the brows. Henna flamed on the pointed tips of the fingers
blazoned with glittering rings, and Arlee fancied the brilliance of
the hair was due to this same generous assistance of nature.

"My soul!" thought the girl swiftly, "they _do_ get themselves up!"

The Captain had stepped forward, speaking quickly in Turkish, with a
hard-sounding rattle of words. The sister glanced at him with a
deepening of that curious air of mockery and let fall two words in
the same tongue. Then she turned to Arlee.

"_Je suis enchantee--d'avoir cet honneur--cet honneur
inattendu----_"

She did not look remarkably enchanted, however. The eyes that played
appraisingly over her pretty caller had a quality of curious
hardness, of race hostility, perhaps, the antagonism of the East for
the West, the Old for the New. Not all the modernity of clothes, of
manners, of language, affected what Arlee felt intensely as the
strange, vivid foreignness of her.

"My sister does not speak English--she has not the occasion," the
Captain was quickly explaining.

"_Gracious_" thought Arlee, in dismay. She had no illusions about
her French; it did very well in a shop or a restaurant, but it was
apt to peeter out feebly in polite conversation. Certainly it was no
vessel for voyaging in untried seas. There were simply loads of
things, she thought discouragedly, the things she wanted most to
ask, that she would not be able to find words for.

Aloud she was saying, "I am so glad to have the honor of being here.
I am only sorry that my French is so bad. But perhaps you can
understand----"

"I understand," assented the Turkish woman, faintly smiling.

The Captain had brought forward little gilt chairs of a French
design which seemed oddly out of place in this room of the East, and
the three seated themselves. Out of place, too, seemed the grand
piano which Arlee's eyes, roving now past her hostess, discovered
for the first time.

"It was so kind of you," began Arlee again as the silence seemed to
be politely waiting upon her, "to send your automobile for me."

"Ah--my automobile!" echoed the woman on a higher note, and laughed,
with a flash of white teeth between carmined lips. "It pleased you?"

"Oh, yes, it is splendid!" the girl declared, in sincere praise. "It
is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen."

"I enjoy it very much--that automobile!" said the other, again
laughing, with a quick turn of her eyes toward the brother.

Negligently, ra