It was a haunting thought.  It left Ryder with the bitter taste of blame in his mouth, the gall and wormwood of blame and a baffled defeat.

But for that sense of blame he might have taken McLean’s advice.  He might—­but for that—­have gone the way of wisdom, and accepted the inevitable.

As it was, he did none of these things.

* * * * *

He said to himself that all that he could do now—­and the least that he could do—­was to let the girl know as much of the story as he knew and draw her own conclusions.  Then, if she wanted to go on and sacrifice herself for Tewfick, very well.  That was none of his affair.

But she had a right to the truth and to the chance of choice.

He did not know what he could do, but secretly and defiantly he promised himself that he would do something, and in the back of his mind an idea was already taking shape.  It was manifest in the tenacity with which he refused to send the locket to the Delcasses.  He had the case and the miniature photographed very carefully by the man who did the reproductions for museum illustrations, and he sent that, conscious of McLean’s silent thought that he was cherishing the portrait for a sentimental memory.

But he had other plans for it.

He did not return to his diggings.  He sent a message to the deserted Thatcher, faking errands in Cairo, and he took a room at the hotel where Jinny Jeffries—­now up the Nile—­had stayed.  He spent a great deal of time evenings in the hotel garden, staring over the brick walls to the tops of distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he slipped out the garden’s back door and wandered up and down the dark canyon of a lane.

He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard’s Hotel.

And yet the girl had her key.  She could get away if she wanted to and she might want to if she knew the truth.

But how to get that truth to her?  That was his problem.  A dozen plans he considered and rejected.  There were the mails—­simple and obvious channel—­but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan seclusion do not receive their letters directly.  And now, especially, Tewfick would be on his guard.

Then there was the chance of a message through some native’s hands.  The house servants—?  There were hours, one day, when Ryder sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered sais who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker’s boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, but Ryder’s Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any creature, and he stayed his tongue.

Bitterly he regretted his wasted years.  If he had not misspent them in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with some official’s pretty wife who had the entree to a pasha’s daughter that she could be induced to make use of it for him.