f huddled figures in the machine!...

There were sounds of voices and of footsteps approaching, but Marishka
could not move. She was prone, inert, helpless.

"She is very tired," someone said.

"_Ach_--she must come within and sleep."

A woman's voice, it seemed, deep but not unsympathetic.

"A glass of wine perhaps--and food."

"It shall be as you desire, Excellency. I know what she needs."

Arms raised her, and she felt herself half led, half carried, into the
house and laid upon a bed in a room upstairs. It was dark within and
there was a strange odor of spices. Presently someone, the woman, it
seemed, gave her something to drink, and after awhile the turmoil in her
head grew less--and she slept.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HARIM

Dreams, colorful and strangely vivid, but not unpleasant. It seemed that
Marishka lay upon a couch so soft that she sank deliciously without end
to perfect rest. Above, about, below her, perfumed darkness, spangled
with soft spots of light, which came and went curiously. She tried to
fix her gaze upon one of them, but it was extinguished immediately and
appeared elsewhere. She found another--and another, but they fled from
her like _ignes fatui_. She heard the whir of a machine, fast and then
slow again, near and then at a distance. Was it an automobile or an
aeroplane? The notion of an automobile speeding in space was
incongruous, the milky way--a queer concept! She smiled in her
dreams.... Then suddenly a bright sunlight peopled with strange figures
in fez and turban, faces that leered at her, lips that howled in
excitement, arms that moved threateningly, dust, noise, commotion, from
which she was trying in vain to escape.... And then darkness again and
the subdued murmur of voices, one voice familiar, one gruff and
unfamiliar.

"Ten thousand _kroner_--that is a large sum," said the gruff voice.

"Yours, Effendi, if the thing is accomplished."

"It should not be difficult. You may reply upon me."

"And you are to show the lady every attention--every comfort----"

"_Zu befehl_----"

There was a recurrence of the changing lights and the voices receded.
Presently she seemed to hear them again.

"She is to be kept in seclusion of course, but otherwise you will accede
to all her requests--all, you understand----Should she care to
write--you will send a message. There are more ways than one to kill a
goose. And this one lays the golden egg, Effendi----"

"I understands--a g