on. At--at four o'clock you will take me."

Abdul spoke to Safti, who turned, squinted horribly at the Princess, and
salaamed to her with a curious and contradictory dignity, turning his
fingers, covered with jewels, towards the earth.

That afternoon, at four, when the venerable Madame de Rosnikoff was
still drinking her weak tea and reading her French novel, the Princess
and Abdul stood before the low wooden door of the jewel doctor's house.
Abdul struck upon it, and the terrible physician appeared in the dark
aperture, looking all ways with his deformed eyes, which fascinated the
Princess. Having ascertained that he could speak a little broken French,
like many of the Tunisian Arabs, she bade Abdul wait outside, and
entered the hovel of the jewel doctor, who shut close the door behind
her.

The room in which she found herself was dark and scented. Faint light
from the street filtered in through an aperture in the wall, across
which was partially drawn a wooden shutter. Round the room ran a
divan covered with straw matting, and Safti now conducted the Princess
ceremoniously to this, and handed her a cup of thick coffee, which he
took from a brass tray that was placed upon a stand. As she sipped the
coffee and looked at the pointed head and twisted gaze of Safti, the
Princess heard some distant Arab at a street corner singing monotonously
a tuneless song, and the scent, the darkness, the reiterated song, and
the tall, strange creature standing silently before her gave to her, in
their combination, the atmosphere of a dream. She found it difficult to
speak, to explain her errand.

At length she said: "You are a doctor? You can cure the sick?"

Safti salaamed.

"With jewels? Is that possible?"

"Jewels are the only medicine," Safti replied, speaking with sudden
volubility. "With the ruby I cure madness, with the white jade the
disease of the hijada, and with the bloodstone haemorrhage. I have
made a man who was ill of fever wear a topaz, and he arose from bed and
walked happily in the street."

"And with an emerald," interrupted the Princess; "have you not preserved
sight with an emerald? They told me so."

Safti's expression suddenly became grim and suspicious.

"Who said that?" he asked sharply.

"Abdul. Is it true? Can it be true?"

Her cheeks were flushed. She spoke almost with violence, laying her hand
upon his arm. Safti seemed to stare hard into the corners of the little
room. Perhaps he was really