stapha. Hamdi would kill me, he would beat
me, he would make me marry Mustapha."

That is what I gathered from her utterances. She was frightened out of
her wits, even into anticlimax.

"But the Turkish Consul is your natural protector," said I.

"You wouldn't be so cruel," she sobbed. The guttural sonority with which
she rolled the "r" in "cruel" made the epithet appear one of revolting
barbarity. She fixed those confounded eyes upon me.

I wonder whether such a fool as I has ever lived.

I promised, on my honour, not to hand her over to the Turkish consulate.

I took a four-wheeled cab from the rank on the Embankment and drove her
to Waterloo. On the way she reminded me that she was hungry. I gave her
food at the buffet. It appears she has a passion for hard-boiled eggs
and lemonade. She did not seem very much concerned about finding Harry,
but chattered to me about the appointments of the bar. The beer-pulls
amused her particularly. She made me order a glass of bitter (a beverage
which I loathe) in order to see again how it was done, and broke into
gleeful laughter. The smart but unimaginative barmaid stared at her in
bewilderment. The two or three bar-loafers also stared. I was glad to
escape to the platform.

There, however, a group of idlers followed us about and stood in a ring
round us when we stopped to interview a railway official. The beautiful,
bronze-haired, ox-eyed young woman in her disreputable attire--I have
never seen a broken black feather waggle more shamelessly--was a sight
indeed to strike wonderment into the cockney mind. And perhaps her
association with myself added to the incongruity. I am long and lean and
unlovely, I know; but it is my consolation that I look irreproachably
respectable. Of the two I was infinitely the more disturbed by the
public attention. "Calm and unembarrassed as a fate" she returned the
popular gaze, and appeared somewhat bored by my efforts to find Harry.
In the midst of an earnest discussion with the station-master she begged
me for a penny to put into an automatic sweetmeat machine, which she had
seen a small boy work successfully. I refused, curtly, and turned to the
station-master. A roar of laughter interrupted me again. Carlotta, with
outstretched hand and pleading eyes, like an organ-grinder's monkey, had
induced the boy to part with the sticky bit of toffee, and was in the
act of conveying it to her mouth.

"I'll call to-morrow morning," said I hurriedly