It was a great problem, the age-old problem which doubtless set the first silver thread among Phryne’s red-gold locks and which now brought a little perplexed wrinkle between Zahara’s delicately pencilled brows.

It had not always been so.  In those early days in Cairo there had been an American boy.  Zahara had never forgotten.  Her beauty had bewildered him.  He had wanted to take her to New York; and oh! how she had wanted to go.  But her mother, who was then alive, had held other views, and he had gone alone.  Heavens!  How old she felt.  How many had come and gone since that Egyptian winter, but now, although admiration was fatally easy to win how few were so sincere as that fresh-faced boy from beyond the Atlantic.

Zahara, staring into the mirror, observed that there was not a wrinkle upon her face, not a flaw upon her perfect skin.  Nor in this was she blinded by vanity.  Nature, indeed, had cast her in a rare mould, and from her unusual hair, which was like dull gold, to her slender ankles and tiny feet, she was one of the most perfectly fashioned human beings who ever added to the beauty of the world.

Yet Agapoulos preferred Safiyeh.  Zahara could hear him coming to her room even as she sat there, chin in hands, staring at her own bewitching reflection.  Presently she would slip out and speak to Harry Grantham.  Twice she had read in his eyes that sort of interest which she knew so well how to detect.  She liked him very much, but because of a sense of loyalty to Agapoulos (a sentiment purely Egyptian which she longed to crush) Zahara had never so much as glanced at Grantham in the Right Way.  She was glad, though, that he had not gone, and she hoped that Agapoulos would not detain her long.

As a matter of fact, the Greek’s manner was even more cold than usual.  He rested his hand upon her shoulder for a moment, and meeting her glance reflected in the mirror: 

“There will be a lot of money here to-night,” he said.  “Make the best of your opportunities.  Chinatown is foggy, yes—­but it pays better than Port Said.”

He ran fat fingers carelessly through her hair, the big diamond glittering effectively in the wavy gold, then turned and went out.  Sitting listening intently, Zahara could hear him talking in a subdued voice to Safiyeh, and could detect the Egyptian’s low-spoken replies.

*****

Grantham looked up with a start.  A new and subtle perfume had added itself to that with which the air of the room was already laden.  He found Zahara standing beside him.

His glance travelled upward from a pair of absurdly tiny brocaded shoes past slender white ankles to the embroidered edge of a wonderful mandarin robe decorated with the figures of peacocks; upward again to a little bejewelled hand which held the robe confined about the slender figure of Zahara, and upward to where, sideways upon a bare shoulder peeping impudently out from Chinese embroidery, rested the half-mocking and half-serious face of the girl.