rez Bey, her father's friend
of many years.

And Ferez left her there in the creamy Turkish moonlight on the
flowering terrace, alone with the Count d'Eblis.

When Ferez came again, long after midnight, with Excellenz on one arm
and the proud and happy Adolf Gerhardt on the other, the whole cycle
of a little drama had been played to a conclusion between those two
shadowy figures under the flowering almonds on the terrace--between
this slender, dark-eyed girl and this big, bulky, heavy-visaged man of
the world.

And the man had been beaten and the girl had laid down every term. And
the compact was this: that she was to be launched in Paris; she was
merely to borrow any sum needed, with privilege to acquit the debt
within the year; that, if she ever came to care for this man
sufficiently, she was to become only one species of masculine
property--a legal wife.

And to every condition--and finally even to the last, the man had
bowed his heavy, burning head.

"D'Eblis!" began Gerhardt, almost stammering in his joy and pride.
"His highness tells me that I am to have an order--an Imperial
d-decoration----"

D'Eblis stared at him out of unseeing eyes; Nihla laughed outright,
alas, too early wise and not even troubling her lovely head to wonder
why a decoration had been asked for this burly, bushy-bearded man from
nowhere.

But within his sinuous, twisted soul Ferez writhed exultingly, and
patted Gerhardt on the arm, and patted d'Eblis, too--dared even to
squirm visibly closer to Excellenz, like a fawning dog that fears too
much to venture contact in his wriggling demonstrations.

"You take with you our pretty wonder-child to Paris to be launched, I
hear," remarked Excellenz, most affably, to d'Eblis. And to Nihla:
"And upon a yacht fit for an emperor, I understand. Ach! Such a going
forth is only heard of in the Arabian Nights. Eh bien, ma petite, go
West, conquer, and reign! It is a prophecy!"

And Nihla threw back her head and laughed her full-throated laughter
under the Turkish moon.

* * * * *

Later, Ferez, walking with the Ambassador, replied humbly to the curt
question:

"Yes, I have become his jackal. But always at the orders of
Excellenz."

* * * * *

Later still, aboard the _Mirage_, Ferez stood alone by the after-rail,
staring with ratty eyes at the blackness beyond the New Bridge.

"Oh, God, be merciful!" he whispered. He had often s