eye that burned holes in you. "You should await a more peaceful season, effendi, for your art."

"On account of the Armenians, your Excellency?" I ventured to inquire with a smile.

"Yes." This, in translation by Joe, came with a whistling sound, like the escaping steam of a radiator.

"But why should I fear these disturbers of the peace, your Supreme Highness? The Turk is my friend, and has been for years. They know me and my pure and unblemished life. They also know by this time that I have been one of the chosen few among nations who have enjoyed your Highness's confidence, and to whom you have given protection." Here my spine took the form of a horseshoe curve—Moorish pattern. "As to these dogs of Armenians" (this last was Joe's, given with a growl to show his deep detestation of the race—part of his own, if he would but acknowledge it), "your Excellency will look out for them." He WAS looking out for them at the rate of one hundred a day and no questions asked or answered so far as the poor fellows were concerned.

At this the distinguished Oriental finished rolling his cigarette, looked at me blandly—it is astonishing how sweet a smile can overspread the face of a Turk when he is granting you a favor or signing the death warrant of an infidel—clapped his hands, summoning an attendant who came in on all fours, and whispered an order in the left ear of the almost prostrate man. This done, the Pasha rose from his seat, straightened his shoulders (no handsomer men the world over than these high-class Turks), shook my hand warmly, gave me the Turkish salute—heart, mouth, and forehead touched with the tips of flying fingers—and bowed me out.

Once through the flat leather curtain that hid the exit door of the Pasha's office, and into the bare corridor, I led Joe to a corner out of the hearing of the ever-present spy, and, nailing him to the wall, propounded this query:

"What did the High-Pan-Jam say, Joe?"

Hornstog raised his shoulders level with his ears, fanned out his fingers, crooked his elbows, and in his best conglomerate answered:

"He say, effendi, that a guard of ein men, Yusuf, his name—I know him—he is in the Secret Service—oh, we will have no trouble with him—" Here Joe chafed his thumb and forefinger with the movement of a paying teller counting a roll. "He come every morning to Galata Bridge for you me. He say, too, if any trouble while you paint I go him—ah, effendi, it is only Joe Hornstog can do these things. The Pasha, he know me—all good Turk-men know me. Where we paint now, subito? In the plaza, or in the patio of the Valedee, like last year?"

"Neither. We go first to the Mosque of Suleiman. I want the view through the gate of the court-yard, with the mosque in the background. Best place is below the cafe. Pick up those traps and come along."

Thus it was that on this particular summer afternoon Joe and I found ourselves on the shadow side of a wall up a crooked, break-neck street paved with rocks, each as big as a dress-suit case, from which I got a full view of the wonderful mosque tossing its splendors into the still air, its cresting of minarets so much frozen spray against the blue.

The little comedy—or shall I say tragedy?—began a few minutes after I had opened my easel—I sitting crouched in the shadow, my elbow touching the plastered wall. Only Joe and I were present. Yusuf, the guard, a skinny, half-fed Turk in fez and European dress, had as usual betaken himself to the cafe fronting the same sidewalk on which I sat, but half a block away; far enough to be out of hearing, but near enough to miss my presence should I decamp suddenly without notifying him. There he drank some fifty cups of coffee, each one the size of a thimble, and smoked as many cigarettes, their burned stubs locating his seat under the cafe awning as clearly as peanut-shells mark a boy's at the circus. I, of course, paid for both.

So absorbed was I in my work—the mosque never was so beautiful as on that day—I gave no thought to the fact that in my eagerness to hide my canvas from the prying sun I had really backed myself into a small wooden gate, its lintel level with the sidewalk—a dry, dusty, sun-blistered gate, without lock or hasp on the outside, and evidently long closed. Even then I would not have noticed it, had not my ears caught the sound of a voice—two voices, in fact—low, gurgling voices—as if a fountain had just been turned on, spattering the leaves about it. Then my eye lighted, not only on the gate, but upon a seam or split in the wood, half-way up its height, showing where a panel was sometimes pushed back, perhaps for surer identification, before the inside wooden beam would be loosened.

So potent was the spell of the mosque's witchery that the next instant I should have forgotten both door and panel had not Joe touched the toe of my boot with his own—he was sitting close to me—and in explanation lifted his eyebrow a hair's breadth, his eyes fixed on the slowly sliding panel—sliding noiselessly, an inch at a time. Only then did my mind act.

What I saw was first a glow of yellow green, then a mass of blossoms, then a throat, chin and face, one after another, all veiled in a gossamer thin as a spider's web, and last—and these I shall never forget—a pair of eyes shining clear below and above the veil, and which gazed into mine with the same steady, full, unfrightened look one sometimes sees on the face of a summer moon when it bursts through a rift in the clouds.

"Don't move and don't look," whispered Joe in my ear, a tone in his voice of one who had just seen a ghost. "Allah! Ekber! Yuleima!"

"Who is she?" I answered, craning my neck to see the closer.

"No speak now—keep still," he mumbled under his breath.

It may have been the gossamer veil shading a rose skin, making pink pearls of the cheeks and chin and lending its charm to the other features; or it may have been the wonderful eyes that made me oblivious of Joe's warning, for I did look—looked with all my eyes, and kept on looking.

Men have died for just such eyes. Even now, staid old painter as I am, the very remembrance of their wondrous size—big as a young doe's and as pleading, their lids fringed by long feathery lashes that opened and shut with the movement of a tired butterfly—sends little thrills of delight scampering up and down my spine. Bulbuls, timid gazelles, perfumed narghilehs, anklets of beaten gold strung with turquoise, tinkling cymbals, tiny turned-up slippers with silk tassels on their toes—everything that told of the intoxicating life of the East were mirrored in their unfathomed depths.

Most of these qualities, I am aware, are found in many another pair of lambent, dreamy eyes half-hidden by the soft folds of a yashmak—eyes which these houris often flash on some poor devil of a giaour, knowing how safe they are and how slim his chance for further acquaintance. Strange tales are told of their seductive power and strange disappearances take place because of them. And yet I saw at a glance that there was nothing of all this in her wondering gaze. Her eyes, in fact, were fixed neither on Joseph nor on me, nor did they linger for one instant on the beautiful mosque. It was my canvas that held their gaze. Men and mosques were old stories; pictures of either as astounding as a glimpse into heaven.

Again Joe bent his head and whispered to me, his glance this time on the mosque, on the hill, on the cafe, where Yusuf sat sipping his coffee, talking to me all the time out of the corner of his mouth.

"Remember, effendi, if Yusuf come we go way chabouk. You look at your picture all time—paint—no look at her. If Yusuf come and catch us it make trouble for her—make trouble for you—make more trouble for me. Police Pasha don't know she come to this garden—I think somebody must help her. You better stop now and go cafe. I find Yusuf. I no like this place."

With this Hornstog rose to his feet and began packing the trap, still whispering, his eyes