ot even sound. She
turned back once more. Prince Shan had only slightly changed his
position. He stood upon the threshold of the inner room, and his arms
were outstretched in invitation.

"Am I a prisoner?" she sobbed.

"You came of your own free will," he replied. "You will stay for my
pleasure and for the joy of my being. As for these things," he went on,
moving slowly to the cabinet, picking up the pile of papers and throwing
them on one side contemptuously, "these are only one's amusements. I
pass my lighter hours with them. They interest me in the same manner as
a chess problem. We do not care, we in the mighty East, which of you
holds your head highest this side of Suez. All you western nations are
to us a peck of dust outside our palace gates. Listen, dear one. We can
leave, if you will, to-night, and top the clouds before sunrise. And I
promise you this," he went on, "when you pass from the greyness of these
sordid lands into the everlasting sunshine of the East, you will not
care any longer about these people who go about the world on all fours.
Day by day you will know what life and love mean. You will find the
cloying weight of material things pass from your brain and body, and the
joy of holy and wonderful living take their place."

Her whole being was in a turmoil. She drew nearer to the papers upon the
table. She was now within a yard of Prince Shan himself. He made no
effort to intercept her, no movement of any sort to stop her. Only his
eyes never left her face, and she felt a madness which seemed to be
choking the life out of her, a pounding of her heart against her ribs, a
strange and wonderful joy, a joy in which there was no fear, a joy of
new things and new hopes. With the papers for which she had come only a
few yards away, she forgot them. She turned her head slowly. His arms
seemed to steal out from those long, silken sleeves. She suddenly felt
herself held in a wonderful embrace.

"Dear lady of all my desires," he whispered in her ear, "you shall make
me happy and find the secret of happiness yourself in giving, in
suffering, in love."

For a long and wonderful moment she lay in his arms. She felt the soft
burning of his kisses, the call of the room with its intoxicating, yet
strangely ascetic perfume, the room to which all the time he seemed to
be gently leading her. And then a flood of strange, alien recollections
and realisations seemed to bring her from a better place back to a
worse,-