"I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before—never have I done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden after sunset—when all Moslem women should be within. But my nurse was indulgent."
Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I slipped away—there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago, and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look on at the world again."
"Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder.
And then suddenly he asked, "Are you—do you—whom do you live with?"
And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father—he is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath.
"I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply.
The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed laughter of youth.
"No husband. I am one of the young revoltées—the moderns—and I am the only daughter of a most indulgent father."
"Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that. He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you—"
He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told him more than its assumption of courage.