"We regret," wrote the Armenian, "that thus far we have had no success in finding at any cost a rug of the weave you ordered. However, we take pleasure in forwarding you this rug which a caravan stopping at Meshed left with our agent in that city with instructions to forward it to our New York office and thence to you. We are pleased that your agent saw fit to use our facilities for forwarding it to you, and wish to congratulate you on having obtained such a priceless specimen. Should you at any time care to dispose of it, be so kind as to give us an option on it, for we are in a position to offer you a better price than any dealer or collector in the United States...." The rug itself was improbable enough--but Siraganian's letter! An insoluble riddle. It couldn't be a jest. Then who----? True enough, Colonel Merbere's expedition must have passed through Samarcand, Yarkand, and Kashgar on its way into the unknown stretches of Chinese Turkestan; but his acquaintance with the colonel was slight, and he had no friend in the colonel's train. And what obscure acquaintance of the "wish you were here" postal-card banality would send a rug which in the old days served as a gift from one prince to another? Diane's arrival cut the thread of fancy. "Oh, Ham, but it is gorgeous," enthused _la belle Livaudaise_ as she entered the roseate duskiness of Clarke's studio. And to herself, "Another rival...." Then she rehearsed the excuses she had offered for Ham's absence, and hoped he'd absent-mindedly contradict her the first time he deigned to speak for himself. That done, one must consider the latest addition to the seraglio. Clarke detailed the story of the rug and its riddle. "But who in the world would send you such a gift," wondered Diane. "Exactly no one, _très chère_." "Unless," Diane pointed out, "it might be one of your lost loves in those Asiatic playgrounds you've never entirely left." Clarke laughed, but his derision was unconvincing, and Diane knew that he had been deep in the blacknesses of Asian nights; knew that her arrival had been an intrusion, that he was but a friendly stranger, babbling to her, a friendly stranger, of loveliness whose intoxication forced him to speak of it to anyone, even her. The others were bad enough, with their everlasting song of Bokhara, and Herat of the Hundred Gardens--an unheard song to which Clarke listened, and replied in unspoken syllables; they were bad enough, they, and those monstrous fancies which at times he smilingly expressed with deliberate vagueness, but this yellow witch from Samarcand---- * * * * * Diane knew that more than a rug had emerged from that bale whose burlap winding-sheet still littered the floor.