She wrote back a word of thanks for the flowers and a request for writing paper and ink, and when they were brought she wrote three most urgent letters, and after an instant's hesitation a fourth—to the Viceroy himself. Feeling that his mail might be bulky, she marked it "Immediate" in large characters and gave them to the maid, who nodded intelligently and shuffled away.

It was very odd, she thought then, that she had no letters. By now the Evershams must surely have written—she had begged them to.... But she was not going to be silly and panicky, she determinedly informed that queer little catch in her side which came at the thought of her isolation, and humming defiantly she sat down at the white piano and opened the score of a light opera which she knew:

Say not love is a dream, Say not that hope is vain ...

She had danced to that tune last night—no, the night before last—danced to it with that extraordinarily impulsive young man from home—for all America was now home to her spirit. And she had promised to see him last night. She wondered what he had thought of her absence.... She could imagine the Evershams dolefully deploring her rashness, yet not without a totally unconscious tinge of proper relish at its prompt punishment. They were such dismal old dears! They would complain—they must have made her the talk of the hotel by now. Robert Falconer would enjoy that! And his sister and Lady Claire would ask about her, and Lady Claire would say, "How odd—fancy!" in that rather clipped and high-bred voice of hers.... But she was not going to think about it!

She opened more music, stared wonderingly at the unfamiliar pages, read the English translation beneath the German lines, then pushed them away, her cheeks the pinker. They were as bad as French postcards, she thought, aghast. Whose room was this, anyway? Whose piano was this? Whose was the lacy negligee she had worn and the gossamer lingerie the maid had placed in the chiffonier for her? Was she usurping her hostess's boudoir?

She began to walk restlessly up and down the room, feeling time interminable, hating each lagging second of delay.

Then came a tray of luncheon, and lying upon it a yellow envelope. With an eagerness that hurt in its keenness she snatched it up and tore out the folded sheet. Her eyes leaped down the lines. Then slowly they followed them again:

I think it very strange of you to leave us like that, but of course you are your own mistress. We are sorry and hope it will soon be over and you will join us again, unless you prefer your other friends, the Maynards. We have packed your clothes and sent them to Cook's for your orders, and we have paid your hotel bill. Let us know when you can join us.

MRS. EVERSHAM.

That was all. No word of real sympathy—no declaration of help. Passive acceptance of her predicament—perhaps indeed a retributive feeling of its fitness for her folly. They were annoyed.... Packing her clothes must have been a bother—so was paying her hotel bill.

She crumpled the telegram with an angry little hand. Evidently they had done none of the telephoning she had begged of them. Surely there would have been time for that, if only they had hurried a little! She remembered with a sort of hopeless rage their maddening deliberateness.... Well, they were gone off to the Nile—the telegram, she saw, had been sent as they were on their way to the boat—and she had nothing more to hope from them! But surely the other people, the consul, the ambassador, the mysterious medical authorities, would understand when they had read her letters.

She sent another note to the Captain, asking to be called when the doctor came, and then she sat down at the little white table and began again to write.

But not to Falconer. Never would she beg of him, never, she resolved, with a tightening of her soft lips. She would never let him know how miserable she was over this stupid scrape; when she returned to the hotel she would carry affairs with a high hand and hold forth upon the interesting quaintness of her experience and the old-world charm of her hostess. She laughed, in angry mockery. Never to him, after their quarrel, would she confess herself.

The letter was to a young man whose gray eyes she remembered as very kind and whose chin as very vigorous. He would do things, she thought. And he would understand—he was an American. And dimly she felt that she didn't want him to think she had utterly forgotten her promise of the evening before last, and she didn't want him to be filled with whatever dismal impression the Evershams were giving out. So she dwelt very lightly upon her annoyance at being detained, and asked him please to see the consul or the English Ambassador or somebody in power and hurry matters up a little, as her rightful caretakers had taken themselves off to the Nile. And she said nothing stupid about the strangeness of her writing to him after only speaking to him twice and never being really presented. She merely added, "Please hurry things—I hate being a prisoner," and sealed and addressed it with a flourish to William B. Hill, and sent it off by the maid, and felt oddly comforted by the memory of Billy's vigorous chin.

The heat of the rose-and-white room was stifling now as the slant sun of afternoon burned through the closed blinds and drawn hangings. Languidly she curled up upon the sofa and pillowed her heavy head on the scented silk, and so, drowsing with fitful dreams, she lost the sense of the lagging hours.

She roused to find the maid at hand with more water jars, and, when she had bathed, the girl reappeared and beckoned her to follow. Perhaps the doctor was below, thought Arlee; perhaps the consulate had sent for her! With flying feet she followed down the dark old stairs and across the anteroom into the dim salon, only to find a candle-lighted table set for dinner in the middle of the room and Captain Kerissen bowing ceremoniously beside it.

In the blankness of her disappointment she scarcely grasped what he was saying about the dinner hour being early and his sister being indisposed. She interrupted with a breathless demand for news:

"And my letters—surely there has been time for answers!"

"Answers, yes," he replied, "but not such as I could wish for your sake."

"You mean——?"

"The English have written to me and request that I cease to trouble the department with my importunities. For I myself had written to them again, that I might find grace in your eyes by accomplishing your desires. They say to me that it is useless. The plague is more serious than the convenience of my visitors, and all must be done according to rule. When there is no danger you may depart."

The crash of hopes went echoing to the farthest reaches of her consciousness. But pride stiffened her to dissemble, and she tried to smile as she mechanically accepted the Captain's invitation to be seated at the little candle-lighted table.

"There was no word to me personally?" she asked.

"None, but the telegram which came this morning. I judged that it was not of a significance, for you did not send me a report."

"No—it was not of a significance," she repeated, with a ghost of a little smile. "It was from the Evershams."

"Ah! Their condolences, I think?... And is it that they still make the Nile trip?"

"Yes.... They went this morning." She spoke hesitantly, averse to having this eager-eyed young host perceive how truly deserted she was. "They expect me to take the express train later and join them."

"It is only a night's ride to Assouan." He spoke soothingly. "But you are not eating, Miss Beecher. I recommend this consomme."

It was worth the recommending. Miss Beecher spooned it slowly, then demanded, "Why was I not called when the doctor came?"

"But he does not come! Perhaps he is afraid"—the young man's brows and shoulders rose expressively—"but certainly he does not risk himself. If a servant is ill we are to tell a soldier and the sick one will be taken away to the house of plague—bien simple. It is so hard that I am helpless for you," he said, with sympathetic concern, then added, with an air of boyish confession, "although I do not deny that it is happiness for me to see you here."

The look in his eyes forced itself upon her. And the secret sense of discomfort intruded like a third presence at the little table.

In a clear voice of dry indifference: "That's very polite of you," she remarked, "but I imagine you are pretty furious, too, to be kept pent up in somebody else's house like this."

"But this is not somebody else's house," he smiled, his eyes observant of her quick glance and look of confusion. "I am chez moi."

"Oh! I thought—I was visiting your sister."

"My sister lives with me. She is a widow—and we are both alone."

"She does not seem to care for company."

"She is indisposed. She regrets it exceedingly." The young man looked grave and solicitous. "But I trust your comfort is not being neglected?"

"Oh, my comfort is being beautifully attended to, thank you, but my patience is wearing itself out!" Arlee spoke with a blithe assumption of humor.

"I wish that I could extend the resources of my palace for you."

"You must tell me about the palace. I shall want to picture it to my friends when I tell them about it. It's very old, isn't it? It must have seen a great deal of life."

"Ah, yes, it has seen life—and what life! Quelle vie!" A flash of real enthusiasm dispelled the suave indolence of his handsome features.

"Have you seen those old rooms? Those rooms that were built by the Mamelukes? There is nothing now in Cairo like them."

"I thought them very beautiful," said the girl. "Tell me about those Mamelukes who lived here."

