ab, and must know Arabs."

Stephen forgot to press his request for her promise. "How can I help
you?" he wanted to know.

"I'm not sure. Only, you're going to Algiers. I always ask everybody to
help, if there's the slightest chance they can."

Stephen felt disappointed and chilled. But she went on. "I should hate
you to think I _gush_ to strangers, and tell them all my affairs, just
because I'm silly enough to love talking. I must talk to strangers. I
_must_ get help where I can. And you were kind the other night.
Everybody is kind. Do you know many people in Algeria, or Tunisia?"

"Only one man. His name is Nevill Caird, and he lives in Algiers. My
name is Stephen Knight. I've been wanting to tell you--I seemed to have
an unfair advantage, knowing yours ever since Paris."

He watched her face almost furtively, but no change came over it, no
cloud in the blueness of her candid eyes. The name meant nothing to her.

"I'm sorry. It's hardly worth while my bothering you then."

Stephen wished to be bothered. "But Nevill Caird has lived in Algiers
for eight winters or so," he said. "He knows everybody, French and
English--Arab too, very likely, if there are Arabs worth knowing."

A bright colour sprang to the girl's cheeks and turned her extreme
prettiness into brilliant beauty. It seemed to Stephen that the name of
Ray suited her: she was dazzling as sunshine. "Oh, then, I will tell
you--if you'll listen," she said.

"If I had as many ears as a spear of wheat, they'd all want to listen."
His voice sounded young and eager. "Please begin at the beginning, as
the children say."

"Shall I really? But it's a long story. It begins when I was eight."

"All the better. It will be ten years long."

"I can skip lots of things. When I was eight, and my sister Saidee not
quite eighteen, we were in Paris with my stepmother. My father had been
dead just a year, but she was out of mourning. She wasn't old--only
about thirty, and handsome. She was jealous of Saidee, though, because
Saidee was so much younger and fresher, and because Saidee was
beautiful--Oh, you can't imagine how beautiful!"

"Yes, I can," said Stephen.

"You mean me to take that for a compliment. I know I'm quite pretty, but
I'm nothing to Saidee. She was a great beauty, though with the same
colouring I have, except that her eyes were brown, and her hair a little
more auburn. People turned to look after her in the street, and that
made our stepmother angry