s, her whole being was sick with apprehension;
desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her
goal by a roundabout way.

Then she stopped, sighed, and cast down her eyes; then raised them
beseechingly when the man spoke.

"Fearing to use force against the--the woman who thou sayest is loved
by the man thou lovest--and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale
is as full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in
which thou spinn'st thy web--thou would'st tear her from him by craft.
Explain thy seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for
behold the hour of dawn approacheth."

And the wrath in the voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over
the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing.

"She, the white woman, walks in the bazaar, yea, even at noon and at
sunset. Perchance one evening, lured by the tale of the riches of the
house of Zulannah, might not her feet stray within the portals at the
setting of the sun. And behold, the key of the great door is within
these hands, and--and------"

The man's hands lay quietly on his knees as he leant forward, and the
shadow thrown by the flowering plants hid the twin pools of murder in
the depths of his eyes.

"And------?" he whispered.

"And------" she whispered back, "would the white man, thinkest thou,
take to wife her who had passed a night in the house of the courtesan?
Would he not, without waiting for explanation, throw her into the filth
of the bazaar, leaving her for the first comer to pick up, and turn
himself to------"

She leapt to her feet, screaming, as his fingers closed round her wrist
in a grip of steel; mad with fury, she tore her raiment and hair,
raving obscenities in the vilest language of the lowest reaches of the
bazaar, oblivious of the dogs which reared and fell and reared
unceasingly behind her.

"The white woman who trapeses the bazaar unveiled," she screamed. "The
white virgin who flung herself into thy arms, in the market-place, thou
trafficker in foreign harlots, the------"

Hugh Carden Ali, the son of his father to the inner-most part of his
being in the horrible scene, had made one little sign, and the dogs
were upon her.

With a sickening scrunch one caught the side of her head in the steel
jaws which stretched from the nape of the neck to the corner of the
mouth; with a sharp snap the other drove its fangs into the muscle
behind the dimpled knee.

They pul