treet, crowded
with native Jews, and dark with shadows.

"Madame does not know me."

The exact truth of this observation struck home, like a dagger, to the
mind of Mrs. Greyne.

"I am a wicked person," added Abdallah Jack, with a profound conviction.
"That is why Monsieur Greyne chose me as his guide."

The novelist began to quake. Her chocolate brocade fluttered. Was she
herself to learn at first hand, and on her first evening in Africa,
enough about African frailty to last her for the rest of her life? And
how much more of life would remain to her after her stock of knowledge
had been thus increased? The carriage turned into a second side street,
narrower and darker than the last.

"Are we going right?" she said apprehensively.

"No, madame; we are going wrong--we are going to the wicked part of the
city."

"But--but--you are sure Mr. Greyne will be there?"

Abdallah Jack laughed sardonically.

"Monsieur Greyne is never anywhere else. Monsieur Greyne is wicked as is
a mad Touareg of the desert."

"I don't think you quite understand my husband," said Mrs. Greyne,
feeling in duty bound to stand up for her poor, maligned Eustace.
"Whatever he may have done he has done at my special request."

"Madame says?"

"I say that in all his proceedings while in Algiers Mr. Greyne has been
acting under my directions."

Abdallah Jack fixed his enormous eyes steadily upon her.

"You are his wife, and told him to come here, and to do as he has done?"

"Ye-yes," faltered Mrs. Greyne, for the first time in her life feeling
as if she were being escorted towards the criminal dock by a jailer with
Puritan tendencies.

"Then it is true what they say on the shores of the great canal," he
remarked composedly.

"What do they say?" inquired Mrs. Greyne.

"That England is a land of female devils," returned the guide as the
carriage plunged into a filthy alley, between two rows of blind houses,
and began to ascend a steep hill.

Mrs. Greyne gasped. She opened her lips to protest vigorously, but her
head swam--either from indignation or from fatigue--and she could
not utter a word. The horses mounted like cats upward into the dense
blackness, from which dropped down the faint sounds of squealing music
and of hoarse cries and laughter. The wheels bounded over the stones,
sank into the deep ruts, scraped against the sides of the unlighted
houses. And Abdallah Jack sat staring at Mrs. Greyne as an English
clergyman's wife mi