, looked up in sheer surprise. Then her heart
seemed to stop suddenly, and then leap with excessive thuds of
horror against her breast. The face above her seemed carved in
stone, pale, bloodless, calm; it was set, as the girl realised in a
moment of terror and agony, in a repose that would never be broken.
The large, dark eyes, still open, gazed past her, sightless,
changeless. Fear, her fear of him, her awe, her oppressed terror
fell from her, giving way to an infinite regret, a sorrow, a sense
of loss that rushed over her, filling every cell, every atom of her
being. She, the unwilling, the reluctant, the slow-coming, the
grudging bride, now stood free. The bridegroom asked of her
nothing, demanded nothing, needed nothing, desired nothing.

The slave-girl neither shrieked nor fainted. A great, convulsive
sob tore itself from her trembling body as she rose from her knees
and bent over the sitting figure. Wildly she passed her soft,
shaking fingers across his brow, still warm, and round his throat,
seeking mechanically the wound; then her eyes fell on the gold silk
of his tunic, and just over the left breast she saw a little brown
patch, and on the left side of the chair the silver light gleamed
on a small, dark-red pool. He had been stabbed as he sat there,
waiting for her--stabbed from the back, and the dagger thrust
through to the little brown spot in the front of the tunic. And
through that tiny door his life had gone.

Lying at his feet, Dilama sobbed uncontrollably, rolling her head,
with its wonderful crown of flower-decked hair, and her pink-silk
clad body amongst the rugs on the floor. What was the worth or use
of anything now, silk or bridal attire, or beauty, or flower-decked
hair? Never would any of them now be mirrored in his eyes again.
Never could anything change that awful serenity, that implacable
silence, out of which she felt her own love, her own desire rush
upon her and devour her. Ahmed had been hers and she had shrunk
from him, and now all the blood in her body she would have given
willingly to replace that little scarlet stream that had borne away
his life.

As she lay there, weeping in an agony of despair, a dark shadow
suddenly grew in the window, and fell a black patch in the panel of
white light upon the floor. A lithe figure balanced a moment on the
ledge of the open window, then leapt with the silent elastic bound
of a cat into the room. Dilama sprang from the floor to her knees
with a