ailors. The door was white, with mouldings of
gold, and the inscription above it was in golden characters.

"It looks so significant that I must know what it means," she added.

"It is taken from the Koran, madame."

"And it means?"

He fixed his great eyes upon her.

"'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck.'"

"'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck,'" she repeated,
slowly. "So that is the motto for the _Loulia_!"

She was standing quite still, staring up at the cabalistic signs beneath
which she was going to pass.

"Do you dislike it, madame?"

"No, it's strong, but--well, it leaves no loophole for escape, and it
rather suggests a prison."

"We are in the prison of our lives, and we are in the prison of
ourselves," he answered, calmly.

She dropped her eyes from the words.

"Yes?" she said, looking at him like one who asks for more.

"Prison!" said Nigel, behind her. "I hate that word. You're wrong,
Baroudi. Life is a fine freedom, if we choose it to be so, and we can
act in it according to our own free-will. Our fate is not bound about
our necks. It is only we ourselves who can bind it there."

"All that is not at all in my belief," returned Baroudi, inflexibly.
"Here are cabins for servants."

He led them into a passage, and pointed to little doors on the right and
left.

"And here is my room for working and arranging all I have to do. I
believe you English call it a 'den.'"

He opened a door that faced them at the end of the passage, and preceded
them into his "den." The effect of this chamber was that it was a
"double room," for an exquisite screen of mashrebeeyeh work, in the
centre of which was a small round arch, divided it into two
compartments. On each side of this arch, facing the entrance door, were
divans covered with embroideries and heaped with enormous cushions.
Prayer-rugs covered the floor, prayer-rugs of very varied patterns and
colours, on which yellows, greens, mauves, pinks, reds, purples, and
browns dwelt in perfect accord; on which vases were seen with trees,
lamps with flowers, strange and conventional buildings with ships, with
chains, with pedestals, with baskets of fruit, mingled together,
apparently at haphazard, yet forming a blend that was restful. By the
windows there were lattices of mashrebeeyeh work, which could be opened
and closed at will. At present they were open. Beneath them were fitted
book-cases containing rows of books, in Engli