turn to my own life." Her voice was a whisper.
"And I did not want you to know--"

"To know what? Who are you? Where were you going?" A confusion of
conjecture, fantastic, horrible, impossible, was surging in him.
Dim, vague, terrible things....

"Who are you, anyway?"

She looked away from him, to the door which she had tried to gain.

"No masker, monsieur.... For me, there is no unveiling."

Ryder's hand stiffened. He felt his blood stop a moment, as if his
heart stood still.

And then it beat on again in a furious turmoil of contradiction of
this impossible thing that she was telling him.

"That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door
leads to another garden--the garden of a girl you can never know."

He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still
battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had
happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard
something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose
lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition.

Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ...
freedom, travel, often,--Paris, London, perhaps--and then, as the
girl eclipses the child--the veil. Still indulgence and luxury,
still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society--but a
feminine society.

Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an
interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband--until the
bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded
lives.... Extinguished by tradition--a tradition against which their
earlier years only had won modern emancipation.

And she--this slim creature in the black domino--one of those
invisibles?

Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers.

"You--a Turk?" he blurted.

"I--a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with
defensive pride. "I am ashamed--but for the thing I have done. That
is a shameful thing. To steal out at night--to a hotel--to a
ball--And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am--Oh, yes, I am
much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him
suddenly, between mockery and malice.

Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on
his face was reflected swiftly in her own.

"I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before--never have I
done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden
after sunset--when all Mosle