e Arab how well she was progressing in the art, she
suddenly stood up before him and made a slight movement of her body,
holding the slender white arms rigidly to her side, whilst her small,
rose-tinted right foot tapped the ground impatiently.

"Allah!" had suddenly exclaimed the Arab, as he had seized her arms and
pulled her towards him. "You would mock me, make fun of me, you woman
of ice!

"How dare you make me see a picture of you in--ah! but I cannot speak
of it in words, suffice that one day I will--Allah! you--you dare to
mock me with a picture of that which you refuse me------!"

"I haven't the faintest idea of what you are talking about," had
replied a very ruffled Jill, as with golden anklets softly clinking she
withdrew to a distance. "If that is the effect of my dancing I will
never dance for you, _never_!"

"But, woman, do you mean to tell me that you have no idea of the
translation put upon your movements?"

"Evidently not," haughtily replied the inwardly laughing girl.

"That you do not know the movement you made just now meant that in the
dimness of the night I--oh! I cannot tell you, but I swear before
Allah that _I--I_, Hahmed, who have known no woman, will teach you the
translation of every movement of all that you have learned."

Whereupon Jill, having seated herself upon the stuffed head of an
enormous lion skin, murmured "_soit_," and proceeded to light a
cigarette.

Her second and favourite pastime was riding, and, in as few words as
possible, so that my book shall not ramble to unseemly length, I will
tell you how the fame of her horsemanship had come to be spoken of,
even in the almost untrodden corners of Asia and Egypt.

The whim seizing her, she would bid the Arab to her presence, sometimes
to her evening repast, sometimes to sweet coffee and still sweeter
music, sometimes to wander on foot or on camel-back through the oasis,
to the desert stretching like a great sea beyond, and still beyond.

Everything, as you will note if you have the patience to get through to
the end of this book, happened to Jill in the light of the full moon.
On this night in question, clad all in black, with the moonbeams
striking rays from the silver embroidered on her veil, and the anklets
above her little feet, she seemed small and fragile, altogether
desirable, and infinitely to be protected to the man beside her on the
edge of the sand. Still more so when she waxed ecstatic with delight
on the ap