"They were men," he said with pride, his eyes kindling, "men who lived as kings dare not live to-day!" The subject of those old days and those old ancestors of his was evidently dear to the young modern, and he launched into an animated sketch of those times, trying to picture for Arlee something of the glowing pageant of the past. And as she listened she found her own high spirit stirring in sympathy with the barbaric strength of those old nobles, riding to battle on their fiery Arab steeds, waging their private wars, brooking no affront, no command, working no other man's will.

"They knew both power and beauty," he declared, "like the Medici of Florence. There are no leaders like that in the modern world. To-day beauty is beggared, and power is lusterless.... And taste? Taste is a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!"

"While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of Mamelukes?" Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.

He nodded. "It should be the concern of nobles—not of the rabble. That is why I should hate your America—where the rabble prevail."

"It's not nice of you to call me a rabble," said Arlee, busy with her plate of chicken. "But I want to hear more about your old Mamelukes. Is the story true about the Sultan's being so afraid of them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?"

"He did well to fear them," said Kerissen. "And he, too, was a strong man who had the power to clear his own path. Those nobles were in the path of Mohammed Ali. They were too strong for him, he knew it—and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in 1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon of gold. His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes.... The Mamelukes were feted and courted, and then, as they were leaving the Citadel—you have been up there?" he broke off to question, and Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child's, "and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls, between the fortified doors? Imagine to yourself that deep way filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken leave of their Sultan—they were a picture of such pride and pomp as Egypt has never seen again. And then the treachery—the great gates closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the hosts of death—the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last moan and hiccough of blood."

"But one escaped?" questioned the girl, breaking the silence which had followed the cessation of his voice. "Is it true that one really escaped?"

"Anym-bey—yes, he was the only one that escaped that massacre. He had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop, he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down—down—down! Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape. Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He was killed."

"Oh, the pity—after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it all when the dragoman told me—probably because he showed me the mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it was all a legend—like the mark."

"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?" laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles they think you tourists!"

But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.

"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.

The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No, that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been brought to the home of her husband—there she holds her reception. Those are the fetes to which the English ladies come in such curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.

"You cannot blame them for feeling a real—interest," said Arlee hesitantly.

"Their interest—pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violent gesture with his cigarette. "They peer at the bride with their haggard eyes, and they say, 'What! You have not seen your husband till to-day! How strange—how strange! Has he not written to you? Suppose you do not like him,' and they laugh and add, 'Fancy a girl among us being married like that!'... The imbeciles—whose own marriages are abominations!"

For a moment Arlee was silent, instinct and impulse warring within her. The man was a maniac upon those subjects, and it was madness to exchange a word with him—but her young anger darted through her discretion.

"They are not abominations!" she gave back proudly.

"But I know—I know—have I not been at marriages in England?" he declared, with startling fierceness. "Men and women crowd about the bride; they press in line and kiss her; bearded mouths and shaven lips, young and old, they brush off that exquisite bloom of innocence which a husband delights to discover. Her lips are soiled, fanee.... And then the man and woman go away together into a public hotel or a train, and the people laugh and shout after them, and hurl shoes and rice, with a great din of noise. I have heard!" He stopped, looked a moment at the flushed curve of Arlee's averted face, the droop of her shadowy lashes which veiled the confusion and anger of her spirit, and then, leaning forward, his eyes still upon her, he spoke in a lower, softer tone, caressing in its inflections.

"With us it is not so," he said. "We have dignity in our rejoicing, and delicacy in our love. The bride is brought in state to the home of her husband, no eyes in the street resting upon her, and there, in his home, her husband welcomes her and retires with his friends, while she holds a reception with hers. Later the husband will come home and greet her, and he wooes her to him as tenderly as he would gather a flower that he would wear. He is no rude master, no tyrant, as you have been taught to think! He wins her heart and mind to him; it is the conquest of the spirit!... I tell you that our men alone understand the secret of women! Is not the life he gives her better than what you call the world? The woman blooms like a flower for her husband alone; his eyes only may dwell upon the beauty of her face; for him alone, her lips—her lips——"

The young man's voice, grown husky, died away. A dreadful stillness followed, a stillness vibrating with unspoken thought. Her eyes lifted toward him, then fled away, so full of strange, dark, desirous things was the look she encountered. Abruptly he rose—he was coming toward her, and she struggled suddenly to her feet, battling against the cold terror which held her dumb and unready. She flung one arm out before her and found it grasped by hands that were hot and burning. The touch shot her with a fierce rage that cleared her brain and unlocked her lips.

"Is that—the conquest of the spirit?" she gasped, and for an instant the white-hot scorn in her eyes, flashing into his, hid any hint of the fear in her.

Involuntarily his grasp relaxed, and violently she wrenched her arm away and stood facing him, a little white-clad image of war, her eyes blazing, her breast heaving, a defiant child in her intrepidity who gave him back look for look.

In his eyes there glowed and battled a conflict of desires. For one moment they seemed flaming at her from the dark, like some wild creature ready to spring; the next moment they were human, recognizable. She read there grudging admiration, arrested ardor, irresolution, dubiety, and secret calculation.

Then he put both hands behind him and bowed with ceremony.

"The spirit," he remarked dryly, "is worth the conquest."

She said proudly, "You would not like your English friends to know how you treat a guest!"

At that she saw his lip curl in irony—at the mention of the English, perhaps, or in disdain at the appearance of fearing a threat, however powerful that threat might be. He answered with calmness, "It is not the English I am considering.... Nor have I treated my guest so ill, chere petite mademoiselle.... If for the moment I mistook my cue—that look within your face—I ask grace for my stupidity."

Suddenly she was frightened. He did not look like a man who wholly surrenders his desires. His eyes seemed to say to her, "Wait—the last word has not been spoken!" She felt her knees trembling.

With an effort she got out, "It is granted—but never again—must you misunderstand. An American girl——"

She stopped. There was a lump in her throat. Across a bright, familiar veranda she could hear a clear, sharp voice answer, "American goose!" She saw a lean tanned face burn red with anger. A wave of loneliness went through her. The irony of it was pitiless. How right Robert Falconer had been!

He was staring down at the table beside him, frowning, considering. She saw with peculiar distinctness how the cigarette he had dropped had burned a hole in the fine linen. One of the candles was dripping lopsidedly. She thought some one ought to right it. She wondered if that soft step, hesitating, behind the curtains, was the serving woman's, and she turned toward that doorway.

"I don't think I care for any coffee," she said, with an air of careless finality. "I think I will go back to my room. Good evening."

He followed her to the doorway, drawing aside the curtains as she passed into the anteroom, and opening the door at the foot of the steps, with an answering, "Good evening," and an added, "Till to-morrow, Mademoiselle." And then, as the door closed below her, she paused on the dark stairs and huddled against the wall, listening to the faint footfalls from below, crossing and recrossing. Then, when the silence seemed continual, she tiptoed down the stairs again, softly pushed open the unlatched door, stole across the anteroom to the curtained doorway and peered in.

The salon was empty, and in its center the supper table stood stripped of its cloth and candles. Only the pale light from the windows dispelled the growing dark. Like a little white wraith Arlee fled through the room and turned the handle of the door at the head of the haremlik stairs. The door was locked.

She shook the handle, first cautiously, then with increasing violence, then she ran back into the room to the nearest window, staring down through the screen. It would have been a steep jump down into the street, but her tense nerves would have dared it instantly. Her hands tore at the mashrubiyeh, but the tiny spindles and delicate curves held sound and firm. She beat against it with fierce little fists; she leaped against it with all her trifling weight. It did not yield an inch. Was there iron in all that delicacy? Or was that old wood impregnable in its grim trust?

Wildly she glanced back into the room. Suppose she took a chair and beat at this carving—could she clear a way before the servants came? Could she take the jump successfully? She gazed down into the street, estimating the fall, trying to calculate the hurt.

As she gazed, her eyes grew fixed and filled with utter amazement. Down the street, on a black horse that arched his curving neck and danced on light, fleet feet, rode a man in a uniform of green and gold. He sat erect, his clear-cut profile toward her. The next instant his horse, side-stepping at a blowing paper, turned his face into view. It was Captain Kerissen.

