Flower Forbidden/Part 3

by C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

 

[The first installment of this story appeared in the April number.]

CHAPTER XII.

THE MOORISH BATH—AND AFTER.

THE most important “hamman,” frequented by aristocratic Arab women being in old Tunis, El Khadra's carriage, driven by Miloud in place of the coachman, had not very far to go. Nouna accompanied the bride elect and the bride's sister; and Lalla Aïssa having been left at home, there was little risk in hurrying through the ceremonies, and ordering the carriage to return comparatively early. The only real danger, the sisters believed, was threatened by the presence of several friends of the family, invited days ago to watch the ceremonious dyeing of Ourïeda's hair, and the staining of her fingers with henna. These ladies would be surprised at the girls' haste to start for home, and might later mention it to Aunt Aïssa, who would demand why, as they had left the baths early, they had not come home till late.

Luckily for the sisters, however, the day, which had begun with warmth and sunshine, turned cold and windy toward afternoon, threatening one of Tunis' rare, fierce storms. Arab women dislike cold, and fear it, especially after the warmth of the rooms in a Moorish bath; therefore all who had been invited sent excuses by their servants, with little gifts of perfumes, flowers, and spangled sweets to Ourïeda, things which they had meant to bring.

The building was domed, almost like a mosque, but was entered from a fine, tiled doorway, through a long, low-ceilinged hall. Even there, the heat began to be intense, and damp, as in a greenhouse. The two girls went in together, escorted by their negress, who also wore a veil, not because she was young and beautiful, but because she would not admit to herself that she had passed the happy age, the flower of Mussulman womanhood, when veiling is obligatory. At the end of the hall, a door was thrown open for them by a bath attendant, a plump girl, dressed only in a short robe of gauzy, yellow material, which clung to her warm body and golden-bronze limbs. She welcomed them, smiling respectfully, for the daughters of El Khadra—whose sister Aïssa had hired the baths—were young ladies of importance.

On ordinary days, the inner rooms would have been filled with bathers, pretty or plain, lightly but brilliantly clad, like gauzy butterflies; reclining on divans, or squatting on nattes spread on the marble floor; gossiping together before their turn for the hottest rooms, or sipping ices, French sirups, or Moorish coffee, after the bath. To-day, however, the whole place belonged to the family of El Khadra. Many attendants, draped in mere outlines of yellow, green, or rose, trooped to welcome the girls with smiling respect, as, having been undressed and wrapped in filmy white silk robes brought by Nouna, they advanced along a labyrinth of tiled passages and small rooms, to a large one with a plashing fountain in the middle.

Here it was very hot, and steam floated like a pink cloud over the fountain, taking its tint from a few rose-shaded lamps, and the reddish marble walls and floor. The girls were used to the place, however, and did not dislike the heat. Usually, some of these attendants gave them their baths; and so it was to be to-day, for Laila, who was not the heroine of the occasion. But to receive the bride, a distinguished person presented herself; none other than the celebrated woman known to the fiancées of two generations in Tunis as Zakia, “la hennena.”

This title meant that she was the expert above all experts in dyeing the hair, staining the fingers, painting the lashes of Arab brides and beauties. She was engaged by those who could afford her coveted services, not only to give this bath in the great bathhouse, but afterward to spend a week in the bride's house, anointing her face and body with scented emollients, tinting her brows and lashes, showing her how to “make up” her complexion for her husband's admiration when, at last. he should be permitted to lift her veil, in his own harem. So it was to be in the case of Ourïeda. To-night, Zakia, the “hennena,” would sleep under the roof with her, and would remain until the bride went to the bridegroom.

Now she began the ceremony of the bath, complimenting the “little rose” extravagantly upon the glorious beauty of her eyes, her skin, her hair; weaving poetical phrases, and exclaiming upon the joy that would be the great Sidi Mohammed's when, for the first time, he was permitted to see the face of his bride. But Ourïeda did not smile with pleasure, as did most of the young girls Zakia thus flattered. She looked frightened whenever the name of her fiancé was mentioned, and gazed at the preparation of scented pastes and powders with something like disgust.

Finally, when the bath, with all its intricacies, was over, and, fragrant as her name-flower, Ourïeda was taken into the cooling room, it was time for the dyeing of her long hair. It had been coiled round her head, to keep it dry, during the bath; but it was slightly damp with the moisture, and fell into lovely waves as Zakia took out the pins, and let it drop over the uncovered shoulders.

The girl owed to her Greek blood the ivory fairness of her complexion, and the color and curl of her beautiful hair. As she sat, despondent, on a low stool, all the paraphernalia of the “hennena,” in bowls or platters, ranged round her on the marble pavement, the brown waves covered her like a shining veil, and almost reached the floor.

Zakia picked up the heavy locks, and exclaimed in admiration. Never had she touched such wonderful hair! It would be a pleasure to dye it. Now, she would begin; and the color could dry while she transformed the ivory fingers of the bride to coral.

But suddenly Ourïeda rebelled. She remembered how Norah had said that such hair as hers was a glory, and that it was of the rich brown which she and her brother admired most. Then Laila had replied quickly: “Our men like jet-black hair better, and it must be dyed before Ourïeda marries.”

“What sacrilege!” Norah had ejaculated. And her eyes had turned to the photograph of her brother, on the dressing table; for the girls had been talking in her room, at night, all three brushing their hair. It was as if she had said to the picture: “Isn't it a shame that the poor child's beauty has to be spoiled?” And the eyes of the “dream man” had seemed to Ourïeda to answer: “Yes.”

The girl put up her hands impulsively now, with this memory fresh in her mind.

“I won't have it done!” she exclaimed. “My hair shan't be black. I like it as it is. I hate artificial things.”

Zakia, the “hennena,” looked aghast, almost dropping the bowl of dye which she held—a mixture called sabgha by the Arabs, made of antimony mingled with charcoal of pinewood, and clous de girafle.

“But,” the woman stammered, “it must be done, little moon, sweet rose. It is the custom of all brides. It has been so since time immemorial with our women, they say, even before the day of our great Prophet. I do not know what thy husband would say, to see thy hair the color it now is.”

“I do not care what he says, and I wish that he may never see me at all!” cried Ourïeda. “I tell thee I will not have thy black stuff, and now I have made up my mind, I will not change it. Custom is nothing to me, and I will be a law unto myself.”

Zakia dared protest no more; and, after all, this wild decision was not irrevocable. She was going to spend the whole week before the wedding in E1 Khadra's house. She would take the dye with her, and it was almost certain that the obstinate child's aunt, or her father, would force Ourïeda to submit.

“Then, shall I plait thy hair for thee, and teach thee a bewitching way for a bride to wear it, in wheels and loops on either side?” she coaxed.

“No, leave it hanging. It will not be seen under my veil, when I go out, and it is still damp,” said Ourïeda. She thought that Norah would like to see it so—for the last time.

“At least, thou wilt give me thy little hands to make beautiful with my rosy lotion?”

“The tips of my fingers only,” replied the girl firmly. “I hate to see the whole fingers red, as our Arab ladies have them. They look wicked, as if they had been dipped in blood. I will have mine as a Roumia friend wears hers; only the ends stained.”

Her delicate little face, with its great eyes, expressed so much decision that Zakia yielded; and she got no help from Laila, who had heard everything; for the more ways in which Ourïeda transgressed to-day, the better pleased was her elder sister.

The hair-dyeing process would have been long; and since that feature of the entertainment was unexpectedly abandoned, Zakia made the most of what was left. The bath attendants brought her a low table covered with mother-of-pearl. A gilded plate displayed a paste of henna and a small knife. Over these preparations the tall, brown figure of the woman bent eagerly, as if she were a priestess serving at the altar of beauty.

Two gauzily attired girls placed wax candles in sconces with five branches each, wound with narrow ribbons—a custom as ancient as the rest. Then one held the gilded dish, and Zakia seized the little hands of Ourïeda. She rubbed the nails and the tips of the fingers as far down as the dimpled second joint with the paste, and they took on an ugly, brown color, which disgusted the young girl. But immediately they were hidden in a pair of large velvet gloves, which Zakia slipped onto the stained hands.

A few minutes of suspense, then the gloves were drawn off; whereupon all heads bent forward anxiously. The henna had “taken” well; and now came the moment when the presents would have been given to the bride elect by her friends, if the ladies had not been prevented by the bad weather from arriving. As it was, the attendants took the gifts which had been brought in, and smilingly piled them at Ourïeda's feet. With the little pearl-handled knife, Zakia peeled off the adhering paste, and Ourïeda's fingers appeared, tinted a deep rose, the nails glittering.

It was even earlier than they had dared hope when the sisters escaped from the Moorish baths, having bestowed gold coins on Zakia and the attendants. But Miloud, guessing from what he knew of the plan that they would waste no time, was already at the door with the carriage. He enjoyed driving, as much as the old coachman enjoyed fingering the silver pieces which had bribed him to be ill.

There was a faint suspicion of a grin on the black face, as Miloud drove into modern Tunis, and stopped at the door of a tall, white building, elaborately ornamented, in the worst French taste, with stucco scrolls and moldings. A clock somewhere was striking five as he reined in his two big brown mules.

“What wilt thou give me, little rose, if I sit here, and let thee pay thy visit to Miss Luck alone?” asked Laila, smiling at her sister in the dusk of the closed vehicle, her veil half off.

Ourïeda was securing hers, ready to descend from the carriage. Her heart gave a throb of joy.

