 CHAPTER VII. TO MCCLAIN'S ESTONISHMENT It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble. Andrew McClain remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the packet which his unexpected lunching-guest had pushed over to his plate, uncommon-thoughtful. It is undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the portrait of the man's wife, whatever his name was. Del Casse said Jack Ryder promptly. Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was hot and dusty. You might have sent the thing, McClain mentioned. I daresay that special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he was at the end of his search. And of course, this isn't much of a clue, eh, what? It's everything of a clue, insisted Ryder. It shows where this Frenchman was working for the first thing, unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in the tomb. Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been stolen and hidden, but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely that this was the very tomb where Del Casse was working at the time of his death. For one thing the place showed signs of previous excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern got ahead of me. And for another thing it's a perfect specimen of the limestone carving of the Tomb of Ty, which Del Casse wrote in his book about, looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. There's a flock of hippopotamia in a marsh scene with the identical drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail. But there, you boundary, you don't know the Tomb of Ty from a thyroid gland. You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high, and the low. Your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Ty tomb would be grubbing away. Lord, they could choose their find in those days. It's uncommonly likely, Maclean conceded, abandoning his demolished cherry tart and pulling out his briar. And if the locket proves the duplicate of the other, it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame Del Casse, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame Del Casse. Though in a general way, Maclean deduced with scotch judicialness, it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would hardly have lost her miniature or have sold it, except under pressin' conditions, in fact, Brider was brusque with his facts. That doesn't matter. Madame Del Casse doesn't matter. The thing that matters is, as brusquely he broke off, his tongue blocked before the revelation, but he goaded it on, that there is a girl, the living image of that picture. I say," Maclean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. That's getting on. You mean you've seen her?" Brider nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette. "'Where is she now, in Cairo? That's luck, man. And you say she's like?' You'd think, at her picture. It's an uncommon face." Maclean bent over it again. I fancied the artist had just been makin' a bit of beauty. But if there's a girl like that, fancy stumblin' on that. But where is she? And what name does she go by? "'Oh, her name. She doesn't know her own, of course,' Brider paused uncertainly. "'She's in Cairo,' he began again vaguely. She'd be just about the right age, eighteen or so. She's had awfully hard luck.' Distressfully he hesitated. The shrewd eyes of Maclean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "'Ei, jock,' he said at last, with mock scandal, scarcely veiling rebuke. "'I did not know that you knew any of that sort. The poor wee lost thing. Tell me no.' "'Tell you you're off your chump,' said Jack rudely. There's no lost lamb. Fact is she's never spoken to a man except myself. He rather enjoyed the start this gave Maclean after his insinuations. It helped him on with his story. The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks she's the daughter of Tufik Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and died very soon afterwards, and he brought up this girl as his own. She says she's his only child. He paused ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually to enjoy Maclean's astonishment. As astonishment it was distinctly vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into his friend's mind. Maclean knew, slightly, Tufik Pasha. He knew, supremely, the inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the utter impossibility of any man's speech with her. Yet here was Ryder telling him. Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He touched lightly upon her attempted flight in his pursuit. Even more lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate and the exchange of confidences. She said that her dead mother had been French and that her name was her mother's name, Amy, so there is—but the likeness, man, of a face. She never unveiled to you—well, the next night. The next night? It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of Maclean's astonishment. Yes, the next night. He repeated with careful carelessness. I told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right. There had been some footsteps the night before. And you went? And she came? Do you suppose she sent her father? You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch! Maclean retorted grimly. Well, get on with your damnin' story. The girl took off her veil? Nothing of the kind, said Jack, a trifle testily. So soon, this conventional masculinity championed the conservatism of the other sex. That was just as I was going, gone, in fact. I looked back and she had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face. I saw her as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a picture of her. She is Delcasse's daughter, and she doesn't know it. Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old turk. Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago, Tufik could hardly have been thirty, and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love affair, or it may have been plunder. The girl remembers her? Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that her father was so in love that he never married again. Hmm! That seems to me that I've heard tales about Tufik and of pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and tatlers. However, as to this Delcasse inheritance, I'll just notify the French legation. We'll have to look sharp, said Ryder quickly. There's no time to lose. The girl is to be married. Married? But she'll inherit the money just the same. But she doesn't want to be married, Ryder insisted anxiously. Her father, her alleged father, has just sprung this on her. He says there are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty work by this Hamdi bay, and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the girl, and we've got to stop that. I wonder if we can, said MacLaine thoughtfully. If we can, when the girl is French, when she's been lied to and deceived? She seems to have been taken jolly well care of, brought up as its own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack, MacLaine advised Riley with a shrewd glance from his grey eyes at the other's unguarded heat. Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again, a lovely face, a lovely, unfortunate creature, and if the daughter looked like that, small wonder that Jack was touched, beauty in distress. Some men had all the luck, MacLaine reflected. He had never taken Jack for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to masquerades with one girl and coming home with another. Jack was too good-looking. That was the trouble with the youngster, good-looking and gay-humored, the kind that attracted women. Men and romance were never fluttering about the blank, light-eyed, uninteresting old scotch-man of twenty-nine. A mild and wistful pang, which MacLaine refused to name, made itself known. I'll see the legation, he began. At once I'll wait, urged Ryder, and at once MacLaine went. The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative of his interest. That special agent had returned to France, but his address was left and undoubtedly the family of Delcasse would be grateful for any information which Monsieur MacLaine could send. Send, repudiated Ryder hotly, right to France and back, wait for somebody to come over, can't the legation do something now? The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from the man who is, at any rate, her step-father. They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's marriage. And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage, and remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to alienate the affections of influential Turks or criticised fifteen years ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of the responsibilities of foreign representatives. But to let him dispose of a French girl? He is disposed of her as his daughter, an honourable marriage to a wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his motives. Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right. Carefully MacLaine ignored the other's wrath. Patiently, he explained, it's not what I think, my dear fellow. It's what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of getting the marriage stopped. Then I'll do it myself, declared Ryder. I'll see this toothic posh and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother, and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can always be bluffed. In silence, MacLaine gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded. His quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to heart, and it was a bad business. You will let me do the tellin', he stated at last grimly. What can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle. And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of Toothic Pasha. End of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 of the 40th Store. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The 40th Door by Mary Hastings Bradley. Chapter 8. Toothic Receives. A huge Sudanese admitted them. They found themselves in a tiled vestibule looking through open arches into the green of a garden. That garden Ryder hardly needed to remind himself with whose backdoor he had made such unconventional acquaintance. Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, and on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, gay white walls with green shutters, more suggestive of a French villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Sudanese marshaled them toward the stairs upon the right. The left, then, was the way to the harem lick, and some were in those secluded rooms to which no man but the owner of the palace ever gained admission was a me. The Sudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door into a long drawing-room, from which the Pasha's modernity had stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs. The windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper instead of paneling, and one corner was a Victrola, and in another, beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays and French novels with explicit titles. The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits of pompous turban gentlemen, in one of which Ryder recognized the familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes. As a Pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague romantic notions of high walls and gilded arches suffered a collapse. Tufik Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these collars were announced, and he was dressed for parade in a very light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his gloved hands, fezz upon his head. For all their smiling welcome his full dark eyes were uneasy. He had grown distrustful of surprises. It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any accusations the Canny Scott announced himself as the bearer of glad tidings, a fortune he announced was coming to the Pasha, or to the Pasha's family, a very rich old woman in France had decided to change her will. There he paused, and the Pasha continued to smile noncommittally, but the word fortune was operating. In the back of his mind he was hastily trying to think of rich old women in France who might change their wills. I am afraid that it's my stupidity which has kept you from the knowledge of this for some weeks, McLean went on. I had so many other matters to look up that I did not at once consult my records. It has been so many years since you married