giving
there had scarcely time to make itself felt, Arlee found herself in
a spacious vestibule, marble floored and inlaid with brilliant tile.
She had just a glimpse of an inner court between the high arches
opposite, and then her attention was claimed by Captain Kerissen,
who sprang forward with a flash of welcome in his eyes that was like
a leap of palpable light.

"You are come!" he said, in a voice which was that of a man almost
incredulous of his good fortune. Then he bowed very formally in his
best military fashion, straight-backed from the waist, heels stiffly
together. "I welcome you," he said. "My sister is rejoiced.... This
stair--if you please."

He waved to a stairway on the left, a small, steep affair, which
Arlee ascended slowly, a sense of strangeness mounting with her, in
spite of her confident bearing. She had not realized how odd it
would feel to be in this foreign house with the Captain at her
heels.

There was a door at the top of the stairs standing open into a long,
spacious room which seemed shrouded in twilight after the sunflooded
court. One entire side of the room was a brown, lace-like screen of
_mashrubiyeh_ windows; wide divans stretched beside them, and at the
end of the room, facing Arlee, was a throne-like chair raised on a
small dais and canopied with heavy silks.

By one of the windows a woman was squatting, a short, stout,
turbaned figure, striking a few notes on a tambourine and crooning
softly to herself in a low guttural. She raised her head without
rising, to look at the entering couple, and for a startled second
Arlee had the half hysterical fear that this squatting soloist was
the _triste_ and aristocratic representative of the _haut-monde_ of
Moslem which the Captain had brought her to see, but the next
instant another figure appeared in a doorway and came slowly toward
them.

Flying to the winds went Arlee's anticipations of somber elegance.
She saw the most amazingly vivid creature that she had ever laid
eyes on--a woman, young, though not in her first youth, penciled,
powdered, painted, her hair a brilliant red, her gown a brilliant
green. After the first shock of scattering amazement, Arlee became
intensely aware of a pair of yellow-brown eyes confronting her with
a faintly smiling and rather mocking interrogation. The dark of
_kohl_ about the eyes emphasized a certain slant _diablerie_ of line
and a faint penciling connected with the high and supercilious arch
of