“Laila! Dost thou mean it?” she faltered. “I will give thee my new bottle of attar of rose. Thou lovest it.'

“I will do thee this favor for nothing,” the elder girl answered. “I have meant it from the first, but I thought it would be fun to surprise thee at the last moment. I shall have other chances to talk with Miss Luck, but this is thine only one. Make the best of it; and as I have given thee a pleasant surprise, give her one. As soon as thou hast been admitted into her flat, by the young French maid of whom she wrote us, take off thy veil, and let her eyes first fall on thee with thy hair hanging round thy shoulders, as she likes it best. She will cry out with delight, I am sure, to see thou hast not dyed it black.”

“Yes; I will do as thou sayest,” answered Ourïeda, throbbing with excitement and gratitude to her sister, who seldom showed so much interest in her affairs.

“And stay an hour if thou wilt,” went on Laila generously. “I will have Miloud drive me past the shops, so that I can peep at the windows and see if there is any pretty new thing there from Paris, since we came out last. We shall not be expected home till night, and Zakia will not arrive till bedtime, so there is nothing to fear. Aunt Aïssa will by that time have taken her sleeping draft, and no questions will be asked.”

Miloud opened the carriage door, and Ourïeda and the negress descended in haste. Nouna took the young girl up to the door of Miss Luck's flat; but the instant it had been opened by a neat French maid, the veiled figure scuttled downstairs again. A moment later Miloud had driven away with Laila and Nouna. But they did not go to the region of the shops. They drove to one of the finest and most ancient houses in the Arab town, where lived Lella Nedjma, the relative of Si Mohammed, the bey's cousin.

“Thy mistress is at home and expecting me?” Ourïeda said in her pretty French to Miss Luck's servant.

The girl was not only new to the flat, but new to Tunis, and this call from a veiled Arab lady struck her dumb with surprise. She let Ourïeda enter the little hall, and closed the door, before mumbling that mademoiselle was out, but if she were expecting a visitor, no doubt she would return soon—perhaps in a few moments.

“It is well, I will wait,” said Ourïeda, dropping her mantle, and wrapping her veil over her arm.

The servant stared open-mouthed at the vision of romance. For Ourïeda had been dressed for this day's outing her last as an unmarried girl—as, if for a fête. Her jacket was of deep, rose-colored velvet, rich with silver embroidery; her blouse of pale-rose gauze; her vest a network of seed pearls; her sash, silver tissue, worked with pink roses and fringed with delicately tinted coral; her seroual, or trousers, full as a divided skirt, of rose-colored silk as pale as the blouse; and the deep crimson of her jacket was repeated in the little velvet slippers, crusted with tiny pearls. To the astonished Jeanne she was a princess strayed out of a fairy book—this magical girl, whose hair covered her like a brown cloak.

“Where shall I sit till mademoiselle comes?” Ourïeda asked. “In this room?” And she gently reminded the maid of her duty, by motioning toward the nearest door.

“Mais oui!” answered Jeanne, still dazed.

It was the door of the salon, and of course the vision must wait there for mademoiselle, as there was no other reception room. Jeanne knew practically nothing of Tunis and its ways. She had come to find a place there, because she had a cousin, who might one day be her husband, whose regiment was stationed in this town which struck her as so outlandish; and she had had time to learn very little of Arab customs.

It was true that the sofa on which the convalescent brother of mademoiselle reclined had been drawn into the sunny salon to-day for the first time; but if Jeanne vaguely doubted the propriety of ushering in the visitor, it was only because the young monsieur might be sleeping. She did not know if he would like to be disturbed; but it did not occur to her that it was a thing unprecedented for an Arab girl to be brought unveiled into the presence of a strange man.

Hesitatingly, but not knowing what else to do, she opened the door of the drawing-room for the fairy princess, and Ourïeda walked in, flinging her veil down upon a chair. A cheap Japanese screen, for the flat was taken ready furnished—hid most of the room, until she passed round it, and the door had shut behind her, when, to her surprise, something moved on a bed-sofa which faced the window. A head lifted itself from a bank of cushions—a man's head, and a pair of eyes like those she had seen in dreams looked at her—at first in sheer surprise, then in dazzled admiration.

Ourïeda started back, as if some terrible thing had happened, and, with a faint cry, covered her unveiled face with her hands.

CHAPTER XII.

FORBIDDEN FLOWERS ARE FAIREST.

Pat Lassels, his arm in a sling, forgot that he was an invalid still, and that sudden movements were strictly tabooed. He jumped up, and involuntarily came a step or two forward, hardly knowing what he did; for to him, too, this was a vision, a fairy princess out of the Arabian Nights.

Never in his life had he seen or dreamed of a girl so beautiful as Ourïeda. He could have fallen down on his knees, worshiping her, imploring her not to be frightened. Once he had laughed at men who talked of “love at first sight,” but then—he had not imagined that there could be such a divinity as this in the world. He could hardly believe now that she was real. Not to be in love with such a radiant apparition at first sight, even at first glance, would prove a man a blind fool, if he were free to love. And Pat was free, for he had never seriously cared for any woman.

His heart glowed in his breast, and gave light to his eyes. He told himself that just to see this angel once was worth all he had suffered. He was glad of everything that had happened, because it had brought him to Africa, to find her. And he would not lose her— he could not now.

But she stood shrinking from him, her face hidden in her hands, her long hair waving round her slight rose-and-silver figure. And suddenly he realized the poignancy of the situation for the girl, a point of view he had been too startled to catch at first.

It was all he could do not to cry out to her, in his Irish impulsiveness: “Why, you darling, you beautiful angel, don't you know I'd rather be struck dead this instant than hurt or offend you?”

But instead he stammered: “I—beg your pardon! You are my sister's friend. She was expecting you, but not here. I——”

Still hiding her face, Ourïeda murmured: “Je ne comprend pas. Je ne parle pas l'Anglais.”

She knew that she ought not to stay for an instant; but where was she to fly? The carriage had gone. She could not run out, and wait in the public hall of the house, even if she were veiled. Besides, mademoiselle's brother, who could not know how Arabs felt about such things, would think her mad, or an idiot. And even the glimpse she had caught of his face, with its clear, true eyes, showed her how like the eyes and face were to those of her dreams.

Then one held the gilded dish, and Zakia seized the little hands of Ourïeda.

Why was she not a European girl, able to talk with him freely and openly? She knew well enough that he would think it no harm. And never, never would she see her dream man again, after to-day. The rest of her life she was doomed to spend in prison.

Pat instantly began to speak in French,

“Mademoiselle—forgive me. I will go at once. But—perhaps I had better ask you first—there is some change of plan? My sister is to meet you here, not in the other flat?”

“Oh, yes, she is to meet me here,” faltered Ourïeda, still from between shielding hands.

Then suddenly she grew brave, mentally putting herself in the young man's place, realizing how exaggerated her prudery must appear to him. It was stupid and childish, she, told herself, now that this accidental meeting had come about, to behave as if she were afraid her dear friend's brother could murder her with his eyes. She would show him that girls of her race had learned a little sense, and knew how to be dignified in an emergency.

With a great effort of self-control, she trampled upon the conventionalities which to her had been as the air she breathed. She faced that dangerous, unknown enemy—Man—dropping her ice-cold hands at her sides, the blood hot in her cheeks.

“Monsieur, do not go,” she said, with a charming, youthful dignity. “I was taken by surprise for the instant, and so I behaved foolishly. Girls of our race do not show their faces to men, except those of their own family; but it is a convention, not a law, made by our Prophet. We all know that; yet we yield, and most of us have no wish for a different rule. In this case, however, no harm is done. Thou art my dear Miss Luck's well-loved brother, and I trust thee, though I would not have come into this room if I had known thou wert here. Stay, since the thing has happened by the will of Allah. Thou art still an invalid. Thou must not go, or I shall be grieved, and feel I have done thee injury.”

Pat was human, and overwhelmed by the high tide of love. He felt that he ought not to take the girl at her gracious word, since she was caught like a bird in a trap; but the temptation was too strong.

“Will it really not offend you if I stay?” he asked, his eyes paying her such tribute of worship as might have made her feel a goddess, if she had had thoughts for herself. His eyes, as she met them, seemed to drink hers, as the sea drinks a river. His voice set her heart beating, her pulses thrilling. The dream man! At least, she had not been destined to miss all the meaning of life. Nothing could take this moment from her. It was hers to remember always. And there could be no sin in remembering. It was but a moment—a passing joy, like the light that flashes on a white dove's wing, and is gone.

“No, it will not offend me,” she answered softly.

Almost, she began to think that this was a dream; that by and by she would wake. But she did not wish to wake yet.

“Will you sit down to wait for my sister?” he asked, hardly daring to come close enough to place a chair with his free hand. What if she should take fright again?

She sat down quickly, in a chair not so comfortable as the one Pat would have chosen for her.

“Thou must sit also. Remember thou art not yet strong,” she said.

“And may I talk to you?” Pat asked, obeying.

“Yes,” she answered bravely, thinking that his voice was like Norah's, but more thrilling—strange, how thrilling! He was the first man who had ever spoken to her, since her childhood, except her father, her Cousin Mahmoud, and the negro servants, who did not count as men. But in dreams he had spoken to her before.

“Talk to me—till thy sister comes. She will not be long, I think, for she knew I was to come here.”

Pat reflected for an instant. Norah had told him that her two little Arab friends wanted her to meet them at a flat in the same building, where lived the young wife of an Arab doctor, a girl they had known for years. But Norah had gone out while he dozed, and he suposed now, as the Vision seemed so confident, some different arrangement had been made by letter since his sister spoke to him, and while he slept.

