blazed out upon me. How beautiful they were, with the dark beauty of an Egyptian night; how often had they looked into mine in dreams!
To labor against a ceaseless yearning for a woman whom one knows, upon evidence that none but a fool might reject, to be worthless—evil; is there any torture to which the soul of man is subject, more pitiless? Yet this was my lot, for what past sins assigned to me I was unable to conjecture; and this was the woman, this lovely slave of a monster, this creature of Dr. Fu-Manchu.
“I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!” I said harshly.
Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.
“It is very convenient to forget, sometimes,” I ran on bitterly, then checked myself; for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless desire to hear her defense, by a fool’s hope that it might be an acceptable one.
I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it had a strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously it was intended for snaring.
“What were you about to do?” I demanded sharply—but in my heart, poor fool that I was, I found admiration for the exquisite arch of Karamaneh’s lips, and reproach because they were so tremulous.
She spoke then.
“Dr. Petrie—”
“Well?”
“You seem to be—angry with me, not so much because of what I do, as because I do not remember you. Yet—”
“Kindly do not revert to the matter,” I interrupted. “You have chosen, very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please yourself. But answer my question.”
She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
“Why do you treat me so!” she cried; she had the most fascinating accent imaginable. “Throw me into prison, kill me if you like, for what I have done!” She stamped her foot. “For what I have done! But do not torture me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches—that I forget you! I tell you—again I tell you—that
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