permitted her a dangerous freedom, believing that she would appreciate
without abusing it.

Her friendship with Lou Chada had first opened his eyes to the perils
which beset the road of least resistance. Sir Noel Rourke was an
Anglo-Indian, and his prejudice against the Eurasian was one not lightly
to be surmounted. Not all the polish which English culture had given to
this child of a mixed union could blind Sir Noel to the yellow streak.
Courted though Chada was by some of the best people, Sir Noel remained
cold.

The long, magnetic eyes, the handsome, clear-cut features, above all,
that slow and alluring smile, appealed to the husband of the wilful
Pat rather as evidences of Oriental, half-effeminate devilry than as
passports to decent society. Oxford had veneered him, but scratch the
veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the East, perfumed, seductive,
appealing, but something to be shunned as brittle and untrustworthy.

Yet he hesitated, seeking to be true to his convictions. Knowing what he
knew already, and what he suspected, it is certain that, could he have
viewed Lou Chada through the eyes of Chief Inspector Kerry, the affair
must have terminated otherwise. But Sir Noel did not know what Kerry
knew. And the pleasure-seeking Lady Rourke, with her hair of spun gold
and her provoking smile, found Lou Chada dangerously fascinating; almost
she was infatuated--she who had known so much admiration.

Of those joys for which thousands of her plainer sisters yearn and
starve to the end of their days she had experienced a surfeit. Always
she sought for novelty, for new adventures. She was confident of
herself, but yet--and here lay the delicious thrill--not wholly
confident. Many times she had promised to visit the house of Lou Chada's
father--a mystery palace cunningly painted, a perfumed page from the
Arabian poets dropped amid the interesting squalor of Limehouse.

Perhaps she had never intended to go. Who knows? But on the night when
she came within the ken of Chief Inspector Kerry, Lou Chada had urged
her to do so in his poetically passionate fashion, and, wanting to go,
she had asked herself: "Am I strong enough? Dare I?"

They had dined, danced, and she had smoked one of the scented cigarettes
which he alone seemed to be able to procure, and which, on their arrival
from the East, were contained in queer little polished wooden boxes.

Then had come an unfamiliar nausea and dizziness, an uncomfortable
recogn