Some one was stirring in the anteroom, and Arlee darted to the left of the throne-chair and through the door there which stood ajar. She was in a dim salon, like the one that she had left, but smaller, and across from her was another door. She flew toward it, wild with the hope of escape, and it opened before her eager hands.

From the shadows of the room it disclosed came a figure with a quick cry. So suddenly it came, so tumultuously it threw itself toward her that Arlee had a startled vision of bare arms, glittering with jeweled bands, arrested outstretched before her as the low gladness of the cry broke in an angry guttural. Slowly the arms dropped in a gesture of despair. She saw a face, distorted, passionate, grow haggard beneath its paint in the reversal of hope.

"Madame!" stammered Arlee to that strange figure of her hostess. "Madame—Oh, pardon me," she cried, snatching at her French, "but tell me how I can go away from here. Tell me——"

"C'est toi—va-t-en!" the woman answered in a voice of smothered fury. She made a menacing gesture toward the door. "Va-t-en." Suddenly her voice rose in a passion of angry phrases that were indistinguishable to the girl, and then she broke off as suddenly and flung herself down upon a couch. From behind her the old woman came shuffling forth and put a hand on Arlee's arm, and Arlee felt the muscles of that hand as strong and rigid as a man's. Utterly confused and bewildered, the girl suffered herself to be led back through the rooms to the foot of her stairs.

"Mariayah!" screamed the old woman, and after a moment the voice of waiting-maid answered from above, and then as Arlee dumbly ascended the stairs, the voice of the old woman rose with her in shrill admonition.

It was the voice of a jailer, thought the white-lipped girl, and that little, dark-skinned maid who waited upon her so eagerly, with such sidelong glances of strange interest, was the tool of a jailer. And though the turning of the key in her own hand gave her a momentary sense of refuge from them, it was but a false illusion of the moment. There was neither refuge nor safety here. She was being deceived ...

The quarantine was lifted.

How else could the Captain be cantering down the street? He did not look like a man escaping.... Perhaps he had bribed the doorkeeper—that which he had declared impossible for Arlee.... But certainly he was deceiving her.

Like a swollen river bursting its banks, her racing mind, wild with suspicion, surged out of its simple channels and swirled in every direction.... What did he mean? What was he trying to do? Keep her in ignorance of the outside world, detain her as long as he dared while the Evershams' absence left her friendless, and inflict his dreadful love-making upon her? Perhaps he thought that he could fascinate her!

She laughed aloud, but it was such a ghostly little laugh that it set her nerves jumping. She stopped in her feverish pacing of the floor; she tried to control her racing mind, she tried to be very calm and to plan.

Had he sent all those letters she had written? Steadily she stared at the possibility that he had not. But at least the Evershams knew where she was. Even the meager warmth of their telegram was like an outstretched hand through the dark. She clung tight to it.

It was absurd to be frightened. He would never dare to annoy her—never, in his sober senses. When they were alone together he had lost his head, but that was accident—impulse...

She rolled the divan against the locked door. She piled two chairs upon it.

No, of course, she had nothing really to fear from him. He was too wise not to understand the gulf between them. To-morrow she would confront him flatly with his deceit; she would array the power of the authorities behind her race. She would sweep instantly from that ill-omened palace. There would be no more philandering.

Her lips moved as she silently rehearsed the mighty speeches that she would make, and all the while as she leaned there against a window, staring strangely through the candle-light at the barricade before the door, she could think of nothing but how mad and unreal it all seemed—like some bad dream from which she would wake in an instant.

But she did not wake. The dream persisted, and the iron bars across her window were very tangible. Down below her in the garden the old lebbek tree rustled stealthily in the stillness. Gusty clouds hid the stars. In the distance the interminable tom-tom beat.

She cast herself into the bed and cried convulsively, like a desperately frightened child, while the awful sense of terror and utter loneliness seemed to be rolling over and over her, like an unending sea. Her sobbing racked her from head to foot. She cried until she was spent with weakness. Then, her wet face still pressed against the pillow and her tangled hair flung out in disordered curls, she fell at last into the deep sleep of exhausted youth.

She woke with a smothered cry. In the darkness a hand had touched her.



CHAPTER VI

A GIRL IN THE BAZAARS

Billy slapped on his hat with a clap of violence. She might have just seen him! Then he got up and marched down the steps. There was no more use in camping on that veranda. There was no more use in guarding that entrance. When a girl went whirling off in a limousine, "all dolled up" as his academic English put it, that girl wasn't going to be back in five minutes. And anyway he'd be blessed if he lay around in the way any longer like a doormat with "Welcome" inscribed upon the surface.

So this spurt of masculine shame at his swift surrender to her, and his masculine resentment at being ignored as she went by, sent him hurrying down the street resolved not to return till dinner.

From habit his steps took him to the bazaars. But the zest of that bright pageant was dulled for him. The color was gone even from the red canopies, and the excitement had vanished from the din of noises, the interest fled from the grave figures squatting in their cubby holes of shops draped with silky rags or sewing upon scarlet slippers. He listened apathetically to the warring shouts of the donkey boys and the anathemas of a jostled water carrier stooping under his distended goatskin, then dodged out of the way of a goaded donkey and turned into one of the passages where the four-footed could not penetrate.

For a few moments the bargaining over a silver bracelet between two beturbaned and berobed Arabs caught the surface of his attention, and as the wrangling became a bedlam of imprecations, and the explosive gestures made physical violence a development apparently of mere seconds, Billy's eyes brightened and he estimated chances. But as he picked his favorite there was one final frenzy of fury, and then—peace and joy, utter calm on the wild waters! One Arab counted out the coins from a little leather bag about his neck and the other passed over the bracelet, and with mutual salaams and smiling speeches, behold! the affair was accomplished.

Disgustedly Billy turned away. Then on the other side of him he heard a voice, a sweet and rather high voice, with a musical intensity of inflection that was as English as the Union Jack.

"Yes, it's sweetly pretty," the voice was saying irresolutely, "but I don't think I quite care to—not at that price."

"I—I will buy it for you—yes?" said another voice. "It is made for you—so 'sweetly pretty' as you say."

Billy turned. A slim, tall girl in a dark blue frock was standing before a counter of Oriental jewelry, her head turned, with an air of startled surprise, to the man on the other side of her who had just spoken. He was a short, stout, blond man, heavily flushed, showily dressed, with a fulsome beam in his light-blue eyes and an ingratiating grin beneath his upturned straw-colored mustaches.

The girl turned her head away toward the shop-keeper and put back the turquoise-studded buckle she held in her hand. "No, I do not care for it," she said in a steady voice whose coldness was for the intruder and turned away.

Billy had a glimpse of scarlet cheeks and dark lashed eyes before the blond young man again took his attention.

"You do not like it—no?" he said, blocking her path, his face thrust out to smile into hers. "But I buy you anything you wish—I make you one present——"

The girl gave a quick look about. But she was in a pocket; for there was no other exit to that line of shops but the path he was blocking. All about her the dark-skinned venders and shoppers, the bearded men, the veiled women, the impish urchins, were watching the encounter with beady eyes of malicious interest.

Billy took a quick step forward and touched the man on the arm. "Let this lady pass, please," he said.

The German confronted him with blood-shot blue eyes that ceased to smile and clearly welcomed the belligerency.

"Gott! Who are you?" he derided. "Get out—get out the way."

"Get out yourself," said Billy, and stepping in front of the fellow he extended a rigid arm, leaving a passage for the girl behind him.

"Oh, thank you," he heard her say, and as he half turned his head at the grateful murmur he felt a sudden staggering blow on the side of his face. He whirled about, on guard, and as the man struck again, lunging heavily in his intoxication, Billy knocked up the fist as it came.

