conquest
which, for the time being, made him feel as though he were a very
king of men. There was nothing in his nature of the noble
tenderness which makes the lover mentally exalt his beloved as a
queen before whom he is content to submit his whole soul in
worship; what he realized was merely this: that here was one of
the most beautiful and seductive women ever created, in the person
of the Princess Ziska, and that he, Gervase, meant to possess that
loveliest of women, whatever happened in the near or distant
future. Of her, and of the influence of his passion on her
personally, he did not stop to think, except with the curiously
blind egotism which is the heritage of most men, and which led him
to judge that her happiness would in some way or other be enhanced
by his brief and fickle love. For, as a rule, men do not
understand love. They understand desire, amounting sometimes to
merciless covetousness for what they cannot get,--this is a
leading natural characteristic of the masculine nature--but Love--
love that endures silently and faithfully through the stress of
trouble and the passing of years--love which sacrifices everything
to the beloved and never changes or falters,--this is a divine
passion which seldom or never sanctifies and inspires the life of
a man. Women are not made of such base material; their love
invariably springs first from the Ideal, not the Sensual, and if
afterwards it develops into the sensual, it is through the rough
and coarsening touch of man alone.

Throughout the entire day the Princess Ziska herself never left
her private apartments, and towards late afternoon Gervase began
to feel the hours drag along with unconscionable slowness and
monotony. Never did the sun seem so slow in sinking; never did the
night appear so far off. When at last dinner was served in the
hotel, both Denzil Murray and Dr. Dean sat next to him at table,
and, judging from outward appearances, the most friendly relations
existed between all three of them. At the close of the meal,
however, Denzil made a sign to Gervase to follow him, and when
they had reached a quiet corner, said:

"I am aware of your victory; you have won where I have lost. But
you know my intention?"

"Perfectly!" responded Gervase, with a cool smile.

"By Heaven!" went on the younger man, in accents of suppressed
fury, "if I yielded to the temptation which besets me when I see
you standing there facing me, with your easy and self-satisfied
demeanor,--when I know that you mean dishonor where I meant
honor,--when you have had the effrontery to confess to me that you
only intend to make the Princess Ziska your mistress when I would
have made her my wife,--God! I could shoot you dead at this
moment!"

Gervase looked at him steadily, still smiling slightly; then
gradually the smile died away, leaving his countenance shadowed by
an intense melancholy.

"I can quite enter into your feelings, my dear boy!" he said. "And
do you know, I'm not sure that it would not be a good thing if you
were to shoot me dead! My life is of no particular value to
anybody,--certainly not to myself; and I begin to think I've been
always more or less of a failure. I have won fame, but I have
missed--something--but upon my word, I don't quite know what!"

He sighed heavily, then suddenly held out his hand.

"Denzil, the bitterest foes shake hands before fighting each other
to the death, as we propose to do to-morrow; it is a civil custom
and hurts no one, I should like to part kindly from you to-night!"

Denzil hesitated; then something stronger than himself made him
yield to the impulsive note of strong emotion in his former
friend's voice, and the two men's hands met in a momentary silent
grasp. Then Denzil turned quickly away.

"To-morrow morning at six," he said, briefly; "close to the
Sphinx."

"Good!" responded Gervase. "The Sphinx shall second us both and
see fair play. Good-night, Denzil!"

"Good-night!" responded Denzil, coldly, as he moved on and
disappeared.

A slight shiver ran through Gervase's blood as he watched him
depart.

"Odd that I should imagine I have seen the last of him!" he
murmured. "There are strange portents in the air of the desert, I
suppose! Is he going to his death? Or am I going to mine?"

Again the cold tremor shook him, and combating with his uneasy
sensations, he went to his own apartment, there to await the
expected summons of the Princess. No triumph filled him now; no
sense of joy elated him; a vague fear and dull foreboding were all
the emotions he was conscious of. Even his impatient desire of
love had cooled, and he watched the darkening of night over the
desert, and the stars shining out one by one in the black azure of
the heavens, with a gradually deepening depression. A dreamy sense
stole over him of remoteness or detachment from all visible
things, as though he were suddenly and mysteriously separated from
the rest of humankind by an invisible force which he was powerless
to resist. He was still lost in this vague half-torpor or semi-
conscious reverie, when a light tap startled him back to the
realization of earth and his earthly surroundings. In response to
his "Entrez!" the tall Nubian, whom he had seen in Cairo as the
guardian of the Princess's household, appeared, his repulsive
features looking, if anything, more ghastly and hideous than ever.

