hands,
that, with her pointing to the water outside, sent Ryder a sudden
enlightenment.

"Swim? You mean--do I swim?"

She nodded. "Not go--" She made a swift downward movement of her
hands and then pointed again to that water just outside the gate.

"Not go down--not sink?" interpreted Ryder. "No, indeed, I can
swim," he assured her, and revisited with smiling satisfaction she
knelt again before the barred gate.

Open it swung with so sharp a crack that both glanced at the figure
behind them, and then at the shadowy gloom of the stairs. But no
alarm sounded. Outside the gate Ryder saw the darkness of fairly
wide rippling waters, visited with floating stars, and beyond a
low-lying, dun bank.

Escape was there. Freedom. Safety. He felt an exultant longing to
plunge in and strike out, but he turned, questioningly, to the
mysterious rescuer.

"Aimee?" he asked, under his breath. "Where is she?" He repeated it
in the vernacular, distrusting her English, and in the vernacular
she answered, "You want her? You want to take her away with you?"

She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited
for his speech.

"Good--what a lover! You are not afraid?"

Mendaciously he assured her that he was not.

"Good!" she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her
carmined lips. "You take her--you take her away from him. That is
what I want. You understand?"

Very suddenly he understood.

CHAPTER XVIII

AZIZA IS OFFENDED

This was no emissary from Aimee. This was no philanthropic
bystander. It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring,
conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival.

"Take her away," she was saying urgently. "Out of this palace. We
want no brides here." Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the
word.

"To-night, I was watching," she went on swiftly. "I heard--the
noise--and then the whispering.... The darkness has ears and
eyes--and a tongue. And so I waited out there...."

He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he
caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls,
jealously spying, defying the eunuchs' authority, and how she had
caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal. Later,
hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his
burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had
discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked.... And then she had
watched until the