wanted to kill me, Mike." Her fingers slipped round his throat.
"And now I should like to kill you, yes, kill you! Strangle you and
leave your austere, ascetic body for the vultures to enjoy!"

Mike tried to shake her off, to unclasp her hands. She was as strong
as a young leopard.

"I would," she said. "For I hate you and despise you!

"Then leave me," he said. "I wish to God you would!"

"Ah, but I won't!" The cry came from Millicent savagely. "I won't
leave you, not until my will has subjected yours! Before I leave your
camp you will have been my lover--mystic, aesthetic, dreamer, drifter!"

"Never!" Michael said. "Never, never that!"

Still Millicent clung to him. Her angry words blew her hot breath over
his cheeks.

"You are not altogether the ascetic or the saint you appear to be. You
have scorned my love. I will break your will. I will humble you in
your own fine estimation of yourself. When I take it into my head to
do a thing, I generally accomplish it."

Michael disengaged her hands with a tremendous wrench. If he hurt her
thumbs he could not help it. He held her from him at arm's length and
shook her, shook her as though she was a naughty child in a paroxysm of
passion which had to be subdued by extreme severity.

"You little devil!" he said. "You'll leave my camp at once, this very
day! I've had more than enough of you!"

Millicent's eyes, as unflinching as Michael's, laughed triumphantly.

"What about my food and medicine for your sick man, your valuable guide
to the hidden treasure? You can't afford to let him slip through your
hands!"

Michael's eyes dropped. He had allowed Millicent to remain
unquestioned, even willingly, as a member of his expedition, since the
sick man was in need of the delicate food and medicine her equipment
contained.

As his eyes dropped, he asked her what she knew about the hidden
treasure. He had only told her about the tomb of Akhnaton; he had
particularly refrained from mentioning the Pharaoh's hidden store.

"How did I get to know all I wanted to know?" She glanced at him
tauntingly. "It wasn't quite all my love for you, dear man! Perhaps
I, too, wished to pick up some of the jewels in King Solomon's Mines!"

"I never mentioned them to you--what do you know about them?"

"What about the precious jewel in the saint's ear--the oriental
amethyst, the ninth jewel in the high priest's breast-plate, as
mentioned in Exodus, 'and the third r