audience--seated round on dainty marble-topped bamboo tables,
inhaling, in the case of Madame, a dainty "Regie," or if Bey or
Effendi, a Tshibuk or Narghile, gravely drawing on the amber
mouthpiece and slowly exhaling the perfumed smoke. The gorgeous
officers' uniforms, mostly a vivid red, blue and gold; the picturesque
flowing robes and burnouses, with here and there a six-foot stalwart
silk trousered Albanian with gold and silver inlaid daggers and
pistols thrust in his sash, make a picture reminding one of the
Sheherezade.

Observing that everybody was bent on spoiling this popular little
houri by emphatic admiration, I made myself conspicuous by a
peculiarly British stony indifference. Nor was I wrong in my tactics.
The piqued little dancer was not to be ignored.

One night she approached my table and challenged me in French, at
which I gave a noncommittal smile. I pretended that I did not know
French. Then she tried indifferent German and I looked at her with
puzzled blankness. Finally she spoke to me in a piquant English and I
answered. She spoke English extremely well and it developed that she
had been a choriphyée at the London Empire. I let the acquaintance
grow leisurely. One night I found her in a fit of despondency, over a
quarrel with her friend, Mlle. Balniaux. My subterfuge getting
effective, I was just beginning to ply her with questions when a
Turkish officer full of cognac wandered by and dropped a remark to her
in French. It went against the grain for those swine to cast
innuendoes to a white woman and forgetting my play acting, I told him
his comments were uncalled for and advised him to draw in his horns a
bit. After a little bluster to which I angrily replied in French, he
disappeared, and, as I sat down at the table, Cecelia was looking at