Madame Del Kalf that the name had slipped general recollection. It was twelve years ago, I believe, that she died. Casually he waited, and Jack Ryder held his breath. He felt the full suspense of a pause long enough for the Pasha's thoughts to dart down several avenues and back. If the man should deny it, but why should he? He'd harm in the admission after all these years with Madame Del Kalf's dead and buried, and with a fortune involved in the admission. The Turk bowed, and Ryder breathed again. Ten years, said Tufik softly. Ah, ten, but there's been no communication with France for twelve years or even longer? Possibly not, monsieur. This old aunt, pursued McLean, was a person of prejudice as well as fortune. Hence it is taken a little time for her to adjust herself. He paused and looked understandably at the Turk, who nodded amably as one whose comprehension met him more than halfway. My own aunt was of similar obstancy, he murmured. He added, this fortune you speak of, it comes through my wife. For her inheritors, Madame Del Kalf's, the former Madame Del Kalf's, I should say, left but one daughter. When the Pasha bowed, and again Ryder felt the throb of triumph, he looked upon his friend with admiration how marvelously McLean had worked the miracle, no accusations, no threats, no obstacles, no blank walls of denial. Not a ruffle of discord in the establishment of these salient facts, the marriage of Madame Del Kalf's to the Pasha and the existence of the daughter. Wonderful man, McLean, he had never half appreciated him. But the Pasha was not wholly the simple assenter. Do I understand, he inquired, that there is a fortune coming from France for my daughter? And at McLean's confirmation, and when you say, fortune, he continued, you intend to say, and his glance now took in the silent American, considering that some cue must be his. But McLean responded. The figures are not to be divulged. Not until the aunt is in communication with her niece. But they will be large, mishear, for this aunt is a person of great wealth, and yet alive to enjoy it, said Tufik with smiling eyes. An aged and dying woman, dressed in Ryder in haste, her only care now is to see her niece before she dies. Ah! But that could be arranged, said Tufik aimably. We have at once communicated with France, McLean told him, but we came instantly to you to inform you. A thousand thanks, and a thousand. The bearers of good tidings smiled their host. Because we understand that there is a question of the young lady's marriage, pursued McLean. And Yerwood, of course, wished to defer this until these new circumstances are complied with. The Pasha stared. Not at all. A fortune is as pleasant to a wife as to a maid. There are so many questions of law, offered McLean with purposeful vagueness. French wardship and trustyship and all that. It would be advisable, I think, to wait. Absurd, said the Pasha, easily, Yerwood want no doubts cast upon the legality of the marriage, McLean persisted thoughtfully. And since Mademoiselle is underage, and the French law has certain restrictions, pfft, we are not under French law. At least I have not heard that England has relinquished her power, retorted to thick, not without malice. But Mademoiselle Delcasse is French, thrust in writer. He knew that McLean had ventured as far as he, an official, and responsible person, could go, and that the burden of intimation must rest upon himself. And under her father's will, his family there is considered in trustyship, so there would be certain technicalities that must be considered, before any marriage can be arranged, the signature of the French guardian, the settlement of the dot. This inheritance, for instance, all mere formalities, but involving a little delay. Tufik Pasha turned in his chair, and cocked his eyes at this strange young man who had dropped from the blue with this extensive advice. He looked puzzled. This American fitted into no type of his acquaintance. He was so very young, and slim, and boyish, with not at all the air of a legal representative, but McLean's position vouched for him. You speak for the French family, Michaud? Unhesitatingly, Ryder declared that he did. Then you may inform the family, announced to Tufik, bristling, that my daughter has been very well cared for, all these years, without advice from France. I haven't a doubt of it, said Ryder quickly, but the French law might begin to entertain doubts of it if Mademoiselle were married off now without consultation with the authorities. Already, he added a little meaningly, as the other shrugged the suggestion away, there have been questions raised concerning the mother's marriage and the separation of the little Mademoiselle del Casse from her relatives in France, and now if she were to be married without an illegal settlement of her estate. Eventually he sustained the other's gaze, while his unfinished thought seemed to float significantly in the air about them. Have a cigarette! said the Pasha, hospitably, extending a gold case monogrammed with diamonds and emeralds. Ah! Coffee! he announced welcomely, as a little black boy entered with a brass tray of steaming cups. I hope, gentlemen, that you like my coffee. It is not the usual Turkish brew, no, this comes from Aydin, the finest coffee in the world. A ship captain brings it to me especially. Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that suspended sentence. But you were saying, something of a trusteeship, do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame Del Casse, the former Madame Del Casse, who is leaving this money? Not of Madame, but of Mishul Del Casse, Maclean informed him. Ah! There counts. But in that case, then, there need be no concern in France over my daughter's marriage. He turned his round eyes from one to the other a moment. There is no Madame Del Casse. Sir? said Rider sharply, there is no Madame Del Casse, repeated the Pasha, his eyes frankly in liven, but we have been just speaking, you cannot mean to say. We have been speaking of my daughter, the daughter of the former Madame Del Casse. Smilingly he looked upon them. A pity that we did not understand each other, but you appear to know so much, and I supposed that you knew that, too, that the daughter of Mishul Del Casse was dead. Neither of the young men spoke, Maclean looked politely attentive, Rider's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the fluctuations of his feelings. It was many years ago, the Pasha murmured, putting down his coffee-cup and selecting another cigarette, not long after her mother's marriage to me, a very charming little girl, I was positively attached to her, Toothick admitted reminiscently. Well, well, well, what a pity now, said Maclean very slowly. This would be a great disappointment. And so the present Mademoiselle is my daughter. Maclean was silent, Rider could hardly trust himself to speak. What did she die of, he asked at last, in a voice whose edged quality brought the Pasha's glance to him with a flash of hostility behind its veil, but he answered calmly enough. Of the fever, Mishul, she was never strong. And her grave I should like to make a report. It was in the south, desert Burial, I am afraid. You must know that the little one was hardly a true believer for our cemetery. And you would say that she was only five or six years old? Rider persisted, the Pasha nodded. I should like to get as near as possible to the date, if it is not too much trouble. The father died fifteen years ago, and the mother was married to you soon after. Really, Mishul, you, Toothick was frankly restive. I knew nothing of the father, he said sullenly. Just to the child's death, how can one recall after these years? In one, two years, after she came to me, one does not grave these things upon the eyeballs. But you do remember that it was long ago, when your own daughter was very little? Exactly. That is my recollection, Mishul. And I recall, said the Pasha, suddenly obliging and sentimental, that even my little one cried for the child. It was afflicting. Assure the family and friends of my sympathy in their disappointment. I am very sorry that my news is after all of new interest to you, observed McLean, setting the example for rising. You pardon my error of information, and accept my appreciation of your courtesy. It is I who am indebted for your trouble. Their host assured them all smiles again. But Rider was not to be led away without a parting shot. The name of the Delcasse child was Amy. Imperceptibly, Tufik hesitated, then bowed in ascent. Odd, said young Rider thoughtfully, and your own daughter's name also is Amy, two little ones with the same name. With a slight vexed laugh, as one despairing of understanding, the Pasha turned to McLean. Your young friend, Mishul, is uninformed that Turkish children have many names. After the loss of the elder, we called the little one by the same name. I trust I have made everything perfectly clear to you. As Kristal, said McLean politely, as lightning, said Jack Rider hotly, striding down the street. It was a flash of invention that yarn. When I spoke about the question raised by his marriage, the old fox sniffed the wind and was afraid of trouble. He decided on the instant that no future fortune was worth interference with his plans, and he cut the ground from under our feet. Lord, what a lie! Masterly, you must admit. Oh, I admired the beggar even while I choked on it. But fever, desert burial, two Amis, and the sentimental face he pulled, he ought to have had a spotlight in wailing woodwinds. McLean chuckled. I'll believe anything of him now, Rider rushed on. I'll bet he murdered Delcasse and kidnapped a mother, and now he's selling their daughter. I fancy murders a bit beyond our Toothic, that's too thick. He's probably telling the truth there. He may never have known Delcasse, and as for the widow, she must have been in no end of trouble with a dead man in a wrecked expedition, and a baby on her hands, and Toothic may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. He'd be surprised at the things I've heard, and if she looked like her picture, Toothic probably laid himself out to be lovely to her. I'd rather like the chap myself. I love him, Rider snorted, the infernal liar. Steady now, suppose it's all the truth, nothing impossible to it. Fact is, I'd rather believe it, said McLean imperturbably. It hangs together. If this girl he met thinks she's his daughter, that's conclusive, she'd have some idea, serve in gossip of family whispers, and why should he have brought her up as his own? No other children, and he'd grown fond of her, of course, if you could see her, retorted Rider, just as well I can't, and I think he could hardly have kept her in the dark. We'd better call it a way of goose chase and say the man's tellin' the truths. If this girl were his daughter, she couldn't be more than fourteen years old, and I've seen the girl, and she's eighteen if she's a day, you might take her for twenty. Fourteen, said Rider, in repudiating scorn, hesitatingly McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the natives. The natives, Rider flung back angrily, this girl's French. As far as we're concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish. And fourteen, we can't get around that, and you had better not forget it, his friend quietly advised. We've done everything that we can, and there's no use workin' yourself up. If anybody's to blame in this business, I don't think it's too thick. He's done the handsome thing by her. But the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, and forget it, there's nothing more to be done. It was sound advice. Jack Rider knew it. They had done all that they could. McLean had been a brick. There remained nothing now but to notify the Delcasse Anne that Tufik Pasha claimed the child. An eye of an ocean, Jack, said McLean thoughtfully, that he might not have done that if he hadn't rushed him so, trying to break off the marriage, that was what frightened him. I thought you said she was his own daughter. Rider responded indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, she will be now, to all time. It was a haunting thought. It left Rider 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 Tufik 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 Ginny 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 the distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he slipped out the garden's backdoor and