ng spectators, all those
interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her
humiliation.

Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were
all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness--as if
happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling,
fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the
familiar acceptances of every day....

If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all
a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and
from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for
some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength--

"I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved
towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that
train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her
in her slow descent of the stairs.

In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the
ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's
thanks for all his care of her.

Mechanically Aimee advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her
eyes--and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless,
questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She
had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant
passion of her spirit....

Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so,
careless, callous--or was it only a father's semblance, and did
there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some
darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and
broken her heart--?

Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated
Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his
olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's
pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his
power,--but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in
that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul.

It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was
severed forever.

She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom
dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a
maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but
with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered.

And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear
and supplication.

Useless to beg no