The Fortieth Door | Page 9

had died when I was very young and so happy when my father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went down into the hold to play with their dogs..."
She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to Moslems--but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our grandmothers are..."
"With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your grandmothers were!"
"My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame it on her--the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget--"
"Forget?" said Ryder under his breath.
"Forget--and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very dangerous here--"
"It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more dangerous every moment--"
"But I mean--" Her confusion betrayed itself.
"But I mean--that you are magic--black magic," he murmured bending over the black domino.
The crescent moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at each other ... like dim shadows in a garden of still enchantment.
And then, as from a palpable clasp, she tried to slip away. "Truly, I must go! It is so late--"
Ryder's heart was pounding within him. He did not recognize this state of affairs; it was utterly unrelated to anything that had gone before in his merry, humorous, rather clear-sighted and wary young life.... He felt dazed and wondering at himself ... and irresponsible ... and appalled ... but deeper than all else, he felt eager and exultant and strangely, furtively determined about something that he was not owning to himself ... something that leaped off his lips in the low murmur to her, "But to-morrow night--I shall see you again--"
She caught her breath. "Oh, never again! To-night has no to-morrow--"
"Outside this gate," he persisted. "I shall wait--and other nights after that. For I must know--if you are safe--"
"See, I am very safe now. For if I were missed there would be running and confusion--"
He only drew a little closer to her. "To-morrow night--or another--I shall come to this door--"
"It must not open to you.... It is a forbidden door--forbidden as that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the forbidden--"
"I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night--or another--"
She moved her head in denial.
"Neither to-morrow nor another night--"
Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips....
Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel.
Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he heard her locking after.
And then, for her sake, he fled.
CHAPTER III
IN THE PASHA'S PALACE
Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows.
At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low branches over it.
"Aimée," came a guarded call. "Aimée!"
Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes.
"Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself, she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse, emerging now into the moonlight.
"Alhamdolillah--Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly--he is here--thy father! And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again into the shadows of the shrubbery.
Aimée felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she