wandered up and down the dark canyon of Elaine. He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepard'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 the truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen plans he considered and rejected. There were the males, simple and obvious channel, but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, especially, Tufik 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 riders sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy, trousered Saïs, 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 riders' 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 Appasha's daughter, that she could be induced to make use of it for him. Desperately he thought of remodeling this defect. There were several charming young matrons, not averse to devoted young men, but the time was short for establishing those confidential relations which were what he required now. Ginny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Ginny would not return for another week, and if she changed her mind and took the boat back, as he, Alak, had advised, instead of the express, then she would be longer. And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now, since he and McClane had heard the Sudanese locking the door behind them. There seemed nothing for it, but to trust that idea which had been slowly shaping in his mind. CHAPTER IX A WEDDING PRESENT In a room high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. For a tall, pure glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging, to the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly from the image in the glass. Through the open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and beyond the palms the hot, bright blue sky and the far towers of a minaret. A little more to the left, if you please, miss, the woman intruded through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure moved. A bit of all right now, that drape, the woman chirped, sitting back on her heels to survey her work. She was an odd, gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed features had an effect of popping out of bondage. She was London-born, brought out by an English official's wife as a dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care, and the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have graced a court-bowl, and lunching in familiar sociability with the family, sometimes having a bae or a captain or a pasche for a vis-à-vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon. As the girl did not turn her head, she looked for appropriation to the third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome French woman in black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulvenne, teacher of French and literature to the genre-feel of Cairo, former governess of Amy, returning now to her old room in the palace for the wedding preparations. There was history behind Madame's sculptured face. In an incredibly impulsive youth she had fled from France with a handsome captain of Algerian dragoons. After a certain matter at cards he had ceased to be a captain, and became petty official in a Cairo importing-house. Later yet he became an invalid. Life for the French woman was a matter of paying for her husband's illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send to a convent in France. There was at first the hope of reunion, extinguished by each added year. What could Madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited accomplish in France? The mere getting there was impossible. The little one required so much. Her daughter was no dependent upon charity, and in Cairo Madame had a clientele. She commanded a price. And so, for the child's sake, she taught and saved, concentrating now upon a dot. And feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters arriving each week of the years and the occasional photographs of an ever-growing, unknown young creature. It was to Madame's care that Amy had been given when the motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam's administrations. And for nearly nine years in the palace Madame had maintained her courteous and tactful supervision. Indeed, it was only this last year that Madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, perceiving that Amy would not longer require her. Excellent, she said now, in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. Hendricks, and in French to Amy she added, with a hint of asperity. Do give her a word, she is trying to please you. It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks, said the girl dutifully, bringing her glance back from that far sky. The little seamstress was suddenly all vivacity. And now for the sash shall we have at it so or so, she demanded, attaching the wisps of tool experimentally. As you wish it, it is very nice, Amy repeated vaguely. She picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously across her fingers. A dinner gown. When she wore this she would be a wife. The wife of Hamdi Bey. A shiver went through her and she dropped the tool swiftly. In ten days more. Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be accomplished. Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that strange, brief past. There was a stir at the door, and on her shuffling, slippered feet old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulivan. Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a croon like a lullaby. Beautiful as the dawn, she will walk upon the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals. She will dazzle him with the beams of her eyes, and with the locks of her hair she will bind him to her. Beautiful as the dawn. It was the marriage chant of Miriam's native village, an old love song that had come down the wind of centuries. Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest attention, and Madame de Coulivan displayed interest only in the packages, if she saw the stiffening of the girl's face and the rigid aversion of her eyes from the old nurse's adolation she gave no sign. Towards Amie's moods Madame preserved a calm and sensible detachment. Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young girl's charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of that absent daughter, as if jealously she had held herself aloof from such devotion. Perhaps Amie's indulged and petted childhood with a fond pasha extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score a tennis at delegation, Madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely child in France. Certainly there was nothing in Amie's life then to invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of the girl's first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften the inevitable for her with a useless compassion. So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the useful fretting, and offered the example of her own unmoved acceptance. What diamonds, she said now admiringly, holding up a pin and examining the card, from Sennaha Hanam, the cousin of Hamdi Bey. A moment more she held up the pin, but the girl would not give it a look. And this, from the same jewelers, continued Madame, while the dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that no scratch should mar that milk-white skin. How droll, the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid. Amie spun about. The dress fell a glistening circle at her feet, and with regardless haste she tripped over it to Madame. How strange, she said breathlessly, a plaid, a scotch plaid, memories of an erect, tart-and-draped young figure, of a thin, bronze face and dark hair, where a tilted cap sat rakeishly, memories of smiling boyish eyes, darkening with sudden emotion, memories of eager lips. She took the box from Madame. Within the cloth lay a jeweler's case, and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold. Her heart beating, she opened it. For a moment she did not understand. Her own face, her own face smiling back, yet unfamiliar, that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat. Mermoring Madame shared her wonder. It was Miriam's cry of recognition that told them, "'Thy mother, the grace of Allah upon her, it is thy mother, eh, those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot nights upon the roof.' "'But you are her image, Amie,' murmured the French woman, but half understanding the nurse's rapid gutter-rolls, and then, her father's gift?' With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the tell-tale color in her cheeks. "'But whose else, his thought, of course,' she stammered. That plaid was warning her of mystery. The dressmaker was creating a diversion, leaving she wished to consult about the purchases for tomorrow's work, and Madame moved towards the hall with her, talking in her careful English, while Miriam bent towards the dropped finery. Amie slipped through another door into the toilet of her bedroom, whose windows upon the street were darkened by those fine wrought screens of wood. Swiftly she thrust the box from sight into the hollow in the Mastroubillet made in old days to hold a water-bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street. Leaning against the woodwork her fingers curving through the tiny openings she stared toward the west. The sky was flushing, broken by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the Mastroubillet. She saw the city taking on the hues of sunset. Suddenly the cry of a musin from a nearby minaret came rising and falling through the streets. La ilayhi il'Allah, Muhammadun, Rezool Allah. The call swelled and died away and rose again. There is no God, but the God, and Muhammad is the Prophet of God. From farther towers it sounded, echoing and re-echewing, vibrant and insistent, falling upon crowded streets, penetrating muffling walls. La ilayhi il'Allah. In the avenue beneath her two Arabs leading their camels to market were removing their shoes and going through the gestures of ceremonial washing with the dust of the street. La ilayhi the city was ringing with it. The seamstress and the French woman, still talking, had passed down the hall. In the next room Miriam's lips were moving in pious testimony. Ech hiddu en la ilayhi. I testify that there is no God, but the God. In the street the Arabs were bowing towards the east, their heads touching the earth, and in the window above them a girl was reading a note. The last call of the musin falling from the tardy towers of Kayat Bay drifted faintly through the colored air. With resounding wax the Arabs were urging on their beast, Miriam, her prayers concluded, was shaking out silks and tulle with a side long glance for that still figure in the next room, pressing so close against the guarding screens. She could not see the pallor in the young face. She could not see the tumult in the dark eyes. She could not see the note crushed convulsively against the beating breast in the fingers which so few moments ago had drawn it from the hiding place in the box. Ryder had not dared a personal letter, but clearly and distinctly he stated the story of the Delcasses. He gave the facts which the Pasha admitted and the ingenious explanation of the two Amis, and for reference he gave the address of the Delcasse aunt and agent in France, and of Ryder and McClain at the agricultural bank. The Pasha did not dine with his daughter that night. He had been avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of too excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before the young, and it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes of his late misfortunes and of her absurd reluctance towards matrimony. As if this marriage were not the best thing for her, as if it were a hardship to make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the wife of a rich general, irrational, the little sweet meat was irritating. To this point two-fix buoyancy had brought him, and all the more hastily because of his eagerness to escape the pangs of that uncomfortable self-reproach. To Ami, in her new clear-sidedness of misery, it was bitterly apparent that he was reconciled with her lot and careless of it. So blind it had been her young affection that it was a hard awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for his easy humours that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and resentful, and deeply cold. And now, this letter, it dazed her like a flame of lightning before her