to the
glass, to see a wan and big-eyed girl staring back affrighted.

Then the door opened, and desperately calling on her courage, Arlee
heard the Captain speaking her name and saw his smiling face
advancing through the shadows.

"A thousand greetings, Mademoiselle. Ah, I am glad to see you." A
strained emotion quivered through the false assurance of his tone.

She stood very straight and tense before him, a childishly small
figure there in the dusk, the blowing candles making strange play of
light and shadow over her. Steadily she answered, "And I am very
glad to see you, Captain Kerissen."

"And I am glad that you are glad." But his ear had caught the
hardness of her voice, for answering irony was in his. Some devil of
delay and disappointment seemed to enter into him, for his face, as
she saw it now in his advancing, struck fright into her. The four
fingers of his right hand were wrapped in a bandage and he extended
his left to her, murmuring an apology. "A slight accident, you see."

"There is so much I do not see that I do not feel like shaking
hands," gave back Arlee. "Captain Kerissen, this is too strange a
situation to be maintained. You must end it."

"It is a very delightful situation," he returned blandly, looking
about with dancing eyes. "To be again your host, even in so poor a
place as this old house of the Sheik--and the place has its
possibilities, Mademoiselle. It is romantic. Your window overlooks
that desert you were so anxious to see. The sunsets----"

"Captain Kerissen, I must say that you use a very strange way to
keep me your guest!"

"I might respond that any way was justifiable so that it kept you a
guest.... But you wrong me. Did I not bring you safely out from that
quarantine, as you besought me?" His smile was mockery itself.

"But you did not bring me to my friends. I do not like your sending
me here, without explanation," she returned, trying to be very wise
and speak quietly and not rouse him to anger. "We passed a city
where the American flags were flying over a house, and I could have
gone there."

"I am sorry you do not care for my hospitality. I did not know that
I was displeasing to you."

"It is those ways that are displeasing to me. I----"

"Then you shall change them," he laughed. "That will give me
pleasure.... But I did not come in the dead of this night, half sick
and fatigued, to find such welcome. Come, you must smile a little
and sit down at the table with m