aith and upbringing made him grasp the personality before him. Had he
himself been born in these surroundings, under these influences! The
thought flashed through his mind like lightning, even as he bowed before
Harrik, who salaamed and said: "Peace be unto thee!" and motioned him to
a seat on a divan near and facing him.

"What is thy business with me, effendi?" asked Harrik.

"I come on the business of the Prince Pasha," answered David.

Harrik touched his fez mechanically, then his breast and lips, and a
cruel smile lurked at the corners of his mouth as he rejoined:

"The feet of them who wear the ring of their Prince wait at no man's
door. The carpet is spread for them. They go and they come as the feet
of the doe in the desert. Who shall say, They shall not come; who shall
say, They shall not return!"

Though the words were spoken with an air of ingenuous welcome, David
felt the malignity in the last phrase, and knew that now was come
the most fateful moment of his life. In his inner being he heard the
dreadful challenge of Fate. If he failed in his purpose with this
man, he would never begin his work in Egypt. Of his life he did not
think--his life was his purpose, and the one was nothing without the
other. No other man would have undertaken so Quixotic an enterprise,
none would have exposed himself so recklessly to the dreadful accidents
of circumstance. There had been other ways to overcome this crisis, but
he had rejected them for a course fantastic and fatal when looked at in
the light of ordinary reason. A struggle between the East and the West
was here to be fought out between two wills; between an intellectual
libertine steeped in Oriental guilt and cruelty and self-indulgence, and
a being selfless, human, and in an agony of remorse for a life lost by
his hand.

Involuntarily David's eyes ran round the room before he replied. How
many slaves and retainers waited behind those velvet curtains?

Harrik saw the glance and interpreted it correctly. With a look of
dark triumph he clapped his hands. As if by magic fifty black slaves
appeared, armed with daggers. They folded their arms and waited like
statues.

David made no sign of discomposure, but said slowly: "Dost thou think I
did not know my danger, Eminence? Do I seem to thee such a fool? I came
alone as one would come to the tent of a Bedouin chief whose son one had
slain, and ask for food and safety. A thousand men were mine to command,
but I came