"Madame la Princesse demande votre presence!" said this unlovely
attendant of one of the fairest of women. "Suivez-moi!"

Without a moment's hesitation or loss of time, Gervase obeyed, and
allowing his guide to precede him at a little distance, followed
him through the corridors of the hotel, out at the hall door and
beyond, through the garden. A clock struck ten as they passed into
the warm evening air, and the mellow rays of the moon were
beginning to whiten the sides of the Great Pyramid. A few of the
people staying in the hotel were lounging about, but these paid no
particular heed to Gervase or his companion. At about two hundred
yards from the entrance of the Mena House, the Nubian stopped and
waited till Gervase came up with him.

"Madame la Princesse vous aime, Monsieur Gervase!" he said, with a
sarcastic grin. "Mais,--elle veut que l'Amour soit toujours
aveugle! oui, toujours! C'est le destin qui vous appelle,--il faut
soumettre! L'Amour sans yeux! oui!--en fin,--comme ca!"

And before Gervase could utter a word of protest, or demand the
meaning of this strange proceeding, his arms was suddenly seized
and pinioned behind his back, his mouth gagged, and his eyes
blindfolded.

"Maintenant," continued the Nubian. "Nous irons ensemble!"

Choked and mad with rage, Gervase for a few moments struggled
furiously as well as he was able with his powerful captor. All
sorts of ideas surged in his brain: the Princess Ziska might, with
all her beauty and fascination, be nothing but the ruler of a band
of robbers and murderers--who could tell? Yet reason did not
wholly desert him in extremity, for even while he tried to fight
for his liberty he remembered that there was no good to be gained
out of taking him prisoner; he had neither money nor valuables--
nothing which could excite the cupidity of even a starving
Bedouin. As this thought crossed his brain, he ceased his
struggles abruptly, and stood still, panting for breath, when
suddenly a sound of singing floated towards him:

 "Oh, for the pure cold heart of the Lotus-Lily!
    A star above
    Is its only love,
  And one brief sigh of its scented breath
  Is all it will ever know of Death!
  Oh, for the passionless heart of the Lotus-Lily!"

He listened, and all power of resistance ebbed slowly away from
him; he became perfectly passive--almost apathetic--and yielding
to the somewhat rough handling of his guide, allowed himself to be
urged with silent rapidity onward over the thick sand, till he
presently became conscious that he was leaving the fresh open air
and entering a building of some sort, for his feet pressed hard
earth and stone instead of sand. All at once he was forcibly
brought to a standstill, and a heavy rolling noise and clang, like
distant muttered thunder, resounded in his ears, followed by dead
silence. Then his arm was closely grasped again, and he was led
on, on and on, along what seemed to be an interminable distance,
for not a glimmer of light could be seen under the tight folds of
the bandage across his eyes. Presently the earth shook under him,-
-some heavy substance was moved, and there was another booming
thunderous noise, accompanied by the falling of chains.

"C'est l'escalier de Madame la Princesse!" said the Nubian. "Pres
de la chambre nuptiale! Descendez! Vite!"

Down--down! Resistance was useless, even had he cared to resist,
for he felt as though twenty pairs of hands instead of one were
pushing him violently on all sides; down, still down he went,
dumb, blind and helpless, till at last he was allowed to stop and
breathe. His arms were released, the bandage was taken from his
eyes, the gag from his mouth--he was free! Free--yes! but where?
Thick darkness encompassed him; he stretched out his hands in the
murky atmosphere and felt nothing.

"Ziska!" he cried.

The name sprang up against the silence and struck out numberless
echoes, and with the echoes came a shuddering sigh, that was not
of them, whispering:

"Charmazel!"

Gervase heard it, and a deadly fear, born of the supernatural,
possessed him.

"Ziska! Ziska!" he called again wildly.

