ld palace which was
to be my prison for four years. How I passed those four years has no
bearing upon the matters which I have to tell you, but I lived the
useless, luxurious life of some Arabian princess, my lightest wish
anticipated and gratified; nothing was denied me, except freedom.

"Then, one day--it was actually my nineteenth birthday--Chunda Lal
presented himself and told me that I was to have an interview with
Fo-Hi. Hearing these words, I nearly swooned, for a hundred times
during the years of my strange luxurious captivity I had awakened
trembling in the night, thinking that the figure of the awful veiled
Chinaman had entered the room.

"You must understand that having spent my childhood in a _harem,_
the mode of life which I was compelled to follow in Cairo was not so
insufferable as it must have been for a European woman. Neither was my
captivity made unduly irksome. I often drove through the European
quarters, always accompanied by Chunda Lal, and closely veiled, and
I regularly went shopping in the bazaars--but never alone. The death
of my mother--and later that of my father, of which Chunda Lal had
told me--were griefs that time had dulled. But the horror of Fo-Hi was
one which lived with me, day and night.

"To a wing of the palace kept closely locked, and which I had never
seen opened, I was conducted by Chunda Lal. There, in a room of a
kind with which was part library and part _mandarah,_ part museum
and part laboratory, I found the veiled man seated at a great
littered table. As I stood trembling before him he raised a long
yellow hand and waved to Chunda Lal to depart. When he obeyed and I
heard the door close I could scarcely repress a shriek of terror.

"For what seemed an interminable time he sat watching me. I dared not
look at him, but again I felt his gaze passing over me like a flame.
Then he began to speak, in French, which he spoke without a trace of
accent.

"He told me briefly that my life of idleness had ended and that a new
life of activity in many parts of the world was about to commence.
His manner was quite unemotional, neither harsh nor kindly, his
metallic voice conveyed no more than the bare meaning of the words
which he uttered. When, finally, he ceased speaking, he struck a gong
which hung from a corner of the huge table, and Chunda Lal entered.

"Fo-Hi addressed a brief order to him in Hindustani--and a few
moments later a second Chinaman walked slowly into the room."