And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general!

A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him.  “Oh, well, if you prefer this,” he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon him.

A girl who would let him kiss her one night—­and on the next inform him that she was giving herself to an unknown—­an old Turk....  If she could go like that, to some other’s arms and lips ...

He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips against his and then fling her away and say, “Oh, go to him now—­if you can!”

And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would protect her against all the world.

He was divided and confused and blindly angry.  He felt baffled and frustrated.  He was both aching and raging.  And yet he was capable of reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this was undoubtedly the best thing for them both.

What else?  For him?  For her?

And yet his tongue went on stabbing her.

“If this is what you are determined to do—­” he heard himself saying hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality.

It was as if he had said, “If this, then, is what you are like!  If you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the odalisque—­If you will endure undesired love rather than face the world—­”

And she knew that was what he was saying to her.  The injustice brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat....  That he should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice....  That he should reproach, despise....  She had expected other entreaties ... protestations....

Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness.

But she did not stir.  Not a line of her drooping draperies wavered towards him.  And swallowing that lump in her throat, she achieved a toneless, “That is what I am going to do.”

At the other end of the garden a sound came from the house.

Ryder seemed to rouse himself.  “Good-bye, then,” he said, uncertainly.

“Good-bye, monsieur.”

He looked oddly at her.  “Good-bye,” he muttered again, and turned, and stumbled out of the gate.

A pool of moonlight lay without its arches, and he stepped into it as if coming out of the shadows of an enchanted garden.  He stood and straightened himself as if throwing off that garden’s spell.  He put back his shoulders and took a quick step down the lane.

A slight sound drew his eyes back.

She had followed him to the gate; she stood there, in the moonlight, against the inky wells of shadow into which her black robe flowed, and in the moonlight her face, gazing after him, was an exquisite, ethereal apparition, like a spirit of the garden.

She had cast off her veil.  He had a vision of her dark eyes shining over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight—­only an instant’s vision, for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, like a magician’s curtain.