arl-studded gold box, one of many quaint
ornaments on a chain the girl always wore round her neck. She had
explained the meaning or contents of each fetich long ago, and Sanda
knew all about the sacred eye from Egypt, the white coral horn to ward
off evil, the silver and emerald case with a text from the Koran blessed
by a great saint or marabout, and the pearl-crusted gold box containing
a lock of hair certified to be that of Fatma Zora, the Prophet's
favourite daughter.

"I have put the hair with the text," said Ourieda. "Look, in its place
this tiny bottle of white powder. Canst thou guess what it is for?"

The blood rushed to Sanda's face, then back to her heart. But she did
not answer. She only looked at Ourieda: a wide-eyed, fascinated look.

"Thou hast guessed," the Agha's daughter said in a very little voice
like a child's. "But I shall not use it if, when I have told him how I
hate him, he consents to let me alone. If he is a fool, why, he brings
his fate on himself. This is for his lips, if they try to touch mine."

"But," Sanda gasped; "you would be a----"

"I know the word in thy mind. It is 'murderess.' Yet my conscience would
be clear. It would be for the sake of my love--to keep true to my
promise at any cost. And the cost might be my life. They would find
out; they would know how he died. This is no coward's act like smiling
at a man and giving him each day powdered glass or chopped hair of a
leopard in his food, which many of our women do, to kill and leave no
trace. If I break, I pay."

As she spoke the door opened and Lella Mabrouka came swiftly into the
room, fierce-eyed as a tigress whose cub is threatened. She was
tight-lipped and silent, but her eyes spoke, and all three knew that she
had listened. Such words as she had missed her quick wit had caught and
patched together. Ourieda's wish to propitiate Zakia by not seeming to
talk secrets before her had undone them both. But it was too late for
regrets, and even for lies.

Lella Mabrouka clapped her hands, and Taous came, to be told in a tense
voice that the Agha must be summoned. Then Mabrouka turned to the
Roumia.

"Go, thou! This has nothing to do with thee," was all she said.

Sanda glanced at her friend, and an answering glance bade her obey. She
rose and went out, along the balcony to the door of her own room. This
she left open, thinking with a fast-beating heart that if there were any
cry she would run back, no matter what they mi