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.