"'Lilla,' she replied, blushing under her dark skin. I noticed that she had a little pipe in her hand. 'Half?' she asked.
"'No,' I said, 'not yet. I want a talk. That is, if you don't mind.'
"Again she blushed, and settled herself down at the foot of the ottoman. 'You know you're in danger here?' she muttered interrogatively.
"'Why?' I asked, in no way alarmed, though.
"'Well,' she replied, gazing into my eyes, 'queer things happen here occasionally which would cause some talk were they to become known.' She shrugged her little shoulders suggestively. She was certainly a bewitching girl.
"'You are an officer?' she asked.
"'Yes,' I replied, foolishly betraying the fact, when, dressed as I was in civilian attire, I might have passed as a merchant or some other English resident of the city.
"For the moment I confess I was bewitched—powerless in the hands of the dark-eyed girl whose life was spent in such strange surroundings.
"For many an hour we sat there—she at the foot, I at the head of the couch, and our conversation disturbed a silence only broken occasionally by the heavy breathing or moans of one or other of the motionless figures stretched round us.
"'Lilla' told me much about herself and about those that kept the den. The latter were a native and his Chinese wife, the parents of 'Lilla,' which was an abbreviation of some eight-syllabled name by which she was known in her peculiar family circle.