rds the fire, trailing the golden
raiment after her so that it pulled against the beauty of her body.
For a moment she stood unconsciously silhouetted against the wall,
virginal in her whiteness and her slimness, and yet, in her build
alone, giving such promise of greater beauty, in the maturity of love.

Slowly, whilst her mind worked, she traced the blue vein from her wrist
up her forearm, up until the finger stopped suddenly, upon a tiny mark
tattooed just above the elbow.

A faint shadow of incomprehension swept across the man's face, for from
nowhere, in one brief instant, a little wind, laden with straying
particles of fear, distrust and memories, swept between the two, as the
girl's voice, biting in its coldness, searing great scars upon the
Arab's raging, storming, totally hidden pride, let fall slowly,
cruelly, light-spoken, mocking words of French.

"Please tell me my woman's name, so that I may call her, for I would
disrobe, being overcome by a great desire to--sleep!"

[1]Moles are considered a great beauty among the Egyptian races.

CHAPTER XXV

The sun in a great red-gold ball was slipping behind the sharp edge of
sand which like a steel wire marked the far horizon, the sky resembling
some gorgeous Eastern mantle stretched red and orange and purple from
the West, fastened by one enormous scintillating diamond star to the
pink, grey, fawn and faintest heliotrope shroud which the dying day was
wrapping around her in the East.

Terrific had been the heat throughout the month, wilting the palms,
drawing iridescent vapours from the diminished stream, making the very
sand too hot even for native feet.

The green reed blinds sheltering the great balcony room, and over
which, in the heat of the day, trickled a continuous stream of water,
were drawn up to allow the sunset breeze to pass right through the long
two-storeyed building which, the essence of coolness, comfort, and
beauty, in the past months by the efforts of countless skilled workmen,
hailing from every conceivable corner of Asia and Egypt, and regardless
of expense and labour, had been built for one beautiful English girl,
who, in a moment of ever regretted contrariness, had refused to
participate in the planning and devising of the work, thereby shutting
herself off from that most fascinating pastime, house-building; leaving
everything down to the minutest details to the imagination, ingenuity,
and inventive genius of the Arab. For mo