aughed at the idea that the adventure would be more
dangerous for him as a French officer, if anything leaked out, than for
two travelling Englishmen.

"I would give my soul to be in this!" he exclaimed, before he knew what
he was saying, or what meaning might be read into his words. But both
faces spoke surprise. He was abashed, yet eager. The impulse of his
excitement led him on, and he began stammering out the story he had not
meant to tell.

"I can't say the things you ought to know, without the things that no
one ought to know," he explained in his halting English, plunging back
now and then inadvertently into fluent French. "It is wrong not to
confess that all the time I know that young lady is there--in the
Zaouia. But there is a reason I feel it not right to confess. Now it
will be different because of this letter that has come. You must hear
all and you can judge me."

So the story was poured out: the romance of that wonderful day when,
while he worked at the desert well in the hot sun, a lady went by, with
her servants, to the Moorish baths. How her veil had fallen aside, and
he had seen her face--oh, but the face of a houri, an angel. Yet so
sad--tragedy in the beautiful eyes. In all his life he had not seen such
beauty or felt his heart so stirred. Through an attendant at the baths
he had found out that the lovely lady was the wife of the marabout, a
Roumia, said not to be happy. From that moment he would have sacrificed
his hopes of heaven to set her free. He had written--he had laid his
life at her feet. She had answered. He had written again. Then the
sister had arrived. He had been told in a letter of her coming. At first
he had thought it impossible to confide a secret concerning
another--that other a woman--even to her sister's friends. But now there
was no other way. They must all work together. Some day he hoped that
the dear prisoner would be free to give herself to him as his wife. Till
then, she was sacred, even in his thoughts. Even her sister could find
no fault with his love. And would the new friends shake his hand wishing
him joy in future.

So all three shook hands with great heartiness; and perhaps Sabine would
have become still more expansive had he not been brought up to credit
Englishmen stolid fellows at best with a favourite motto: "Deeds, not
words."

As Sabine told his story, Stephen's brain had been busily weaving. He
did not like the thing they had to do, but if it must be do