h a sort of wild abandon.

"Why do you treat me so!" she cried; she had the most fascinating accent
imaginable. "Throw me into prison, kill me if you like, for what I have
done!" She stamped her foot. "For what I have done! But do not torture
me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches--that I forget you! I tell
you--again I tell you--that until you came one night, last week, to
rescue some one from--" There was the old trick of hesitating before the
name of Fu-Manchu--"from him, I had never, never seen you!"

The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for
belief--or so I was sorely tempted to suppose. But the facts were
against her.

"Such a declaration is worthless," I said, as coldly as I could. "You
are a traitress; you betray those who are mad enough to trust you--"

"I am no traitress!" she blazed at me; her eyes were magnificent.

"This is mere nonsense. You think that it will pay you better to serve
Fu-Manchu than to remain true to your friends. Your 'slavery'--for I
take it you are posing as a slave again--is evidently not very harsh.
You serve Fu-Manchu, lure men to their destruction, and in return he
loads you with jewels, lavishes gifts--"

"Ah! so!"

She sprang forward, raising flaming eyes to mine; her lips were slightly
parted. With that wild abandon which betrayed the desert blood in her
veins, she wrenched open the neck of her bodice and slipped a soft
shoulder free of the garment. She twisted around, so that the white skin
was but inches removed from me.

"These are some of the gifts that he lavishes upon me!"

I clenched my teeth. Insane thoughts flooded my mind. For that creamy
skin was red with the marks of the lash!

She turned, quickly rearranging her dress, and watching me the while. I
could not trust myself to speak for a moment, then:

"If I am a stranger to you, as you claim, why do you give me your
confidence?" I asked.

"I have known you long enough to trust you!" she said simply, and turned
her head aside.

"Then why do you serve this inhuman monster?"

She snapped her fingers oddly, and looked up at me from under her
lashes. "Why do you question me if you think that everything I say is a
lie?"

It was a lesson in logic--from a woman! I changed the subject.

"Tell me what you came here to do," I demanded.

She pointed to the net in my hands.

"To catch birds; you have said so yourself."

"What bird?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

And now a memo