yes, their voices, their intonations, their
pressure of her hands.

And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile
demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening
unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in
vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes
saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of
terror rose higher and higher in her soul.

Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night
when she found the key was gone.

Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen
back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the
breaking sobs of rebellion and despair--and of a longing so deep and
so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a
pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar.

Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know--never
would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe
her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished--forever and ever.

She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key.
And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself
against the iron of necessity.

She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion,
not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison
gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never
again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that
voice--why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late
now to recede.

So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its
part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous
pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she
would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she
would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its
memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne.

But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening
terror.

To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship
which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be
forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing
corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age....

She thought wildly of death.

And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a
friend, feeling the fingers of s