She was pale as a ghost, and she stepped light with a terrified
tread. Bertram could see at a glance she was profoundly agitated.
For a moment he could hardly imagine the reason why: then he
remembered all at once the strict harem rules by which married
women in England are hemmed in and circumvented. To visit an
unmarried man alone by night is contrary to tribal usage. He rose,
and advanced towards his visitor with outstretched arms. "Why,
Frida," he cried,--"Mrs. Monteith--no, Frida--what's the matter?
What has happened since I left? You look so pale and startled."

Frida closed the door cautiously, flung herself down into a chair
in a despairing attitude, and buried her face in her hands for some
moments in silence. "O Mr. Ingledew," she cried at last, looking up
in an agony of shame and doubt: "Bertram--I KNOW it's wrong; I KNOW
it's wicked; I ought never to have come. Robert would kill me if he
found out. But it's my one last chance, and I couldn't BEAR not to
say good-bye to you--just this once--for ever."

Bertram gazed at her in astonishment. Long and intimately as he had
lived among the various devotees of divine taboos the whole world
over, it was with difficulty still he could recall, each time, each
particular restriction of the various systems. Then it came home to
him with a rush. He removed the poor girl's hands gently from her
face, which she had buried once more in them for pure shame, and
held them in his own. "Dear Frida," he said tenderly, stroking them
as he spoke, "why, what does all this mean? What's this sudden
thunderbolt? You've come here to-night without your husband's
leave, and you're afraid he'll discover you?"

Frida spoke under her breath, in a voice half-choked with frequent