belief in her, to save his face until his infatuation was gratified.

But actually he did not believe in any great guilt of hers. Tewfick
Pasha, for all his indulgent modernity, would keep too strict a
harem for that. What he rather believed had happened was that the
young American--now so happily immured in his masonry--had become
aware of the girl through the story of her French father, and in
that connection had struck up the clandestine and romantic
correspondence which had led to their mutual infatuation and his
desperate venture there that afternoon.

The young man had been dealt with--and the thought of the very
summary and competent way he had been dealt with drew the fangs from
the bite of that night's invasion.

His fury felt soothingly glutted.

He had been a match for them both. He recalled his own subtlety and
agility with a genuine smile as he exchanged his dripping uniform
for more informal trousers and a house coat. He had taught that
young man a lesson--a final and ultimate lesson. And he was
beginning to teach one to that girl. Before he was done with
her ...

He felt for her a mingled passion for her beauty and a lust for
conquest of her resistant spirit that fed every base and cruel
instinct of his nature.

A find--a rare find--even with her circumvented lover! He would have
his sport with her.... But though he promised this to himself with
feline relish, apprehension and chagrin were still working.

The fond fatuity with which he had welcomed that starry-eyed little
creature had been rudely overthrown. And his pride smarted at the
idea of the whispers that might echo and re-echo through his palace.
He was too wise an old hand to flatter himself that it would
preserve its bland and silent unawareness of this night.

So far, he believed, he had been unobserved. In Yussuf's silence he
had absolute confidence.... But of course there were a hundred other
chances--some spying, back-stairs eye, some curious, straining
ear....

And for this matter of the boating mishap--he cursed himself now, as
he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his
thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his
malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have
done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his
dramatic itch--and now had paid for it with that idiotic story of
the boating expedition.

He had reason to trust Fatima--there was history behin