Karamaneh started forward to meet him, suppressing
a little cry, whose real anguish could not have been simulated.
"Go back! go back!" she whispered urgently, and thrust out her hands
against Smith's breast. "For God's sake, go back! I have risked my
life to come here to-night. _He knows_, and is ready...."
The words were spoken with passionate intensity, and Nayland Smith
hesitated. To my nostrils was wafted that faint, delightful perfume
which, since one night, two years ago, it had come to disturb my
senses, had taunted me many times as the mirage taunts the parched
Sahara traveller. I took a step forward.
"Don't move!" snapped Smith.
Karamaneh clutched frenziedly at the lapels of his coat.
"Listen to me!" she said beseechingly, and stamped one little foot
upon the floor--"listen to me! You are a clever man, but you know
nothing of a woman's heart--nothing--_nothing_--if seeing me, hearing
me, knowing, as you do know, what I risk, you can doubt that I speak
the truth. And I tell you that it is death to go behind those
curtains--that _he_...."
"That's what I wanted to know!" snapped Smith. His voice quivered with
excitement.
Suddenly grasping Karamaneh by the waist, he lifted her and set her
aside; then in three bounds he was on to the model's throne and had
torn the plush curtains bodily from their fastenings.
How it occurred I cannot hope to make clear, for here my recollections
merge into a chaos.
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