“So you see,” muttered Tewfick Pasha, “what the devil of a serious business this is.  And how any talk of—­of unreadiness—­if you were not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon you—­might serve to anger him....  And so—­”

Significantly his glance met hers.  Her eyes fell, stricken.  The color flooded her trembling face.  She quivered with confused pain, with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot, protective compassion that tore at her pride....

She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words that would not come.  Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat.

She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity, of understanding, of promise, she achieved.  But her father suddenly dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the enfant gate of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their soft, quiescent palms....  She drew one away and placed it upon his dark head from which the fez had tumbled.

For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child.  And her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort.

She had need of that warmth.  For a cold tide was rising in her, a tide of chill, irresistible foreboding....

For all the years of her life....  For all the years....

CHAPTER IV

EXPLANATIONS

The remaining hours of Jack Ryder’s night might be divided into three periods.  There was an interval of astounding exhilaration coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past sleeping camels and snoring dhurra merchants—­a period during which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a gauzy veil....

This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean’s domicile and stared into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and himself.

Had he really done this?  Had he actually caught and kissed this girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and self-preservation?

In the name of wonder, what had possessed him?  The night?  The moon?  The mystery of the unknown?...  If he had never really kissed her he might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to.  But having kissed her—!

He looked upon himself as a stranger.  A stranger of whom he would be remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect.  There had been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger....