Okewood of the Secret Service | Page 8

what is the name? Ah, Major
Okewood!"
Nur-el-Din sank into a bergere chair beside her great mirror.
"There are too many in this room," she cried, "there is no air! Lazarro,
Ramiro, all of you, go outside, my friends!"
As Madame's entourage surged out, Strangwise said:
"I hear you are leaving the Palaceum, Marcelle!"
He spoke so low that Mr. Mackwayte and Barbara, who were talking to
Desmond, did not hear. Marcelle, taking off her heavy head-dress,
answered quickly:
"Who told you that?"
"Never mind," replied Strangwise. "But you never told me you were
going. Why didn't you?"
His voice was stern and hard now, very different from his usual quiet
and mellow tones. But he was smiling.
Marcelle cast a glance over her shoulder. Barbara was looking round

the room and caught the reflection of the dancer's face in a mirror
hanging on the wall. To her intense astonishment, she saw a look of
despair, almost of terror, in Nur-el-Din's dark eyes. It was like the
frightened stare of some hunted beast. Barbara was so much taken
aback that she instinctively glanced over her shoulder at the door,
thinking that the dancer had seen something there to frighten her. But
the door was shut. When Barbara looked into the mirror again, she saw
only the reflection of Nur-el-Din's pretty neck and shoulders. The
dancer was talking again in low tones to Strangwise.
But Barbara swiftly forgot that glimpse of the dancer's face in the glass.
For she was very happy. Happiness, like high spirits, is eminently
contagious, and the two men at her side were supremely content.
Her father's eyes were shining with his little success fit, of the evening:
on the way upstairs Fletcher had held out hopes to him of a long
engagement at the Palaceum while as for the other, he was radiant with
the excitement of his first night in town after long months of
campaigning.
He was thinking that his leave had started most propitiously. After a
man has been isolated for months amongst muddy masculinity, the
homeliest woman will find favor in his eyes. And to neither of these
women, in whose presence he so unexpected found himself within a
few hours of landing in England, could the epithet "homely" be applied.
Each represented a distinct type of beauty in herself, and Desmond, as
he chatted with Barbara, was mentally contrasting the two women.
Barbara, tall and slim and very healthy, with her braided brown hair,
creamy complexion and gray eyes, was essentially English. She was the
typical woman of England, of England of the broad green valleys and
rolling downs and snuggling hamlets, of England of the white cliffs
gnawed by the restless ocean, The other was equally essentially a
woman of the South. Her dark eyes, her upper lip just baring her firm
white teeth, spoke of hot Latin or gypsy blood surging in her veins.
Hers was the beauty of the East, sensous, arresting, conjuring up
pictures of warm, perfumed nights, the thrumming of guitars, a great
yellow moon hanging low behind the palms.

"Barbara!" called Nur-el-Din from the dressing table. Mr. Mackwayte
had joined her there and was chatting to Strangwise.
"You will stay and talk to me while I change n'est-ce pas? Your papa
and these gentlemen are going to drink a whiskey-soda with that animal
Fletcher... quel homme terrible... and you shall join them presently."
The men went out, leaving Barbara alone with the dancer. Barbara
noticed how tired Nur-el-Din was looking. Heir pretty, childish ways
seemed to have evaporated with her high spirits. Her face was heavy
and listless. There were lines round heir eyes, and her mouth had a hard,
drawn look.
"Child," she said, "give me, please, my peignoir... it is behind the
door,... and, I will get this paint off my face!"
Barbara fetched the wrapper and sat down beside the dancer. But
Nur-el-Din did not move. She seemed to be thinking. Barbara saw the
hunted look she had already observed in her that evening creeping over
her face again.
"It is a hard life; this life of ours, a life of change, ma petite! A great
artiste has no country, no home, no fireside! For the past five years I
have been roaming about the world! Often I think I will settle down,
but the life holds me!"
She took up from her dressing-table a little oblong plain silver box.
"I want to ask you a favor, ma petite Barbara!" she said. "This little box
is a family possession of mine: I have had it for many years. The world
is so disturbed to-day that life is not safe for anybody who travels as
much as I do! You have a home, a safe home with your dear father! He
was telling me about