It seemed only too certain that Norah might come in at any minute, and break up this heavenly tête-à-tête. Never before had there been a time when he had wished his beloved twin long out of his sight, but at this moment he rejoiced in her absence, and hoped for its continuance.

“May I ask questions?” he inquired, with a humility that went oddly with his bigness and splendid young manhood. Never had he felt it with any other girl, but now he half feared to speak aloud, lest the fairy princess should vanish like a rainbow.

“Questions?” she echoed.

“Yes. Because Norah has talked of you and your sister. She has interested me. Your sister who is to be married soon——”

“Ah!” cried Ourïeda, and he broke off, in alarm lest an indiscretion had vexed her. “What did she tell thee?”

“Very little,” he amended hastily. “You see, I was rather ill at first, and couldn't talk or listen much. The journey wore me out a bit, though Winthrop did everything he could to make it easy. It's only for the last week we've had any real conversation, and—you know, perhaps, what Norah is—how foolish the dear thing is over me? She has made me jabber about myself and my adventures, mostly.”

“Tell me about them!” exclaimed the girl, her heart beating, anxious above all things to calm herself before any other question should be asked.

Pat saw her agitation, and thought that he understood it. He imagined that he had perhaps shocked some Arab prejudice, in mentioning the subject of a marriage in the family.

For, in reality, Norah had had little time to tell of her late pupils to her brother; there had been so much to do for him, and so much she wanted to hear about himself. Besides, when he was well enough for sustained talk, they had touched upon the subject of Constantine Prevali.

It had come up because of the mystery of Pat's wound, which had not been received in fighting. He had been shot from ambush; and Norah had seized upon the theory that the would-be assassin was in Prevali's pay. The idea might seem fantastic, but the man was capable of anything. She had reason to know that!

And then, when she had paused, and flushed, her voice trembling, her eyes tear-filled, Pat had put an abrupt question, a question which led to revelations on both sides. No longer was there the barrier of a secret between the twins.

Norah confessed how, after she had twice refused Constantine Prevali—immensely rich, ambitious, not yet firmly established in that society where marriage with Lord Greyminster's niece could place him—she had received a letter threatening Pat. If she would come and talk matters over on a certain afternoon, at Prevali's house, he would give her an IOU of Pat's to destroy, with her own hands. Otherwise, he would call at once for payment, knowing that Pat was not able to pay.

Norah told how she had gone to keep the appointment; how Prevali confessed that, under another name, he was a money lender; that her brother was deeply in his debt. How, after letting her tear up a paper which appeared to contain Pat's signature, Prevali had taken her to the door, then pulled her suddenly in, saying that she had been seen by a man passing—a great gossip. She must marry him now, or hear this visit talked about. Still, she had refused, believing that she had actually destroyed a paper which Prevali could use against Pat.

And rather than let her brother know that she had risked scandal for his sake, she had been silent about that visit. Afterward, when Pat had gone to France to fight the duel which had broken his career, she had wondered agonizingly if Prevali had spoken evil of her, if Pat had fought to protect her, though insisting that the quarrel had arisen over bridge.

Then, when Norah had told him these things, which she had not dared to tell before, in the face of his reticence, Pat had admitted that Prevali had threatened, had said that he—Lassels—had better use his influence with Norah to marry him, or there might be unpleasant gossip. And Pat, who had struck him in the face, had still the pain of knowing that his own eyes had seen Norah close to Prevali's door on the day when the man boasted of a visit from her.

Pat would have died sooner than ask a question, believing in his sister as he believed in the whiteness of angels; but now, when they were together, after all their troubles, and she had showed her desire to speak, he, too, could be frank.

So each knew the truth about the past; and they had gone on to speculate upon Prevali's actions: what they had meant, and what they might mean in the future, since it appeared that the man had recovered.

There had been a great deal to say, a great deal to discuss. Pat had explained to Norah some things she had never quite understood; how Prevali's money lending had been kept a secret from his relatives, the Greek Prevalis, who were reputable bankers, and from whom he had expectations. He had wished to hide his profession, while reaping every advantage from it, and, for his own sake, would scarcely have kept his threat to make Pat's debts known. Therefore, he had schemed to get some real hold upon Norah; then, through her, upon Pat.

And when his plan failed, a wild wish for revenge upon them both had prompted the challenge to a strange duel. He had broken no law of his own country, but had been willing, in the heat of his anger, to run some risk of losing his life if he could ruin Lassels and break Norah's heart.

As it had turned out, he had saved his life, and succeeded in ruining Pat. But he had lost Norah; and now, evidently, he was wildly trying to retrieve that failure.

In talking everything over, the twins agreed that Duprez had certainly been Prevali's agent; and they thought it not unlikely that he, or some other tool of the Greek money lender, had struck again at Pat, in order that Norah might be left alone in Africa. If she did not suspect, with Pat dead and no one to help her, she might, after all, in desperation promise to be Prevali's wife—or such might have been his hope. Then he could take her back to England, and there would be a reconciliation with Lord Greyminster, with all that would mean of social advantage for Norah's husband.

But the brother and sister saw that ambition alone could not account for everything Prevali had done, everything they suspected him of doing. Certainly, in his way, he must have loved Norah for herself, and loved her passionately. Also, they agreed, his behavior suggested latent madness.

With so much to tell, so much to discuss, there had been few spare moments for talk about outsiders. Of Paul Winthrop, even, they had talked little, though Pat loved, and was grateful to, him, and wondered a good deal how he stood with Norah; why he had seemed surprised and enchanted on learning their relationship, of which he had been ignorant, and why he had undertaken a journey of so much difficulty and even danger, as traveling alone to Oudjda.

All, therefore, that Pat knew of El Khadra's family was that there were two beautiful sisters, one of whom was to be married immediately. He had not believed for an instant that his vision could be that one, for she was so young, so childlike, with her hair hanging over her shoulders like a shining veil. Nevertheless, it did not strike him that she was too young to be fallen in love with by him.

Just for the joy of seeing her, he felt that he would again go through everything he had suffered, everything that had led up to this moment. But he must see her again. He must make her want to see him again, too, and then he was sure that somehow he would be able to break down any obstacles of race and prejudice which rose between them.

 

Meanwhile, Norah had done a few commissions in the town, buying little things for Pat, and she felt so extraordinarily happy that she pitied Ourïeda more intensely than ever; she herself had so much to be thankful for. Pat had been brought safely back to her, rescued from danger by Winthrop. Soon he would be well; and Winthrop said that it would be possible to buy him out of the Foreign Legion, though he had agreed to serve for five years.

Winthrop was going to find out the sum necessary, before anything was said to Pat; then, somehow, everything would be arranged. This “sick leave” would be changed into an honorable discharge; for Winthrop had promised her that he would “think of something worth her brother's while to do.” He was such a friend, this wonderful American! How could she ever have lived without him? As soon as Pat was a little stronger, she and he together would tell Winthrop all about themselves, their true name, and the whole story.

Knowing that Pat had fallen asleep before she started out, and not wishing to disturb him, she did not stop at her own flat, on coming home, but went immediately to that of the Arab doctor, where she had arranged to meet Laila and the bride elect. “Poor little Ourïeda! Norah could hardly bear to think of the forced marriage, and the monotonous future, to which the girl looked forward hopelessly.

A knock at the door of the flat almost instantly brought a negress to admit the visitor. She looked a disagreeable old creature, Norah thought, as she was ushered into a hall, and then a salon, furnished with the wildest mixture of French and Arab taste.

It was a few minutes after five, and Norah half expected to find the two girls already in the drawing-room, with their “emancipated” friend and hostess; but no one was there. The negress, who could, or would, speak no French, ushered her in, indicated that she was to be seated, and then disappeared.

A moment later Constantine Prevali came in. He stood still for a second, smiling at her, his back against the door, evidently expecting that she would try to pass him and escape.

Sick at heart, and not knowing what to do, Norah sprang up, her blood pounding in her ears.

“At last!” he said. “I have taken a good deal of trouble for your sake, and have gone through more than most men will go through for a woman; but you're worth it. I love you! And I love succeeding when there's a thing I want. No use staring over my head at the door. You won't leave this room till you have sworn by everything you believe holy that you will be my wife.”

Quick as light, and before he could guess what was in her mind, Norah rushed to the window, flung it open, and screamed for help, as he sprang to her, and dragged her away.

CHAPTER XIII.

HOW THE PLAN WORKED.

Laila dared not tell her father that Ourïeda was at Miss Luck's flat. EI Khadra would not believe that his “little rose” had insisted upon going there without his permission, or that Laila had found it impossible to detain her. He would blame his elder daughter; and, sending quickly for Ourïeda, would never let Si Mohammed know what had happened. And it was because Laila wanted Si Mohammed to know, that she had fallen into the scheme, helping Prevali, in correspondence, to arrange his part of it.

She found Lella Nedjma at home, in the old Arab palace where Si Mohammed sometimes came to see his widowed relative. The elderly woman began to apologize for her absence from the ceremony at the Moorish baths; but, tactfully and respectfully, Laila cut her short. She had not come, as Lella Nedjma thought, with a message from her Aunt Aïssa, but to ask what ought to be done in a dreadful emergency. Against her will—though she had implored, with tears—Ourïeda had persisted in paying a visit to Miss Luck's flat, in the French town.

Lella Nedjma was startled, but not desperately shocked. “After all, the young Roumia will do the child no harm,” she said soothingly. “Go thou, and fetch her away. Threaten, if she will not come, to tell thy father.”

