in stories she told me after we
knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the
dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those
days, because I loved doing it. It came as natural to dance as to
breathe, and Saidee had always encouraged me, so when I was left alone
it made me think of her, to dance the dances of her stories."

"What about your teachers? Did they never find you out?" asked Stephen.

"Yes. One of the young teachers did at last. Not in the attic, but when
I was dancing for the big girls in their dormitory, at night--they'd
wake me up to get me to dance. But she wasn't much older than the
biggest of the big girls, so she laughed--I suppose I must have looked
quaint dancing in my nighty, with my long red hair. And though we were
all scolded afterwards, I was made to dance sometimes at the
entertainments we gave when school broke up in the summer. I was the
youngest scholar, you see, and stayed through the vacations, so I was a
kind of pet for the teachers. They were of one family, aunts and
nieces--Southern people, and of course good-natured. But all this isn't
really in the story I want to tell you. The interesting part's about
Saidee. For months I got letters from her, written from Algiers. At
first they were like fairy tales, but by and by--quite soon--they
stopped telling much about herself. It seemed as if Saidee were growing
more and more reserved, or else as if she were tired of writing to me,
and bored by it--almost as if she could hardly think of anything to say.
Then the letters stopped altogether. I wrote and wrote, but no answer
came--no answer ever came."

"You've never heard from your sister since then?" The thing appeared
incredible to Stephen.

"Never. Now you can guess what I've been growing up for, living for, all
these years. To find her."

"But surely," Stephen argued, "there must have been some way to----"

"Not any way that was in my power, till now. You see I was helpless. I
had no money, and I was a child. I'm not very old yet, but I'm older
than my years, because I had this thing to do. There I was, at a
farmhouse school in the country, two miles out of Potterston--and you
would think Potterston itself not much better than the backwoods, I'm
sure. When I was fourteen, my stepmother died suddenly--leaving all the
money which came from my father to her husband, except several thousand
dollars to finish my education and give me a start