If her dancing was correct or not, men had begun to foregather in the house, where—­if her temper allowed—­she would dance o’ nights fully clothed or fully unclothed; also her reputation was beginning to be used as a lure to the uninitiated freshly arrived in Cairo, therefore her usually fiendish temper was as hell unloosed when, as part payment of a debt, she found herself willy-nilly strapped to a camel and carted by slow stages to the house of rest whose proprietor was Achmed, and landlord Hahmed, the Camel King.

“Dance I will not, thou descendant of pigs,” she stormed at Achmed, who, reducing his fez to a pulp, raved at her as she crouched in a corner with something a-glitter in her hand.  “Send in thy wife who ambles like a camel in foal, and whose ankles are thick enough to serve as prop to a falling house.”

“Thou fool,” hissed the man with sweat pouring down his face, and who through the working of his oriental mind already felt the swish of the whip about his shoulders, and the agony of the desert fly’s bite on his flagellated anatomy.  “It is Hahmed—­the great Hahmed, who orders thee to his presence.  It is thy chance, thou fool--it is------”

And his dull eyes brightened, and his sensual month widened in a grin as the girl sprang to her feet and sped to a mirror on the opposite side of the room.

“Dullard,” she cried, as she pulled her clothing furiously from her, and stood with nothing but a plain coloured shawl of gauze covered in tinsel twined about her slim waist, “why hast thou wasted precious moments?  Why has thou imperilled my chance by infuriating the great man?  Out of my way, thou snail.”

And as she fled precipitately from the room she caught the man by the throat and flung him against the wall with the ease of muscle trained to the last point.

“Ow!” exclaimed Ali ’Assan at the apparition in the doorway with the flaming henna head and taut brown body, with long, thin, brown arms stretched down stiff as ramrods to the sides, and “Ow!” he said again, as she suddenly moved and again stood still with the gleaming orange eyes fixed on his host, who looked at her for an instant, and looked away again to the far corner, as he indifferently lit a cigarette.

And then La Belle danced for all she was worth, and for all she knew, whilst the guest watched in sensual enjoyment, and the host took not the slightest notice.

Nearer she came, and nearer still, until the pungent odour of the insufferable Eastern perfume of which the body is musk, suddenly struck the nostrils of the man for whom she danced, bringing a slight frown to his face, and causing him to thoughtlessly raise his right hand, which, as perhaps the reader may not know, is an oriental sign of appreciation.

A flash of triumph swept across the face of the woman, who was absolutely on the wrong tack, as she sidled so near that her bare limbs almost touched the flowing cloak which swept round the man.  His mind was full of his exquisite, delicate, tantalising, fastidious wife, his body ached for her, his soul fainted for even a touch of her little hand, so that once again he raised his right hand as though to sweep away some pestilential insect from his path, just one little careless gesture which proved a woman’s undoing.