"Charmazel!" answered the penetrating unknown voice; and as it
thrilled upon the air like a sob of pain, a dim light began to
shine through the gloom, waveringly at first, then more steadily,
till it gradually spread wide, illuminating with a pale and
spectral light the place in which he found himself,--a place more
weird and wondrous than any mystic scene in dream-land. He
stumbled forward giddily, utterly bewildered, staring about him
like a man in delirium, and speechless with mingled horror and
amazement. He was alone--utterly alone in a vast square chamber,
the walls and roof of which were thickly patterned and glistening
with gold. Squares of gold were set in the very pavement on which
he trod, and at the furthest end of the chamber, a magnificent
sarcophagus of solid gold, encrusted with thousands upon thousands
of jewels, which were set upon it in marvellous and fantastic
devices, glittered and flashed with the hues of living fire.
Golden cups, golden vases, a golden suit of armor, bracelets and
chains of gold intermixed with gems, were heaped up against the
walls and scattered on the floor; and a round shield of ivory
inlaid with gold, together with a sword in a jewelled sheath, were
placed in an upright position against the head of the sarcophagus,
from whence all the spectral and mysterious light seemed to
emerge. With thickly beating heart and faltering pulses Gervase
still advanced, gazing half entranced, half terrified at the
extraordinary and sumptuous splendor surrounding him, muttering
almost unconsciously as he moved along:

"A king's sepulchre,--a warrior's tomb! How came I here?--and why?
Is this a trysting-place for love as well as death?--and will she
come to me? ..."

He recoiled suddenly with a violent start, for there, like a
strange Spirit of Evil risen from the ground, leaning against the
great gold sarcophagus, her exquisite form scarcely concealed by
the misty white of her draperies, her dark hair hanging like a
cloud over her shoulders, and her black eyes aflame with wrath,
menace and passion, stood the mysterious Ziska!




CHAPTER XVI.


Stricken dumb with a ghastly supernatural terror which far
exceeded any ordinary sense of fear, he gazed at her, spellbound,
his blood freezing, his very limbs stiffening, for now--now she
looked like the picture he had painted of her; and Death--Death,
livid, tortured and horrible, stared at him skull-wise from the
transparent covering of her exquisitely tinted seeming-human
flesh. Larger and brighter and wilder grew her eyes as she fixed
them on him, and her voice rang through the silence with an
unearthly resonance as she spoke and said:

"Welcome, my lover, to this abode of love! Welcome to these arms,
for whose embraces your covetous soul has thirsted unappeased!
Take all of me, for I am yours!--aye, so truly yours that you can
never escape me!--never separate from me--no! not through a
thousand thousand centuries! Life of my life! Soul of my soul!
Possess me, as I possess you!--for our two unrepenting spirits
form a dual flame in Hell which must burn on and on to all
eternity! Leap to my arms, master and lord,--king and conqueror!
Here, here!" and she smote her white arms against her whiter
bosom. "Take all your fill of burning wickedness--of cursed joy!
and then--sleep! as you have slept before, these many thousand
years!"

Still mute and aghast he stared at her; his senses swam, his brain
reeled, and then slowly, like the lifting of a curtain on the last
scene of a dire tragedy, a lightning thought, a scorching memory,
sprang into his mind and overwhelmed him like a rolling wave that
brings death in its track. With a fierce oath he rushed towards
her, and seized her hands in his--hands cold as ice and clammy as
with the dews of the grave.

"Ziska! Woman! Devil! Speak before you drive me to madness! What
passion moves you thus--what mystic fooling? Into what place have
I been decoyed at your bidding? Why am I brought hither? Speak,
speak!--or I shall murder you!"

"Nay!" she said, and her slight swaying form dilated and grew till
she seemed to rise up from the very ground and to tower above him
like an enraged demon evoked from mist or flame. "You have done
that once! To murder me twice is beyond your power!" And as she
spoke her hands slipped from his like the hands of a corpse newly
dead. "Never again can you hurl forth my anguished soul unprepared
to the outer darkness of things invisible; never again! For I am
free!--free with an immortal freedom--free to work out repentance
or revenge,--even as Man is free to shape his course for good or
evil. He chooses evil; I choose revenge! What place is this, you
ask?" and with a majestic gliding motion she advanced a little and
pointed upward to the sparkling gold-patterned roof. "Above us,
the Great Pyramid lifts its summit to the stars; and here below,--
here where you will presently lie, my lover and lord, asleep in
the delicate bosom of love--here..."

She paused, and a low laugh broke from her lips; then she added
slowly and impressively:

"Here is the tomb of Araxes!"

