ount, and he was still in
the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and
then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head
he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop,
he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down--down--down!
Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape.
Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but
the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He
was killed."

"Oh, the pity--after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked
around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old
embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room
makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it
all when the dragoman told me--probably because he showed me the
mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it
was all a legend--like the mark."

"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the
indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where
Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?"
laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles
they think you tourists!"

But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the
plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was
really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.

"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised
chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.

The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No,
that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and
lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been
brought to the home of her husband--there she holds her reception.
Those are the fetes to which the English ladies come in such
curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.

"You cannot blame them for feeling a real--interest," said Arlee
hesitantly.

"Their interest--pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violen