“I dare not tell him, for her sake,” Laila persisted. “For Miss Luck is not at home this afternoon. Ourïeda knew very well that she would not be there. My sister has gone to see what the Roumia's brother is like, he who came to Tunis wounded, from Morocco. Ourïeda was always talking of him, since the day she saw his photograph in Miss Luck's room at our house. She called him the 'man of her dreams.'”

Lella Nedjma turned pale under her paint.

“Allah!” she faltered. “Can it be possible that the child has done this thing? She who seemed so docile and sweet—she whom I myself recommended to Mohammed, as being the Pearl of Tunis—perfect in body and heart?”

“If thou tellest Si Mohammed he will not marry her,” said Laila, quivering with excitement.

“I fear he must be told,” sighed the old woman; and Laila's eyes flashed. It was that flash which endangered her success; for Lella Nedjma saw it, and remembered the story of the two mothers—recalled Aunt Aïssa's hints concerning the elder girl's jealousy. “That is, he must be told,” she went on, in a changed voice, “if I see, when I go to the house of Miss Luck, that Ourïeda is really there without the Roumia, and in the presence of a man.”

“Do not give thyself the pain of going, in this storm,” Laila urged. “There is no doubt that my story is true, and the thing done, and cannot be mended. Let Si Mohammed know while there is time, since it is according to thy conscience.”

“It is not yet according to my conscience,” replied Lella Nedjma sharply. “I shall start out immediately, and to save time I will take thy carriage. Thou canst wait here with thy negress till I return.”

Crestfallen, but far from despairing, Laila had to submit. Perhaps, after all, it would be better for the old busybody to see for herself, she thought, when Lella Nedjma had driven away with a 3edouin servant maid, and a negro of her own sitting beside Miloud on the box. When she had found Ourïeda, without Miss Luck, and probably with Miss Luck's brother—oh, how Laila hoped that it might be so!—she would be able to draw a more forcible picture for Si Mohammed.

 

Paul Winthrop had gone to Carthage when all anxiety for Norah's brother was at an end. There were things he had to arrange there, in relation to some excavations which, by government permission, were being made at his expense. But he had his motor car with him, and could spin into Tunis at any time he chose, from the strange, sad city of the past—city of ruins and of dreams.

It was now, however, nearly a week since he had felt able to leave the work he was superintending at Carthage, which had reached a critical and acutely interesting stage. His men had come upon a statue, almost perfect, and believed that they had reached the threshold of a buried temple. Paul was excited—the more so because he was happy again, and wanted something splendid to tell Miss Luck, as an excuse to go and see her.

Perhaps, now that they had uncovered the statue, she would consent to come out and see it before it was moved from the place where it had lain for more than two thousand years. He could take her, and bring her back, all within two or three hours; and she should have a chaperon if she liked—an American lady whom he knew, staying at the Tunisia Palace.

But he hoped she would not want a chaperon for the motor run, as she knew him so well. If she would let him drive her alone, he would ask a question he had made up his mind to ask, the moment he learned that the “wild fellow in the Foreign Legion” was Norah's brother, not her lover.

So it happened that, on the afternoon of Ourïeda's visit to the flat, Winthrop started for Tunis, meaning to call, ask after Pat's health, and sound Norah about running out to Carthage next morning.

Just as he was ready to set off, the post came in, and there were a lot of illustrated English papers, which he had been taking in lately, ostensibly for himself, but really for Norah. He made a pretense each week of glancing all these over, and then sent them off at once to his two friends in Tunis, knowing that they would always find much to interest them, in pictures and news of their own country.

Now, he took the bundle with him in the car; and, in order that the papers might seem to have been read, he let his chauffeur drive, while he pulled off the post-office wrappings. Then he began glancing at a few of the pictures, so that he could speak of them, if questioned by Norah or Pat. He did not want his friends to suspect that he subscribed for this budget of papers for their pleasure alone.

Thinking of something else, he hardly knew what he saw, until suddenly his eyes were arrested by two photographs. “The Honorable Norah Lassels,” one was labeled; the other, “The new Lord Conron, late the Honorable Patrick Lassels, Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards.” And the faces were those of Norah and Patrick Luck.

There could be no mistake. He was not deceived by a mere likeness. Miss Luck was the Honorable Norah Lassels. Her brother was the new Lord Conron. Was this the secret which the last time they met Norah had said that she and Pat wished to tell him, when Pat was strong enough to do his part of the talking?

The whole page was devoted to these two photographs, and one other, that of the “late Lord Conron, half-brother of the successor.” Beneath the pictures were descriptive paragraphs; and as he read that the late Lord Conron had just died in a sanatorium, having lain there paralyzed for years, it occurred to Winthrop that very likely this news might come as a surprise to Pat and Norah. What reason they could have had for concealing their identity he guessed; for he remembered reading of Patrick Lassels' duel with Constantine Prevali, and its momentous consequences.

“Poor chap!” Paul said to himself. “He's somebody again now, anyhow, and will have a little money. As for my darling girl, if only she'll take me, and all I've got, she can have the pleasure of adding as much as she likes to her brother's income.”

Reluctantly he shut up the paper with the old photograph of Norah—the only one he had ever seen of her. Already his chauffeur had brought him to Tunis, and into the street where she lived.

It was just as the car was slowing down, to stop before the door of the big white house, that a window on the top floor was flung open, and Norah's voice cried the one word: “Help!”

Almost instantly she was snatched away, but Winthrop saw her face—an«d the face of the man behind her. Also, he marked the window.

“Gaston, got a revolver?” he asked the chauffeur, his voice unsteady. “If you have, give it to me.”

Gaston, being a Frenchman, always carried a weapon, and gave it, as he brought the car to a halt.

“Good! And get me a chisel out of the tool box. I may want it.'

Almost as he spoke the chisel was in his hand. Gaston was quick-witted and quick of action.

“Now, bring me a gendarme, quick as you can—two if you can pick' em up. May be case of life and death,” Winthrop commanded brusquely.

Without waiting to answer, the chauffeur drove off, and Winthrop shot himself up in the lift, to the fifth story, in less time than the ascenseur had ever risen from bottom to top of that house before.

He tried the door of the flat at the right of the stairway. It was locked, as he expected; and it was because he expected the door to be locked, that he had brought the chisel. Doors, in new houses of the French quarter, are not made for strength; and Winthrop was a muscular man, as well as a determined one. In less than two minutes he had got the door open, and had made very little noise.

Then he dashed across the small, square hall, to the nearest door, thinking the window of that room must be the one at which Norah had appeared. That door was not fastened, for on the other side Constantine Prevali guarded it from Norah, and had no fear that she could pass him to reach it. But his one thought had been to get the girl away from the window, and he had not seen Winthrop's face looking up out of the motor car.

When Paul threw open the door, Prevali was completely taken by surprise. He should have left the servant—hired with the flat during the owner's absence—on guard in the hall, to warn him of danger, instead of giving her permission to go out, as he had done. But it was too late for regrets. There was the American whom Duprez had described, standing in the doorway, with a revolver aimed neatly at his forehead.

“Hands up, or I'll blow your head off,” Winthrop said, in the quiet voice which had won Norah Lassels' trust when she heard it first. And now it was almost as steady and pleasant as it had been then.

Prevali had seized Norah's hand, and kept it, protesting—after dragging her roughly from the window—that she had nothing to be afraid of, if only she would be reasonable. That he loved her desperately, and wanted her for his wife. All he asked was to make her happier—far happier than she had ever been in the house of her uncle, Lord Greyminster. And he, Prevali, had done nothing which need make him a pariah in her wor1d—the world they could rule together, by virtue of his money, and her birth and charm. but, reasonable she must be, if she wished to leave that room alive, and go back to her brother.

“Hands up, or I'll blow your head of!”

“Promise to marry me, swear sacredly to keep your promise,” he said, with a strange look of madness in his eyes, “or I'll shoot you, and myself, too. When your brother comes to know what has happened, it will kill him. He's not strong enough yet to stand a great shock. So if you want to save him you'll have to be my wife.”

Perhaps the man would have kept his word, and shot her, if she had refused, perhaps not; but his revolver was still in his pocket, and Winthrop gave him no time to pull it out. Prevali dropped Norah's hand, which she had been vainly trying to free, and held up both his, helpless rage in his eyes and his haggard, white face.

Then Norah ran to Paul and stood beside him.

“Go home, my child,” Winthrop said, still very quietly, “and leave this madman to me. In a minute the police will be here. My chauffeur's fetching them now.”

Norah was trembling; and, danger being past, it would have been a relief to cry hysterically. But she kept back her tears, and tried to steady her voice.

“Don't ask me to go,” she said. “I couldn't leave you. I should die of suspense.”

The words, the tone, betrayed a secret which Norah had hardly known herself, a moment ago. Winthrop did not take his eyes from Prevali's, or slacken his finger on the trigger of Gaston's revolver; but suddenly the room seemed full of golden light for him; and he saw the other man's face grow red. He, too, must have known what Norah's pleading meant.

“Yow coward!” Prevali said viciously. “To hold up an unarmed man! Miss Lassels is engaged to me. I——”

“Don't talk, and especially don't lie, unless you want me to lose my temper, and send you in a hurry where you deserve to go,” Winthrop cut him short.

“Anyhow, you'll hang for me!”

“I'll risk that.”

And then the police came; two gendarmes, one of them a big fellow, and both followed by Gaston, who had left his beloved car for once to look after itself.

