Olga spoke with an air of angered innocence which completely deceived the Sultan, anxious as he was to find the extraordinary story false, and he hastily replied-- “It is the latter that I desire, of course. I was obliged to say that if you were unable to deny the accusation it would be impossible for me to continue an alliance with one who had been guilty of a crime which my faith and the customs of my race denounce as vile beyond all human measure. But I refused to believe it against you until your own lips had confessed it, or undeniable evidence had proved it, and therefore I have asked you to come and let us know the truth.” “I thank you, Sultan Khalid, for your confidence and your chivalry,” she said, looking up into his eyes with a glance that rendered all denial from her once and for ever unnecessary. “You shall hear me deny the foul falsehood to my traducer’s face.” Stung to fresh fury by the knowledge that Alan had sought to expose her in her true nature to the man whom she sought to make her slave in his place, she strode forward to within three paces of where he was standing, and, drawing herself up to the full height of her royal stature, she faced him with pale cheeks and blazing eyes, her beauty so transfigured by anger that the Moslems standing about her instinctively shrank back, awe-stricken by such an incarnation of wrath and loveliness as no man of them had ever dreamed of before. Even Alan himself forgot his hate and disgust for the moment in the contemplation of her almost miraculous beauty and the indescribable dignity with which her anger invested her, and waited in silence that was almost respectful for the tempest of wrath and reproach which he saw was about to be let loose on him. Her lips trembled mutely for a moment or two before any sound came from them, but when she spoke her tone was low and clear, though almost hoarse with passion, and shaken by the manifest effort she made to keep it under control. “So this is the return that your chivalry makes for my generosity in giving you life and liberty when you were lost to the world; when I might have killed you, as I see now that I should have done, without a single soul among your people knowing anything of your fate!