cross-legged audiences the
dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl.

Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets
where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the
carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which
sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German
millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no
avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid
flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle.

It was quite dark now. The last pale gleam of the afterglow had
faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced
with the thronging stars. It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful
stirring in the tops of the feathery palms.

The streets were growing still. Only from some of the hotels came
the sound of music from lighted, open windows.

Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel. He could, of course,
drop in for a few minutes since he was so near.... He walked past
the hotel.... Jinny would be packing--or ought to be. A pity to
disturb her.... And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no
calling costume....

He walked past again. And this time he paused, on the brink of a
dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with
bougainvillea.

Quite suddenly he remembered that he had told that girl, whose name
he did not know, that he would come. It was a definite promise. It
was an obligation.

He could do nothing less. It might be unwelcome, absurd, a nuisance,
but really it was an obligation.

He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He
loitered within that deep-set door--and felt a queer throb of
emotion at the sight of it--and so, sauntering and loitering, he
waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through
the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still
interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned
expectancy.

Very cautiously, the gate began to open.

CHAPTER V

AT THE GARDEN GATE

Inch by inch the gate edged open. Warily he presented himself. The
furtive crack gave him an instant's glimpse of a dark form within
the shadows, then, in his face, it closed.

Ryder waited. In a moment it was opened wider, and he saw the
dark-shrouded head and the veiled face of the Turkish girl, and out
from the blackness the sparkle of young eyes.

"Is it--but who is