ecrets of those grim walls.

He had died for her sake, and all that she asked now of life, she
thought in the utter agony of her youth, was death. And very
quickly.

"I am so soft hearted," he sighed, still with that ringlet in his
lifted hand, his hand which wanted palpably to settle upon her and
yet was withheld by some strange inhibition of those fixed, helpless
eyes. "Who knows--perhaps I may forgive you yet? You might persuade
me--"

"He is dead," she said shiveringly.

"Dead? He?... Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who
wanted you for a family in France!" The bey laughed gratingly. "No,
I assure you he is not dead--I have not harmed a hair of his head.
He is alive--only not with quite the widest range of liberty--"

He broke off to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely.
"Shall I send, then, for some proof--an ear, perhaps, or a little
finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five
minutes it will be here."

Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart. If Ryder were alive
and still in this man's power--

"You are horrible," she said to him in a voice that was suddenly
clear and unshaken. "What is it you want of me--fear and hate--and
utter loathing?"

Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting. The Turk looked
down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his
mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze.

"Not at all--nothing at all like that, little dove with talons. I
want sweetness and repentance--and submission. And--"

"You have a strange way to win them," she said desperately.

"You have taken a strange way with me, my love! Little did I
foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning--" He broke
off. "There are men," he reminded her, "who would not consider a
cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans."

She was silent.

"But I," he murmured, "I am soft hearted." He dropped on one knee
before her and tried to smile into her averted face. "I can never
resist a charming penitent.... I assure you I am pliability itself
in delicate fingers--although iron and steel to a threatening
hand.... If you should woo me very sweetly, little one--"

She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes
the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch. But she
did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice
was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be.

"How can I know what yo