hands alone, as she desperately tried to liberate
herself.

"Let me go, Hahmed! let me go! You are hurting me dreadfully. You
must _not_ hurt me--you must _not_ bruise me. Oh! you don't
understand!"

She struggled furiously and unavailingly, resorting at last to cruelty
to gain her end.

"Let me go, Hahmed! Take your hands away--I--I _hate to feel them upon
me_!"

He let her go, pushing her away from him ever so slightly, so that she
stumbled against the chair, cracking her ankle-bone, that tenderest bit
of anatomical scaffolding, against a projecting piece of ornamental
wood.

It was a case of injury added to insult, and she crouched back furious
in her physical hurt as she tore the silken covering from her arms,
where already showed faint bruises above the little tattoo mark showing
itself so black against the white skin, and upon which she put her
finger.

"Oh! who would have thought when you tattooed that, Jack----!"

But she stood her ground and shrugged her naked shoulders irritatingly
when Hahmed crossed the dividing space in a bound with his hand upon
the hilt of his dagger.

"Bi--smi--llah! what sayest thou? This mark upon the fairness of thy
arm which I have thought a blemish, and therefore have not questioned
thee thereon--sayest thou it is a _dakkh_, what thou callest a tattoo
mark? And if so what has it to do with the man whose name is
unceasingly upon thy lips?"

Jill stood like a statue of disdain.

"What _is_ the matter now, Hahmed? Please understand that I will not
tolerate such continual fault-finding any longer! That is a tattoo
mark of a pail of water--you may not know that we have a rhyme in
England which begins like this:

"Jack and Jill went up a hill
To fetch a pail of water!"

Oh! shades of ancient Egypt, did you ever hear or see anything so
pathetically absurd as Jill as she solemnly repeated the old doggerel.

"That makes no difference--a pail of water or the outline of a
flower--did this man--this--this _Jack_ make the mark upon thee?"

Jill hesitated for a second and then answered with a glint in her eye.

"Yes! he did--and he did Mary too--put the dinkiest little heart on her
arm--we were under the cherry tree in the vegetable------!"

"Go!" suddenly thundered the Arab.

And Jill, gathering her raiment about her for departure, turned to look
straight into the man's eyes, whilst her heart, in spite of the little
scornful smile which twisted the corner