Western veneer was the fascinating naivete of the
Eastern woman, and Miska had all the suave grace, too, which belongs
to the women of the Orient, so that many admiring glances followed
her charming figure as she crossed the room to a vacant table.

"Now," said Stuart, when he had given an order to the waiter, "what
do you want to tell me? Whatever it may be, I am all anxiety to hear
it. I promise that I will only act upon anything you may tell me in
the event of my life, or that of another, being palpably endangered
by my silence."

"Very well. I want to tell you," replied Miska, "why I stay with
Fo-Hi."

"Who is Fo-Hi?"

"I do not know!"

"What!" said Stuart. "I am afraid I don't understand you."

"If I speak in French will you be able to follow what I say?"

"Certainly. Are you more at ease with French?"

"Yes," replied Miska, beginning to speak in the latter language. "My
mother was French, you see, and although I can speak in English
fairly well I cannot yet _think_ in English. Do you understand?

"Perfectly. So perhaps you will now explain to whom you refer when
you speak of Fo-Hi."

Miska glanced apprehensively around her, bending further forward over
the table.

"Let me tell you from the beginning," she said in a low voice, "and
then you will understand. It must not take me long. You see me as I
am to-day because of a dreadful misfortune that befell me when I was
fifteen years old."

"My father was _Wali_ of Aleppo, and my mother, his third wife, was a
Frenchwoman, a member of a theatrical company which had come to Cairo,
where he had first seen her. She must have loved him, for she gave up
the world, embraced Islam and entered his _harem_ in the great house
on the outskirts of Aleppo. Perhaps it was because he, too, was half
French, that they were mutually attracted. My father's mother was a
Frenchwoman also, you understand.

"Until I was fifteen years of age, I never left the _harem,_ but my
mother taught me French and also a little English; and she prevailed
upon my father not to give me in marriage so early as is usual in the
East. She taught me to understand the ways of European women, and we
used to have Paris journals and many books come to us regularly. Then
an awful pestilence visited Aleppo. People were dying in the mosques
and in the streets, and my father decided to send my mother and myself
and some others of the _harem_ to his brother's house in Damaskus.

"Perhaps you will thin