m women should be within. But my nurse
was indulgent."

Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of
me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night
something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered
the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I
slipped away--there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago,
and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look
on at the world again."

"Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder.

And then suddenly he asked, "Are you--do you--whom do you live
with?"

And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father--he
is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath.

"I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply.

The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed
laughter of youth.

"No husband. I am one of the young revoltees--the moderns--and I am
the only daughter of a most indulgent father."

"Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that.
He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you--"

He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told
him more than its assumption of courage.

This was no boarding school girl lingering beyond hours.... This was
a high-born Moslem, risking more than he could well know.

The escapade was suddenly serious, tremendously menacing.

She answered faintly, "I have no idea--the thing is so impossible!
But of course," she rallied her spirit to protest, "I do not think
they would sew me in a sack with a stone and drop me in the river,
like the odalisques of yesterday!"

She added, her voice uncertain in spite of her, "I meant only to
stay a moment."

"Which is the way?" said Jack briefly.

With caution he opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane.
Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive
starved dogs, slinking back from some rubbish....

The girl moved forward and keeping closely at her side he followed;
they crossed to the other wall, and turned towards the right,
stopping before the deeper shadow of a small, pointed door set into
the heavy brick of the high wall. From her draperies the girl drew
out a huge key.

She fitted it into the ancient lock and turned it; carefully she
pressed open the gate and stared anxiously into the gloom of the
shadowy garden that it disclosed.

Relief colored her voice as she turned to him.