w. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored.

And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his
paternal benediction and hastened the phrases.

Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a
hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs
for the journey to the bridegroom's house.

That day Aimee did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as
she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of
damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that
awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little
maids of honor.

It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her
grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion
of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If
she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the
windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the
impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully.

She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing
on into the slavery of this marriage--Aimee, no longer the daughter
of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimee Delcasse, child of a dead Frenchman,
inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl....

And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of
sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had
spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps
her mother had loved and perhaps had hated....

Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of
carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests
and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the
wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the
Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige.

Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to
curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimee caught once a
glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled
greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came
glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of
well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of
Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond.

But where were they bearing her? Aimee had a despairing sense of
distance and desolation as the carriage turned again--Abdullah, the
coachman, having traversed unnecessary