"You silly fool!" he said impatiently, and as the man made a blind rush upon him he caught him and by main force flung him off, but his own foot struck something slippery and he lurched and went down, with a wave of intense disgust, into the dirt of the bazaars. He heard a chorus of cries and imprecations about him; he jumped up instantly, looking for his assailant, but the German was clinging to the front of the jewelry booth. "Meet you—satisfaction—honor," he was saying stupidly.

A native policeman elbowed his way through the throng, urging some Arabic question upon Billy, who caught its import and replied with the few sentences of reassurance at his command, pointing to the banana peel as the cause of all. A fat dragoman had suddenly appeared from nowhere and was hurriedly attempting to lead away the intoxicated one.

"You in charge of him? Take him to his hotel and throw him in the tub," said Billy curtly, and the dragoman replied with profound respect that he would do even as the heaven-born commanded.

Brushing off his clothes Billy shouldered his way out of the throng and was met by two bright and grateful eyes and a slim, bare, outstretched hand.

"Thank you so much—I am so sorry," said the musical voice.

"You shouldn't have waited," said Billy, with a prompt pressure of the friendly little hand. "It might have been a real row."

"I couldn't run away," she said in serious protest at such ingratitude. "I had to see what happened to you. And I am so sorry about your clothes."

"Not hurt a particle—I chose a fortunate place to drop," he returned lightly, but distinctly chagrined that he had dropped.

"It was so fine of you," she answered, "just to parry him like that—when he'd been drinking. I saw what you did." And then she added, very matter-of-factly, "And I'm afraid your nose is bleeding, too."

Billy put up a startled hand. In the general soreness he had not noticed that warm trickle. His whole face turned as scarlet as the shameless blood. Frantically he rummaged with the other hand.

The girl thrust a square of white linen upon him. "Please take mine—it will ruin your clothes if it gets on them."

Her immense practicality refused to be embarrassed in the least. Feeling immensely foolish Billy accepted hers, but then he discovered his own handkerchief and stuffed hers away into his pocket.

"You're a trump," he said heartily. "And it's all right now—all but the swelling, I suppose." He sounded rueful. He had remembered his engagement for the evening.

Her head a little aslant, the girl regarded him critically. "N-no, it doesn't seem to be swelling," she observed. "Of course it's a little red but that will pass."

They were walking side by side out of the narrow street and now, on a crowded corner, they paused and looked around. "I left Miss Falconer at the Maltese laces," she murmured, and to the laces they turned their steps.

Miss Falconer was still bargaining. She was a middle aged lady, Roman nosed and sandy-haired, and she brought to Billy in a rush the realization that she was "sister" and the girl was Lady Claire Montfort. The story of the encounter and Billy's hero part, related by Lady Claire, appeared most disturbing to the chaperon.

"How awkward—how very awkward," she murmured, several times, and Billy gathered from her covert glance upon him that part of the awkwardness consisted in being saddled with his acquaintance. Then, "Very nice of you, I'm sure," she added. "I hope the creature isn't lingering about somewhere.... We'd better take a cab, Claire—I'm sure we're late for tea."

"Let me find one," said Billy dutifully, and charging into the medley of vehicles he brought forth a victoria with what appeared to be the least villainous looking driver and handed in the ladies.

"Savoy Hotel, isn't it?" he added thoughtlessly, and both ladies' countenances interrogated him with a varying nuance of question.

"I remember noticing you," he hastily explained. "I'm not exactly a private detective, you know,"—the assurance seemed to leave Miss Falconer cold—"but I do remember people. And then I heard you spoken of by Miss Beecher."

The name acted curiously upon them. They looked at each other. Then they looked at Billy. Miss Falconer spoke.

"Perhaps we can drop you at your hotel," said she. "Won't you get in?"

He got in, facing them a little ruefully with his damaged countenance, and subtly aware that this accession of friendliness was not a gush of airy impulse.

"You know Miss Beecher then?" said Miss Falconer with brisk directness.

"Slightly," he said aloud. To himself he added, "So far."

"Ah—in America?"

"No, in Cairo."

Miss Falconer looked disappointed. "But perhaps you know her family?"

"No," said Billy. He added humorously, "But I'll wager I could guess them all right."

"Can you Americans do that for one another? That is more than we can venture to do for you," said the lady, and Billy was aware of irony.

"We know so little about your life, you see," the girl softened it for him, with a direct and friendly smile, and then gazed watchfully at her chaperon. She was a nice girl, Billy decided emphatically.

"How would you construct her family?" was the elder lady's next demand.

"Oh, big people in a small town," he hazarded carelessly. "The kind of place where the life isn't wide enough for the girl after all her 'advantages' and she goes abroad in search of adventure."

"Adventure," repeated Miss Falconer thoughtfully. She seemed to have an idea, but Billy was certain it was not his idea.

He hastened to clarify the light he had tried to cast upon his upsetting little countrywoman. "All life, you know, is an adventure to the American girl," he generalized. "She is a little bit more on her own than I imagine your girls are," and for the fraction of a second his eyes wandered to the listening countenance of Lady Claire, "and that rather exhilarates her. And she doesn't want things cut and dried—she wants them spontaneous and unexpected—and people, just as people, interest her tremendously. I think that's why she's so unintelligible on the Continent," he added thoughtfully. "They don't understand there that girlish love of experience as experience—enjoyment of romance apart from results."

"Romance apart from results," repeated Miss Falconer in a peculiar voice.

"I don't believe you quite get me," said Billy hastily. He felt foolish and he felt resentful. And if these English women couldn't understand the bright, volatile stuff that Arlee was made of, he certainly was not going to talk about it. But Miss Falconer had one more question for him.

"When you say big people in a small town do you mean her father would be a sort of country squire?"

"More probably a captain of industry," Billy smiled.

"A captain—Oh, that is one of your phrases!"

"One of our phrases," he laughed, and then parried, "I thought you were acquainted with Miss Beecher?"

"Quite slightly," said Miss Falconer in an aloof tone. "My brother came over on the same ship with her—he came to join us here."

Billy experienced a flood of mental light. The brother—at the hotel he had discovered that his name was Robert Falconer—was coming to join his elder sister and her young charge. He had come on the same steamer as Miss Beecher. Ergo, he was staying at the hotel where Miss Beecher was and not with his sister. Billy comprehended the anxiety of the lady with the Roman nose. He looked at Lady Claire with a certain sympathy.

He caught her own eyes reconnoitering, and they each looked hastily away.

Again Miss Falconer returned to her attack. "Then you really know nothing positive of Miss Beecher's family?"

"Nothing in the world," said Billy cheerfully. "But why not ask Miss Beecher?"

The lady made no reply. "Miss Beecher is a beautiful girl," said Lady Claire hastily. "She's so beautiful that I suppose we are all rather curious about her—of course people will ask about a girl like that!"

"Of course," said Billy, and Lady Claire, perceiving that he resented this catechism about his young countrywoman, and Miss Falconer perceiving that nothing was to be gotten out of him, the conversation was promptly turned into other channels, the vague, general channels of comment upon Cairo.

* * * * *

The Evershams dined alone. Alternately, from their table to the doorway went Billy's eager eyes, but no vision with shining curls and laughing eyes appeared. Evidently she had stayed to dine with whatever people she had gone to see. Robert Falconer was watching that table, too.... Perhaps she would not return till late; perhaps he would have only a tiny time with her that evening.... And he had not been able to buy out that man's berth upon the steamer....

Consomme and whitebait, boeuf roti and haricots vert and creme de cerises succeeded one another in deepening gloom. The whole dinner over, and she had not appeared!

He went out to the lounge and smoked with violence. Presently he saw the Evershams in the doorway talking to Robert Falconer, and he jumped up and hurried to join them. As he approached he heard the word Alexandria spoken fretfully by Mrs. Eversham.

"Good evening, good evening," said Billy hurriedly to the ladies, and being a young man of simple directness, undeterred by the glacial tinge of the ladies' response—they had not forgotten his defection of the evening before when they were entertaining him so nicely—he put the question which had been tormenting him all evening, "Where is Miss Beecher to-night?"

"Alexandria," said Mrs. Eversham again, and this time there was a hint of malicious satisfaction in her voice.