“I charge this man, Constantine Prevali, with threatening the life of this lady,” said Winthrop. “And there'll probably be another charge later, of planning an attempt on her brother's life.”

Winthrop was well known in Tunis, where he had been coming each winter for several years past; and Prevali, important enough in a certain set in London and Paris, was not known at all in this part of the world. Enraged, but powerless, he did not attempt to resist when the gendarmes searched him, and relieved him of the revolver which might have ended Norah Lassels' life.

 

It was odd, Ourïeda thought at first, as the minutes passed, that Miss Luck did not come; but by and by she forgot to think it strange, because Miss Luck's brother let her think only of him. Timidly, partly to make conversation—she had never before talked with a strange man—partly because she really cared to hear, she begged Pat to tell of his adventures. So Pat, anxious to please, and entranced by the light in the girl's eyes as she listened, told of his soldiering in Africa, of his journey to the Moroccan frontier, with other soldiers of the Foreign Legion; of the mysterious shot which had wounded him in a street of that wild town, Oudjda, just over the border; of the coming of Paul Winthrop to the rescue, and the beginning of their friendship.

“It was through Winthrop that my sister went to your house, I know, for she's told me something about it,” Pat said. “And I shall get Winthrop to introduce me to your father, if you'll permit it, for—I must see you again.”

The color burned in Ourïeda's cheeks.

“Thou dost not understand!” she broke in. “It is not with us as in thy country. Thou and I can never meet again.”

Pat flushed also.

“You wouldn't say that so coldly if you guessed how it hurt,” he exclaimed. “Oh, I don't know what you'll think of me for speaking to you in this way, the first time I've seen you, but how can I help it, when you tell me it will have to be the last? Unless you dislike me very much, I shan't—I won't let you go out of my life. I must say this now, you see, or else you may never give me a chance to speak at all. At least I want you to know what you've done to me. You've changed everything for me—present and future—since you came into this room. You were like a vision and a revelation. Before I saw you, I thought myself rather an unlucky sort of chap, without much incentive to get well and live, except, of course, my sister. And now—though I've got no money, and not much of a prospect while my half-brother lives—I feel I could work miracles, if only you would say, before you go away this afternoon, that I may see you again, that I may try to gain your love some day, that I may have a chance to plead my cause with your father. And if he——”

“Ah, do not go on, I beg of thee!” cried Ourïeda. “It is too sad. Thou wilt break my heart. It is all impossible—what thou sayest. My father would never consent, even if I—I———”

“If you—what? Do you mean that I've offended you, that I've made you hate me?”

“No, no, not that,” she stammered, not able, after all, to tell him what had been on her lips to tell; that it was she, not her sister, who would be married in a week.

“What, then? Are you sure you could never learn to love me?”

“Ah, if I were but sure!” she cried, before she knew what she had said.

In another instant, Pat Lassels was on one knee beside her, as she sat; his hand—the one unwounded—clasping hers in a warm, eager clasp. And the other would have been out of its protecting sling if she had not laid her own upon it, and thus felt the pounding of his heart, as she touched his breast.

“Fairy princess, I worship you,” he pleaded. “It was all over with me, as you came through the door. You were to me like sunlight to a man who lived always in the dark. I shall love you to the end of my life—and life won't be life without you. Tell me you may learn to care.”

“Ah, it would be but too easy,” the girl whispered. “I used to look at thy picture—and even before that, I dreamed of thine eyes and thy face, never of any other man's. It is as if I had met thee before, in some other world. But always I knew there could be nothing but parting—even in the days when thou wert my 'dream man.'”

“My darling—my beautiful star of the East!” Pat cried passionately, kissing her little hands with a worshiping love that sent fire through the girl's veins. “There shall be no parting, for now I am no 'dream man,' but your lover—some day, please God, your husband. For no difference of race or religion can stand before such a love as I'll prove mine to be. Not even your father——”

“Ah, but there is more—more even than all that, to part us,” Ourïeda cut him short. “I must tell thee——”

3ut the door opened, and she started to her feet, breaking away from him in terror. For an instant the screen hid them both, until Pat, too, was on his feet; but Norah, who came in, white and quivering with the strain she had passed through, gave a cry of dismay when she saw the Arab girl and her brother together.

Winthrop had left her at the door of the flat, obliged to go with the gendarmes, who, in his car, would take Prevali to the French police station.

Later, Norah's evidence would be called for, but it would be given in her own house; and her anxiety had been, how to tell Pat of what had happened, without exciting him too much.

“We must be careful still that our invalid doesn't get a 'temperature,'” the doctor had said to her only last night.

But at sight of Ourïeda and Pat alone together, she forgot her own feelings and Pat's possible danger, in a shock of fear for the Arab girl. She felt as if she and her brother were guilty of horrible treachery to El Khadra, who trusted her with his daughter.

“Ourïeda!” she cried, catching the girl in her arms, and pressing the childish face against her breast, as if to hide it from the man whose eyes should never have looked upon it. “Oh, Pat, this may make the most awful trouble, if her father has to know that you were here when she came. Go—go quickly—to your own room!”

“But, you don't understand,” Pat pleaded. “We have talked together. There's something I must tell you.”

“Tell me nothing. It's you who don't understand,” Norah broke in, almost angrily, still holding her friend in her arms. “Listen! There's a knock! If her people have come for her! There's some plot, I'm afraid—for I was told to expect her and Laila in the flat upstairs. But there's no time to explain. If you don't want her to suffer—go!”

There was that in her voice which killed objection. Without another word, without seeing Ourïeda's face again, Pat went. And almost as the door of the adjoining room closed after him, the salon door was opened by Jeanne, to admit Lella Nedjma.

“Praise be to Allah!” murmured the Arab woman, as she saw the two friends standing together alone. “It was a lie that Laila told.”

Driving away in the carriage with Ourïeda, Lella Nedjma asked no questions. Not because she was not keenly curious to know what, if anything forbidden had happened in Miss Luck's house, but, because in her Arab woman's diplomacy, she thought it wiser not to know. Since Miss Luck had been at home, she told herself, at least, there could have been no flirtation with the brother, nothing to call for serious notice from the family of the betrothed. Ourïeda was a sweet child; and the heart of Mohammed, so bewitched by thoughts of her, need not be broken, after all. He would never know that Ourïeda had visited her Roumia friend; or, if he did some day hear of the visit, his love would make him lenient to so small an offense.

But, as Lella Nedjma made these wise and comforting reflections, Ourïeda spoke out, and confessed, with a kind of frightened defiance, that she had seen and talked to a man alone. Desperately she hoped that, if this thing came to Si Mohammed's ears, he might refuse to marry her, and then—then—if there were no hope of happiness, she would at least be free to live her own life, in her father's house.

“But it was not the man's fault,” she added hastily, fearing some swift and secret vengeance upon Pat. “He did not dream that I was to visit his sister there. He was in the room, and we saw each other. I do not know yet whose fault it was; but there was something strange, for Miss Luck had been told that Laila and I would come to Djamila's flat above, while we expected to find her in her own.”

“I know the mystery, if thou dost not, my child. It was planned by Laila, who is jealous, who would hurt thee if she could, and rob thee of a husband richer and higher than hers,” Lella Nedjma cut the girl short, with a cruel confidence in the truth of her assertion, which struck at Ourïeda's heart.

It would be too horrible to think that Laila hated her, and had planned this thing for her undoing. Yet the girl could regret nothing that had happened. She was very unhappy—more unhappy than she had believed it possible to be—yet she would not have missed the few strange moments of joy that she had known, even if they were to cost her life. 'They will be all I shall have to remember, till my death,” she was saying to herself, and calling up the love look in Pat's eyes, while Lella Nedjma wondered what was to be done with Laila.

Instead of going back to her own house, to pick up the girl, and take her home with Ourïeda, the old woman ordered her negro to tell Miloud that he must drive at once to his master's. There, she explained to Lella Aïssa the plot which she believed Laila to have conceived and carried out; and Aunt Aïssa passed on to El Khadra as much of the story as the two women thought a man should know.

Fierce anger filled his heart against his elder daughter, when he learned what she had done, and what she had tried to do. Even though Aïssa assured him that Miss Luck had been at home—no thanks to Laila—and that Si Mohammed would never hear of the adventure from Lella Nedjma, El Khadra was in a rage which brought him near to the desire to kill.

Laila should never return to his house, he said. Until after Ourïeda's marriage, it would not in any case be safe to have her back, for she might do the child some injury. She had shown herself capable of any wickedness; and who knew but powdered glass, or chopped leopard's hair, would be an ingredient of her next plot, since the last had failed? That very night she should go to the country, and remain in his house there, watched by servants whom she could not bribe.

If, in spite of all, her Cousin Mahmoud still wished to marry her, well and good; let him quietly take her from her prison, and make her his wife; there should be no ceremony, no rejoicing. And El Khadra insisted that he did not care for the gossip which would be caused by Laila's absence from her sister's wedding.

“All the world of women in Tunis knows that she is of a jealous nature,” he said, “and if they think she is sulking because of Ourïeda's good fortune, her punishment is on her own head. She should rejoice that it is no worse; for she deserves death—such a death as men of our race gave treacherous women in old days. She deserves to be sewn in a sack, and flung into the sea.”

So it was that the preparations for Ourïeda's marriage went on, and she dared speak no further of her meeting with Pat Lassels; for Lella Nedjma had warned her that, if El Khadra or Mohammed learned that she had talked with him alone, soon and surely he would disappear, and no one would ever hear more of him in this world, or know how he had died.

