But the vision of Aimée--that delicate beauty in its tragic irony of throne and diadem! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight vision this, ethereal and dream-like, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of dark, shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks. He had never seen her hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth--wistful and gay, like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin, so tender and willful ... nor her skin, satin-soft, in its veiling from the daylight.... She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of her helplessness. A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion, before the prolonging of his look. "But it is dangerous--your being here," she murmured. "The fortieth door," he reminded her. Under her breath, "Ah, you remember?" "I remember. And but last night I heard Khazib, the story teller, tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning--of the door that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open." "And so you opened it, monsieur." Faintly she smiled, with downcast lashes. "And I came as you first came to me--in mantle and veil." For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which seemed so long ago. "But it is too late," she said tremulously. "_Is_ it too late--for me to help you?" At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. "Oh, take me away from him!" she breathed suddenly, unpremeditately. "Somehow--somewhere--" Another figure came towards them. Madame De Coulevain in all her severe elegance of black. "Come and join your friends at the supper, my dear; there is no need for you to be pilloried here any longer," she observed with an indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and Ryder moved slowly away while Aimée came dutifully down from the throne, a huge black bending to hold her train. "I thought you were _never_ coming! What _were_ you talking about?" demanded a voice in Ryder's ear, and he found Jinny Jeffries at his side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. "Oh, I wished her joy--native phrases--that sort of thing," he answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room. "But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth at a tremendous rate. Why wouldn't you let me stay and listen--?" "You'd have put me off my shot, I had to feel unobserved to play up." "You must be fearfully good at Arabic," said Jinny guilelessly. "And what did she say?" "Why--she didn't say anything in particular--" "But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with a locket or something--?" A plague upon Jinny's bright eyes! "Oh, yes, the locket," said Ryder with an effort. "She--ah--she showed it to me."