As she spoke, a creeping sense of coldness and horror stole into
his veins like the approach of death,--the strange impressions he
had felt, the haunting and confusing memory he had always had of
her face and voice, the supernatural theories he had lately heard
discussed, all rushed at once upon his mind, and he uttered a loud
involuntary cry.

"My God! What frenzy is this! A woman's vain trick!--a fool's mad
scheme! What is Araxes to me?--or I to Araxes?"

"Everything!" replied Ziska, the vindictive demon light in her
eyes blazing with a truly frightful intensity. "Inasmuch as ye are
one and the same! The same dark soul of sin--unpurged, uncleansed
through ages of eternal fire! Sensualist! Voluptuary! Accursed
spirit of the man I loved, come forth from the present Seeming-of-
things! Come forth and cling to me! Cling!--for the whole forces
of a million universes shall not separate us! O Eternal Spirits of
the Dead!" and she lifted her ghostly white arms with a wild
gesture. "Rend ye the veil! Declare to the infidel and unbeliever
the truth of the life beyond death; the life wherein ye and I
dwell and work, clamoring for late justice!"

Here she sprang forward and caught the arm of Gervase with all the
fierce eagerness of some ravenous bird of prey; and as she did so
he knew her grasp meant death.

"Remember the days of old, Araxes! Look back, look back from the
present to the past, and remember the crimes that are still
unavenged! Remember the love sought and won!--remember the broken
heart!--remember the ruined life! Remember the triumphs of war!--
the glories of conquest! Remember the lust of ambition!--the
treachery!--the slaughter!--the blasphemies against high Heaven!
Remember the night of the Feast of Osiris--the Feast of the Sun!
Remember how Ziska-Charmazel awaited her lover, singing alone for
joy, in blind faith and blinder love, his favorite song of the
Lotus-Lily! The moon was high, as it is now!--the stars glittered
above the Pyramids, as they glitter now!--in the palace there was
the sound of music and triumph and laughter, and a whisper on the
air of the fickle heart and changeful mood of Araxes; of another
face which charmed him, though less fair than that of Ziska-
Charmazel! Remember, remember!" and she clung closer and closer as
he staggered backward half suffocated by his own emotions and the
horror of her touch. "Remember the fierce word!--the quick and
murderous blow!--the plunge of the jewelled knife up to the hilt
in the passionate white bosom of Charmazel!--the lonely anguish in
which she died! Died,--but to live again and pursue her murderer!-
-to track him down to his grave wherein the king strewed gold, and
devils strewed curses!--down, down to the end of all his glory and
conquest into the silence of yon gold-encrusted clay! And out of
silence again into sound and light and fire, ever pursuing, I have
followed--followed through a thousand phases of existence!--and I
will follow still through limitless space and endless time, till
the great Maker of this terrible wheel of life Himself shall say,
'Stop! Here ends even the law of vengeance!' Oh, for ten thousand
centuries more in which to work my passion and prove my wrong! All
the treasure of love despised!--all the hope of a life betrayed!--
all the salvation of heaven denied! Tremble, Soul of Araxes!--for
hate is eternal, as love is eternal!--the veil is down, and Memory
stings!"

She turned her face, now spectral and pallid as a waning moon, up
to him; her form grew thin and skeleton-like, while still
retaining the transparent outline of its beauty; and he realized
at last that no creature of flesh and blood was this that clung to
him, but some mysterious bodiless horror of the Supernatural,
unguessed at by the outer world of men! The dews of death stood
thick on his forehead; there was a straining agony at his heart,
and his breath came in quick convulsive gasps; but worse than his
physical torture was the overwhelming and convincing truth of the
actual existence of the Spiritual Universe, now so suddenly and
awfully revealed. What he had all his life denied was now declared
a certainty; where he had been deaf and blind, he now heard and
saw. Ziska! Ziska-Charmazel! In very truth he knew he remembered
her; in very truth he knew he had loved her; in very truth he knew
he had murdered her! But another still stranger truth was forcing
itself upon him now; and this was, that the old love of the old
old days was arising within him in all its strength once more, and
that he loved her still! Unreal and terrible as it seemed, it was
nevertheless a fact, that as he gazed upon her tortured face, her
beautiful anguished eyes, her phantom form, he felt that he would
give his own soul to rescue hers and lift her from the coils of
vengeance into love again! Her words awoke vibrating pulsations of
thought, long dormant in the innermost recesses of his spirit,
which, like so many dagger-thrusts, stabbed him with a myriad
recollections; and as a disguising cloak may fall from the figure
of a friend in a masquerade, so his present-seeming personality
dropped from him and no longer had any substance. He recognized
himself as Araxes--always the same Soul passing through a myriad
changes,--and all the links of his past and present were suddenly
welded together in one unbroken chain, stretching over thousands
of years, every link of which he was able to count, mark, and
recognize. By the dreadful light of that dumb comprehension which
flashes on all parting souls at the moment of dissolution, he
perceived at last that not the Body but the Spirit is the central
secret of life,--not deeds, but thoughts evolve creation. Death?
That was a name merely; there was no death,--only a change into
some other form of existence. What change--what form would be his
now? This thought startled him--roused him,--and once again the
low spirit-voice of his long-ago betrayed and murdered love
thrilled in his ears:

"Soul of Araxes, cling to my soul!--for this present life is
swiftly passing! No more scorn of the Divine can stand whither we
are speeding, for the Terrible and Eternal Truth overshadows us
and our destinies! Closed are the gates of Heaven,--open wide are
the portals of Hell! Enter with me, my lover Araxes!--die as I
died, unprepared and alone! Die, and pass out into new life again-
-such life as mine--such torture as mine--such despair as mine--
such hate as mine! ..."

She ceased abruptly, for he, convinced now of the certainty of
Immortality, was suddenly moved to a strange access of courage and
resolution. Something sweet and subtle stirred in him,--a sense of
power,--a hint of joy, which completely overcame all dread of
death. Old love revived, grew stronger in his soul, and his gaze
rested on the shadowy form beside him, no longer with horror but
with tenderness. She was Ziska-Charmazel,--she had been his love--
the dearest portion of his life--once in the far-off time; she had
been the fairest of women--and more than fair, she had been
faithful! Yes, he remembered that, as he remembered Her! Every
curve in her beautiful body had been a joy for him alone; and for
him alone her lips, sweet and fresh as rosebuds, had kept their
kisses. She had loved him as few women have either heart or
strength to love, and he had rewarded her fidelity by death and
eternal torment! A struggling cry escaped him, and he stretched
out his arms:

"Ziska! Forgive--forgive!"

As he uttered the words, he saw her wan face suddenly change,--all
the terror and torture passed from it like a passing cloud,--
beautiful as an angel's, it smiled upon him,--the eyes softened
and flashed with love, the lips trembled, the spectral form glowed
with a living luminance, and a mystic Glory glittered above the
dusky hair! Filled with ecstasy at the sight of her wondrous
loveliness, he felt nothing of the coldness of death at his
heart,--a divine passion inspired him, and with the last effort of
his failing strength he strove to gather all the spirit-like
beauty of her being into his embrace.

"Love--Love!" he cried. "Not Hate, but Love! Come back out of the
darkness, soul of the woman I wronged! Forgive me! Come back to
me! Hell or Heaven, what matters it if we are together! Come to
me,--come! Love is stronger than Hate!"

Speech failed him; the cold agony of death gripped at his heart
and struck him mute, but still he saw the beautiful passionate
eyes of a forgiving Love turned gloriously upon him like stars in
the black chaos whither he now seemed rushing. Then came a solemn
surging sound as of great wings beating on a tempestuous air, and
all the light in the tomb was suddenly extinguished. One instant
more he stood upright in the thick darkness; then a burning knife
seemed plunged into his breast, and he reeled forward and fell,
his last hold on life being the consciousness that soft arms were
clasping him and drawing him away--away--he knew not whither--and
that warm lips, sweet and tender, were closely pressed on his. And
presently, out of the heavy gloom came a Voice which said:

"Peace! The old gods are best, and the law is made perfect. A life
demands a life. Love's debt must be paid by Love! The woman's soul
forgives; the man's repents,--wherefore they are both released
from bondage and the memory of sin. Let them go hence, the curse
is lifted!"

* * * *

Once more the wavering ghostly light gave luminance to the
splendor of the tomb, and showed where, fallen sideways among the
golden treasures and mementoes of the past, lay the dead body of
Armand Gervase. Above him gleamed the great jewelled sarcophagus;
and within touch of his passive hand was the ivory shield and
gold-hilted sword of Araxes. The spectral radiance gleamed,
wandered and flitted over all things,--now feebly, now
brilliantly,--till finally flashing with a pale glare on the dark
dead face, with the proud closed lips and black level brows, it
flickered out; and one of the many countless mysteries of the
Great Pyramid was again hidden in impenetrable darkness.

* * * *

Vainly Denzil Marray waited next morning for his rival to appear.
He paced up and down impatiently, watching the rosy hues of
sunrise spreading over the wide desert and lighting up the massive
features of the Sphinx, till as hour after hour passed and still
Gervase did not come, he hurried back to the Mena House Hotel, and
meeting Dr. Maxwell Dean on the way, to him poured out his rage
and perplexity.

"I never thought Gervase was a coward!" he said hotly.

"Nor should you think so now," returned the Doctor, with a grave
and preoccupied air. "Whatever his faults, cowardice was not one
of them. You see, I speak of him in the past tense. I told you
your intended duel would not come off, and I was right. Denzil, I
don't think you will ever see either Armand Gervase or the
Princess Ziska again."

Denzil started violently.

"What do you mean? The Princess is here,--here in this very
house."

"Is she?" and Dr. Dean sighed somewhat impatiently. "Well, let us
see!" Then, turning to a passing waiter, he inquired: "Is the
Princess Ziska here still?"

"No, sir. She left quite suddenly late last night; going on to
Thebes, I believe, sir."

The Doctor looked meaningly at Denzil.

"You hear?"

But Denzil in his turn was interrogating the waiter.

"Is Mr. Gervase in his room?"

"No, sir. He went out about ten o'clock yesterday evening, and I
don't think he is coming back. One of the Princess Ziska's
servants--the tall Nubian whom you may have noticed, sir--brought
a message from him to say that his luggage was to be sent to
Paris, and that the money for his bill would be found on his
dressing-table. It was all right, of course, but we thought it
rather curious."

And glancing deferentially from one to the other of his
questioners with a smile, the waiter went on his way.

"They have fled together!" said Denzil then, in choked accents of
fury. "By Heaven, if I had guessed the plan already formed in his
treacherous mind, I would never have shaken hands with Gervase
last night!"

"Oh, you did shake hands?" queried Dr. Dean, meditatively. "Well,
there was no harm in that. You were right. You and Gervase will
meet no more in this life, believe me! He and the Princess Ziska
have undoubtedly, as you say, fled together--but not to Thebes!"

He paused a moment, then laid his hand kindly on Denzil's
shoulder.

"Let us go back to Cairo, my boy, and from thence as soon as
possible to England. We shall all be better away from this
terrible land, where the dead have far more power than the
living!"

Denzil stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"You talk in riddles!" he said, irritably. "Do you think I shall
let Gervase escape me? I will track him wherever he has gone,--I
daresay I shall find him in Paris."

Dr. Dean took one or two slow turns up and down the corridor where
they were conversing, then stopping abruptly, looked his young
friend full and steadily in the eyes.

"Come, come, Denzil. No more of this folly," he said, gently. "Why
should you entertain these ideas of vengeance against Gervase? He
has really done you no harm. He was the natural mate of the woman
you imagined you loved,--the response to her query,--the other
half of her being; and that she was and is his destiny, and he
hers, should not excite your envy or hatred. I say you IMAGINED
you loved the Princess Ziska,--it was a young man's hot freak of
passion for an almost matchless beauty, but no more than that. And
if you would be frank with yourself, you know that passion has
already cooled. I repeat, you will never see Gervase or the
Princess Ziska again in this life; so make the best of it."

"Perhaps you have assisted him to escape me!" said Denzil
frigidly.

Dr. Dean smiled.

"That's rather a rough speech, Denzil! But never mind!" he
returned. "Your pride is wounded, and you are still sore. Suspect
me as you please,--make me out a new Pandarus, if you like--I
shall not be offended. But you know--for I have often told you--
that I never interfere in love matters. They are too explosive,
too vitally dangerous; outsiders ought never to meddle with them.
And I never do. Come back with me to Cairo. And when we are once
more safely established on the solid and unromantic isles of
Britain, you will forget all about the Princess Ziska; or if you
do remember her, it will only be as a dream in the night, a kind
of vague shadow and uncertainty, which will never seriously
trouble your mind. You look incredulous. I tell you at your age
love is little more than a vision; you must wait a few years yet
before it becomes a reality, and then Heaven help you, Denzil!--
for you will be a troublesome fellow to deal with! Meanwhile, let
us get back to Cairo and see Helen."

