crimson gush down the bronze forehead and over the glittering eyes. But
the wounded Arab did not fall back an inch or drop a burden which he
carried carefully. Now he was sheltering behind the high, jutting
gate-post. In another minute it would be too late to save the gate.

But Angus did not think of Victoria. Nor did Victoria stop to think of
herself. Something seemed to say in her heart, "Maieddine won't let them
blow up the gate, if it means your death, and so, maybe, you can save
them all."

This was not a thought, since she had no time for thought. It was but a
murmur in her brain, as she ran up the steep stairway close to the gate,
and climbed on to the wall.

Maieddine, streaming with blood, was sheltering in the narrow angle of
the gate-post where the firing from the towers struck the wall instead
of his body. He had suspended a cylinder of gunpowder against the gate,
and, his hands full of powder to sprinkle a trail, he was ready to make
a dash for life when a voice cried his name.

Victoria stood on the high white wall of the bordj, just above the gate,
on the side where he had hung the gunpowder. A few seconds more--his
soul sickened at the thought. He forgot his own danger, in thinking of
hers, and how he might have destroyed her, blotting out the light of his
own life.

"Maieddine!" she called, before she knew who had been ready to lay the
fuse, and that, instead of crying to a man in the distance, she spoke to
one at her feet. He stared up at her through a haze of blood. In the red
light of the fire, she was more beautiful even than when she had danced
in his father's tent, and he had told himself that if need be he would
throw away the world for her. She recognized him as she looked down, and
started back with an impulse to escape, he seemed so near and so
formidable. But she feared that, if the gate were blown up, the ruined
tower might be shaken down by the explosion. She must stay, and save
the gate, until Stephen had reached the ground.

"Thou!" exclaimed Maieddine. "Come to me, heart of my life, thou who art
mine forever, and thy friends shall be spared, I promise thee."

"I am not thine, nor ever can be," Victoria answered him. "Go thou, or
thou wilt be shot with many bullets. They fire at thee and I cannot stop
them. I do not wish to see thee die."

"Thou knowest that while thou art on the wall I cannot do what I came to
do," Maieddine said. "If they kill me here, my death will be on thy