going. Why didn't you?"

His voice was stern and hard now, very different from his usual
quiet and mellow tones. But he was smiling.

Marcelle cast a glance over her shoulder. Barbara was looking
round the room and caught the reflection of the dancer's face in
a mirror hanging on the wall. To her intense astonishment, she
saw a look of despair, almost of terror, in Nur-el-Din's dark
eyes. It was like the frightened stare of some hunted beast.
Barbara was so much taken aback that she instinctively glanced
over her shoulder at the door, thinking that the dancer had seen
something there to frighten her. But the door was shut. When
Barbara looked into the mirror again, she saw only the reflection
of Nur-el-Din's pretty neck and shoulders. The dancer was talking
again in low tones to Strangwise.

But Barbara swiftly forgot that glimpse of the dancer's face in
the glass. For she was very happy. Happiness, like high spirits,
is eminently contagious, and the two men at her side were
supremely content.

Her father's eyes were shining with his little success fit, of
the evening: on the way upstairs Fletcher had held out hopes to
him of a long engagement at the Palaceum while as for the other,
he was radiant with the excitement of his first night in town
after long months of campaigning.

He was thinking that his leave had started most propitiously.
After a man has been isolated for months amongst muddy