when
his quick ear detected footsteps again in the garden. Some one--the man,
of course--was returning.

"May fire burn his eyes for ever! He would talk with Kald, then go again
among them all, and so pass out unsuspected and safe. For who but I--who
but I could say he did it? And I--what is my proof? Only the words which
I speak."

A scornful, fateful smile passed over his face. "'Hast thou never killed
a man?' said Kaid. 'Never,' said he--'by the goodness of God, never!'
The voice of Him of Galilee, the hand of Cain, the craft of Jael. But
God is with the patient."

He went hastily and noiselessly-his footfall was light for so heavy a
man-through the large room to the farther side from that by which David
and Kaid had first entered. Drawing behind a clump of palms near a door
opening to a passage leading to Mizraim's quarters, he waited. He saw
David enter quickly, yet without any air of secrecy, and pass into the
little room where Kaid had left him.

For a long time there was silence.

The reasons were clear in Nahoum's mind why he should not act yet. A new
factor had changed the equation which had presented itself a short half
hour ago.

A new factor had also entered into the equation which had been presented
to David by Kaid with so flattering an insistence. He sat in the place
where Kaid had left him, his face drawn and white, his eyes burning, but
with no other "sign of agitation. He was frozen and still. His look was
fastened now upon the door by which the Prince Pasha would enter, now
upon the door through which he had passed to the rescue of the English
girl, whom he had seen drive off safely with her maid. In their swift
passage from the Palace to the carriage, a thing had been done of even
greater moment than the killing of the sensualist in the next room.
In the journey to the gateway the girl David served had begged him to
escape with her. This he had almost sharply declined; it would be no
escape, he had said. She had urged that no one knew. He had replied that
Kaid would come again for him, and suspicion would be aroused if he were
gone.

"Thee has safety," he had said. "I will go back. I will say that I
killed him. I have taken a life, I will pay for it as is the law."

Excited as she was, she had seen the inflexibility of his purpose. She
had seen the issue also clearly. He would give himself up, and the whole
story would be the scandal of Europe.

"You have no right to save me only to kil