ctions afforded poor consolation. It was not of the penalties
that Lou Chada must suffer for this infringement of Western codes, but
of the price that she must pay for her folly, of which Pat was thinking.

There was a nauseating taste upon her palate. She remembered having
noticed it faintly while she was smoking the cigarette; indeed, she had
commented upon it at the time.

"The dirty yellow blackguard!" she said aloud, and clenched her hands.

She merely echoed what many a man had said before her. She wondered at
herself, and in doing so but wondered at the mystery of womanhood.

Clarity was returning. The room no longer swam around her. She crossed
in the direction of a garish curtain, which instinctively she divined to
mask a door. Dragging it aside, she tried the handle, but the door was
locked. A second door she found, and this also proved to be locked.

There was one tall window, also covered by ornate draperies, but it
was shuttered, and the shutters had locks. Another small window she
discovered, glazed with amber glass, but set so high in the wall as to
be inaccessible.

Dread assailed her, and dropping on to one of the divans, she hid her
face in her hands.

"My God!" she whispered. "My God! Give me strength--give me courage."

For a long time she remained there, listening for any sound which should
disperse the silence. She thought of her husband, of the sweet security
of her home, of the things which she had forfeited because of this mad
quest of adventure. And presently a key grated in a lock.

Lady Pat started to her feet with a wild, swift action which must have
reminded a beholder of a startled gazelle. The drapery masking the door
which she had first investigated was drawn aside. A man entered and
dropped the curtain behind him.

Exactly what she had expected she could not have defined, but the
presence of this perfect stranger was a complete surprise. The man,
who wore embroidered slippers and a sort of long blue robe, stood there
regarding her with an expression which, even in her frantic condition,
she found to be puzzling. He had long, untidy gray hair brushed back
from his low brow; eyes strangely like the eyes of Lou Chada, except
that they were more heavy-lidded; but his skin was as yellow as a
guinea, and his gaunt, cleanshaven face was the face of an Oriental.

The slender hands, too, which he held clasped before him, were yellow,
and possessed a curiously arresting quality. Pat im