According to Arab customs, Zakia, the “hennena,” came to live in the house of the bride elect, during these last few days of the girl's maidenhood; and several hours each morning were spent in heightening Ourïeda's beauty for the eyes of her husband. Though she still refused to have her hair dyed, and they humored her strange fancy, it was washed, and perfumed with a rich scent known in Tunis as le parfum du bey, Si Mohammed's favorite fragrance. Her face and throat, her arms and hands, were bathed with milk of almonds; her pretty coral nails were shaped according to the fashion; her little, rosy ears were pinched to make them more rosy; and all sorts of rouge for the cheeks, paint for the lips, and kohl for brows and lashes, were manufactured under Zakia's directions, to be ready for the future, since the girl obstinately rejected them now.

Her gifts from the bridegroom had all come: wonderful jewelry, which had belonged to his ancestresses of royal blood; and the coffer heaped with gold coins, which, according to ancient law, remains the property of a wife, even should she ever be repudiated by her husband. Now, all these things, as well as many other gifts, from his relatives and hers; her trousseau, and numerous little treasures of her girlhood, were packed, and ready to be carried by a procession of gayly dressed, smiling negro servants, from El Khadra's house to the palace, outside the town, where Ourïeda would go to her husband, the man she feared, and had never seen. Invitations had been sent out to half aristocratic Tunis, for the last feastings at the home of El Khadra, and to see the bride in her wedding finery before her departure; on the part of Lella Aïssa, who would entertain the women splendidly in the harem; on the part of El Khadra, who would entertain the bridegroom and a large company of men in his own part of the house. Four cooks were busy, preparing every sort of fantastic dainty; dancers and musicians were engaged to amuse the guests. No one talked of anything but the wedding, and Ourïeda's future happiness. Every day, at the hours of prayer, when the muezzin's voice cried from the mosque, and the doves wheeled, the bride elect prayed to Allah and the Prophet that she might die, since now her only hope of release was in death; for she had, even at the last moment, begged her father to save her from this marriage, and he had refused.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE APPEAL.

At first Pat Lassels would not believe Norah when she told him that Ourïeda was to be married in a week. Then, when she had convinced him that there was no mistake, that the bride was the girl he had seen, the look on Pat's face frightened his sister.

“What is it, dearest?” she asked. “Are you ill again?”

“I love her,” he answered, “and I think she cares for me. I swear she shan't be married against her will to a brute of an Arab, whom she's never seen. The thing is monstrous.”

“Monstrous, but inevitable, I fear,” Norah sighed. “Oh, my poor boy! What a cruel trick of fate that you should have seen each other just too late!”

“It's not too late!” he echoed, almost savagely. “I tell you, Norah, it would not be too late even if they were taking her to that man's house. I'd snatch her from him at the very door.”

“She wouldn't go with you, dear one,” Norah tried to soothe him. “You don't know what these Arab girls are. I have begun to understand a little. I saw when I was in the house that the poor child hated the thought of marrying Si Mohammed, and—and I saw, too, that part of her hatred was because of your picture. I think, if I hadn't been stupid enough to show it to her, she would have resigned herself to her fate more easily. But even as it was, she had no idea of rebelling against her father's will. Submission seems to be in an Arab woman's blood. All the conventions of who knows how many thousand years are chains that make her a slave, even in our century.”

“But it is different with Ourïeda now,” Pat argued hotly. “Before we met she was helpless to escape. Since she knows I love her, and am ready to fight for her——”

“She would understand better than you do that fighting could do no good.”

“She wouldn't believe that, if only I could see her again, and argue it all out with her myself. Oh, for Heaven's sake, Norah, go to see her—take her a letter from me. You could at least do that.”

“It would be treachery to her father, and would only make Ourïeda more miserable than before, without helping either of you.”

“If you refuse,” Pat pleaded, “it will be worse than treachery to me. It will be cruelty. To have to let her go, without making even an effort to save her! Norah, I believe it will kill me!”

Tears poured over his sister's face.

“Don't—don't say that!” she begged. “You know I'd do almost anything rather than you should suffer—you've suffered too much already, dearest. But you saw her only once. Surely you can't have learned to care as much as that, in an hour!”

“She is all the romance, all the dreams and ideals of my whole past, come to life in the form of a perfectly beautiful and adorable girl,” Pat answered, his face rapt and transfigured. “The moment we looked into each others' eyes we knew that we belonged to one another, heart and soul. Give me a chance to ask, at least, if she will let me try to save her. You see, dear, now that we've heard the news about poor Conron, there isn't the question of money to stand in the way. I can get an advance easily. Not that I shall be rich. But if she'd let me take her away, I she wouldn't have to face poverty. And Lord Conron can do his best to live down Pat Lassels.”

“Pat Lassels doesn't need to be lived down!” Norah protested. “Right or wrong, I'll take the letter. I warn you, though, it will be useless. She's the sweetest child in the world, but to attempt what you ask would need a woman, strong and courageous as I think no Arab woman is. And even if she dared, the attempt would be almost sure to fail.”

That same night, the night of the second day after Prevali's arrest, Paul Winthrop asked Norah to marry him. And because she was so happy, because she seemed suddenly to understand how much she cared, and what a wilderness life would be if she lost her love, she was more ready than she had been before to carry the letter to Ourïeda.

But the worst part was, that the thing was so easy, because of El Khadra's trust in her. She was free to visit his daughter, and wish the bride elect happiness. The man did not know that his “little rose” had been seen by the eyes of Miss Luck's brother, that the sweet petals of her youth and beauty were paling now, and drooping, for love of a stranger.

He did not know that while others made songs in her honor, to sing on the day of her wedding, the bride sang under her breath the old Arab love ballad, saddest of all: “How sweet is death, yet how far sweeter still, is the flower forbidden, whose fragrance kills.”

Ourïeda was in her own room, when Norah arrived, though the salon of the harem was filled with guests, laughing and chatting with Lella Aïssa. The girl had complained of a headache, and was lying down; but the message came that she would see Miss Luck, and Hemar led the visitor to her young mistress. Nouna was in disgrace, and her brother Miloud; but they had not been sent away, lest they should talk too much.

The color burned in Ourïeda's cheeks. “Thou dost not understand!” she broke in.

Even in the three weeks since Norah had left El Khadra's, Ourïeda had altered; and the last two days had made marked change in her. She was very thin, her eyes mournfully large and bright, as if they glittered through tears. Her complexion looked transparent, like the texture of a lily when the sun shines through it.

Norah took the child in her arms, and held her close for a moment, without speaking. A great tenderness and pity beyond words overcame her. She was almost ashamed of her own happiness in Winthrop's love for her, and hers for him—their freedom to belong to each other. Not for the world would she have told Ourïeda the news of her engagement.

“My poor one, are you so unhappy?” she murmured, at last. “My sweet rose—my little sister.”

“Ah, if I could be that!” Ourïeda whispered, then hid her face between her hands, as at first she had hidden it from Pat Lassels.

“I have a letter for you,” Norah said guiltily. “Perhaps I ought not to have brought it—but he begged so hard, and he worships you so, Is it safe for you to read it? Laila——”

“Laila is not in the house,” the girl broke in. “The sidi, my father, has sent her away, and by and by Mahmoud will marry her quietly. She may have been cruel, and wished to do me harm, but—she was my sister. I loved her, and I miss her every hour.”

Then Norah put the letter in Ourïeda's hand, and turned away, not to see the beautiful, sad eyes as they traveled, line by line, down the pages Pat had written.

The girl read every word twice over and yet again. Then she asked: “Dost thou know what he says?”

“No. I only guess—for he told me that—he wanted you to let him try and save you from—from——”

“Yes, that is it. He asks me to run away with him. Ah, if I could! If to try and fail would mean death for me only, I would go, and not hesitate. But to fail would mean his death, too, and so I—will not even try. Yet do not tell him that. He has taught me love. Just in looking into his eyes, I learned the secret of loving. And so I know that because he loves me he would risk death, and even take it for my sake, as I would for his. I must give him some other reason, or he will not be content.”

“I am afraid nothing will ever make him content in this world if he must live without you,” said Norah sadly, for her heart was breaking for her brother and this girl who loved him. Her own happiness could never console her for their pain. “His one hour with you seems to him worth more than all his life that went before, or could come after.”

“Oh, if I could see him again, just for one moment!” Ourïeda whispered. “I wonder—I wonder?”

She thought intently for a few seconds, and then said eagerly: “If I could have a word with him—if I could touch his hand, look in his eyes just once! For an instant we would be happy, and forget misery. Then—I would tell him that he must go away—alone, and forget me. I would let him believe that I was afraid—for myself, not for him—to try and do as he asks. That would make it easier for him, perhaps, for I think men of thy race do not love their women to be cowards.”

“How could it be managed, that you should see each other?” Norah inquired anxiously,

“I have been thinking. When thou leavest me, Aunt Aïssa will invite thee to the last feasting in our house. It will be to-morrow, and will last all to-morrow night. On the morning of the day after I am to be dressed in my wedding things, and carried like a doll, when I have been seen by my friends, to the palace of Si Mohammed. There will be more feasting; and in the evening he will see me for the first time—but only for a few moments; and though he will speak to me, I must not raise my eyes.

“Then Lella Nedjma, as the woman most nearly related to him—for his mother is dead—will bring me water to drink, and Si Mohammed will drink from the same glass. In our religion that is a sign that we have been made one, and so we shall be actually married; though I shall not see him again till late next day, when all the feasting will be over, and we will be left alone.