"Alexandria?" Billy was incredulous. "Why I—I understood she was to go up the Nile to-morrow morning."

"She was, but she has changed her mind. She had word from some friends of hers while we were out this afternoon and she flew right off to join them."

"You mean she isn't going up the Nile at all now?"

"I haven't an idea what she is going to do. She is not in our care any longer. And I don't suppose the boat company will do anything about her stateroom at this late date—certainly she can't expect us to go to any trouble about it."

"She left us half her packing to do," Clara Eversham contributed, addressing Falconer with plaintive mien, "and her hotel bill to pay. She is the most unexpected creature!"

Two young men silently and heartily concurred.

"What was her hurry?" Billy demanded.

"Oh, she's going camping in the desert with them—that sort of thing would fascinate her, you know. Her telegram wasn't very clear. She just sent a wire from the station, I think, or from Cook's, with some money for her bill by the boy. So careless, trusting him like that!"

"I don't suppose he brought it all," Mrs. Eversham declared. "You see, she didn't say how much she was sending—just said it was enough for her bill."

Billy looked at Falconer. He admired the stolidity of that sandy-haired young man's countenance. He envied the unrevealing blankness of his eyes.

"May I ask where she is stopping in Alexandria?" he persisted.

Mrs. Eversham shook her head. "She didn't give any address—the best hotel, I suppose, whatever that is."

"The Khedivial," Falconer supplied.

"She just said to send her things to Cook's and to write to her there and she would write when she came back. She had been expecting to meet those friends, the Maynards, later, but we had no idea that she was going to run off with them like this. It's very upsetting."

"We shall miss her," said Clara Eversham suddenly, with a note of sincerity that made Billy warm to her a trifle. So he bestirred himself getting their after dinner coffee and remembered to send Mohammed for the cream for her, and listened with a show of attention to their interminable anecdotes and corrections. But his mind was off on the way to Alexandria....

Not a word of farewell. Of course, they had not exactly arrived, in those twenty-four hours, at a correspondence stage, but still she had made a positive engagement for that evening—and she had known he was trying to buy that berth. Only that morning she had listened to his account of his endeavors with a mischievous light in her blue eyes and a prankish smile edging her pink lips ... and she might, after that, have left just a line to tell him to cancel his arrangements.... But what could he expect from such a tricksy sprite of a girl? Only twenty-seven hours before he had seen her, flagrantly tardy, nonchalantly unrepentant, first mock and then annihilate the worthy and earnest young Englishman who had endeavored to correct her ways ... He had known then the volatile stuff that she was made of—and had succumbed to it!

But he had succumbed. On that point he was most disastrously certain. The memory of the young girl possessed him. Her beauty haunted him, that spring-like beauty with its enchanting youth and gaiety. And the spirit that animated that beauty, that young, blithe, innocently audacious spirit which looked out on the world with such sunnily trustful eyes, drew him with a golden cord.

* * * * *

He smoked many a pipe over it that night, his feet on the open window ledge, his eyes on the far-spreading flat roofs, the distant domes and minarets darkly silhouetted against the sky of softest, deepest blue. The stars were silver bright. They spangled the heaven with the radiance they never give to northern skies; they gleamed like bright, wild creatures on their unearthly revels.... It would be glorious camping in the desert on a night like this ... Heaven be praised, he had not bought that berth ... Alexandria ... the Maynards ... the desert ...

He knocked out the ashes from his last pipe and rose briskly. His decision was made, but its success was on the knees of the great god Luck.



CHAPTER VII

BILLY HAS HIS DOUBTS

The encounter in the bazaars that Thursday afternoon brought one more result to young Hill besides the bruise upon his chin and the privilege of bowing to Lady Claire and her vigilant chaperon, and the presence of Lady Claire's little handkerchief in his coat pocket.

It brought a young German, scrupulously sober, soberly apologetic, in formal state to Billy's hotel upon Friday morning, whose card announced him to be Frederick von Deigen and whose speech proclaimed him to be utterly aghast at his own untoward behavior.

"I was not myself," he owned, with a sigh and a melancholy twist of his upstanding mustaches. "I had been lunching alone—and it is bad to lunch alone when one has a sadness. One drinks—to forget.... But you are too young to understand." He waved his hand in compliment to Billy's youth, then continued, with increasing energy, "But when I find what dummheit I have done—how I have so rudely addressed the young Fraeulein with you, and have used my fists upon you, even to the point of hurling you upon the street—I have no words for my shame."

"Oh, it wasn't exactly a hurl," Billy easily amended. "There was a banana peel where my heel happened to be—and I wasn't half scrapping. I could see you weren't yourself."

"Indeed no! Would I," he struck himself gloomily upon the breast, "would I intrude upon a young Fraeulein, and attack her protector? It was that bottle—that last bottle.... I knew—at the time.... I offer you my apology. I can do no more—unless you would have satisfaction—no?"

"I guess I had all the satisfaction that was coming to me yesterday," said Billy. "You've got a fist like a professional. But there's no harm done.... Only you want to get over taking that last bottle and offering presents to young ladies," he concluded, with an accent of youthful severity.

The German nodded a depressed head. His melancholy, bloodshot eyes fixed themselves sadly upon Billy. "Ach, it is so," he assented meekly, "but when one has a sadness—" He sighed.

"Yes, of course, that's tough," agreed Billy sympathetically. "I hate a sadness."

"Perhaps you have known—?" The other's eyes lifted toward him, then dropped dispiritedly. "But, no, you are too young. But I—Ach!" He added in his own tongue a line of which Billy caught geliebt and gelebt, and so nodded understandingly.

"That geliebing business is bad stuff," he returned, and again the other tugged at his mustaches with a nervous hand and shook his big blond head.

"She was to have met me here," he said abruptly. "She wrote—I was to come quick—and then she comes not. That is woman, the ewige weibliche." He scowled. "But, Gott, how enchantment was in her!"

Billy heard himself sigh in unison. The phrase suggested Arlee. And the situation was not dissimilar. He felt a positive sympathy for the big blond fellow in his pronounced clothes and glossy boots and careful boutonniere.... He smiled in friendly fashion.

"She'll come along yet," he prophesied, "and if she doesn't, just you go out after her. I wouldn't take too many chances in the waiting game."

The German shook his head. His blue eyes swam with sentimental moisture. "You do not understand," he said. "She went with another—I must wait for her to come away. I have no address—so?"

"Well, that—that's different," stammered the young American. His sympathy became cynical. Fishy business—but even a fishy business has its human side. So presently he found himself gazing interestedly upon the photograph the German displayed in the back of his watch—the photograph of a decollete young woman with provocative dark eyes and parted lips and pearl-like teeth, and he shook the caller's hand most heartily in parting, and prophesied, with fine assurance, the successful end of this fishy romance.

"You have a heart, my friend," said the German solemnly, and lifting hat and stick and lemon-colored gloves from the table, he bowed profoundly in farewell.

"And to the Fraeulein—you will give my so deep apology?" he added earnestly, and Billy assured him that he would. And he found himself, for all his pre-occupation with the vision of Arlee's spring-like beauty, by no means displeased at the errand. A man must have something to do while he is waiting—if he is to avoid last bottles! He would seek her out that very afternoon.

* * * * *

But by afternoon he was tearing upstairs and downstairs through the hotel after a very different quarry, which at last he ran to earth at a tiny table behind a palm on the veranda. The quarry was further protected by an enveloping newspaper, but Billy did not stand on ceremony.

"I want to talk to you," said he.

Falconer looked up. He recognized Billy perfectly, though his gaze gave no admission of that. This tall young fellow with the deep-set gray eyes and the rugged chin and the straight black hair he first remembered seeing dancing that Wednesday evening with Arlee—after their own disastrous tea and its estrangement. Arlee had appeared on mystifyingly good terms with him, though he was positive from his own observations, and had corroboration from the Evershams, that she had never spoken to him until five minutes before. Then the fellow had fairly grilled the Evershams about the girl's whereabouts last night. And he had learned that the previous afternoon he had managed to take Claire's protection upon himself in the bazaars, actually convincing her that she ought to feel indebted to him, and had driven back with them.... An unabashed intruder, that fellow! He ought to have a lesson.

