advance with a full stop between each stride, like Mary Queen of Scots going to execution in a play.  Billali was not good at crawling, I suppose his years stood in the way, and our progress up that apartment was a very long affair.  I was immediately behind him, and several times I was sorely tempted to help him on with a good kick.  It is so absurd to advance into the presence of savage royalty after the fashion of an Irishman driving a pig to market, for that is what we looked like, and the idea nearly made me burst out laughing then and there.  I had to work off my dangerous tendency to unseemly merriment by blowing my nose, a proceeding which filled old Billali with horror, for he looked over his shoulder and made a ghastly face at me, and I heard him murmur, “Oh, my poor Baboon!”

At last we reached the curtains, and here Billali collapsed flat on to his stomach, with his hands stretched out before him as though he were dead, and I, not knowing what to do, began to stare about the place.  But presently I clearly felt that somebody was looking at me from behind the curtains.  I could not see the person, but I could distinctly feel his or her gaze, and, what is more, it produced a very odd effect upon my nerves.  I was frightened, I do not know why.  The place was a strange one, it is true, and looked lonely, notwithstanding its rich hangings and the soft glow of the lamps—­indeed, these accessories added to, rather than detracted from its loneliness, just as a lighted street at night has always a more solitary appearance than a dark one.  It was so silent in the place, and there lay Billali like one dead before the heavy curtains, through which the odour of perfume seemed to float up towards the gloom of the arched roof above.  Minute grew into minute, and still there was no sign of life, nor did the curtain move; but I felt the gaze of the unknown being sinking through and through me, and filling me with a nameless terror, till the perspiration stood in beads upon my brow.

At length the curtain began to move.  Who could be behind it?—­some naked savage queen, a languishing Oriental beauty, or a nineteenth-century young lady, drinking afternoon tea?  I had not the slightest idea, and should not have been astonished at seeing any of the three.  I was getting beyond astonishment.  The curtain agitated itself a little, then suddenly between its folds there appeared a most beautiful white hand (white as snow), and with long tapering fingers, ending in the pinkest nails.  The hand grasped the curtain, and drew it aside, and as it did so I heard a voice, I think the softest and yet most silvery voice I ever heard.  It reminded me of the murmur of a brook.

“Stranger,” said the voice in Arabic, but much purer and more classical Arabic than the Amahagger talk—­“stranger, wherefore art thou so much afraid?”