“Oh, dear Miss Luck, dear Norah, if I could die before that time! It will be too late, when I have gone to Si Mohammed's house, for I shall be his wife, and cannot betray him. But if thou couldst tell Aunt Aïssa that thou wishest to see my father; and when thou seest him, if thou wouldst say: 'Sidi El Khadra, pray invite my brother to thy feast, with thine own men friends,' he would send the invitation gladly. He does not know that thy brother and I have met—or thy brother might not now be safe in thy house. When my dear love is here—under the same roof with me—and I have thee near enough to help, if need be, it is possible—just possible, he might be smuggled for a single moment into our part of the house. Only he must try to think of a way. I cannot think much now.”

“We will try,” said Norah. “He and I will both try.”

But she was sick with fear for Ourïeda and for Pat. She had heard some strange tales of tragedies in harems, and she thought with horror of what Arab revenge might be.

CHAPTER XV.

THE LAST FEAST FOR THE BRIDE.

It was time to go to the house of El Khadra, for it was seven o'clock, and the feast, which would last through the evening and all night, was beginning. Winthrop had been invited before the invitation was extended to Norah and her brother. Pat knew and delighted in his sister's engagement, as heartily as it was in him to delight in anything now; and all three were going to El Khadra's together.

Norah knew that Pat had some desperate plan in his mind, but he did not wholly confide in her or in Winthrop. She knew that this reticence sprang from no lack of love, but from his fear that both might pronounce his scheme worse than useless; that they might try to dissuade him from an attempt upon which he had set his heart, and would stake his life. So, understanding and sympathizing, but hoping little, Norah and Winthrop refrained from questions. Only, they promised that, whatever he might ask of them at the last moment, they would do.

Pat—now Lord Conron—had thrown away his sling and his bandages, though the French doctor had advised against what he called “the rash haste of these English.” That Norah and her brother were not English, but Irish, was a mere detail, though it might have strengthened his point of view, had he considered it.

All day, nearly, before the evening which was to decide everything, Pat was out—out for the first time since Winthrop had brought him home to be nursed by Norah. What he had done, he did not choose to tell; but when he came back to the flat, in time to dress, his eyes sparkled with excitement, and there was a slight flush on his cheeks, which had been pale during these weeks of convalescence.

In his hand he carried a rather large, flat parcel; and when Winthrop arrived to fetch the brother and sister, Pat gave this bundle to Norah.

“I want you to take it to Ourïeda,” he said. 'Give it to her when she is alone, if you can. If not, make a joke of the thing. Say it's another wedding present, which you would like to give her when nobody was looking on. In the package, just on top, is a letter, explaining everything. If she cares, and is brave, as I believe she can be, she will do what I tell her. And one thing she must do, if she consents, is to keep as near you as possible all the evening, till—something happens.”

“What will happen, Pat?” Norah asked, her voice trembling with anxiety. “I ought to know, if I'm to help.”

“Better, for your sake and Winthrop's, dear, that you shouldn't know, whether the business succeeds or—fails. I don't want to involve you in my trouble any farther than is absolutely necessary. All I want is for you to stop with Ourïeda, and as close as you can to some door of communication with the men's part of the house. If an alarm comes—no matter of what kind—don't be frightened, but stand in front of and protect her from being seen, until she says to you: 'Sauve qui peut?' That will be her signal for you to run and scream, and do whatever the rest are doing.

“If you can get out of the house, well and good. But if Winthrop is willing to stay, and will let you shift for yourself, getting home, all the better for every one concerned. No harm could come to you in those streets, or I wouldn't suggest it. It's for Winthrop to decide; but it may be that El Khadra would be glad to have a calm, cool chap like Paul standing by him just then—an old friend, and incidentally a friend of ours, too, who might plead my cause if he got a chance. And now you may guess a little why it's just as well that you and he shouldn't know any more than I've been obliged to tell you of my plans. And I'd rather you wouldn't ask questions.”

Norah was very pale; and never had the twin brother and sister looked more alike than at that moment.

“Only one question,” she said, and when she and Pat had gazed deep into each other's eyes for a few long seconds: “It's this: what will happen to you if Ourïeda consents, but fails you at the last minute?”

Pat shrugged his shoulders.

“I don't know, and don't care. But, anyhow, nothing will happen that can hurt her—or you.”

“I'm not thinking of myself,” Norah said gently.

“In any case, Pat, I'll look after your sister,” Winthrop assured him. “And, as you say, I'm El Khadra's friend. But, all the same, I wish you success. And if success comes, I'll try and straighten things out for you and Ourïeda as well as I can. If you fail—and I daren't hope too much—why, then, you know very well that I'll stand by you with all I am, and have.”

“Thank you, Paul,” the new Lord Conron answered.

And the two men gripped hands. All three understood one another. There was nothing more to add; and, for the moment, nothing more to do.

 

As the blue Tunisian twilight fell, the guests of El Khadra and Lella Aïssa, for the last feast of the bride, began to arrive. To-morrow evening the feast would be at the house of the bridegroom,

For the ladies, driving up heavily veiled, in the shuttered carriages, El Khadra had ordered a small door, usually closed, to be opened, so that the principal entrance might be free for the men. This side door, in a narrow alley, led, by means of a passage shorter than the other, into the patio or court of the harem. And this fact—with the fact that he was an Arab—explained the reason why that door was not only locked on ordinary occasions, but the only key kept in his possession. Arab men adore their women, and—distrust them.

To-night, however, might well be an exception to his rule. Laila was away, banished to the country. So far as El Khadra knew, the bride was submissive, after her brief, childish rebellion. Lella Aïssa was delighted with the marriage, contented in every way with her own lot and Ourïeda's. The women servants were ecstatically interested in the feastings, and had no wish to leave the scene of attraction; besides, the door was guarded by two of the stolid, fat negroes upon whom El Khadra, like other Arabs of his class, almost implicitly relied.

The rooms belonging to the harem ladies were on the first floor, the story above the garden court; while those of the women servants opened upon the ground.

Now, white-cloaked, black-veiled figures began trooping in a procession up the stairs, the wonderfully fine, embroidered Tunisian veils being removed by Hemar's help as their wearers arrived at the top.

And in this procession of flitting, soft-footed ghosts, was only one unveiled figure, save those of the dancers coming to entertain the guests. The two famous professionals wore high. golden crowns, and their bare necks and arms glittered with a mass of jewelry, which weighed them down. There was a tinkling of gold and silver anklets as they moved, and their barbaric garments of violently colored brocades and golden gauze gave out wafts of perfume.

But the other unveiled figure wore a pale-blue evening cloak from Paris, in which the Honorable Norah Lassels had been seen during part of the London season, a year ago. Under that cloak, Norah carried the flat parcel which Pat had given her; and when Hemar offered to take her wrap, as she took the veils of the Arab ladies, the Rouimia shook her head with a “No, thank you,” in Arabic—one of the few phrases she had learned.

She knew that, to these women unversed in European customs, it would not seem extraordinary that she should keep her cloak. They would suppose that, according to the outlandish ideas of a Roumia, it was part of the costume proper for an evening entertainment. And, luckily for her, it was a pretty cloak, of shimmering satin charmeuse, with jeweled trimming, and a fluffy lining of chiffon.

Lella Aïssa was receiving the ladies, even as, at this moment, El Khadra was receiving the men downstairs, in his part of the house. On the balcony that ran round the garden court of the harem, a door was open, usually locked on the other side; and beyond was an iron grille with ornamental bars set very close together.

Through this, across a short passage, a glimpse could be caught of El Khadra's patio, where the men were arriving: beautifully dressed Arabs, young and old; a few French officers high in the service and esteem of the bey; two or three Europeans in civilian's clothes; and among these Winthrop, who introduced Lord Conron, Miss “Luck's” brother.

“It is better El Khadra should know you have z title,” Paul had explained to Pat. “It will add to his respect for you, and, if anything comes of this night's work, Heaven knows you'll need it all.”

He might have added: “If you survive.” But Winthrop was no croaker, and he knew his friend to be determined for good or ill.

Ourïeda, as the bride and heroine of the feast, did not help her aunt receive. To-morrow, in going to Si Mohammed's house, she would be dressed like a doll, and placed upon a kind of throne, or “couch of state,” where she would be viewed by all his female relatives and their intimate friends.

To-night, however, in her father's house, she could move about with a certain amount of freedom. She could even go to the grille and watch the dancers, who would presently perform in F1 Khadra's garden to delight the men, after having displayed their jewels to the eager and excited ladies. But, though all this was permissible for the bride, it would not be “good form,” as she might catch sight of her fiancé among her father's guests; and a curiosity to see his features before going to his house was not considered quite well-bred in an Arab girl.

There was a pretty, flowerlike group before the bride, when Norah arrived; but with gentle Eastern politeness it melted away to give the Roumia place; for it was an open secret that Si Mohammed did not approve of European friends for his wife, and that Norah would not be invited to visit her. This was the Roumia's last chance, and the charming, butterfly creatures were ready to let her have it, for her consolation as well as the bride's.

“I have brought you a parcel and a letter from—you can guess,” Norah whispered in French to Ourïeda.

And, taking quick advantage of the interest every one displayed in the two idollike dancers, the girl turned her back to the company, and found the letter in the package.

She had been pale before, but she grew deathly white when she had read what her lover had to say.

“Dost thou know what he has written?” she faltered.

“Only a little,” Norah answered.

