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