cket, he
thought acutely.... Jack sending Miss Jeffries home.... Had he
arranged that purposely? Was there some mad, improvised scheme of
escape in the air?

The pictures became mere flitting wraiths of conjecture, yet touched
with horrifying possibility.... Jack lingering, hiding.... Jack
making love to the girl, attempting flight.... Jack discovered--and
the quick saber thrust--for both.

A fire?... Very likely--to screen the darker tragedy. Hamdi was
capable of it to save his pride. And it would dispose so easily of
the--evidence.

McLean's thoughts flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He
tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire
might be the simple truth, that Ryder's talk with the girl might
actually have ended in farewell--at least a temporary farewell--and
that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp.

That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was
actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that
way, McLean's Scotch sense of Providence was capable of pointing out
the stern benefits of the sad visitation.

Whatever mischief might have been afoot between his friend and that
unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented. And however hard Jack
might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for
him than her life.

No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure. No more
desire and danger. No more lurking about barred gates and secret
doors and forbidden palaces. No more clandestine trysts. No more
fury of mind, beating against the bars of fate.

Jack was saved.

Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl--what then? McLean was
skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the
finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then--

His eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the
unconscious answer to that future. She would save Ryder from regret
and retrospection.... In after years, looking back from a happy and
well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic,
far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of
youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty.

Jack must never tell this girl the story. McLean had read somewhere
of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very
sure of it.... She must never receive this hurt, never know that
when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance he