"Maintain this tone," he said, with concentrated anger, "and that will
soon befall."

"I care not so that the sleek mask be plucked from the face of that
dog-descended Sakr-el-Bahr. May Allah break his bones! What of those
slaves of his--those two from England, O Asad? I am told that one is a
woman, tall and of that white beauty which is the gift of Eblis to these
Northerners. What is his purpose with her--that he would not show her in
the suk as the law prescribes, but comes slinking here to beg thee set
aside the law for him? Ha! I talk in vain. I have shown thee graver
things to prove his vile disloyalty, and yet thou'lt fawn upon him
whilst thy fangs are bared to thine own son."

He advanced upon her, stooped, caught her by the wrist, and heaved her
up.

His face showed grey under its deep tan. His aspect terrified her at
last and made an end of her reckless forward courage.

He raised his voice to call.

"Ya anta! Ayoub!"

She gasped, livid in her turn with sudden terror. "My lord, my lord!"
she whimpered. "Stream of my life, be not angry! What wilt thou do?"

He smiled evilly. "Do?" he growled. "What I should have done ten years
ago and more. We'll have the rods to thee." And again he called, more
insistently--"Ayoub!"

"My lord, my lord!" she gasped in shuddering horror now that at last she
found him set upon the thing to which so often she had dared him. "Pity!
Pity!" She grovelled and embraced his knees. "In the name of the Pitying
the Pitiful be merciful upon the excesses to which my love for thee
may have driven this poor tongue of mine. O my sweet lord! O father of
Marzak!"

Her distress, her beauty, and perhaps, more than either, her unusual
humility and submission may have moved him. For even as at that
moment Ayoub--the sleek and portly eunuch, who was her wazeer and
chamberlain--loomed in the inner doorway, salaaming, he vanished again
upon the instant, dismissed by a peremptory wave of the Basha's hand.

Asad looked down upon her, sneering. "That attitude becomes thee best,"
he said. "Continue it in future." Contemptuously he shook himself free
of her grasp, turned and stalked majestically out, wearing his anger
like a royal mantle, and leaving behind him two terror-shaken beings,
who felt as if they had looked over the very edge of death.

There was a long silence between them. Then at long length Fenzileh rose
and crossed to the meshra-biyah--the latticed window-box. She opened it
an