TO pursue further the adventure on the marshes would be a task at once useless and
thankless. In its actual and in its dramatic significance it concluded with our parting from
Karamaneh. And in that parting I learned what Shakespeare meant by "Sweet Sorrow."
There was a world, I learned, upon the confines of which I stood, a world whose very
existence hitherto had been unsuspected. Not the least of the mysteries which peeped
from the darkness was the mystery of the heart of Karamaneh. I sought to forget her. I
sought to remember her. Indeed, in the latter task I found one more congenial, yet, in the
direction and extent of the ideas which it engendered, one that led me to a precipice.
East and West may not intermingle. As a student of world-policies, as a physician, I
admitted, could not deny, that truth. Again, if Karamaneh were to be credited, she had
come to Fu-Manchu a slave; had fallen into the hands of the raiders; had crossed the
desert with the slave-drivers; had known the house of the slave-dealer. Could it be? With
the fading of the crescent of Islam I had thought such things to have passed.
At the mere thought of a girl so deliciously beautiful in the brutal power of slavers, I
found myself grinding my teeth--closing my eyes in a futile attempt to blot out the
pictures called up.
Then, at such times, I would find myself discrediting her story. Again, I would find
myself wondering, vaguely, why such problems persistently haunted my mind. But,
always, my heart had an answer. And I was a medical man, who sought to build up a
family practice!-- who, in short, a very little time ago, had thought himself past the hot
follies of youth and entered upon that staid phase of life wherein the daily problems of
the medical profession hold absolute sway and such seductive follies as dark eyes and red
lips find-- no place--are excluded!
But it is foreign from the purpose of this plain record to enlist sympathy for the recorder.
The topic upon which, here, I have ventured to touch was one fascinating enough to me; I
cannot hope that it holds equal charm for any other. Let us return to that which it is my
duty to narrate and let us forget my brief digression.
It is a fact, singular, but true, that few Londoners know London. Under the guidance of
my friend, Nayland Smith, I had learned, since his return from Burma, how there are
haunts in the very heart of the metropolis whose existence is unsuspected by all but the
few; places unknown even to the ubiquitous copy-hunting pressman.
Into a quiet thoroughfare not two minutes' walk from the pulsing life of Leicester Square,
Smith led the way. Before a door sandwiched in between two dingy shop-fronts he
paused and turned to me.
