s
value. He tried to rise but could not. To roll his head from side to
side seemed the limitation of conscious effort.

And whilst he looked, the door opened noiselessly and closed again.
Somebody had come into the room, and that somebody passed softly across
the foot of the bed, and stood revealed against the window. Had he been
capable of speech he would have cried out.

It was the girl!

He saw her plainly in a moment. She wore a wrapper over her nightdress,
and carried a small electric lamp in her hand. She went to the chair
where he had thrown his clothes and made a search. He saw her take
something out and put it under her wrap, then she went back the way she
came, pausing for the space of a second at the foot of his bed.

She stood there undecidedly, and presently she came up to the side of
the bed and bent down over him. His eyes were half closed; he had
neither the power of opening or shutting them, but he could see clearly
the white hand that rested on the bed and the book that it held, and the
polished table by the bedside reflecting the moonlight back to her face
so that she seemed something as intangible and as shadowy as the night
itself.

A little smile played upon her pale face, and every whispered word she
uttered was clear and distinct.

"Good-bye, poor Mr. Hay," she said softly.

She shook her head as though in pity; then, stopping swiftly, she kissed
him on the cheek and passed quickly to the half-open door by which she
had entered. She was nearing the door when she stopped dead and shrank
back toward the bed. Another electric lamp gleamed unexpectedly. He saw
the white of her nightdress show as a dazzling strip of light where the
beam caught it. Then the unknown intruder touched on the light, and they
stood revealed, the girl tall, imperious, a look of scorn on her
beautiful face, and the stout menial with the crooked nose.

Boolba wore an old dressing-gown girdled about with a soiled rainbow
sash. His feet were bare, and in his two hands laying from palm to palm
was a long thin knife.

At the sight of the girl he fell back, a grotesque sprawling movement
which was not without its comicality. A look of blank bewilderment
creased his big face.

"You--you, Highness!" he croaked. "The Jew, where is he?"

She was silent. Malcolm saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom, saw
the book clutched closer to her side beneath the filmy silken gown.

Boolba looked from the girl to Malcolm, from Ma