eyes, and then, like lightning, it lit up the world with terrifying luridity. Fiery-coloured, unfamiliar, her life trembled about her. Truth or lies? Custom and habit stirred incredulously to reflect the supposition. The romance, the adventure of youth, dared its swift acceptance. How could she know? Intuitively she shrank from any question to the Pasha, realising the folly and futility of exposing her suspicion. If he needed to lie, lie he would, and in her understanding of that, she read her own acceptance of the possibility of his needing to lie. Madame Tukulevan? Madame had never known her mother. Only Old Miriam had known her mother, and Miriam was the Pasha's slave. But the old woman was unsuspecting now, and full of disarming comfort in this marriage of her wild darling. Through dinner she planned the careless seeming questions, and then, in her negligee, as the old nurse brushed out her hair for the night. Dadi, said the girl in a faint voice, am I truly like my mother? And when Miriam had finished her fond preface station, that they were as like as two roses, as two white roses, bloom and bud, she launched that little cunning phrase on which she had spent such eager hoping. And was I like her when I was little, when first she came to my father? Eh, yes, always delves the tiny image which Allah, glory to his name, had made of her, came the nurse's assurance. I am glad, sent a me in a trembling voice. She dared not press that more. Confronted with her unconscious admission, the old woman would destroy it, feigning some evasion. But there it was, for as much as it was worth. Presently then she found another question to slip into the old woman's narrative of the Pasha's grief. Eh, till here a man weep, Miriam was murmuring, her beauty had set its spell upon him, and, and he lost her so soon, three or four years only, was it not, ventured, Amy, that they had have life together? It seems that Miriam's brush missed a stroke. Years I forget, the nurse muttered, but tears I remember, and she began to talk of other things. But it seemed to Amy that she had answered. As for that other matter of the dead Delcasse child, she dared not refer to it, lest Miriam tell the Pasha. But how many times she remembered had she been told that she was her mother's only one. Yet, oh, to know, to hear all the story, to learn writer's discovery of it, it was all as strange and startling as a tale of jins. And the life it held out to her, the enchanted hope of freedom, of aid, oh, not again would she refuse his aid. She had no plans, no purposes. But that night over her hastily dawned frock, she slipped the black street mantle, and when at last, after endless waiting, the murmuring old palace was safely still and dark, she stole down the spiral stair and gained the garden. And then, a phantom among its shadows, she fled to the rose bushes by the gate. Breathlessly she knelt and dug into the hiding-place of that gate's key. To the furthest corner her fingers explored the hole, pushing furiously against the earth, and then she drew back her hand and crushed it against her face to check the nervous sobs. The hole was empty, the key was gone. CHAPTER 10 THE RECEPTION In Tufik Pasha's harem everything was a stir. It was the morning of the marriage. Almost the very hour when the wedding cortege would bear the bride from her father's home to the house of her husband. The invited guests were already arrived, and streaming through the reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide and evening toilets surrounding the exhibited gifts were pausing about tables of cool syrups. And their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of high-bred Turkish women rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to the tensor regions about, tightening the excitement of haste. The bride was not yet ready. Still and white she was the only image of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were hovering about her, and her maids of honour, two charming little Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam, resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver them. On her knees the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, her head a-tilted like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming sentimentally upon the bride. The prettiest I ever did see, she pronounced with satisfaction, has pretty as a wax figure now, only a thought too waxy. And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the sweeping satin, over-rich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes portrayed the tumult within. Your diadem, my dear, you are keeping us attending, came Madame de Coulavan's voice from the door. The diadem, that heavy-circlet of brilliance which crowned the eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of western convention, must not be touched by the bride's fingers, but placed by one of her friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in that marriage. Goul Adin, a meese selection from her friends, stepped hastily forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy with domesticity. No question of Goul Adin's happiness. She extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy, unquestioning absorption. A shaft of irony sped through Emy as she bent her head for its crowning at this young wife's hands and received the ceremonial wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour. Without that outlet for her tortured spirit, she felt she would grow suddenly mad, hysterical, and babbling, or passionate and wild. So many moods had stormed through her since that night, when she had found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key. So many impulses seeth frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last time that white misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her humiliation, arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were all that mattered to this hour, wishing her happiness as if happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing, smiling, fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the familiar acceptances of every day. If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and from her heart its dumb terrors. If only she had the courage for some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength. I am ready, she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that train of three yards' length which stretched so regally behind her in her slow descent of the stairs. In the French drawing room below her father was waiting for the ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's thanks for all his care of her. Mechanically Emy advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her eyes, and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, questioning intensity that it was like something palpable. She had not foreseen this sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant passion of her spirit. Her father, was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so careless, callous? Or was it only a father's semblance, and did there lie in the background of those petted childish years some darker shadow of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and broken her heart? Like a flashing light that looked past between them, it penetrated Tufic's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's peak, perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his power, but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul. It was a moment in which the last chord of their relationship was severed forever. She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom dictated, but to sweep a long, slow curtsy, that salutation of a maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered. And yet there was a wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear and supplication. Tufic was to beg now, she knew it, and yet the eyes implored. And then she smiled, and before that smile Tufic faltered in his paternal benediction and hastened the phrases. Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their charchefs for the journey to the bridegroom's house. That day Emy did not put on her veil. On either side of her as she went out her father's gate huge negroes held up silken walls of damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulvain and the two little maids of honour. It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her grew to a whirlwind. The horses hooves trotting, trotting, the motion of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If she could only stop it, if she could only cry out, tear up in the windows, scream to the passers-by. She knew these were only the impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully. She saw herself in those moments helpless and hopeless, passing on into the slavery of this marriage. Emy no longer the daughter of Tufik Pasha, but Emy Delcasse, child of a dead Frenchman, inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl. And her own lips had assented, in the supreme, silly uselessness of sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had spent such careless indulgence upon her, that man whom perhaps her mother had loved, and perhaps had hated. Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests and trousseau, rolling on under the libyx and sycamores of the wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the Gazira Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige. Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to curious attention, and through a half-moon gate Emy cut once a glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Further on came glimpses of farmlands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of well-wooded heights, and in the distance the white houses of Demmerdach against the Ghibil Akmal beyond. But where were they bearing her? Emy had a despairing sense of distance and desolation as the carriage turned again, Abdullah the coachman having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride before the house of his parents, and made a zig-zag way towards the river, where old palaces roged from the back-waters, their faces hidden by high walls are covered with heavy vines and moss. Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world from that bright modern Cairo that she knew. This was as remote from her daily life as the old streets of Al-Rashid. Her thoughts flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage the horror of a life together when unknown, fearful familiarities would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies. Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent Ethiopian was standing before an open doorway through which a rich carpet was spread. Ah, but he looks like an ogre that new eunuch of yours, Amy, murmured one of the little turks. The other, more touched with thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness. Madame Alon Sareen ignored the dismaying impression. The palace is of a fine ancient beauty, I am told, she mentioned cheerfully. For one wild instant Amy thought to plead with her, to implore her to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of herself and her bridal robes in flight brought the hysterical laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by, and as for Madame's pity on her, this was not the first time that Amy had thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well, that thought's supreme futility. Sympathetic as Madame Dukovayne might be in her inmost heart, and Amy, devined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of existence, never would sympathy betray her to rashness. She would never believe that in serving Amy, she would not be ruining her, and even if assured of Amy's safety, she could never be brought to betray her own reputation for trustworthiness among the harems of Cairo, as well appeal to the rocks of the Macadam Hills. The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one moment's parting of the silken walls, the girl saw a sun-flooded cluster of stirring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the damask intervened, and through its lane, followed by her duena and her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway. She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, overspread with ancient moss-encrusted trees. A broken marble fountain flung up waters into which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping-stones leading to it were buried in untrodden grass, a garden in which no one lingered. The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were streaming out in availed procession. He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule, and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the sultan's guard. Amy had a confused impression of a thin, meagre, dandified figure with a waspish waist, of a blonde mustache with upstanding ends, of shallow cheekbones and small, light eyes, smiling at her in a strained, eager curiosity. Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as represented, if his cousin's fervor had misled his hope, but in that instance encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and gaiety, and he smiled, a smile curiously feline, ironic for all its intended ingratiation, a conqueror's smile, winged to assure and melt. He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard to the apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit and the body. She knew in a moment that she hated this man, and that he inspired her with fear and horror. Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the ancient marriage-throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous crown from which old embroidered silks hung heavily. Then with an unheard phrase and another bow he left her to the day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again until night when he would pay her a call of ceremony. She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming guess, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled, sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tool and gauze, that he had never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon the throne. How often in these last years Amie had pityed that poor puppet of a bride, stuck there like some impaled winged creature, helpless for flight to the exhibition of the long stream of passers-by. How often she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never would she be given to an unknown, and now. She was smiling as she faced him. That light-fixed smile she had seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious, satirical, cynical or sympathetic, that light-smile defied them all, but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of some mortal hurt. The sympathy unconsciously betrayed was hardest. The whispers of her young maids of honour, really, Amie, he looked so young, one would never surmise, were more galling in their intended consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friend's own shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man, than the barbed-art of the uncaring, inquisitive, how do you find him, my dear? He has the reputation for conquest. They were all there, her friend's young, slim, modest Turkish girls whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient drawing-room, with its solid side of Mašrubie, its old-wall panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their glances back at her as if to ask. This is our revoltee. Is this her end in this dim old palace among the ghosts of the past? Some the frankest murmured, but why did you not refuse? And others attempted consolation with a light, as well the first as the last, since we must all come to it. Of the married women there were those who raised blank bitter eyes to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to infuse encouragement into their smiles, as if they said, Come, courage, it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women, after all. We do not need so much for happiness. Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your spirit in place of a Mašr, delighting in your beauty alone. What are they? Those dreams. But the childless stuff a fancies. For other races, perhaps, but for you, take hold of life. There are realities yet in it to bring you joy. It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their pressure of her hands. And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening unhearingly to the sea of voices, breaking on her ears, responding in vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of terror rose higher and higher in her soul. Never had she given way to her fear. Ever since the black night when she found the key was gone. Then after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the breaking sobs of rebellion and despair, and of a longing so deep and so terrible that it seemed to render with a physical anguish a pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar. Never again would she see him now. Never would she know. Never would she know all. She had refused his aid, and he might believe her still aloof incredulous. It was finished, forever and ever. She had told herself that before, but always there had been the key, and now there was no key and no escape, and her heart broke itself against the iron of necessity. She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, not peace, but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison gate is shut, and if there was never to be freedom for her, never again the sight of that two remembered face and the sound of that voice, why then as well one's fate as another, and it was too late now to recede. So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half contemptuous pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she would keep its own in its unsullied dreams and in its memories. Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly born. But now she had seen the man, now this wild dislike, this sickening terror, to be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship which the Mohammedan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be forever at his mercy in the solitary palace with its echoing corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age. She thought wildly of death. And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her, listening to praises of her beauty. For she was beautiful, no image of wax now. The scarlet of her frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the throne-back veil her dark hair revealed its lovely wealth. Is she not a rose? Will he not adore her, our Hamdi? She heard that stout cousin of Hamdi say to a companion, and the two stared on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated master. And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the flickering light and shadow of the Meshrubie, slender young Turks or blond Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some rotund matron graved in serene, her head encircled with an old-fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks, bought at Damascus so as not to enrich the unbelievers at Lyon. And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared, Yasmuks and Charchefs, for now the doors were open to all the feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women slipping out from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace. Old-timers often draped in turban in the fashion of some far province of their youth, women incredibly fat and rich stuffs of Asia, their bright, deep-sunkened eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor women, keeping courage in twos and threes. Now two at four came the women from the embassies, a Russian girl with whom Amy had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with yesterday's sun, and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half dead, already consigned to the tomb. Other girls she did not know, who stared at her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities. Older women experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a lifetime of talk, asking amably the most incredible questions. And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane, she says she has never met him. A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainty. She was a pretty girl with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her smart straw, and very bright eyes where shyness was at variance with a friendly smile. Indeed Ginny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an almost inaudible tone. It is very good of you to let us come. I wish you every happiness, she said. Beside her, a tall slender figure and a black charchef and Yasmuck made its appearance. Amie's eyes slipped past the pretty American. The mechanical smile was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes, bright with excitement, vivid as speech, the eyes of the masquerader in the scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate, Jack Ryder's eyes, the eyes of her dreams. End of Chapter 10. CHAPTER 11 THE FOURTY DOOR When Ryder had dispatched from the jewelers who had polished the locket for him that package with its secret note and its warning plaid, he had no real assurance that the message would fall into Amie's hands. But he could think of nothing better, and he argued very favorably for his stratagem. That miniature should have some effect, and given the miniature and the bit of plaid cloth, Amie's quick wit ought to divine a message. She had always the key, he remembered, and the power of Egress from her prison, and surely it ought not to be difficult for her to devise some way of getting a letter into the post. So his hope fluctuated between the garden gate and the daily mail at the bank, and he rather surprised McLean by the frequency and brevity of his visits, and by the duration of his stay in Cairo. For that he had an excuse, both to McLean and to the deserted Thatcher at the excavation camp. Two excuses, in fact, some belated identification work to be done at the museum, and a cracked wisdom tooth. Chiefly he spoke of the necessity for dentistry, and accounted for his moods with his molar. Of moods he had many. Moods when he contemplated his behavior lightly and brightly, or darkly in unreleaved disgust. Moods when he refused to contemplate it at all. But he stayed. That was the conspicuous and enduring thing. He stayed. Ginny Jeffery's return from the Nile by Express to find him ensconced at her hotel, and her bright confidence suffered no diminution of its self-respect. And it was through Ginny that Chance set another straw of circumstance dancing his way. Ginny had a frock she wished repaired. Mrs. Heath Brown, whom she had met upon the Nile, recommended to her a Mrs. Hendricks, wife of a British soldier, and a most clever little needle-woman. Ginny looked up Mrs. Hendricks, and found it impossible to secure her for some days, as she was busy refitting for a fashionable wedding in the Muhammadan world. A night later, and two nights before the wedding, Ginny made a narrative of the circumstances for Jack Ryder's benefit. Such frocks as I have to do, and the young lady no more caring! I'd been a saying of Mrs. Hendricks that Ginny passed interestingly on to Jack. She had no memory of the young lady's name, but distinctly she recalled that she was young and beautiful, and to marry a general. It was enough to launch Ginny's eager interest in Muhammadan marriages, and foster the wish that she might attend one. She regretted Mrs. Heath Brown's absence and her lack of acquaintance, and suggested that Jack ought to know someone. Better than that, I'll take you, said Jack, with a promptness that brought a light to Miss Geoffrey's eyes. There was also a light in Jack Ryder's eyes, a swift burning of excitement and adventure. Why not? The thing was possible, muffled in a charge-off, and veiled with a heavy yasmuk, armed with enough Arabic for the briefest of encounters, he might dare the danger, who in the world would discover him, who would ever know? The thing was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, comparable only in his vague analogies to the mecca-pilgrimage and the profanation of a holy tomb, but its very improbability would prevent detection. Only Ginny had to keep her mouth extremely shut before and afterwards. He impressed this upon her so thoroughly, as they did their shopping for the costume together the next morning, that she had compunctious moments of solicitude when she said he really ought not to, she would feel responsible. Thereupon he laughed and dared her to be game, and she grew all mirthful confidence again. But that night, sitting alone in a native café over his Turkish coffee, Ryder was grimly serious. He knew that it was a mad thing to do. He felt not so much the danger he ran from discovery, but the danger to his already shattered peace of