ur bargain. You boast yourself
lord of life and death. A lie! Death is all that you can command."

Quick steps came pattering up the stairs, and before he could answer
her, before he had thought of words in which to do so, Ali confronted
him with the astounding announcement that there was a woman below asking
urgently to speak with him.

"A woman?" he questioned, frowning. "A Nasrani woman, do you mean?"

"No, my lord. A Muslim," was the still more surprising information.

"A Muslim woman, here? Impossible!"

But even as he spoke a dark figure glided like a shadow across the
threshold on to the terrace. She was in black from head to foot,
including the veil that shrouded her, a veil of the proportions of a
mantle, serving to dissemble her very shape.

Ali swung upon her in a rage. "Did I not bid thee wait below, thou
daughter of shame?" he stormed. "She has followed me up, my lord, to
thrust herself in here upon you. Shall I drive her forth?"

"Let her be," said Sakr-el-Bahr. And he waved Ali away. "Leave us!"

Something about that black immovable figure arrested his attention and
fired his suspicions. Unaccountably almost it brought to his mind the
thought of Ayoub-el-Sarnin and the bidding there had been for Rosamund
in the sok.

He stood waiting for his visitor to speak and disclose herself. She
on her side continued immovable until Ali's footsteps had faded in
the distance. Then, with a boldness entirely characteristic, with the
recklessness that betrayed her European origin, intolerant of the Muslim
restraint imposed upon her sex, she did what no True-believing woman
would have done. She tossed back that long black veil and disclosed the
pale countenance and languorous eyes of Fenzileh.

For all that it was no more than he had expected, yet upon beholding
her--her countenance thus bared to his regard--he recoiled a step.

"Fenzileh!" he cried. "What madness is this?"

Having announced herself in that dramatic fashion she composedly
readjusted her veil so that her countenance should once more be decently
concealed.

"To come here, to my house, and thus!" he protested. "Should this reach
the ears of thy lord, how will it fare with thee and with me? Away,
woman, and at once!" he bade her.

"No need to fear his knowing of this unless, thyself, thou tell him,"
she answered. "To thee I need no excuse if thou'lt but remember that
like thyself I was not born a Muslim."

"But Algiers is not thy native Sici