“I stay at the hotel first till he make this like a private apartment for me,” went on the little dancer, “and when I come here he do everything for me.  I have luxury, yes, jewels and dresses and a fine new car.  Then, by and by, I grow tired.  It was always the same and he was at the palace, much.  And he would not let me make acquaintance.  We quarrel, but still I have a fancy for him, and then, you understand, money is not always so easy to find.  Life can be hard.  But I get more restless, I want to go back on the stage and I, well, I write some letters that he finds out. Bang, goes the door upon me!  He laugh like a fiend.  He say that I am to be a little Turkish lady to the end of my life.  Oh, God, he shut me up like a prisoner in this place, and I can do nothing—­nothing—­nothing!”

She beat out angry emphasis on the palm of one hand with a clenched little fist.  “I go nearly mad.  I lose my head.  He laugh—­he is like that.  He is a devil when he turns against you, and, you understand, he had somethings new to play with now....  Sometimes he seem to love me as before, and then I would grow soft and coax that he take me to Europe some day, and then when I think he mean it—­Oh, how he laugh!” She drew in her breath sharply.  “Sometimes I think he will take me again—­sometime—­but I cannot tell.  And the days never end.  They are terrible.  My youth is going, going.  And my youth is all I have.”

She looked at Arlee with eyes where her terror was visible, and all the lines of her pretty, common little face were changed and sharpened, and her babyish lips dragged down strangely at the corners.

A surge of pity went through Arlee Beecher.  “Oh, you will escape,” she heard herself saying eagerly.  “And I will escape—­or—­or——­”

“Or?”

“Or I will kill myself,” she whispered quiveringly.

The little Viennese stared hard at her, and a sudden crinkle of amusement darted across the bright shallows of her eyes.  “Come, love is not so bad,” she said, “and Hamdi can be charming.”  Then as she saw a shudder run through the young girl before her, “Oh, if you do not fancy him!” she cried airily, yet with a keen look.

But Arlee’s two hands sought and covered up the scarlet shame in her face.  She did not cry; she felt that every tear in her was dried in that bitter flame.  Her whole body seemed on fire, burning with fury and revulsion and that awful sense of humiliation.

The other stirred restively, “Come, do not cry—­I hate people to cry.  It makes everything so worse.  And do not talk of killing.  It is not so easy anyway, that killing.  Do I not think I will die and end all when my rage is hot—­but how?  How?  I cannot beat my head out against the wall like a Russian.  I cannot stick a penknife in my throat or eat glass.  To do that one must be a monster of courage.  And I have no poison to eat, no gas to turn on....  Then the mood goes and the day is bright and I look in the glass and say,