He plied her with questions and she tried to summon her spirit: she achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the betrayal of her eyes. He told her, sketchily, of his day. A bore, those affairs, those speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine glass in his hand, a flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to look at him. Her glance evaded his. She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very ancient, she told him. Very--interesting. He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the Mamelukes, his ancestor. Its old banqueting hall was still untouched--the collectors would give much to rifle that, but they would never get their sharks' noses in. Nothing had been changed, but something added. Once the Mad Khedive had borrowed it for some years and begun his eternal additions. "Forty girls, they say, he kept here," smiled Hamdi Bey. "They gulped their pleasure, in those days. It is better to sip, is it not?" He smiled. "But these are no stories for a bride! I only trust that you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very much of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, all your pretty Parisian modernity." She glanced at the glittering table. "But I do not find this so--so much of the old school. Here one does not eat rice with the fingers!" "And I?" said the bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?" "But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you--I do not know you--not yet." "Not--yet. Excellent! There will be time." "I confess that now I am weary--" "Ah,--and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he said solicitously. Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands to it. "Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to aid you." He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own happiness.... Happiness, indeed.... "And that veil--surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the misty veil was secured. She stammered that it was quite light--she would not trouble him-- Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck.