u.... It is a forbidden door--forbidden as
that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine
doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the
forbidden--"

"I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night--or another--"

She moved her head in denial.

"Neither to-morrow nor another night--"

Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest
wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding
drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in
the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft,
human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and
through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips....

Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel.

Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm
his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate
concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he
heard her locking after.

And then, for her sake, he fled.

CHAPTER III

IN THE PASHA'S PALACE

Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened
haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into
the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows.

At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a
hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low
branches over it.

"Aimee," came a guarded call. "Aimee!"

Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the
thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes.

"Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself,
she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse,
emerging now into the moonlight.

"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but
cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly--he is here--thy father!
And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she
gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again
into the shadows of the shrubbery.

Aimee felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured,
and her voice died in her throat.

Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her
at the ball?

The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying
confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to
rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded