after all!" he sighed, for he knew that the steadfast woman had poured
out the wine of her life all in vain. "She loves me!" he cried!

Woman, born to be man's sport and plaything, is doomed to be the
unconscious avenger of her sex in every tragedy of the heart! The
treason of some callous lover is repaid with vengeance meted out to
some defenseless man who comes all unguarded "into the arid desert
of Phryne's life, where all is parched and hot." And, Alan Hawke, the
innocent Lancelot, had suffered for some recreant's past crime!

Among the visions of the burning Lotos Land, the bright phantasmagoria
of his unstained youth, there came back now to Alan Hawke all the
glories of his first Durbar, the unforgotten day when he had fallen
under the spell of the woman whose fatal touch had withered the "very
rose and expectancy" of his brilliant promise. His mind strayed backward
through all the misty years to that gorgeous scene of Oriental pomp. He
closed his eyes and pictured again the brilliant pageant.

The huge masses of serried troops, the lines of stately elephants, the
castled background of the temples of Aurungzebe. The blare of trumpets
smote once more upon his ear, and hordes of jewel-decked Asiatics swept
along before the pompous military representatives of the Empress, who
wears the Crown of the Seas.

There was a quickening of "Love's extinguished embers" as he lived over
again the moment, when "side by side, with England's pride," he rode
with his sword lowered in knightly salute before the clustered banners
of the Imperial military throne. And the hour of his fate sounded when
the eyes of a woman rested upon him in a mute appeal! Their glances told
him all.

For, then and there, the young officer had seen the wonderful beauty
of the woman who had lured him on and then, in after days, sold his
unstained soul to shame! A fair-faced Lilith, her glowing beauty
enshrined in all the borrowed splendor of majesty, a woman of gleaming
golden hair, a later, all too willing, Guenevere! The soft subtle
invitation of her eyes of sapphire blue had called him to her side, in
that unspoken pact which needs no words! He was her slave from the first
moment! With a last pang of his quivering heart, Hawke recalled the sly
skill of the faithless wife who had drawn the young officer into her
net, for the passing amusement of her idle hours! Too late he knew all
the artful craft of his being bidden to the Grand Ball, of the
"v