narrow cages, looking at the big brutes still restless from the show,
rubbing her cheek on the soft little round head of the cub she was
holding in her arms, smiling at its sleepy rasping purr.

"Are you ever afraid?" she had asked suddenly--"not of the ordinary
performance, but of that last act, when you dine all alone with them?"

The girl shrugged her shoulders, blowing a little cloud of smoke into
the cub's face, and her eyes had met Diana's slowly over his little
yellow body. "One does not taste very much," she had said drily.

And it was so with Diana. She had eaten mechanically everything that
had been put before her, but she had tasted nothing. She had one
thought in her mind that excluded everything else--to hide from the
probing eyes that watched her ceaselessly the overmastering fear that
augmented every moment. One thing she had noticed during the meal. For
her only the servant poured out the light French wine that he had
brought. Her eyes wandered to the Sheik's empty glass, and meeting her
glance he smiled, with a little inclination.

"Excuse me. I do not drink wine. It is my only virtue," he added, with
a sudden gleam leaping into his eyes that drove the blood into her
cheeks and her own eyes on to her plate.

She had forgotten that he was an Arab.

The dinner seemed interminable, and yet she wished that it would never
end. While the servant was in the room she was safe; the thought of his
going sent a cold shudder through her. With the coffee came a huge
Persian hound, almost upsetting the Frenchman in the entrance in his