His air of unwelcome deepened, if possible, as Billy helped himself to a chair, drew it confidentially close to him and cast a careful glance about the veranda.

"I don't want anyone to hear this," he explained.

Falconer smiled cynically. He had met confidential young Americans before. There was nothing they could sell him.

"It's about Miss Beecher." Billy looked uncomfortable. He hesitated, blushed boyishly through his tan, and blurted, "There's something mighty queer about that departure of hers yesterday."

"Ah!"

"I don't feel right about it.... It's deuced queer. She isn't in Alexandria."

"Ah!"

"If you say 'Ah' again, I hope you choke," said Billy violently to himself. Aloud he continued, "I wired to the Khedivial and to all the other hotels—there are just a few—and she isn't registered there, and the Maynards are not, either."

"Possibly staying with friends," said Falconer indifferently. He regarded his paper.

"Very few Americans have friends in Alexandria. However, that might be so. But no ship has arrived from the Continent for three days, and it seems mighty odd, if they were there three days ago, for them to have wired at the last minute and had her tear off like that."

"I do not pretend to account for your compatriots," said the sandy-haired young man.

Billy looked at him a minute. "There's no use in your being disagreeable," he remarked. "I didn't thrust myself upon you because I was attracted to you, at all. But I thought you were a sensible, masculine human being who was interested in Miss Beecher's whereabouts."

"I beg your pardon," said the other young man. "I am—I mean I am interested—if you think there is anything really wrong. But I do not see your point."

"Well, now, see if you can see this. I wired the consul there and some other fellow at the port, and they wired back that no people of the name of Maynard have arrived on any of the boats for the past two weeks—that was as far back as they looked up. Now that's queer."

"He could be mistaken—or they could have bought some one else's accommodations—and that would account for the hastiness of their plans," Falconer argued.

"But what train did she go on?"

"What train? Why, the express for Alexandria."

"That left at eight-thirty. Now why in the world would she rush away in the middle of the afternoon, sending a telegram from the station and leaving her packing undone, for an eight-thirty train?"

"Why I—I really can't say. She may have had errands——"

"Where did she have her dinner? Did she dine with friends at some of the hotels? What friends has she here?"

"I really can't say as to that, either. I wasn't aware that she had any."

"And where did she send that telegram from? There isn't a copy of any such telegram at the offices I've been to—at Cook's or the station. It might have been written on a telegraph blank and sent up by messenger with the money—but why not come herself, with all that time on her hands? And nobody remembers selling her any ticket to Alexandria—and you know anybody would remember selling anything to a girl like that."

Falconer was silent.

"And nobody at Cook's paid out any money on her letter of credit—or cashed any express checks for her. Where did that money come from that was sent back to the hotel?"

"But what is the point of all this?"

"That's what I just particularly don't know.... But it needs looking into."

Falconer favored him with a level scrutiny. "How long have you known Miss Beecher?"

"I met her the night before last. That, however, doesn't enter into the case."

"It would seem to me that it might."

"Between three days and three weeks," said Billy, remembering something, "the difference is sometimes no greater than between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." He smiled humorously at the other young man, a frank, likeable smile that softened magically the bluntness of his young mouth. "That's why I came to you. You are the only soul I know to be interested in Miss Beecher's welfare. The Evershams are off up the Nile—and they'd probably be helpless, anyway. Besides, you know more about this blamed Egypt of yours than I do.... Have you any idea where she went yesterday afternoon?"

"Not at all."

"Neither have the Evershams. They were surprised when I asked them about it this morning. They didn't know she was going. Now she went somewhere in a limousine——"

"Probably to the station."

"American girls don't go to stations in floating white clothes and hats all pink roses. I particularly remember the pink rose," said Billy gloomily. "No, if she had been going to the station she would have had on a little blue or gray suit, very up and down, and a little minute of a hat with just one perky feather. And she'd have a bag of sorts with her—no girl would rush away to Alexandria without a bag."

"She could have sent it ahead of her or returned and dressed later for the station."

"Why the mischief did I tramp off to those bazaars?" said the young American. "But, see here—weren't you around the hotel after that yesterday—at tea time?"

"Er—yes—I——"

"And weren't you rather looking out for Miss Beecher? Wouldn't you have noticed if she had been coming or going?"

Falconer stroked his small mustache and shot a look at Billy out of the corners of his eyes which expressed his distinct annoyance at these intrusive demands.

"I don't remember to have met you," said he slowly.

"You haven't. I know your name, but you don't know mine. I am William B. Hill."

"Ah—Behill."

"No—B. Hill. The B is an initial."

"Of what?" said the other casually, and Billy's cheeks grew suddenly warm.

"Of my middle name," said he, with steady composure. "If we are to do any team-work you will have to let it go at the William and the Hill."

"What team-work do you suggest?"

"Find out where she went yesterday. Find out where she is now. What worries me," he burst out, with ungovernable uneasiness, yet with a hint of humor at his own extravagant imaginings, "is her talking to that Turk fellow yesterday—that Captain Kerissen, I think she called him. She had told me the night before that he was going to get her some ball tickets or other, and I didn't think anything of it, but yesterday I thought he had his nerve to come and call upon her. You see, I passed through the hall and saw them talking. I went out to the veranda and after he had gone I came in again, but she was nowhere in sight. Then I went back to the veranda, and in a few moments she came out, in white with a rose on her hat, and went off in a car that was ready. Of course Kerissen wasn't in the car, and I haven't any proof of his connection with the thing, but he might easily have induced her to look at some mosque or other off the 'beaten track'——"

"But she returned, for later she sent that telegram from the station," Falconer argued.

Billy was silent. Then he burst out, "But all the same there is a mystery to this thing.... She—she's too confoundedly young and pretty to run around alone in this painted jade of a city."

"This city has law and order—much more of them than there are in your national hotbeds of robbery and murder."

"H'm—well, I don't hold any brief for Chicago—I suppose Chicago is the target—so I won't defend that. But I've heard stories."

"Queer ones, I should say."

"Devilish queer ones!... How about that young Monkton or Monkhouse who dropped out of things last winter?"

Falconer looked annoyed. "Oh, there are rumors——"

"Yes, rumors that he flirted with a Turkish lady—that he was on horseback just outside her carriage during the jam at the Kasr-el-Nil bridge, and they looked and smiled and afterwards met in a shop. And rumors that she gave him a rendezvous at her home and that he told another man about it at the club, who warned him sharply, and he only laughed.... But it's no rumor that he disappeared. He's gone, all right, and nobody knows where he went, and nobody seems to want to know. Officially they said he was drowned out swimming—or lost in a sandstorm riding in the desert—or spiked on top of an obelisk or something equally reasonable—but, privately, people say other things.... No international law intrudes into the Turkish woman question."

"What of it?" Falconer looked stubborn. "I daresay the fellow received his deserts.... But the case hardly applies—what?"

"Well—it makes one feel that anything can happen here—that the city is quicksand where a chance step would engulf one." Billy stared frowningly out on the vivid street ahead of him. A pretty English bride and her soldier husband were out exercising their dogs. Two ladies in a victoria were advertising their toilettes. A blond baby toddled past with his black nurse. It was all very peaceful and charming. It did not look like quicksand.... Into the picture came a one-eyed man with a stuffed crocodile on his head, stalking slowly along, scanning the veranda with his single, penetrating eye, calling his wares in harsh gutturals, and with him came suddenly the sense of that strange background before which all this bright tourist life was played, that dark watching, secret East, curious and incalculable.

Falconer folded his paper with a sharp crackle that recalled young Hill's wandering thought. "That's all very well, but it doesn't apply," he observed, with conviction.

"Then where is she?" Billy was bluntly belligerent.

The other put his paper in his pocket. "In Alexandria, to be sure, and not at all pleased, either, to have you bring her name into such questioning." He looked squarely at Billy as he said that, and the eyes of the two young man met and exchanged a secret challenge of hostility.

Billy rose. "Oh, all right," he returned. "I daresay I am as much a fool as you take me for.... She may be all right. But if not—I thought I'd give you a chance to take a hand in it."

"The sporting chance," said Falconer, with an appreciable smile. "I'm much obliged—but I don't at all share your misgivings.... And what in the world do you propose to do about it?"

For a minute Billy's gaze blankly interrogated the sunlit distances. His eyes were fixed, but empty; his forehead knitted in an uncertain frown. Then quite suddenly he turned and flashed at Falconer a look of odd and unforeseen decision.

"I'm going to buy a crocodile," he imparted, with a wide, boyish grin. "I'm going to buy a crocodile of a one-eyed man."

Stolidly Falconer eyed his departing back. Stolidly, definitely, comprehensively, he pronounced judgment. "Mad," said he. "Mad as the March Hare."



CHAPTER VIII

THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR

That stealthy touch brought Arlee half upright, shot with ghastly alarms. Her heart stopped beating; it stood still in the cold clutch of terror. The breath seemed to have left her body.

Once more she felt the hands gropingly upon her. It came from the back side of her bed, reaching apparently from the very wall. And then she heard a voice whispering, "Be still—I do not hurt you. Be still."

It was a woman's voice, soft, sibilant, hushed, and the frozen grip of fear was broken. She was trembling now uncontrollably.

"Who is there?"

"S-sh!" came the warning response, and then, her eyes staring into the shadowy recess, she saw the curtains at the back side of the bed were parting as a figure appeared between them.

"Give me a box, a book—somethings to put here in this lock," commanded the voice peremptorily, and in a daze Arlee found herself extending a magazine across the bed toward the half-seen figure, who turned and busied herself about the curtains a moment, then came straight across the bed into the room beside Arlee.

"Now you see who I am," said the astonishing intruder calmly.

Mutely Arlee shook her head, seeing only a figure about her own height clad in a dark negligee. Dumfounded she stood watching while her visitor deliberately lighted a candle.

"So—that is better," she observed, and in the light of the tiny taper between them the two stood facing each other.

Arlee saw a girl some years older than herself, a small, plump, rounded creature, with a flaunting and insouciant prettiness. Her eyes were dark and bright, her babyish lips were full and scarlet, her nose was whimsically uptilted. Dark hair curled closely to the vivid face and fell in ringlets over the white neck.

"You don't know me?" she said in astonishment at Arlee's eyes of wonder. "He has not told you?" Incredulity, impertinent and mocking, darted out of the dark eyes. "What you think then—you what got my room?"

"Your room?" Arlee echoed faintly. She flung a quivering hand toward the bed. "How did you get in here? I locked the door——"

"You see how I came—I came by the panel," She waited a moment, watching the wide blue eyes before her, the parted lips, the white cheeks in which the blood was slowly stealing back, and incredulity gave way to astonished acceptance. "You don't know that, either? That is very funny."

"Did you lock it?" was Arlee's next breathless question. "What was that you said about putting in a magazine? Did you leave it open?"

The other girl reached quickly and caught her arm, as Arlee turned toward the bed. "No, no, if it goes shut we cannot open it inside," she warned. "It does not open this side unless you have the key. It opens from without. But he will not come in now—he is at the Khedive's palace. We are all right."

"But I want to get away," cried Arlee. She turned upon this other girl great eyes of pitiful entreaty, eyes where the dark shadows about them lay like cruel bruises on the white flesh. "I must get away at once. Won't you help me?"

"Help you? I would help myself, if I could. But there is no way out. It is no use." The unknown girl spoke with a bitterness that brought conviction. Piteously the flare of hope and spirit wilted.

"You are sure?" she questioned faintly. "There is no way out?"

"No way, no way!" The other shook her head impatiently. "Do I not know? Let us talk of that again. Now I came to see you, to see what pretty face had sent me packing!" She laughed, but there was ugliness in the laughter, and catching up the candle she held it before Arlee, her face impudently close, her eyes black darts of curiosity.

"Well you are pretty enough," she said coolly. "Hamdi has always the good taste. But do you think you will keep my room from me—h'm?"

"I do not want your room," said Arlee with passionate intensity. "I do not want to stay here. I want only to go away. Oh, there must be a way. Please help me—please." She choked and broke down, the tears hot in her eyes.



The other girl abruptly drew her down on the couch and settled herself beside her among the cushions. "Here—be comfortable—let us be comfortable and talk," she said. "Do not cry so—What, you are so soon sorry? You want to be off?"

Desperately Arlee steadied her shaking voice. "I must go at once."

"You got enough so soon?"

"Enough!" was the quivering echo.

"What you come for then?"

"Come for? I did not know what I was coming into. I thought—but tell me," she broke off to demand, "tell me about the plague. Was there any quarantine at all? How soon was it over? What is really happening?"

"Quar—quar—what you mean?"

"The plague? Has there been a plague here? Have people had to stay in the palace on account of it?"

"Oh—h!" The indrawn breath was eloquent of enlightenment. "Is that somethings he said to you?"

"Yes, yes. Isn't it true? Wasn't there any plague?"

With eyes of dreadful apprehension she saw the other shake her head in vigorous denial. "No plague," she said decisively. "My maid—she know everything. No sickness here."

"Then it was all a lie." Arlee's eyes fixed themselves on the dancing candle flame, swaying in the soft night air. She tried to think very coolly and collectedly, but her brain felt numb and fogged and heavy. The sight of that tortured candle flame hypnotized her. Faintly she whispered, "Then it was all—an excuse," and, at that, sharp terror, like a knife, cleaved her numbness. She turned furiously to her visitor.

"But he would not dare make it all up!"

She saw the callousness of the shrug. "Why not—he is the master here!" Her own heart echoed fearfully the words. She stammered, "But—but I wrote—I had a letter—there must——"

"What in all the world are you saying?" demanded the other. "What is this story?" and as Arlee began the quick, whispered narration she listened intently, her little dark head on one side, nodding wisely at intervals.

"So—you came to have tea," she repeated at the close, in her quaintly inflected, foreign-sounding English. "And you stay because of the plague? So?"

"But I wrote—I wrote to my friends and——"

"And gave him the letters!"

"But I had a letter from my friends—or a telegram rather." Arlee knitted her brows in furious thought. "And it sounded like her."

"Does he know her, that friend?" questioned the other and at Arlee's nod, "Then he could write it himself—that is easy on telegraph paper. He is so clever, that devil, Hamdi."

"But my friends knew where I was going"—slowly the mind turned back to trace the blind, careless steps of that afternoon. "At least he said he'd leave a note—Oh, what a fool I was!" she broke off to gasp, seeing how that forethought of his, that far-sighted remark, had prevented her from leaving a note of her own. And she remembered now, with flashing clearness, that upon her arrival he had carelessly inquired if she, too, had left a note of explanation. How lightly she had told him no! And what unguessed springs of action came perhaps from that single word! For so cleverly had the trap been swiftly prepared that if anything had gone wrong, if anyone had become aware of her intentions, it could have passed off as a visit and she would have returned to her hotel prattling joyously of her wonderful glimpse into the seclusion of Turkish aristocracy!

"But the soldier with the bayonet," she said aloud. "There was one on the stairs."

"A servant."

"Oh, if I had passed him!"

"You could not—he would run you through on a nod from Hamdi. They watch that stairs always—day and night."

Day and night—and she was alone here, in this grim palace, alone and helpless and forsaken.... What were her friends thinking about her? Where did they think she was? Her thoughts beat desperately upon that problem, trying to find there some ray of hope, some promise that there were clues which would lead them to her, but she found nothing there but deeper mystery and fearful surmise. He was clever enough to cover his traces. No one had known of his connection with her departure.... Perhaps he had sent them some false and misleading message like the one he had sent her.... What were they thinking? What did they believe? This was Friday night, and she had been gone since Thursday afternoon.

