In the red-curtained room Harrik sat alone, listening until he heard the far clatter of hoofs, and knew that the Nubians were gone.

Then the other distant sound which had captured his ear came to him again.

In his fancy it grew louder and louder.

With it came the voice that called him in the night, the voice of a woman--of the wife he had given to the lions for a crime against him which she did not commit, which had haunted him all the years.

He had seen her thrown to the king of them all, killed in one swift instant, and dragged about the den by her warm white neck--this slave wife from Albania, his adored Fatima.