deck early. The
early shore-wind tossed unruly brown curls into her eyes and across the
delicate pink of her cheeks.

When the yachtsman joined her, she read in his eyes that he had been
long awake and was deeply troubled. In the shadow of the after-cabin she
stopped him with a light touch on his arm.

"Now tell me," she demanded, "what is the matter?"

His voice was quiet. "There is nothing in my thoughts that you cannot
read--so--" He lifted the eyes in question, half-despairing despite the
smile he had schooled into them. "Why rehearse it all again?"

Her face clouded.

He turned his gaze on the single dome and four minarets of the Mosque of
Suleyman.

"Besides," he added at length, speaking in a steady monotone, "I
couldn't tell it without saying things that are forbidden."

When she spoke the dominant note in her voice was weariness.

"My life," she said, "is a miserable serial of calling on you and
sending you away. Back there"--she waved her hand to the vague west--"it
is summer--wonderful American summer! The woods are thick and green....
The big rocks by the creek are splotched yellow with the sun, and green
with the moss.... I wonder who rides Spartan now, when the hounds are
out!" She broke off suddenly, with a sobbing catch in her throat, then
she shook her head sadly. "You see, you must go!" she added. "You will
take my heart with you--but that is better than this."

She turned and led the way forward and for the length of the deck he
walked at her side in silence.

As they halted he demanded, very low; "And you--?"

Her answering smile was pallid as she quoted, "'More than a little
lonely'--" then, reverting to her old name for him, she laughed with
counterfeited gayety--"as, Sir Gray Eyes, people must be--who try to be
good."

CHAPTER XXVI

IN A CURIO SHOP IN STAMBOUL.

The _muezzin_ had called the devout to their prayer-rugs for the third
time that day, when the girl and the two men turned from the Stamboul
end of Galata Bridge into the tawdry confusion of buildings which
cluster about the Mosque Yeni-Djami. They were bound for the bazaars.

Along the twisting ways stretched the booths of native merchants stocked
with the thousand fascinating trifles that the City of the Sultan
markets to the journeying world. Everywhere the crowd surged and
jostled.

On the side street where the shops are a trifle larger than their
neighbors, one Mohammed Abbas keeps his curio bazaar. In su