mind from another glimpse of that strange girl, that young unknown, on whom he had spent such time and thought, of late, that she seemed a very part of his existence. What was the good of going to her wedding reception? Feebly he told himself, that it was his only chance to inform her upon the history of the Delcasses. There might have been reasons for her non-appearance at the gate, for her not writing. He could have no glimmering of what went on behind those barred windows. This was his only chance, he meant to say, to tell her, but his eager sense is murmured, to see her again. That was it, to see her again. He owned the lure at last, with a bitter ruefulness. But he brightened up at that. It was partly his duty to himself. Now he had all sorts of full imaginings about this girl. He was remembering her as something lovelier than a huri, more enchanting than fairy magic, more sweet than spring. He owed it to himself to route these imbecile prepossessions and proved clearly and dispassionately that the girl was just a very nice little girl, a pretty bride, marrying into a very distinct life from his own, and a girl with whom he would not have an idea in common, a girl in fact far inferior to any American, a girl not to be compared to Ginny Jeffries. Besides there was fun in the thing. It tempted him tremendously. It was adventurous, romantic, forbidden. He heard the word echoed in Turkish behind him. So engrossed in his thoughts had he been that he had been inattentive to the rhythm of the old Kazeeb, the tale-teller's voice as he held forth from the divan beside his long-stemmed pipe to his nightly audience of men and boys, camel-drivers, small merchants, desert men from the long caravans who were the frequenters of this café. Tonight there were few about the old man and writer had small difficulty in drawing nearer the circle, a green-turbaned Arab with the profile of a Washington and the naive eyes of youth whispered to him courteously that it was the tale of the third Kaland, and the Prince Azeeb was in the palace of the forty damsels who were farewelling him, as they were to depart according to custom for forty days. Kazeeb, with a faint salutation of his turban towards the newcomer, went slowly, sonorously on with his tale. We fear said the damsel unto Azeeb, lest thou contraire our charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers, and the amaiest opened of these thirty and nine, but beware, and we conjure thee by Allah and by the lives of us, lest thou open the fortieth door, for therein is that which shall separate us for ever. For a moment the café faded from writer's eyes. He was in the gloom of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and beside him in the shrubbery, a dark shrouded form shaking its shawl headed him in denial, and whispering, lightly but tremblingly, it is a forbidden door, forbidden as that fortieth. There are thirty and nine doors in your life, Mishur, that you may open, but this is the forbidden. He had meant to look up that tale, and now Chance was reminding him of it again. A superstitious man, writer's great-grandfather, perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout man, writer's grandfather, perhaps, would have taken it for a sign from heaven to divert his steps. Writer reflected upon coincidence. When I saw her weeping, Kazeeb was intoning, and now writer attended his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and overleaping the blanks. Prince Kazeeb said to himself, By Allah I will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise. A wise bird thought writer to himself, drawing on his cigarette. And I bade her farewell, continued the voice, slipping into the first person, thereupon all deported, flying like birds, leaving me alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of the first chamber, and found myself in a place like one of the pleasantries of paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest green, and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees, and I smelt the breath of the flowers, and heard the birds sing their praise to Allah, the one, the Almighty. Alhamdulillah, murmured writer's neighbors reverently. And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel yellow. And I looked upon the quince, whose fragrance put its shame, musk, and amber-glease. And upon the pear, whose taste surpasses sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty strikes the eye as if she were a polished ruby. On the morrow I opened the second door, and found myself in a spacious plain set with tall date palms, and bordered by a running stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine. While privet and aglantine, oxy, violet, and lily, narcissus, oregain, and winter giddy flower carpeted the borders, and the breath of the breeze swept over those sweet smelling groves. How inadequate, writer realized, had been the description given by the Book of Genesis to the Garden of Eden. And the third door, droned on the rhythmic voice, into an open hall hung with cages of sandalwood and eaglewood, full of birds which made sweet music, such as the muckingbird and the kusha, the merle, the turtle dove, and the nubian ring dove. A trifle restively, writer stirred, he liked birds, but he wanted to be getting onto that fortieth door, and this was slow progress. Not a sign of impatience marred the bright, absorbed content of the other listeners. Intent now upon the wonders behind that fourth chamber revealed, stores of puddles and jasons and barrels, and emeralds and corals and carbuncles, and all manner of precious gems and jewels, such as the tongue of man could not describe. The storyteller proceeded, then, close Prince Azib, now verily am I the monarch of the age, since by Allah's grace this enormous wealth is mine. And I have forty damsels under my hand, nor is there any to claim them save myself. The handsome Arab, beside writer, inhaled his pipe luxuriously. By the grace of Allah, he said reverently. Then I gave not over-opening place after place until nine and thirty days were passed, and in that time I had entered every chamber except that one, whose door I was charged not to open, but my thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth, and Satan urged me to open it for my own undoing. I see his finish, said writer, interestingly to himself, and any thought of the analogy. So I stood before the chamber, and after a few moments' hesitation, opened the door which was plated with red gold and entered. I was met by a perfume, whose like I had never before smelled, and so sharp and subtle was the odor that it made my senses drunken as with strong wine, and I fell to the ground in a fainting fit that lasted a full hour. When I came to myself I strengthened my heart, and entering found myself in a chamber bespread with saffron and blazing with light. Presently I spied a noble steed, black as the mercs of night when murkiest, standing ready-saddled and bridled, and his saddle was of red gold. Before two manger's, one of clear crystal wherein was husk sesame, and the other also of crystal containing water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marveled and said to myself, doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous mystery and Satan. Satan d'astoned murmured writer's neighbor religiously. Satan cosened me, so I let him without and mounted him, and struck him with awe, when he felt a blow he nae-de-nae with a sound like deafening thunder, and opening a pair of wings flew up with me in the firmament of heaven farred beyond the eyesight of man. After a full hour of flight he descended, shaking me off his back, lashed me on the face with his tail, and gouged out my left eye, causing it to roll upon my cheek. Then he flew away. On rolled the voice, narrowing the prince's descent to the table of the other one-eyed youths, but writer was unheeding, and at the close inclined his head with the other listeners, murmuring, May Allah increase thy prosperity, as he felt in his pockets for the silver which the others were drawing from turban and sleeves and sash to lay in the patriarch's lap, and then raised his head to question diffidently. Would you interpret Okazib the meaning of that door, for I hear that it hath now become a saying of a forbidden thing. The sage hesitated, sucking at his pipe. Then he said slowly, To every man, O youth, is there a forbidden door beyond which waits the steed of high adventure, with wings beyond man's riding, and so the rider is lost and his vision is gone. But for him who could ride, writer suggested, in salah, who can say till he has tried his destiny, and better rather nine and thirty chambers of safe presence, than the lonely sightlessness of the outcast one. It is a tale which if it were written upon the eye-corners with needle-gravers, were a warning to those who would be warned. For a moment their eyes held each other, smiling, but grave. Writer's thoughts were of the morrow, of that forbidden entry he was planning to make, of the risks, the wild uncertainties. Time and council looked significantly out at him, out of those patriarchal eyes, prudence and sanity clamored within him for a hearing. And then he smiled, the whimsical boyish smile of young adventuring. But whoever, O my father, had opened that forbidden door the various crack, and breathed its scent and glimpsed its dazzlement, than for him there is no turning back, he confided. He rose and Kaseeb's eyes followed him. Luck go with you, my son, he said clearly, in Allah's name. And smiling in faint roofleness, may Allah heed thee, Writer murmured piously. CHAPTER XII THE UNINVITED GUEST Now as he stood before Aimee, and saw her eyes widen with recognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all his wit. He stepped hastily forward. Alhamdulillah, glory to God that he has permitted me to behold you this day, he murmured, and the studiously sing-song Arabic that might be expected from a humble Turkish woman, in plain mantle in Yasmuk. May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of enjoyment. And then, lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, can you give me a moment? Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers. Half fearfully Aimee flashed an excited look around her. The space before the marriage-throne had thinned, for there were no more arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations, and the guests were clustering now about the tables for refreshment, or drifting into the next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed orchestra was playing. Miss Geoffrey's alone was lingering near, but she moved off now at a secret look from Ryder, with an appearance of unconcern. I'm going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her. Don't linger or look alarmed, I won't give the show away. So there was no one to overhear a low tone colloquy between the bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English. When I didn't hear from you I had to come to know if you received the package and the letter I sent, with a swift gesture of her little-ringed hand that me drew from the laces of her bosom the heavy gold locket. Indeed I have it and the note too, I found, but I could not write you. There was no way, no one to trust to mail it, and they had stolen my key, she whispered, and the confessing words with their quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those helpless days and nights. He murmured, I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they would find the note. I understood, that plaid about the box that was so clever a warning. I kept the box and hunted in it. I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself from the tomb I was excavating. Do you remember how you wished that I would dig from the sands, whatever secret I most desired? And I found that. And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcasses, of the wife and child of the explorer, who had disappeared fifteen years before. That miniature was your image, and I guessed it once. McLean and I went to the poshah. Oh, I didn't tell him I'd met you. He flung in his eyes twinkling. And we pretended we knew all about his marriage to Madame Delcasse, and he owned up without a quiver. But when we tried to claim you for the French family he doubled like a hare. He said that Delcasse's child was dead, died when his own child was a baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to have this