The Lighted Match

At Von Ritz's elbow stood Pagratide.

Slowly Benton came to his feet, his ears ringing. Then as Karyl turned

from the girl and held out his hand to him, the American heard, as one

listening through the roaring of a fever, some question about affairs in

Galavia.

He heard Karyl answer, and though the words seemed to come from

somewhere beyond Port Said, he recognized that the former King tried to

speak in a matter-of-fact voice.

"I have no Kingdom. Louis took it."

Karyl had held out his left hand. The right was bound down in a sling.

But these things were all vague to Benton because it seemed that the

pilgrim's tom-toms were beating inside his brain, and beating out of

time. He could see that Karyl's eyes also were weary and lusterless.

Turning with an excuse for travel-stain to be removed, Karyl halted.

"Benton," he said. There he fell silent. "Benton," he said again,

forcing himself to speak in a voice not far from the breaking point,

"Blanco--Blanco is dead."

He turned on his heel and went into the hotel.

Blanco dead! For a moment Benton felt an insane desire to rush after

Karyl and demand his life for Blanco's. Some delirious accusation that

this man cost him every dear thing in life seemed fighting for

expression and reprisal, then he realized that the toreador had won

his way into Pagratide's affection as well as his own. Tears came to his

eyes for an instant. He focused his gaze on a cigarette-shop across the

street.

"Lady!"

A grinning Egyptian face, surmounted by a red fez, showed itself over

the railing. The girl started violently and seemed for a moment on the

edge of hysteria. She laughed unnaturally. Thus encouraged, the

Bedouin's grin broadened until it radiated good-humor across the swarthy

visage from cheek-bone to cheek-bone.

"Nice scarabs, lady! Only five piastres--only one shilling," he

spieled. "Scarabs of a dead dynasty. Très antique."