“I cannot—oh, I cannot do as he asks,” the girl said, white-lipped. “It would mean failure—his death.”

“He's ready to risk anything for love of you,” Norah murmured, suddenly beginning to be Pat's champion in this wild adventure, though she had advised against it. “As for you—he thinks he can protect you, if you'll trust him. And, oh, Ourïeda, dear little rose, though I am very anxious, I believe you can trust him. He would rather die than live without you.”

“And I, rather than live without him. Oh, if we can but die together, for me it will be sweet! Norah, you give me courage and strength. I will try to do what he wishes.”

“I will help. Is there some door which leads into your father's part of the house—another as well as this grille?”

“Yes, downstairs, in the patio. But it will be locked on the men's side.”

“We must hope that my brother will think of that, and perhaps bribe some servant to unlock it. Who knows?”

“Miloud might, for a great deal of money. He is in disgrace, but to-night he is allowed to help give refreshments to my father's guests. There is so much to do, every servant is needed.”

“Could you and I go and stand near that door in the patio? For I don't believe anything could be done with this grille. Pat wouldn't think of its existence. His idea was a door on the ground floor, I am sure.”

“We could follow the two dancers, who must pass through that door, which will be locked after them. Others will follow, too, to have a last look at the dancers' jewels. It will not be thought nice of me to go—but what matter? And nobody, not even Aunt Aïssa, or Lella Nedjma, will scold the bride to-night.”

“I will keep the package for you, under my cloak, dear.”

“I thank thee. If thou couldst open it cautiously, so that all might be ready, it would be well. The letter tells me I shall find a white burnoose, and a pair of red boots, such as boys wear.”

Even as they whispered together the dancers were going. Already all sorts of expensive and rare food had begun to be served to the men, whose turn, in Arab houses, comes before that of the women, even at a feast; and while El Khadra's friends ate, and drank delicious sherbets, the famous professionals would dance their strange dances of the far Southern desert.

Suddenly, as the glittering, tinkling pair passed through the mysterious door in the patio, held open by white-robed negroes, there came a loud explosion, and a bright red light flared up—a light that seemed fierce enough to burn the world. It shone everywhere—in the men's garden; in the women's court. Where it had started, no one knew; or where the explosion had been, for the ears of all were stunned, their senses dazed.

Women shrieked, and ran about wildly, wringing their hands, or clung together, and collapsed, half fainting with fear. Men shouted, and little boys, brought to the house by their fathers, screamed shrilly. The dancers, instead of passing through the open door, fell back moaning, before the great light which seared their eyes.

The two negroes, whose business it was to lock the door when the professionals had passed, forgot their duty, and ran through into the women's court, fiercely pushing aside the dancers, who stumbled, and fell in a glittering heap, wailing prayers to Allah.

In the midst of the confusion, no one had time to notice a figure, apparently that of a young boy, wrapped in a white, hooded burnoose so long that only his red leather boots showed underneath. He ran through the door which the negroes had left open, and plunged into a confused crowd of men, in the large patio beyond the passage.

What happened there for the next few minutes, while the ruddy flame burned and hissed, no one ever quite knew or remembered.

In five minutes, or a little more, the fizzing red light had burned dull. No one was hurt. The house was apparently not on fire. El Khadra's orders began to make themselves heard. It was suspected that the alarm was a thieves' plot; yet no one seemed to have been robbed, although some of the guests had disappeared; among others, Lord Conron and his sister had gone, but no one cared, since their only friend. present was Paul Winthrop; and Paul Winthrop drew nobody's attention to their absence.

At first, when Ourïeda could not be found, it was thought that she had rushed away in a panic, to hide herself; but at last, when the confusion was ended, and it was seen that no great damage had been done, the assembled ladies began to inquire for the bride.

“She must have run to her room, and perhaps she has taken the Roumia with her, for Miss Luck, too, has disappeared,” said Lella Aïssa.

The old lady, with several intimate friends, hurried off to look for the bride, and reassure her; but, after all, she was not in her room. Then, in growing fear, a search was made through the whole harem. Not a cupboard, not the meanest room in the quarters of the women servants, not a shady corner of the fountain garden, was forgotten; but the girl had vanished like a spirit.

For a while, only a few knew of her disappearance. There were whisperings, and dark eyes looked into others questioningly, with dilated pupils and lifted brows. Hemar and the other women servants began to wail, and tear their faces with henna-stained finger nails. It was rumored about that something terrible, something mysterious had happened.

Lella Aïssa sent a negro with a message to El Khadra, who came to her quickly, in a corridor out of the way of the women guests, who would have fled horrified from the presence of a man.

The two consulted together in trembling voices. A second search was made, and as a result no hope was left. The bride had left her father's house.

“The Roumia has taken her away,” said Lella Aïssa. “Oh, my brother, darkness has fallen on our home. There will be no wedding.”

“Why should she go with the Roumia?” the man asked, in an agony of fear and loss. “Surely she had forgotten her childish reluctance to marry? Surely she was happy?”

But Lella Aïssa gave him no answer. And El Khadra read in her silence a confirmation of the doubt he had long ago tried in vain to kill.

“Go back to the women,” he said sternly. “Tell them all, every one of them, that Ourïeda has been found. That she was hiding, crazed with fear by the explosion and the fire. That she is ill, very ill, and must have rest. Send them away, and then——”

“And then—what shall we do then?” questioned his sister sadly.

“We shall see what to do when the time comes,” he answered. “It may be even yet that nothing serious has happened. After all, we may have the wedding. Who knows but in the morning——”

“There will be no morning of joy for us,” the old woman broke in upon him. “I tell thee again, the darkness of night has fallen upon our home, though the bridal lights are still burning.”

An hour later, those lights had been put out. Even the guests in the men's part of the house had to know that the bride was ill; though by their lips her—was not spoken under her father's roof,

Next day, the story ran through Tunis that El Khadra's beautiful young daughter, who was to marry a cousin of the bey, was dying. The night after, there was mourning for Ourïeda's death; and Si Mohammed had lost his bride.

It is in this way that, in the East, they manage to hide the dramas of the harem. Even Si Mohammed did not know that the girl who in a few more hours should have been his wife had run away to marry another man.

Her father knew, from Winthrop, but not in time to stop the eloping pair, for Pat Lassels' desperate plan had succeeded. He had engaged staterooms on a ship due to sail from Tunis in less than two hours after his effective use of mortars and Bengal lights in the house of El Khadra. Then it had been a race against time, but the race had been won. And a ramshackle cab, containing a young man, and two girls wearing long cloaks, motor bonnets, and veils, had reached the dock five minutes before the ship was to sail.

One of these girls was Norah Lassels; for at the last moment it had been thought best for her to go, too. Paul Winthrop was left to break the hard truth to his friend, El Khadra; and it was the most difficult task of his life. But he had the gift of eloquence, and he made the most of Lord Conron's title and importance in Ireland.

“If you really mean to keep the secret, and let all your world believe that your daughter is dead,” he finished by saying, “there's no reason why any one should ever identify her with Lady Conron.

“My daughter is dead to me,” said El Khadra, in a voice which would break, though he sternly tried to hide his anguish, “I shall never see her again, in this world or the next.”

But twelve months later, he thought better of his resolution. By that time Norah Lassels was Norah Winthrop. She and Paul, having returned from a trip to America, were in Paris, and El Khadra came from Tunis to visit them there.

At home, there was nothing to keep him, for Laila was the wife of Mahmoud, and her father had not seen her face since the night she was sent in disgrace to the country. Lella Aïssa was dead; Si Mahommed had just married a young princess of his own race, and the supposed death of Ourïeda was almost forgotten, except by a few women who had loved her.

To receive El Khadra, Paul and Norah left their hotel, and took a furnished house, with a large garden, near the Bois—for Norah no longer detested Paris, as once she had detested the scene of her brother's duel. Constantine Prevali was in a private insane asylum now, and she was so happy with Winthrop that she was ready to pardon her old enemy for everything in the past.

After all, if it had not been for Prevali, Pat and she would never have gone to Africa. She would not have known Paul; Pat would never have met Ourïeda. And for Ourïeda, more than ever would Lord Conron have counted the world well lost.

But fortunately it was not lost. Many things could be forgiven Lord Conron, which would not have been forgiven Pat Lassels. And though he and his rather mysterious bride, vaguely believed to be Spanish, lived extremely quietly in Ireland, he was much liked, and she was tremendously admired.

When, at the same time that El Khadra made his visit to France, Conron brought Ourïeda over to Paris, people turned to look after her in the streets, because of her extraordinary, dark beauty. And Pat was very proud of her, in her pretty French frocks and hats, which, oddly enough, became her as well as the Arab finery in which he had first seen and loved her.

But the garden near the Bois was fenced in with great trees. Once the gates in the high wall had shut upon the Winthrops' guests, they were as well hidden as in the fountain court where Norah and Ourïeda had first met. No eyes, not even Pat's, saw the greeting between father and daughter; but afterward Ourïeda was more radiant than Pat had ever known her, even in the earliest days of their honeymoon.

“The sidi, my father, has forgiven me,” she said to her husband, in the pretty, halting English she had learned with much pleasure and some difficulty. “Now I am perfectly happy.”

“I was perfectly happy before,” answered Pat, rather wistfully.

“Ah, so was I!” she answered hastily. “But now, with thee and with him both to love me, I am—I am pluperfectly happy. Oh, I am glad I learned that word the other day, in thy dreadful English grammar. It is just the word I want to express my heart. Yes, I am pluperfectly happy, oh, sidi, my husband!”

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