hrough the horrors of an exile to Arabia, to drag her gnawing
pain through the sands of the desert, was a prospect too awful to be
contemplated. As the effects of the last dose administered began to
disappear, and her sufferings recommenced, she realized her situation
with frightful vividness. Still she strove to be calm and to baffle her
tormentor to the very end. If she had not felt the unspeakable relief
she had gained from his medicine, she would have wished to die, but she
had tasted of life again. The problem was how to preserve this new life
while refusing to answer the question Gregorios had asked of her. She
was so clever, so thoroughly able to deal with difficulties, that if she
could but have relief from her sufferings, so that her mind might be
free to work undisturbed, she still hoped to find the solution. But the
pain was already returning. In a few minutes she would be writhing in
agony again.

"I will wait until morning,--it is not many hours now," said Balsamides,
after a pause. "But I strongly advise you to decide at once. You are
beginning to suffer, and I warn you that unless you confess you shall
not have the medicine."

"I lived without it until you came," answered Laleli. "I can live
without it now, if it is my fate." Her voice trembled convulsively, but
she finished her sentence by a great effort.

"It is not your fate," returned Gregorios. "You can not live without
it."

"Then at least I shall die and escape you," she groaned; but even in her
groan there was a sort of scorn. On the last occasion she had indeed
exaggerated her sufferings, pretending that she was at the point of
death in order to get relief without telling her secret. She had always
believed that at the last minute Balsamides would relent, out of fear
lest she should die, and that she could thus obtain a series of
intervals of rest, during which she might think what was to be done. She
did not know the relentless character of the man with whom she had to
deal.

"You cannot escape me," said Balsamides, sternly. "But you can save me
trouble by deciding quickly."

"I have decided to die!" she cried at last, with a great effort. She
groaned again, and began to rock herself in her seat upon the divan.

"You will not die yet," observed Gregorios, contemptuously. He had
understood that he had been deceived the previous time, and had
determined to let her suffer.

Indeed, she was suffering, and very terribly. Her groans had a di