. But her father suddenly
dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the _enfant gate_
of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their
soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his
dark head from which the fez had tumbled.

For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And
her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort.

She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a
tide of chill, irresistible foreboding....

For all the years of her life.... For all the years....

CHAPTER IV

EXPLANATIONS

The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into
three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration
coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a
Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian
moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past
sleeping camels and snoring _dhurra_ merchants--a period during
which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of
enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure
in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a
gauzy veil....

This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he
lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared
into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and
himself.

Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this
girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never
seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a
Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and
self-preservation?

In the name of wonder, what had possessed him? The night? The moon?
The mystery of the unknown?... If he had never really kissed her he
might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to. But
having kissed her--!

He looked upon himself as a stranger. A stranger of whom he would be
remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger
for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect. There had
been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger....

During the third period he slept.

When he awoke, late in the morning, and descended from a cold tub to
a breakfast room from which McLean had long since departed, he
brought yet another mood with him, a mood of dark, deep disgust and
a shamed inclination to dismiss t