Somewhat soothed by the Doctor's good-nature, and a trifle ashamed
of his wrath, Denzil yielded, and the evening saw them both back
at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, where of course the news of the
sudden disappearance of Armand Gervase with the Princess Ziska
created the utmost excitement. Helen Murray shivered and grew pale
as death when she heard it; lively old Lady Fulkeward simpered and
giggled, and declared it was "the most delightful thing she had
ever heard of!"--an elopement in the desert was "so exquisitely
romantic!" Sir Chetwynd Lyle wrote a conventional and stilted
account of it for his paper, and ponderously opined that the
immorality of Frenchmen was absolutely beyond any decent
journalist's powers of description. Lady Chetwynd Lyle, on the
contrary, said that the "scandal" was not the fault of Gervase; it
was all "that horrid woman," who had thrown herself at his head.
Ross Courtney thought the whole thing was "queer;" and young Lord
Fulkeward said there was something about it he didn't quite
understand,--something "deep," which his aristocratic quality of
intelligence could not fathom. And society talked and gossiped
till Paris and London caught the rumor, and the name of the famous
French artist, who had so strangely vanished from the scene of his
triumphs with a beautiful woman whom no one had ever heard of
before, was soon in everybody's mouth. No trace of him or of the
Princess Ziska could be discovered; his portmanteau contained no
letters or papers,--nothing but a few clothes; his paint-box and
easel were sent on to his deserted studio in Paris, and also a
blank square of canvas, on which, as Dr. Dean and others knew, had
once been the curiously-horrible portrait of the Princess. But
that appalling "first sketch" was wiped out and clean gone as
though it had never been painted, and Dr. Dean called Denzil's
attention to the fact. But Denzil thought nothing of it, as he
imagined that Gervase himself had obliterated it before leaving
Cairo.

A few of the curious among the gossips went to see the house the
Princess had lately occupied, where she had "received" society and
managed to shock it as well. It was shut up, and looked as if it
had not been inhabited for years. And the gossips said it was
"strange, very strange!" and confessed themselves utterly
mystified. But the fact remained that Gervase had disappeared and
the Princess Ziska with him. "However," said Society, "they can't
possibly hide themselves for long. Two such remarkable
personalities are bound to appear again somewhere. I daresay we
shall come across them in Paris or on the Riviera. The world is
much too small for the holding of a secret."

And presently, with the approach of spring, and the gradual break-
up of the Cairo "season," Denzil Murray and his sister sailed from
Alexandria en route for Venice. Dr. Dean accompanied them; so did
the Fulkewards and Ross Courtney. The Chetwynd-Lyles went by a
different steamer, "old" Lady Fulkeward being quite too much for
the patience of those sweet but still unengaged "girls" Muriel and
Dolly. One night when the great ship was speeding swiftly over a
calm sea, and Denzil, lost in sorrowful meditation, was gazing out
over the trackless ocean with pained and passionate eyes which
could see nothing but the witching and exquisite beauty of the
Princess Ziska, now possessed and enjoyed by Gervase, Dr. Dean
touched him on the arm and said:

"Denzil, have you ever read Shakespeare?"

Denzil started and forced a smile.

"Why, yes, of course!"

"Then you know the lines--

 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  Than are
dreamt of in your philosophy?'

The Princess Ziska was one of those 'things.'"

Denzil regarded him in wonderment.

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, of course, you will think me insane," said the Doctor,
resignedly. "People always take refuge in thinking that those who
tell them uncomfortable truths are lunatics. You've heard me talk
of ghosts?--ghosts that walk and move about us like human beings?-
-and they are generally very brilliant and clever impersonations
of humanity, too--and that nevertheless are NOT human?"

Denzil assented.

"The Princess Ziska was a ghost!" concluded the Doctor, folding
his arms very tightly across his chest and nodding defiantly.

"Nonsense!" cried Denzil. "You are mad!"

"Precisely the remark I thought you would make!" and Dr. Dean
unfolded his arms again and smiled triumphantly. "Therefore, my
dear boy, let us for the future avoid this subject. I know what I
know; I can distinguish phantoms from reality, and I am not
deceived by appearances. But the world prefers ignorance to
knowledge, and even so let it be. Next time I meet a ghost I'll
keep my own counsel!" He paused a moment,--then added: "You
remember I told you I was hunting down that warrior of old time,
Araxes?"

