"

"It is true," she replied, her eyes resting on him.

"You wished to reserve me for more pistol practice?"

"I have no--enmity--for you."

"Oh, Scheherazade!" he protested, laughing.

"You are wrong, Mr. Neeland."

"After all I did to you?"

To his surprise a bright blush spread over her face where it lay
framed by the pillows; she turned her head abruptly and lay without
speaking.

He sat thinking for a few minutes, then leaning forward from where he
sat on the bed's edge:

"After a man's been shot at and further intimidated with a large,
unpleasantly rusty Kurdish dagger, he is likely to proceed without
ceremony. All the same, I am sorry I had to humiliate you,
Scheherazade."

She lay silent, unstirring.

"A girl would never forgive that, I know," he said. "So I shall look
for a short shrift from you if your opportunity ever comes."

The girl appeared to be asleep. He stood up and looked down at her.
The colour had faded from the one cheek visible. For a while he
listened to her quiet breathing, then, the imp of perversity seizing
him, and intensely diverted by the situation, he bent over her,
touched her cheek with his lips, put on his hat, took box and
suitcase, and went out to spend the remaining hour or two in the
smoking room, leaving her to sleep in peace.

But no sooner had he closed the door on her than the girl sat straight
up on the sofa, her face surging in colour, and her eyes brilliant
with starting tears.

When the train arrived at the Grand Central Station, in the grey of a
July morning, Neeland, finding the stateroom empty, lingered to watch
for her among the departing passengers.

But he lingered in vain; and presently a taxicab took him and his box
to the Cunard docks, and deposited him there. And an hour later he was
in his cabin on board that vast ensemble of machinery and luxury, the
Cunarder _Volhynia_, outward bound, and headed straight at the
dazzling disc of the rising sun.

And thought of Scheherazade faded from his mind as a tale that is
told.

CHAPTER XVII

A WHITE SKIRT

It was in mid-ocean that Neeland finally came to the conclusion that
nobody on board the _Volhynia_ was likely to bother him or his box.

The July weather had been magnificent--blue skies, a gentle wind, and
a sea scarcely silvered by a comber.

Assorted denizens of the Atlantic took part in the traditional
vaudeville performance for the benefit of the _Volhynia_ passengers;
gulls f