ee steps forward she took and stopped. Hoskins withdrew and
closed the door.

At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely transfigured
features, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders, and,
raising her head, extended both her hands, uttering a subdued cry of
greeting that was almost a sob. She was dark, with the darkness of
the East, but beautiful with a beauty that was tragic. Her eyes were
glorious wells of sadness, seeming to mirror a soul that had known a
hundred ages. Withal she had the figure of a girl, slender and supple,
possessing the poetic grace and poetry of movement born only in the
Orient.

"Naida!" breathed Nicol Brinn, huskily. "Naida!"

His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his hands
with a groping movement The woman laughed shudderingly.

Her cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward him.

She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in the
slightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and jewels
sparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the perfumed luxury
of the East, and was a figure to fire the imagination. But Nicol Brinn
seemed incapable of movement; his body was inert, but his eyes were on
fire. Into the woman's face had come anxiety that was purely feminine.

"Oh, my big American sweetheart," she whispered, and, approaching him
with a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm. "Do you
still think I am beautiful?"

"Beautiful!"

No man could have recognized the voice of Nicol Brinn. Suddenly his arms
were about her like bands of iron, and with a long, wondering sigh she
lay back looking up into his face, while he gazed hungrily into her
eyes. His lips had almost met hers when softly, almost inaudibly, she
sighed: "Nicol!"

She pronounced the name queerly, giving to i the value of ee, and almost
dropping the last letter entirely.

Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman of
the East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that law which
England's poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking of a love so
deep as to be sacred.

Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her to the
settee between the two high windows and placed her there amid Oriental
cushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen. He knelt at her feet
and, holding both her hands, looked into her face with that wondering
expression in which there was someth