t perfectly gowned. A
veil hung from her hat and half concealed her face, but could not
hide her wonderful eyes nor disguise the delightful curves of her red
lips. Stuart automatically raised his hat, and even as he did so
wondered what she should have said and done had she suddenly found
Gaston Max standing at his elbow! He laughed shortly.

"You are angry with me," said Mlle. Dorian, and Stuart thought that
her quaint accent was adorable. "Or are you angry with yourself for
seeing me?"

"I am angry with myself," he replied, "for being so weak."

"Is it so weak," she said, rather tremulously, "not to judge a woman
by what she seems to be and not to condemn her before you hear what
she has to say? If that is weak, I am glad; I think it is how a man
should be."

Her voice and her eyes completed the spell, and Stuart resigned
himself without another struggle to this insane infatuation.

"We cannot very well talk here," he said. "Suppose we go into the
hotel and have late tea, Mlle. Dorian."

"Yes. Very well. But please do not call me that. It is not my name."

Stuart was on the point of saying, "Zara el-Khala then," but checked
himself in the nick of time. He might hold communication with the
enemy, but at least he would give away no information.

"I am called Miska," she added. "Will you please call me Miska?"

"Of course, if you wish," said Stuart, looking down at her as she
walked by his side and wondering what he would do when he had to stand
up in Court, look at Miska in the felon's dock and speak words which
would help to condemn her--perhaps to death, at least to penal
servitude! He shuddered.

"Have I said something that displeases you?" she asked, resting a
white-gloved hand on his arm. "I am sorry."

"No, no," he assured her. "But I was thinking--I cannot help
thinking ..."

"How wicked I am?" she whispered.

"How lovely you are!" he said hotly, "and how maddening it is to
remember that you are an accomplice of criminals!"

"Oh," she said, and removed her hand, but not before he had felt how
it trembled. They were about to enter the tea-room when she added:
"Please don't say that until I have told you why I do what I do."

Obeying a sudden impulse, he took her hand and drew it close under
his arm.

"No," he said; "I won't. I was a brute, Miska. Miska means 'musk',
surely?"

"Yes." She glanced up at him timidly. "Do you think it a pretty name?"

"Very," he said, laughing.

Underlying the