she was not afraid.... Her father
would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to
this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from
defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance,
tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her
brave that wild escapade to-night.

Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the
people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that
young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back
there dancing with some other girl?

What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he
would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would
demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate,
like a gardener's daughter--!

Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to
face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she
would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago
stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had
neither a friend nor a piaster to save her....

"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that
you really mean--that you really think you would like to--that you
would consider--this man--"

He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look.

"Aimee, I have _arranged_ this matter."

He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you."

In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort
to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that
the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his
cigarette like a rather sullen little boy.

"I have always indulged you, Aimee," he said at last, without
looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me
infernally sorry."

"I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady
little voice.

He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the
gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two
great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks.

With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace
up and down the room.

This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who
indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English
governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done--more than
any other father! To sit and weep! Weep--at such a marriage! What
did