ares, only to find that
the gossip which had been circulated about her had arrived well in
advance; and that, like crows after a dust cart, what remained of the
city's female population was busy pulling her to a thousand pieces with
claws and beaks sharpened by the million irritations of the hot weather.

A dignified bearer had salaamed gravely, and handed her a chit upon her
arrival at the bungalow, where her friend was braving the pestilence of
the hot weather in comradeship with her husband, who, in the secret
places of his heart, wished to goodness she had gone to the hills with
the rest of 'em.

Her luggage, the letter stated, had been shifted to the hotel, where a
room had been taken for her, and there would, it seemed, be plenty of
accommodation on the _City of Sparta_ which would be sailing in three
weeks' time for home.

And that was all!

It is wise in the hot weather to pull the purdah, which is the Indian
way of saying to shut the door, in the face of a young and unattached
girl with a tawny head and opalescent eyes; especially if the dust has
long been undisturbed upon the threshold of the secret places of the
male heart supposed to be entirely in your keeping.

For days she had remained in her room, not daring to face the curious
glances, and subdued whispers, of the few visitors to be met with in
the marble desolation of the front hall; and not for worlds would she
have used the telephone for fear of the direct snub the wire would
surely have transmitted.

Food she hardly touched; sleep she did, heavily, waking dull and
unrefreshed; and for hours she would sit and stare into the corners, or
peer over her shoulder into the stifling shadows, or study her face in
the mirror, wondering if her strange eyes were the eyes of a mad woman.

The bearer had caused her long moments of worry.

The morning after her arrival at the hotel, instead of the little,
dusky, nimble, monkey-eyed man of the night before, there had entered
one, tall and dignified, who had cleared a space on the table beside
her bed, deposited a bunch of flowers and the _chotar hazri_, or early
tea, and raising his hand to his turban had departed.

Quite a usual procedure! But wakeful Leonie, who had indifferently
watched him through the mosquito curtain and from under the pillow
frill into which she had burrowed her head, frowned when something
familiar in the man or his movements had particularly attracted her
attention.

Most nati