marriage go on without interference, and so I tried to get the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know, he added, as if in palliation of his invasion here, for he realized now how tremendous an invasion it was. All the guests about him had not given him that feeling. All that sea of femininity, those grave matrons whose serenely unveiled faces would burn with the shame to be beheld by this stranger, those bright, slim girls in their extravagant frocks, their tulle, their lace, their perils, their diamonds, all the hidden charms that no man had yet seen stirred in him no more than an excited and adventurous curiosity. But the vision of Amy, that delicate beauty in its tragic irony of throne and diadem, it touched him to tenderness and to an actual sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight visioned this, ethereal and dreamlike, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of dark shining eyes and rose flushed cheeks. He had never seen her hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth, wistful and gay, like the mouth of the miniature, nor her chin so tender and willful, nor her skin, sat and soft in its veiling from the daylight. She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of her helplessness. A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion before the prolonging of his look. But it is dangerous, your being here, she murmured. The fortieth door he reminded her. Under her breath. Ah, you remember? I remember, and but last night I heard Kazeeb, the storyteller, tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning, of the door that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open. And so you opened it, Mishour. Faintly she smiled with downcast lashes. And I came as you first came to me, in mantle and veil. For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which seemed so long ago. But it is too late, she said tremulously. Is it too late for me to help you? At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. Oh, take me away from him, she breathed suddenly, unpremeditatively. Somehow, somewhere. Another figure came towards them. Madame Tukhulvain in all her severe elegance of black. Come and join your friends at supper, my dear. There is no need for you to be pilloried here any longer. She observed with an indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and rider moved slowly away, while Amy came dutifully down from the throne, a huge black bending to hold her train. I thought you were never coming. What were you talking about? Demanded a voice in rider's ear. And he found Ginny Jeffries at his side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. Oh, I wished her joy, native phrases, that sort of thing, he answered mechanically, as they drew back into an embrasure of the mess rubie that formed one side of the great room. But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth that tremendous rate. Why won't you let me stay and listen? You'd have put me off my shot. I had to feel unobserved to play up. You must be fearfully good at Arabic, said Ginny, guilelessly. And what did she say? Why, she didn't say anything in particular. But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with a locket or something, a plague upon Ginny's bright eyes. Oh, yes, the locket, said rider with an effort. She showed it to me. But why, wasn't that awfully funny? Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt, you know, to show a poor guest some of the presents, he explained, manufacturing under pressure. I'd wish she'd show me her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was the only thing about her you'd call really eastern, all those glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands? Ginny went on enthusiastically. Jack, I never knew there was anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply exquisite. I suppose it's her whole life, Miss Jeffries reflected, keeping herself beautiful. Her eyes rested curiously on the feminine groups before them. They haven't anything else to do or think about, have they? I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women. What's the use of it? said the practical daughter of an American college. They can't ever meet any men but just a husband. They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. And well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ballroom. Who wants those two? But we do bring something to committees and clubs and welfare work. Miss Jeffries maintains stoutly. And we are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't dine out. They haven't anybody but themselves to argue with. And it doesn't matter a straw politically what they think. They can't even change the customs that their great-great-great-grandfathers imposed. If I were one of these girls, she declared positively, I wouldn't bother about Kant and chemistry and history. I'd stuff myself full of sweetmeats and lull around on a divan and not care what happened outside. Or else I'd be miserable. Perhaps they are miserable. They ought to fight. Think, think, said Jenny dramatically, of marrying some man you've never seen the way that lovely girl is doing. Suppose she doesn't like him. Suppose he's dull and cranky and mean and greedy. Suppose he bores her. Suppose she actually hates him. Why, Jack, it's horrible. And yet she submits. She submits to it. Suppose she has to submit that she hasn't a soul on earth to help her. How would you fight, I wonder? Well, you don't need to shout about it. That woman's looking now. That woman with the green turban and the stuffed date eyes. Nervously, Jenny glanced around. It's a fearful arc, she murmured. But I don't believe I'd ever have had the nerve if I'd realized. What do you suppose they would do, Jack, if they found you out? Those big blacks look so, so uncivilized. Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the salon. A huge, hideous fellow with red fez, baggy blouse and trousers, and a knife handle sticking sporadically from a sash. He has on English oxfords, said Ryder, lightly. That's a saving something. But they aren't going to find out. I have an idea. We ought to make our getaway now. And that we had better not go together. You go first, and then I'll stroll along and whisk off these duds in some quiet corner. I have to meet a man tonight. But I'll probably see you tomorrow. And don't, he entreated. Don't, as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, breathe a word of my being here like this to anyone, any time, anywhere. I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it, so be wary. Oh, I shall. Ginny Jeffery's promised vividly, and with a last look about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened. And then she drew a sudden breath of relief and glanced up at a sky of sunset fires and felt the free airs play with her hair and face, and so shook off, lightly and gratefully, that darkening impression of shuttered rooms and guarding blacks. Little rivers of wine and fire were bubbling in Amy's veins. She was gay at supper, as a bride should be gay. It was enough for those first few moments that she had seen him again, that he had dared to come and tried to help her, that he had cared enough to come. Her heart sang little peyands of joy and triumph. She sketched impossible scenes of escape. She saw herself in a shrouding mantle slipping with him past the guests at the door. She saw them speeding away in a motor. She saw France, the unknown Delcasse's, a bright, gay world of freedom and romance. Or perhaps, if not tonight, then tomorrow. They would plan. She would obtain permission to take a drive, and there would be a signal, a waiting car. But better now. She could not endure even the call of ceremony from that man who called himself her husband. The very memory of his eyes on her. Decidedly it must be tonight, and Ryder would think of a way. She must get back to him. He would be lingering. She must get away from this hateful table, these guests and companions. A wild impatience tore at her. She grew uneasy, anxious, fretted at the frightening way that time was slipping past. Her radiance vanished. Her smile was nervous, forced, as she sat at her table of honor, amid the circle of her friends, with a linked wreath of candelabra, sending its sparkle of lights over the young faces and jewel-class throats, over the glittering silver on the white satin cloth among the drift of pink and white rose petals. She began to bite her lips nervously. She did not hear what her bridesmaids were chattering about. Her eyes went often with that stealth that invites regard to the tiny platinum and diamond watch upon her wrist. Would they never finish? Would they never be free? She wondered if she dared feign an illness to rise and leave them, but no, that would mean solicitude, companions. And now the slaves were bringing still another round of trays. Oh, hurry, hurry! Her tightening nerves besought. At last the older women were going, not even for a wedding, would they deeply infringe upon that rule, which keeps the Muslim women indoors after the sun has set. Ceremoniously, each made to the bride her adieu and good wishes, and ceremoniously a frantically impatient amie returned the formal thanks due for assistance at the humblefet. She did not see that black mantle anywhere. Her heart sank. Stupid she told herself with quivering lips, to dream that he could dare to linger, that he had any way to get her out. By help he meant no more than getting letters to France for her. And yet his eyes, when they had met hers, surely he had meant. But when she had disappeared from the reception room to attend the supper, when there seemed no way of speaking again to her, and all the outsiders, all but the invited guests, were departed, he had been obliged to go too. Perhaps someone had begun to notice him. She wondered if he had been careful about his shoes, his hands. How had he managed about the dress, anyway? And then she remembered that girl, that pretty American with the ruddy hair to whom she had seen him talking, and she conjectured that there was feminine aid and confidence. A wave of bitterness swept over her. He had told that girl about her. He knew that girl well enough to tell her, and perhaps he was only sorry for the poor little French girl in the Turkish harem. Perhaps they were both sorry. Had he told that girl, she thought with bitter mutiny, that he had kissed her? That girl must have been very sure of him not to be jealous of his interest in herself. And now they could be somewhere together, perhaps talking her over, while she was here, here, forever. She was so white now, so silent, so distraught, that all the chatter of the younger girls who were lingering around her could not dispel the feeling of depression. They cast covert glances of discomfort at each other, begged for more music from the orchestra, tallied with an effort of the size and spaciousness of the palace and the magnificence of the feast. She had told herself that she had ceased to hope. She did not know how false it was until the eunuch brought his message. Then hope really died. The general was below and begged to be announced to madame. We fly, whispered a lingerie with nervous laughter, and hastily the young people hurried into their charches and veils, murmuring among themselves with sidelong glances at that white figure whose cold hand and cheek they had just touched. Suddenly they sped, like light-footed nymphs in some witch's robes, down the long room while madame de Coulverne drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair and murmured, but smile, my dear, to the still figure and escaped with the guests. And then Amy was alone in the great room, deserted of its throngs, a darkening room, full of burned-down candles and fallen flower petals. With here and there the traces of the revelers, a scented handkerchief, a fan, a buckle from some French slipper, or a feather from some ancient turban clasp. Like the ghost of some deserted queen with her regal satins and glittering circlet she waited. There was a moment of grace in which she tried to turn a gallant face toward the next moment. Then he came, advancing. It may have been her distorted fancy, but down the long perspective that figure looked more mincing, more waspish, more unreal than ever, and she was conscious of that swift rising of this lake of antagonism touched with reasonless fear. CHAPTER XIII. CHAPTER XIII. He