And now the hole was large enough.  He twisted about and thrust out a leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, to the shrouded figure of his rescuer.

She had drawn back a little against the wall, a gauzy veil across her face.  Beside her, upon the stone floor, a solitary candle sent its flickering rays into the shadows, edging with light her slender outlines.

Ryder took one quick step to her, his heart in his throat, and put out eager arms.  But in the very moment that he was gathering her to him, even when he felt her pliant body, at first resistant, then softly yielding, swept against his own, he felt, too, a little palm suddenly upon his mouth.

“Hsh!” said the soft, whispering voice, cutting into his low murmur of “Aimee!” and then, in slow emphatic caution, “Be—­careful!”

He had need of that caution.  For under the saffron veil was not the face of Aimee.  He was clasping a young creature that he had never seen before, a girl with flaming henna hair and kohl darkened brows, a vivid blazoning face that smiled enigmatically with a certain mockery of delight at the amazement he reflected so unguardedly.

CHAPTER XVII

AZIZA

From the slackening grip of his astounded arms she stepped backward, still smiling faintly and holding up in admonishment the palm she had pressed against his mouth.

“But what—­what the dev—­” muttered Ryder.

She nodded mysteriously, and beckoned.

“Come,” she whispered, catching up her candle, and after holding it high for a moment, staring at him, she extinguished it suddenly, and turned to lead the cautious way across the stone spaces while Ryder closely followed.

Not Aimee, then.  But some messenger, he could only suppose.  Some confidante, at need.  A handmaid?  The whisper of her silks, the remembered gleam of jewels in the henna hair flouted that thought, and not troubling his ingenuity with alternatives he was content to follow her swift steps.

They were now in those open rubbishy spaces where he remembered the crumbling masonry and broken arches of old, disregarded mosques; now they were again enclosed in narrow stone walls, winding past cellars and store rooms.

The girl’s advance grew more cautious.  Often she stopped and listened, peering ahead into the darkness, and now, as she took another turning, her care redoubled and Ryder needed no exhortation to imitate it.  Obeying a gesture of her arm, he followed at a greater distance, prepared, at the warning of a sound, to flatten himself against the wall or dart into some cranny of retreat.

They were now in the cellars.  The corridor was widening out before them with a pallid showing of light, crossed with many bars, at some far end....  They stole towards it.  It was a window, or barred gate, he saw, and he heard again that lapping of restless water against stone.