olled a
person, and to hide a sudden rush of rosy colour which swept
uncontrollably from chin to brow, extracted another cigarette from the
Russian case.

"'Simon Artz,' I am sure! May I not offer you one of mine? They are
all made especially and only for me. And do you prize the case? No!"

As the girl shook her head he took the wooden trifle from her, closed
his hand gently, and, crushing it to matchwood, dropped it soundlessly
on to the sand.

And when Hahmed, the Arab, had finished speaking, Jill Carden, the
English girl, understood that with her only rested the decision, that
even now, at the eleventh hour, she was still absolutely free to go.

Outside the gates waited the man's car, ready to take her wherever she
listed on her way home! At her feet lay the camels, ready to take her
to all the possibilities of the unknown!

There was absolute silence as she sat motionless, looking into the
future. In the West she saw boats, trains, hotels, inner cabins,
middle seats, back bedrooms; felt women, mothers, and wives clutching
their mankind so as to keep them from the pariah, the penniless, pretty
companion; heard the clink of the five or ten shillings a week paid
monthly in silver, and all this to be repeated over and over again
until she died, unless she married a man she did not love and "settled
down" for ever and ever and ever; though even this possibility seemed
to have receded into the remote distance with the receding of her
fortune.

Then she looked up to the stars, and down to the sand, and out to the
East, seeing her freedom if she dared grasp it, if she dared venture
out on the many days' journey which, to her astonishment, she had
learned stretched between Ismailiah and the oasis.

She scrutinised the man before her--this Arab with the impassive face,
the camels at his feet, her life in his hands if she went with him.

His what? Wife! to settle down for ever and ever and ever.

His plaything? This was not the man to play or be played with, for had
he not said:

"If you come with me, fear not that you will be a prisoner. The oasis,
the house, my servants, houses, camels, all will be yours, and there
will be nothing to prevent your leaving it all--nothing except the
desert, the miles of pitiless sand, trackless, pathless, strewn with
the white bones of those who have essayed to escape from Fate, the
never-changing, ever-different ocean which beats about my dwelling."

Then once again sh