bore herself with a proud dignity and an unfaltering
composure under that greedy scrutiny; but inwardly she shrank and
writhed in a shame and humiliation that she could hardly define. In some
measure Oliver shared her feelings, but blent with anger; and urged
by them he so placed himself at last that he stood between her and the
Basha's regard to screen her from it as he would have screened her from
a lethal weapon. Upon the poop he paused, and salaamed to Asad.

"Permit, exalted lord," said he, "that my wife may occupy the quarters
I had prepared for her before I knew that thou wouldst honour this
enterprise with thy presence."

Curtly, contemptuously, Asad waved a consenting hand without vouchsafing
to reply in words. Sakr-el-Bahr bowed again, stepped forward, and put
aside the heavy red curtain upon which the crescent was wrought in
green. From within the cabin the golden light of a lamp came out to
merge into the blue-gray twilight, and to set a shimmering radiance
about the white-robed figure of Rosamund.

Thus for a moment Asad's fierce, devouring eyes observed her, then she
passed within. Sakr-el-Bahr followed, and the screening curtain swung
back into its place.

The small interior was furnished by a divan spread with silken carpets,
a low Moorish table in coloured wood mosaics bearing the newly lighted
lamp, and a tiny brazier in which aromatic gums were burning and
spreading a sweetly pungent perfume for the fumigation of all
True-Believers.

Out of the shadows in the farther corners rose silently Sakr-el-Bahr's
two Nubian slaves, Abiad and Zal-Zer, to salaam low before him. But for
their turbans and loincloths in spotless white their dusky bodies must
have remained invisible, shadowy among the shadows.

The captain issued an order briefly, and from a hanging cupboard the
slaves took meat and drink and set it upon the low table--a bowl of
chicken cooked in rice and olives and prunes, a dish of bread, a melon,
and a clay amphora of water. Then at another word from him, each took a
naked scimitar and they passed out to place themselves on guard beyond
the curtain. This was not an act in which there was menace or
defiance, nor could Asad so interpret it. The acknowledged presence
of Sakr-el-Balir's wife in that poop-house, rendered the place the
equivalent of his hareem, and a man defends his hareem as he defends his
honour; it is a spot sacred to himself which none may violate, and it is
fitting that he t