Denzil nodded, a trifle impatiently.

"Well," resumed the Doctor slowly,--"Before we left Egypt I found
him! But how I found him, and where, is my secret!"

Society still speaks occasionally of Armand Gervase, and wonders
in its feeble way when he will be "tired" of the Egyptian beauty
he ran away with, or she of him. Society never thinks very far or
cares very much for anything long, but it does certainly expect to
see the once famous French artist "turn up" suddenly, either in
his old quarters in Paris, or in one or the other of the
fashionable resorts of the Riviera. That he should be dead has
never occurred to anyone, except perhaps Dr. Maxwell Dean. But Dr.
Dean has grown extremely reticent--almost surly; and never answers
any questions concerning his Scientific Theory of Ghosts, a work
which, when published, created a great deal of excitement, owing
to its singularity and novelty of treatment. There was the usual
"hee-hawing" from the donkeys in the literary pasture, who fondly
imagined their brayings deserved to be considered in the light of
serious opinion;--and then after a while the book fell into the
hands of scientists only,--men who are beginning to understand the
discretion of silence, and to hold their tongues as closely as the
Egyptian priests of old did, aware that the great majority of men
are never ripe for knowledge. Quite lately Dr. Dean attended two
weddings,--one being that of "old" Lady Fulkeward, who has married
a very pretty young fellow of five-and-twenty, whose dearest
consideration in life is the shape of his shirt-collar; the other,
that of Denzil Murray, who has wedded the perfectly well-born,
well-bred and virtuous, if somewhat cold-blooded, daughter of his
next-door neighbor in the Highlands. Concerning his Egyptian
experience he never speaks,--he lives the ordinary life of the
Scottish land-owner, looking after his tenantry, considering the
crops, preserving the game, and clearing fallen timber;--and if
the glowing face of the beautiful Ziska ever floats before his
memory, it is only in a vague dream from which he quickly rouses
himself with a troubled sigh. His sister Helen has never married.
Lord Fulkeward proposed to her but was gently rejected, whereupon
the disconsolate young nobleman took a journey to the States and
married the daughter of a millionaire oil-merchant instead. Sir
Chetwynd Lyle and his pig-faced spouse still thrive and grow fat
on the proceeds of the Daily Dial, and there is faint hope that
one of their "girls" will wed an aspiring journalist,--a bold
adventurer who wants "a share in the paper" somehow, even if he
has to marry Muriel or Dolly in order to get it. Ross Courtney is
the only man of the party once assembled at the Gezireh Palace
Hotel who still goes to Cairo every winter, fascinated thither by
an annually recurring dim notion that he may "discover traces" of
the lost Armand Gervase and the Princess Ziska. And he frequently
accompanies the numerous sight-seers who season after season drive
from Cairo to the Pyramids, and take pleasure in staring at the
Sphinx with all the impertinence common to pigmies when
contemplating greatness. But more riddles than that of the Sphinx
are lost in the depths of the sandy desert; and more unsolved
problems lie in the recesses of the past than even the restless
and inquiring spirit of modern times will ever discover;--and if
it should ever chance that in days to come, the secret of the
movable floor of the Great Pyramid should be found, and the lost
treasures of Egypt brought to light, there will probably be much
discussion and marvel concerning the Golden Tomb of Araxes. For
the hieroglyphs on the jewelled sarcophagus speak of him thus and
say:--

"Araxes was a Man of Might, far exceeding in Strength and Beauty
the common sons of men. Great in War, Invincible in Love, he did
Excel in Deeds of Courage and of Conquest,--and for whatsoever
Sins he did in the secret Weakness of humanity commit, the Gods
must judge him. But in all that may befit a Warrior, Amenhotep The
King doth give him honor,--and to the Spirits of Darkness and of
Light his Soul is here commended to its Rest."

Thus much of the fierce dead hero of old time,--but of the
mouldering corpse that lies on the golden floor of the same tomb,
its skeleton hand touching, almost grasping, the sword of Araxes,
what shall be said? Nothing--since the Old and the New, the Past
and the Present, are but as one moment in the countings of
eternity, and even with a late repentance Love pardons all.




FINIS.





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