"That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door leads to another garden--the garden of a girl you can never know." He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition. Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ... freedom, travel, often,--Paris, London, perhaps--and then, as the girl eclipses the child--the veil. Still indulgence and luxury, still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society--but a feminine society. Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband--until the bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded lives.... Extinguished by tradition--a tradition against which their earlier years only had won modern emancipation. And she--this slim creature in the black domino--one of those invisibles? Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers. "You--a Turk?" he blurted. "I--a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with defensive pride. "I am ashamed--but for the thing I have done. That is a shameful thing. To steal out at night--to a hotel--to a ball--And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am--Oh, yes, I am much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him suddenly, between mockery and malice. Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on his face was reflected swiftly in her own. "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--"