She made no reply. She did not even look up. Curtis felt a great spasm of rage contract his heart, and a queer sickness swoop down upon him. He wanted to kill Kostakes, he did not know exactly why. The man certainly had a right to love the girl; it is any man's inalienable right, established from the beginning of the world, to love any girl; and the protestations of protection were exactly what Curtis wanted, but somehow they made him sick and mad. In the midst of all this killing, why couldn't he do a little for himself? Then Kostakes bent lower, and attempted to lift Panayota's hands to his lips. She threw his arm from her with horror, and, shrinking back, with doubled fists, looked at him with such an ague of open-mouthed, staring disgust as no Duse or Bernhardt ever dreamed of. Curtis felt almost friendly toward Kostakes, who bowed solemnly, with hand upon heart, and strode from the room. Two sentinels took their places just inside the open door, and closed the entrance with crossed bayonets. CHAPTER XV THE MAN IN THE BARREL Curtis parted the long hair carefully on Papa-Maleko's head with his fingers and looked for the wound. "I ought to have been a doctor," he said to Panayota. She smiled, a little, fleeting smile that was sadder than tears. Her hair, that had been wound into a great coil at the back of her head, had slipped partly loose. Even as she looked up at Curtis, the glossy rope writhed like a living thing, and a massive loop dropped down upon her temple. Though her cheeks were pale, her lips were still red--Curtis had never noticed until now how red and velvety they were. "Is he badly hurt?" she asked. Papa-Maleko's hair was clotted with blood, but Curtis made absolutely sure that the skull was not fractured. "No," he replied, "it is not broken." "Thank God! thank God!" cried Panayota. The priest put his hand on his daughter's shoulder and shuffled to his feet. He staggered a little and caught his head in his hands. "O papa! papa!" cried the girl, throwing her arms about his neck. "Bah! I'm all right. I was a little dizzy, that's all." "Nothing broken. Nothing broken," reiterated Curtis. "The blood is from the--" he did not know the word for skin, so he lifted up a little tent on the back of his left hand with the finger and thumb of his right. "Nothing, nothing at all," said the priest. Panayota turned her eyes toward the smoky and cobwebbed rafters and crossed herself. The steel cross in the door leaped to a parallel of presented muskets, and Kostakes Effendi reappeared. Twirling his mustache, he gazed perplexedly at the group within the café, but recovered himself in a moment and advanced smiling. "So his reverence is quite well again! I am glad to see it, very glad. I feared that his skull was fractured. A musket butt is no plaything." The Turk assisted Curtis to the door, and into a cavalry saddle on the back of a respectable looking horse.