"Mahara!"...

"I only say, be so very careful."

He made a final, bold attempt to throw his arms about her, but she
slipped from his grasp and ran lightly across the room.

"Go! hurry off!" she said, bending forward and pointing at him with her
fan, her eyes widely opened and blazing--"but remember--there is danger!
There is Said, who creeps silently, like the jackal"...

She opened the ebony door and darted into the corridor beyond, closing
the door behind her.

Gianapolis looked about him in a dazed manner, and yet again applied his
handkerchief to his stinging eyes. Whoever could have seen him now
must have failed to recognize the radiant Gianapolis so well-known in
Bohemian society, the Gianapolis about whom floated a halo of mystery,
but who at all times was such a good fellow and so debonair. He took up
his hat and gloves, turned, and resolutely strode to the door. Once
he glanced back over his shoulder, but shrugged with a sort of
self-contempt, and ascended to the top of the steps.

With a key which he selected from a large bunch in his pocket, he opened
the door, and stepped out into the garage, carefully closing the door
behind him. An electric pocket-lamp served him with sufficient light to
find his way out into the lane, and very shortly he was proceeding along
Limehouse Causeway. At the moment, indignation was the major emotion
ruling his mind; he resented the form which his anger assumed, for it
was a passion of rebellion, and rebellion is only possible in servants.
It is the part of a slave resenting the lash. He was an unscrupulous,
unmoral man, not lacking in courage of a sort; and upon the conquest of
Mahara, the visible mouthpiece of Mr. King, he had entered in much
the same spirit as that actuating a Kanaka who dives for pearls in a
shark-infested lagoon. He had sought a slave, and lo! the slave was
become the master! Otherwise whence this spirit of rebellion... this
fear?

He occupied himself with such profitless reflections up to the time that
he came to the electric trains; but, from thence onward, his mind became
otherwise engaged. On his way to Piccadilly Circus that same evening, he
had chanced to find himself upon a crowded pavement walking immediately
behind Denise Ryland and Helen Cumberly. His esthetic, Greek soul had
been fired at first sight of the beauty of the latter; and now, his
heart had leaped ecstatically. His first impulse, of course, had been to
join the two ladies; but