“Hallo!” he said, smiling, “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I walk very soft,” explained Zahara, “because I am not supposed to be here.”

She looked at him quizzically.  “I don’t see you for a long time,” she added, and in the tone of her voice there was a caress.  “I saw you more often in Port Said than here.”

“No,” replied Grantham, “I have been giving Agapoulos a rest.  Besides, there has been nobody worth while at any of the hotels or clubs during the last fortnight.”

“Somebody worth while coming to-night?” asked Zahara with professional interest.

At the very moment that she uttered the words she recognized her error, for she saw Grantham’s expression change.  Yet to her strange soul there was a challenge in his coldness and the joy of contest in the task of melting the ice of this English reserve.

“Lots of money,” he said bitterly; “we shall all do well to-night.”

Zahara did not reply for a moment.  She wished to close this line of conversation which inadvertently she had opened up.  So that, presently: 

“You look very lonely and bored,” she said softly.

As a matter of fact, it was she who was bored of the life she led in Limehouse—­in chilly, misty Limehouse—­and who had grown so very lonely since Safiyeh had come.  In the dark gray eyes looking up at her she read recognition of her secret.  Here was a man possessing that rare masculine attribute, intuition.  Zahara knew a fear that was half delightful.  Fear because she might fail in either of two ways and delight because the contest was equal.

“Yes,” he replied slowly, “my looks tell the truth.  How did you know?”

Zahara observed that his curiosity had not yet become actual interest.  She toyed with the silken tassel on her robe, tying and untying it with quick nervous fingers and resting the while against the side of the carved chair.

“Perhaps because I am so lonely myself,” she said.  “I matter to no one.  What I do, where I go, if I live or die.  It is all——­”

She spread her small hands eloquently and shrugged so that another white shoulder escaped from the Chinese wrapping.  Thereupon Zahara demurely drew her robe about her with a naive air of modesty which nine out of ten beholding must have supposed to be affected.

In reality it was a perfectly natural, instinctive movement.  To Zahara her own beauty was a commonplace to be displayed or concealed as circumstances might dictate.  In a certain sense, which few could appreciate, this half-caste dancing girl and daughter of El Wasr was as innocent as a baby.  It was one of the things which men did not understand.  She thought that if Harry Grantham asked her to go away with him it would be nice to go.  Suddenly she realized how deep was her loathing of this Limehouse and of the people she met there, who were all alike.

He sat looking at her for some time, and then:  “Perhaps you are wrong,” he said.  “There may be some who could understand.”