ng is talked of. You can't think how word
flies from one harem to another--like a carrier-pigeon! This could never
have been a matter of gossip--though it is true I was young at the
time."

"You think, then, he would have shut her up?" asked Nevill. "That's what
I feared."

"But of course he would have shut her up--with another wife, perhaps."

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Stephen. "The poor child has never thought of
that possibility. She says he promised her sister he would never look at
any other woman."

"Ah, the promise of an Arab in love! Perhaps she did not know the
Arabs--that sister. It is only the men of princely families who take but
one wife. And he would not tell her if he had already looked at another
woman. He would be sure, no matter how much in love a Christian girl
might be, she would not marry a man who already had a wife."

"We might find out that," suggested Stephen.

"It would be difficult," said the Frenchwoman. "I can try, among Arabs I
know, but though they like to chat with Europeans, they will not answer
questions. They resent that we should ask them, though they are polite.
As for you, if you ask men, French or Arab, you will learn nothing. The
French would not know. The Arabs, if they did, would not tell. They must
not talk of each other's wives, even among themselves, much less to
outsiders. You can ask an Arab about anything else in the world, but not
his wife. That is the last insult."

"What a country!" Stephen ejaculated.

"I don't know that it has many more faults than others," said Nevill,
defending it, "only they're different."

"But about the scandal that drove Ben Halim away?" Stephen ventured on.

"Strange things were whispered at the time, I remember, because Ben
Halim was a handsome man and well known. One looked twice at him in his
uniform when he went by on a splendid horse. I believe he had been to
Paris before the scandal. What he did afterwards no one can say. But I
could not tell Mees Ray what I had heard of that scandal any more than I
would tell a young girl that almost all Europeans who become harem women
are converted to the religion of Islam, and that very likely the sister
wasn't Ben Halim's first wife."

"Can you tell us of the scandal, or--would you rather not talk of the
subject?" Stephen hesitated.

"Oh, I can tell you, for it would not hurt your feelings. People said
Ben Halim flirted too much with his Colonel's beautiful French wife, who
died soon a