Was it still the same night?  Were the violins still playing, the people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?...  Was that young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back there dancing with some other girl?

What was it he had said?  To-morrow night, and another night, he would be there in the lane....  If she would come!  As if she would demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, like a gardener’s daughter—!

Her thoughts were so full of him.  And now she had this new horror to face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey.  Did her father dream that she would not resist?  It was against such a danger that she had long ago stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had neither a friend nor a piaster to save her....

“My dear father,” she said entreatingly, “please do not tell me that you really mean—­that you really think you would like to—­that you would consider—­this man—­”

He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look.

“Aimee, I have arranged this matter.”

He added heavily, “To-night.  That is what I came to tell you.”

In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort to ignore her shocked dismay.  He abandoned his airy pretense that the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm.  He sucked at his cigarette like a rather sullen little boy.

“I have always indulged you, Aimee,” he said at last, without looking round at her.  “I hope you are not going to make me infernally sorry.”

“I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry,” said an unsteady little voice.

He looked about.  His daughter was sitting very still upon the gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks.

With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace up and down the room.

This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who indulged his daughter.  This is what came of French and English governesses and modern ideas....  After all he had done—­more than any other father!  To sit and weep!  Weep—­at such a marriage!  What did she expect of life?  Was she not as other women?  Did she never look ahead?  Had she no pride, no ambition—­no hopes?  Did she wish never to marry, then, to become an old mees like her English companion?

“I am but eighteen,” she said quiveringly.  “Oh, my father, do not give me to this unknown—­”

“Unknown—­unknown!  Do I not know him?”

“But you promised—­”

Angrily he gestured with his cigarette.  “Do I know what is good for you or do I not?  Have I your interest at heart—­tell me!  Am I a savage, a dolt—­”

“But you do not know what it is to be unhappy.  I beg of you, my father,—­I should die with such a life before me, with such a man for my husband.  I am too French, too like my mother—­”