freedom, went out upon the terrace. The Pharaoh's palace faced the temple of Isis, behind which lay the mysterious garden with the lonely snow-white pavilion, and the sacred nook, beside the cataract, with beyond it the palace of the royal bride.
The night was exquisitely still, the moon was not yet up, and the shadows were not as yet very dark. It was a perfect evening, and my thoughts flew out across the poetic garden to the lonely spot where, in the midst of this picturesque and pagan land, an Englishman was preparing to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of his honour. An infinite sadness crept over me: I longed for dear old England and for peace, and above all I longed for sight of Hugh before the awful, the irrevocable had actually happened. Somehow I could not believe that the preposterous thing was really about to be accomplished; that, within the next few hours, a man so good, so true as Hugh Tankerville could be called upon to wreck his whole life without a protest. We were obviously doomed to remain in this exotic land for the whole term of our natural lives. I was willing enough to remain: I had no ties, save those which bound me to my friend, and if Hugh could but marry the woman he loved, I know he would have craved for nothing more. But we were among people as high-minded and more civilised than ourselves: a woman here was as sacred, as much worthy of respect, as in our own distant homes, and conscience has an unhappy knack of following one wherever one may go. All this I knew and felt ; and now, at the eleventh hour, I, too, in my inmost heart began to argue with my conscience, to bandy words with my friend's honour, and to try and find a loophole through which I could drag Hugh Tankerville away from the very foot of the hymeneal altar.
