"Are you very miserable?"
"I don't know. I haven't had time to think."
"Don't take time—yet. Stay with me, as we planned before—before——"
"But Mr. Stanton? Aren't you——"
"No, I'm not. He left me fifteen minutes after you went. I shan't see him again."
"Not at the train?"
"No, not anywhere. You see, he has such important things to do, he hasn't time to bother much with—with a person he still thinks of as a little girl. Why, I told you, he would hardly have known me if I hadn't spoken to him! He's going away to-morrow, leaving for Touggourt. There are all sorts of exciting preparations to make for a tremendous expedition he means to undertake, though it will be months before he can be ready to start. He can think of nothing else just now. Oh, it was only 'How do you do?' and 'Good-bye' between us, I assure you, over there at the little tea-table I'd been keeping for you and me."
"It didn't look like anything so superficial," Max found himself trying once more to console her. "I'm sure it must really have meant a lot to him, meeting you. I could see even in the one glance I had, how absorbed he was——"
"Yes, in his map! He was pointing out his route to me, after Touggourt. He's chosen Touggourt for his starting-place, because the railway has just been brought as far as there. And there's a man in Touggourt—an old Arab explorer—he wants to persuade to go with him if he's strong enough. He—and some other Arab Richard came to Algiers to see, are the only two men alive, apparently, who firmly believe in the Lost Oasis that Sir Knight means to try to find, when he can get his caravan together, and start across the desert early next autumn after the hot weather."
"The Lost Oasis? I never heard of it," said Max. "Is there really such a place somewhere?"