o the
pool--peered at her curiously--was already passing at her very
elbow--when something made her lift her head and look around at him.

The mock moonlight struck full across his features; and the shock of
seeing him drove every vestige of colour from her own face.

The man halted, staring at her in unfeigned amazement. Suddenly he
snarled at her, baring his teeth in her shrinking face.

"_Kismet dir!_" he whispered, "it ees _you_!... Nihla Quellen!
_Now_ I begin onderstan'!... Yas, I now onderstan' who arrange it
that they haf arrest my good frien', Tauscher! It ees _you_, then!
Von Igel he has tol' me, look out once eef she escape--thees yoong
leopardess----"

"Ferez!" Thessalie's young figure stiffened and the colour flamed in
her cheeks.

"You leopardess!" he repeated, every tooth a-grin again with rage,
"you misbegotten slut of a hunting cheetah! So thees is 'ow you
strike!... Ver' well. Yas, I see 'ow it ees you strike at----"

"Ferez!" she cried. "Listen to _me_!"

"I 'ear you! Allez!"

"Ferez Bey! I am not afraid of you!"

"Ees it so?"

"Yes, it is so. I _never_ have been afraid of you! Not even there on
the deck of the _Mirage_, that night when you tapped the hilt of your
Kurdish knife and spoke of Seraglio Point! Nor when your scared spy
shot at me in the corridor of the Tenth Street house; nor afterward at
Dragon Court! Nor now! Do you understand, Eurasian jackal! Nor _now_!
Anybody can see what _Heruli_ whelped you! What are you doing in
America? Kassim Pasha is your den, where your _rayah_ loll and scratch
in the sun! It is their _Keyeff_! And yours!"

She took a quick step toward him, her eyes flashing, her white hand
clenched:

"_Allah Kerim_--do you say? _El Hamdu Lillah!_ Do you take yourself
for the _muezzin_ of all jackals, then, howling blasphemies from some
_minaret_ in the hills? Do you understand what they'd do to you in
the _Hirka-i-Sherif Jamesi_? Because you are _nothing_; do you
hear?--nothing but an Eurasian assassin! And Moslem and Christian
alike know where _you_ belong among the lost pariahs of Stamboul!"

The girl was utterly transfigured. Whatever of the Orient was in her,
now blazed white hot.

"What have I done to you, Ferez? What have I ever done to you that
you, even from my childhood, come always stepping noiselessly at my
skirt's edge?--always padding behind me at my heels, silent, sinister,
whimpering with bared teeth for the courage to bite which God denies