kissed her hands. She caught the murmur of compliments and the mingled scent of musk and wine. He had been dining at his reception for the men, but he called now for a table and more refreshment. A small table was brought to the end of the room near the marriage-throne, where all the day she had paraded. A richly embroidered cloth of satin was flung over it, and from crowding candelabra fresh lights shed down a little circle of brilliance. Faintly Amy protested that each she could not, and then she made a faint of eating, lingering over her sherbetts, because eating was, after all, so safe and uncomplicated a thing. The black brought champagne in its jacket of ice and filled their glasses. The general rose. On notre bonheur, to our happiness, he declared, holding at his glass, and she clinked her own to it and brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down the hollow stem. The glass trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty childish dreams, the leaden weight of reality seemed to descend crushingly upon her. She felt stricken, inert, apathetic. It was all so unreal, so bizarre. This could not possibly be taking place in her life. This fantastic scene, this table set with lights and food at the end of a dark, deserted old room, opposite this grimacing, foppish stranger. She could barely master strength for her replies. How had it all gone, excellently? She was satisfied with her new home, with the service, the appointments. He plied her with questions, and she tried to summon her spirit. She achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the betrayal of her eyes. He told her, sketchily, of his day, abhorred those affairs, those speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine-glass in his hand, a flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to look at him. Her glance evaded his. She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very ancient, she told him. Very interesting. He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the Mamalukes, his ancestor. Its old, banqueting hall was still untouched. The collectors would give much to rifle that, but they would never get their shark's noses in. Everything had been changed, but something added. Once the mad-cadive had borrowed it for some years, and begun his eternal additions. Forty girls they say he kept here, smiled Hamdi Bey. They gulped their pleasure in those days. It is better to sip, is it not? He smiled. But these are no stories for a bride. I only trust that you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, or your pretty Parisian modernity. She glanced at the glittering table. But I do not find this so, so much of the old school. Here one does not eat rice with the fingers. And I, said the Bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread arm, do you find me too much of the old school, eh, eh? But you, Mishur, she stammered, still looking down. You, I do not know you, not yet. Not yet. Excellent. There will be time. I confess that now I am weary. Ah, and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it, he said solicitously. Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leadened, constricted sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands to it. Permit me, he said quickly, springing to his feet. Permit me to aid you. He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed the circlet a moment, then placed it upon the marriage-throne behind her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of soft, satisfied, little gul ad-din's bestowal of her own happiness. Happiness indeed. And that veil, surely that is incommoting, suggested the suave voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair, where the misty veil was secured. She stammered that it was quite light. She would not trouble him. Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled sanctities for a Muslim, the back of her neck. She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again, to his place at the table. Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, you must forgive the precipitiveness of a lover, he murmured, you do not know your own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no reflections. All is pure and transparent. If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration, she felt that she was lost. You are not complementary, a bit of glass-missure instead of a diamond, but I am too weary to be exacting. If now you will permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw. Little Trembler, said the General facetiously, and reached out a hand to touch her cheek, the light reassuring caress that one might give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror from her lips. She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so smiling in him. He was like an ogre sitting down to a delicate dish of her young innocence, her childish terrors, her frank fears. She could not have told why she found him so horrible, but everything in her shrank convulsively from him. And the need of courtesy to him, and propitiation. The cup was bitterer than her darkest dreams. She wondered how many other women had drained such deadly bruise, had sat in such ghastly despair, before some other bridegroom, affable, confident, masterful. She told herself that she was overwrought, hysterical. The man was courteous. He was trying to be agreeable, to make a little expected love. He had drank a little too much. Another time she might find him different. He was probably no worse than any other man of her world. It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days that one could find love. But it was not her world. It was an alien world enforced in prisoning. That was the bitterest gull of all the deadly cup. There is no need for haste, he was assuring her. In a moment I will call your woman, Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our house. I could wish, said Amy, that I had been permitted to bring my old nurse Miriam, without whom I feel strange. No old nurses, I know their wiles, laughed the bay, setting down his drained cup with a wavering hand. They are never for the husbands, those old nurses. We will have no old trot tricks here. He laughed again. This Fatima is a watchdog, I warn you, my little one. But if she does not please you, we can find another. And as for the rooms, I have assigned this suite to you, the suite of honor. This is the salon, and there, he pointed to a curtain door behind them, opening into a small room that Amy had already seen. There is your boudoir, and beyond that your sleeping apartment. I have had them done over for you, but you shall choose your own furnishings. Everything shall be to your taste, I promise you. You are too sweet to deny. You have but to ask. Certainly she thought he was drunk. He moved his head so jerkily, and his whole body swayed so queery. Desperately she fought against her horror. Perhaps it was better for him to be drunk. Drunken men grow sleepy. Perhaps he would fall down and sleep. Perhaps she ought to urge him to drink. Long ago the black had left the bottle at his elbow and gone out of his room. But she did not move. She sat back in her chair, withdrawn and shrinking, watching him out of those dark, terrified eyes. You are as beautiful as dreams, he told her, leaning towards her with such abruptness that his sword struck clankingly against the table. And even the words of my babbling cousin, eh? Allah reward her. But she did me a good turn with her talk of you. Fixedly he stared at her out of those intent, inflamed eyes. I did not know that there was anything like you in the harems of Cairo. You are like a vision of the old poets. But I suppose that you do not know the ancient poetry. You little moderns are brought up upon French and English and music, and no little of the Arabic and the Persian. I daresay that you have never heard of the poet, Yuteya. Still leaning towards her he began to entone the stanzas in a very fair tenor voice, and if his movements were at all unsteady, his speech was most precise and accurate. From Hort Radiance the sun taketh increase, when she unveileth and shemeth the moonlight bright. He chuckled, Ah, I should put the triple veil upon you, my little moon. How is this one? O sun and moon of palace cast thy sight. Enjoy her flower-like face, her fragrant light. Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black. Beauty in case of brow, so purely white. He got up and drew his chair closer to her. That is the song for you, little white rose of beauty. Back went her own chair, and she rose to her feet. I thank you for the compliment, Mishur. But now, may I have your permission to retire? For it has been a long day, and I am indeed fatigued. To her vexation her voice was trembling, but she steadied it proudly. I bid you good evening. Nonsense, my little white rose. This is not so fatiguing. A few words more. But you are like the flower that flies before the wind. But your room, yes, to be sure. Shall I show you the way? I can discover it, Mishur. Mishur, fire in you, my little dove. Hamdi, I tell you, your lover, Hamdi. He laughed unsteadily, and put a hand on her arm. You are running away, I know that, and I have so much to tell you. Oh, it was tedious in that villa of your father's. Yes, I thought to myself, that is a fine story, a funny story. But I have heard them all before. And you are in no haste, you revelers. You have no little bride waiting for you at home. And at one glance at you, I tell you it was the glance of which the poet sings, the glance that cost him a thousand sighs. I was on fire within patience, for I am beauty slave, little dove. You may have heard, but no matter. A wife must be a pearl unspotted. I am not as the English who take their wives from the highways, where all men's glances have rested upon them. Have I not been at their balls? Their women dance in other men's arms. They marry wives whose hands other men have pressed. Sometimes, who knows, their lips have been kissed. And then a husband takes her. Oh, many thanks. He laughed sardonically, and waved his hands a little wildly. Oh, I know, English, all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have seen them selling their wares, stripping themselves half-bear in the evenings, the shameless. For me, never. My wife is a hidden treasure. You know what the poet says. Ah, there be one who shares with me her love. I'd strangle love, though life by love were slain, saying, oh, soul, death were the nobler choice, for ill is love when shared, Twick's partner's twain. You are fond of your poets, said Amy, with stiff lips. You, your kindle poetic fires, my little one, you, I, he stammered a moment. Then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. You have the raven hair. His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then tried to draw her to him. Desperately, she resisted, misure, one does not expect a gentleman. Expect? Huh! What should one expect when a man has such a little sweet-meat? When a little syrup-drop, such a rose-pedal, come, come, you would not struggle. But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent the general back. It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from a well-tailored gray sleeve and lilac-striped cuff that caught Hamdi Bey by the epauletted shoulder and sent him spinning about. Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him. Silence! said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish, and repeated it with amplification in English. Not a sound or I'll blow your head off. Amy gave a strangled gasp. He had not gone, then. He had hidden there in some nook of that boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to rescue. Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil. Better put these on, he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bay, and then run for it. But you? You? I'll take care of myself, after you are out of the way. Dare you try that? Or what do you suggest? Oh, not alone, together. So, so! said Hamdi Bey inarticulately. His head knotted. He staggered. His feet gave way, and he crumbled very completely upon the floor, and lay like a felled log. After a quick look at him, Ryder turned to Amy. Quick, then, will make a run for it. He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll, and darted to his feet, beside Amy, whirling her about with pinioned elbows for his shield, and so screened he gave a shrill whistle. End of Chapter 13.