So that when the man ordered the woman to sit up, she sat up, wiped real tears from the innocent-looking eyes, re-arranged her garments, and prepared for battle.

Tough might describe the rose-hued, satin-textured epidermis of the scarlet enchantress.

“Thou hast a great daring, woman.”

The courtesan knew not the meaning of the word hesitation, and was off with the still-born desire and on with her original business between the tossing and falling of a drop from the perfumed fountain and ready with an explanation even before the man spoke.

“Thou hast misheard my words, lord.  Knowing by hearsay of thy hatred of women, I entered thy house as dancer before thee, to gain as my reward one hour of speech with thee.”

“Speech?  Wherefore?

“Because I would help thee, and in helping thee help myself.”  Clasping her slender jewelled hands, across her bosom, she looked up to the gilded ceiling, and sighing softly, whispered: 

“I love!”

“Thou!”

“Yea, lord.  I love—­and—­thou lovest—­and—­nay, hear me, it is for thy advancement—­and mine—­and he, the man for whom my soul has turned to water, for whom I yearn—­yea, if it be but for one single hour of his love--a memory of rose-time in the ash-pit of my years--he------” She stopped.

’Tis wise to approach a wounded tiger warily, especially if you are not certain as to the extent of the hurt or the power of the weapon of defence in your hand.

“Sit—­and speak quickly, for I would have thee gone.”

The man spoke curtly as he sank upon a pile of cushions and pointed to one on the far side of the Persian rug, upon which the most courted woman in Egypt knelt, with her eyes full of gentleness and her heart pounding in a torment of rage and fear.

“Yea, I understand.”

Hugh Carden Ali spoke wearily, being stricken with love.  For ten solid minutes the woman had talked round her subject.  Intuitive, she scented danger; usually fearless, her whole being was sick with apprehension; desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her goal by a roundabout way.

Then she stopped, sighed, and cast down her eyes; then raised them beseechingly when the man spoke.

“Fearing to use force against the—­the woman who thou sayest is loved by the man thou lovest—­and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale is as full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in which thou spinn’st thy web—­thou would’st tear her from him by craft.  Explain thy seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for behold the hour of dawn approacheth.”

And the wrath in the voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing.

“She, the white woman, walks in the bazaar, yea, even at noon and at sunset.  Perchance one evening, lured by the tale of the riches of the house of Zulannah, might not her feet stray within the portals at the setting of the sun.  And behold, the key of the great door is within these hands, and--and------”