her on his outspread
arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?"

"But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you--I do
not know you--not yet."

"Not--yet. Excellent! There will be time."

"I confess that now I am weary--"

"Ah,--and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he
said solicitously.

Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted
sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands
to it.

"Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to
aid you."

He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very
still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed
the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind
her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of
soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own
happiness.... Happiness, indeed....

"And that veil--surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave
voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the
misty veil was secured.

She stammered that it was quite light--she would not trouble him--

Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil
aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled
sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck.

She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood
came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his
place at the table.

Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of
conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive
the precipitateness--of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your
own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no
reflections. All is pure and transparent--"

If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration,
she felt that she was lost.

"You are not complimentary--a bit of glass, monsieur, instead of a
diamond! But I am too weary to be exacting.... If now, you will
permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw--"

"Little trembler," said the general facetiously, and reached out a
hand to touch her cheek, the light, reassuring caress that one might
give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror
from her lips.

She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He
inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so
smiling in him... he