to listen to the cursing of those who ran behind her, stumbling
in the narrow way.

She fled through the farthest door; she was free; there but remained
the shallow flight of marble stairs to the suite wherein her bedroom
lay.

Then she stopped, and, shrieking, flung out her arms.

To right, to left and upon the flight of stairs, there stood her
servants.

The men and the women she had flogged and kicked, thinking to heal
their wounds and bruises and dim their memories by throwing gold
amongst them on the morrow.

They made no movement, they simply stood and stared.

Her head-veil and mantle had gone; her under-garments were torn to
shreds, leaving exposed the slender body which leaned sideways like a
tree which had been struck by lightning. Her matted hair fell far
below her waist; it made a frame to the horrible face, one side of
which was as that of an old, old hag, and the other, grimed with dirt,
flecked with foam, was yet as lovely as a jewel.

They shrank back and still further back; they made the sign to scare
away the spirit of evil; thinking her possessed of Eblis, the devil,
they would not have touched her for a gold piece.

They turned their heads at the sound of rushing footsteps; they
motioned her to move on; believing her mad, they gave her a chance, for
in the East you dare not turn your hand against the mentally afflicted.

She ran.

And after her came the pack in full cry.

Across great rooms, lit by hanging lamps, scented with brasiers of
perfumed wood, she fled, slipping upon chinchilla rug or glaring
monstrous hearthrug of Berlin wool, in her desperate haste to quit the
house.

Out into the air she must get; under the trees in the garden; under the
moon; down the broad paths to the wall at the end.

There was no wall too high for her to climb in her extremity. Her face
was grey; her eyes sunk in black: orbits; her nose pinched, with
nostrils which blew and flattened like bellows to her laboured
breathing.

A hand clutched at her streaming hair and missed it as she sped down
the garden; they were upon her heels, dogs jumping at her face as she
ran.

She was blind, deaf, almost dead when the great gorilla-shaped arms of
Bes closed about her.

She made no sound as she hurtled through the air. Mercifully perhaps
was she dead, as she crashed down into the pit at the bottom of which
great shapes prowled hungrily.

They did not stay to watch, not one of them.

Shouting and lau