wreaths. One by one the riding lanterns of the harbor vessels shone out like stars in a fog, and the rhythm of an Arab sailor song came swelling over the broad bay.

The two friends smoked in silence as the dusk grew deeper. Presently the beacon light flashed up on Matifou ten miles away, sending out its nightly warning to the ships at sea. A thousand lamps flared in the lower town, and far up the hill the boulevard lanterns starred the gloom with their fiery eyes.

"Can you tell me the space of time an Algerian romance requires?" asked Ainsworth, finally.

Trascott's cheery laugh was the only answer.

"In England," the lawyer mused, "I would give them six weeks. In this southern climate, where the blood runs hot, the climax must come in less time, but just how long only Britton knows."

Trascott tapped his pipe upon the pier, refilled it and settled back with a sigh.

"Do you think this affair is really serious?" he asked, with a certain earnestness and anxiety.

"Serious!" Ainsworth snorted, "it's the most serious thing that ever happened him. Do you understand Britton's disposition? He's a whole-hearted fellow full of generous and chivalric impulses, with a belief in the goodness of all the feminine sex. He has run against nothing to knock those notions into chaos. Do you think he can view that fine-looking woman unmoved? Do you think that she is going to pass by Reginald Britton, the heir to Britton Hall and old Oliver's estates? Not if I know anything, Trascott! And mark me, I don't like the woman. She's fair enough for a lord–but I don't like her. Please remember that, Trascott."

The curate started, for he had earlier confessed to himself a similar dislike of the blonde beauty who had taken the yacht and Britton and the port itself, as well as the great English hotels, by storm. However, he was too fair-minded not to combat such an antipathy so far unwarranted.

"Why do you not like her?" he asked, seeking perhaps in Ainsworth's attitude a solution of his own state of mind.

"Intuition, I suppose," the lawyer answered gruffly. "When I see a lady travelling alone, except for her maid, coming apparently from nowhere and heading for a destination wholly indefinite, I always regard her with suspicion. What has Britton learned about this woman? He knows her name is Maud Morris. He knows she can madden him with those eyes and lips. That is the extent of his knowledge. Does he know her home, her county, her family, her support? No! I have questioned Britton, not to mention warning him–"

"You have!" exclaimed the curate, "and what did he say?"

"Told me to go to that infernal region I mentioned. He can't listen to sound reason. They never can!"

"Ah, well," sighed Trascott, "I intended dropping a hint, but since you've anticipated me without result–"

"Might as well talk to a log!" Ainsworth cut in. "I shall be glad when the thing has run its course and we get out of here. This Algerian scenery palls on me! If something would only happen to hasten the climax, it might cheer my heart. I believe I shall hire some dogs of Arabs to abduct the fair princess and let Britton play the rescuer somewhere out on the Djujuras."

"It may not be necessary," said Trascott. "He's going to that dance to-night."

"Yes," muttered the lawyer, "he's been dressing and fussing ever since supper. There's the launch now!"

The gasoline craft spluttered and danced over the waves to the pier where Ainsworth and the curate were smoking.

"You lazy duffers," Britton cried, "aren't you going up?"

He stepped out of the launch, a tall, handsome figure in his evening clothes and top-hat. His paletot hung on his left arm, which was now entirely well, and as he faced his friends they both thought how singularly powerful he looked. Broad of shoulder and deep of chest, it seemed as if the frames of the other two men together would have been required to equal his bulk. His straight, finely-cut features and blue eyes held an expression unmistakably aristocratic.

"Aren't you going up?" he repeated.

"We'll look into the reading-room later on," replied Ainsworth. "I don't care to dance, and it disagrees with Trascott's digestion."

"See you there, then," was his farewell. "Don't forget you can get all you want to eat in the dining-room for the sum of six francs."

A fiacre pulled up near the wharf at his hail.

"Hotel de ––," he said, jumping in with an object-lesson of alacrity.

The driver accepted the hint and dashed away at a swift pace through the lower town till the long ascent which led up to Mustapha Supérieure compelled him to walk his animal.

The last two weeks had passed for Rex Britton as a single day. Not a minute of the whole time dragged, for the reason that he had spent every available minute with Maud Morris. He considered the sojourn, which he had lengthened day by day, as Paradise–the direct antithesis, in fact, of Ainsworth's view! He had pursued the wild dream of that first night on the harbor with all his passionate persistence till it suddenly ensnared him in its tangible and compelling reality.

The lawyer back on the pier was wishing for something to hasten the climax. In spite of his faculty of shrewd observation, Ainsworth did not dream of how deeply Britton was already involved with the woman whom he, Ainsworth, mistrusted.

It would take a wise man indeed to time and trace the development of a romance when the setting lies between the pagan Djujuras and the legend-steeped Mediterranean. Britton would have been filled with dismay had he stopped to inspect, analyze and adjudge his actions during those two weeks. His impulses were at riot under the sway of a heavenly elixir which the woman held to his lips; he never looked back; his mind was centred on the days ahead, planning a wonderful permanency for the exotic, filmy atmosphere of present experiences.

As the fiacre climbed the Mustapha Supérieure Britton could possess in vision the whole expanse of the port, the wharves dimly lighted and busy with the night-labor that the volume of trade enforced, the illuminated vessels in the wide anchorage and the mingling gleams that marked the Mustapha Inférieure.

Britton knew every nook of the climbing city, old, by almost a thousand years, in story and conflict. With the lady of pale-gold beauty he had explored all the charming retreats of both towns. They had loitered in the Place Royale amid the orange and lime trees, finding pleasure in watching the cosmopolitan crowds which thronged that oblong space in the centre of the city. The traits of character disclosed by representatives of so many different nations–Moors, Jews and Arabs, Germans, Spaniards, French, Corsicans, Italians and Maltese, and scores of other races–proved very interesting to the English observers.

The mild, balmy Algerian evenings seemed temptations to roam abroad, and the two had grown accustomed to promenade the Bab-el-Ouad and the Bab-azoun, which ran north and south in a parallel direction for half a mile. Those walks down the dim vista of