In that moment she saw with merciless clarity the bitter straits that she was in.

"Oh, he is a devil!" her companion was reaffirming with an angry little half-whisper sibilant with fury. "Look how he treat me—me, Fritzi Baroff! You do not know me? You do not know that name? In Vienna it is not so unknown—Oh, God, I was so happy in Vienna!" She stopped, her breast heaving, with the flare of emotion, then went on quickly, with suppressed vehemence, "I was a singer—in the light opera. I dance, too, and I was arriving. Only this year I was to have a fine role—and it all went, zut, it all went for that man! I was one fool about him, and his dark eyes and his strange ways.... I thought I had a prince. And he worship me then, too—he follow me, he give me big diamonds.... So he take me here—it was to be the vacation!"

She gave a strangling little laugh. Arlee was listening with a painful intensity. She was living, she thought, in an Arabian nights.

"I stay at the hotel first till he make this like a private apartment for me," went on the little dancer, "and when I come here he do everything for me. I have luxury, yes, jewels and dresses and a fine new car. Then, by and by, I grow tired. It was always the same and he was at the palace, much. And he would not let me make acquaintance. We quarrel, but still I have a fancy for him, and then, you understand, money is not always so easy to find. Life can be hard. But I get more restless, I want to go back on the stage and I, well, I write some letters that he finds out. Bang, goes the door upon me! He laugh like a fiend. He say that I am to be a little Turkish lady to the end of my life. Oh, God, he shut me up like a prisoner in this place, and I can do nothing—nothing—nothing!"

She beat out angry emphasis on the palm of one hand with a clenched little fist. "I go nearly mad. I lose my head. He laugh—he is like that. He is a devil when he turns against you, and, you understand, he had somethings new to play with now.... Sometimes he seem to love me as before, and then I would grow soft and coax that he take me to Europe some day, and then when I think he mean it—Oh, how he laugh!" She drew in her breath sharply. "Sometimes I think he will take me again—sometime—but I cannot tell. And the days never end. They are terrible. My youth is going, going. And my youth is all I have."

She looked at Arlee with eyes where her terror was visible, and all the lines of her pretty, common little face were changed and sharpened, and her babyish lips dragged down strangely at the corners.

A surge of pity went through Arlee Beecher. "Oh, you will escape," she heard herself saying eagerly. "And I will escape—or—or——"

"Or?"

"Or I will kill myself," she whispered quiveringly.

The little Viennese stared hard at her, and a sudden crinkle of amusement darted across the bright shallows of her eyes. "Come, love is not so bad," she said, "and Hamdi can be charming." Then as she saw a shudder run through the young girl before her, "Oh, if you do not fancy him!" she cried airily, yet with a keen look.

But Arlee's two hands sought and covered up the scarlet shame in her face. She did not cry; she felt that every tear in her was dried in that bitter flame. Her whole body seemed on fire, burning with fury and revulsion and that awful sense of humiliation.

The other stirred restively, "Come, do not cry—I hate people to cry. It makes everything so worse. And do not talk of killing. It is not so easy anyway, that killing. Do I not think I will die and end all when my rage is hot—but how? How? I cannot beat my head out against the wall like a Russian. I cannot stick a penknife in my throat or eat glass. To do that one must be a monster of courage. And I have no poison to eat, no gas to turn on.... Then the mood goes and the day is bright and I look in the glass and say, 'Die? Die for you? Kill all this beautiful young thing that has such joy to dance and sing? Never! Some day I will be out of this and laugh at the memory of such blackness.' And so I practice my voice and my steps—and I wait my chance. When you came, yesterday, first I was furious to be pushed out, then I think it is the chance, maybe. I think you would be glad to help me to get out and not to stay to make you jealous. But if you are also in the trap——" Her voice fell dispiritedly. She drew a long, weary breath.

"But I shall not stay in the trap." Arlee spoke with desperate resolve, her eyes on the sputtering candle, her palms against her burning cheeks, her finger tips pressed into her throbbing temples. "I shall not let him make me afraid like this. He must know he will be found out—he cannot play like this with an American girl! I shall face him to-morrow. I shall demand my freedom. I shall tell him that I did tell people at the hotel—that he will be discovered. I will make him afraid!"

"You cannot. He watches what happens on the outside—he knows."

After a pause, "Oh, why did I come!" said Arlee in choking bitterness.

The little dancer turned, and, sitting there cross-legged on the couch like a squat little idol, her chin sunk in her palm, her dark eyes staring unwinkingly at Arlee, gave the girl a long, strange scrutiny.

"You do not like him?" she said.

"I hate him!"

"But you came to tea?"

"To meet his sister. To see the palace."

"His sister? Did he show you one?"

"Yes—a woman with red hair. A Turkish woman. She spoke French to me."

"Ah—that would be Seniha!"

"Seniha? I don't know. She played the piano. Has he more than one sister?"

But as she put the question a sudden flash of intuition forestalled the dancer's mocking cry of "Sister!" And as Fritzi hurried on, "He has no sister—not here, anyway," Arlee's thoughts ran back to the beginning of that very evening which seemed so long ago when she had plunged wildly into those unknown rooms, and saw again that painted, jeweled woman with her outstretched arms.

"She is his wife," the Viennese was saying.

"I—I did not know that he was married."

"Oh, Turkish marriages." The other shrugged, with a contempt a trifle droll in one who had dispensed with every ceremony. "She was his second. The first was a little girl, he said. The match was made for him. She is dead. This Seniha was her cousin, a cousin who was divorced and she lived with the wife. And our pretty Hamdi made love to her, and she was mad about him and so, presently, it happens that he must marry her, for it would be terrible to have disgrace upon the wife's family. Besides the first wife had no children. So he married her. But she had no children. It was all one fairy story." Fritzi laughed under her breath in great enjoyment. "So Hamdi was cheated and he has been a devil to her. The first little wife dies and he shut the second up here, teasing her sometimes, sometimes making love when he is dull, but forcing her to his will for fear he will divorce her.... How she must have hated you, when she had to play that sister. Except that she was glad that I was being put aside," the dancer added with quick spite. "I think she would put poison in my meat if she did not fear Hamdi so.... And always she hopes that he will come back to her. I have seen her waiting, night after night——"

And Arlee thought of the jewels and the silks ... and the long, long, silent hours.... Slowly she put out her hand and snuffed out the smoking wick, then raised her eyes to where the painted bars stretched black across the starry square of sky. "Won't she help?" she asked.

"Not she! Hamdi would find her out.... Not through her can you get word to your friends. For you have friends here? And they will help you? And then you will help me?"

"Oh, yes, if I can get help," promised Arlee. "But I am afraid my friends have gone up the Nile—and there are just—just one or two left in Cairo that would help. And I must get word to them at once. What is the best way? Couldn't I push a note through the windows on the street? Someone might see that!"

"Yes, the doorkeeper. No, that is not safe.... If only that girl were sure——"

"Mariayah?" cried Arlee.

"No, the other—the little one with the wart over her eye. Have you seen her? Well, watch for her, then. She has an itching palm—she may help. But only in little things, of course, for she is afraid. And I have no money left and she is afraid to take a jewel."

"I have almost no money," said Arlee blankly. "Only a letter of credit——"

"A letter of nothing here! But promise her your friends will give much."

"Would she mail a letter?"

"Have you stamps? No? She is so ignorant that is an obstacle. And the post is distant and she dare not go far. But sometimes the baker sends a little boy, and if you had money to give she might get a note to him to carry—though, maybe, she burns the note and keeps the money," the Viennese ended pessimistically.

"But I must get help at once," Arlee iterated passionately. Before——"

"Before?" the other repeated curiously, "He makes love to you—h'm?"

"He—is beginning."

"Only beginning?"

"Only—beginning." Arlee felt the girl's strange, hard scrutiny through the dark. Then she heard her draw a quick breath as if her eyes on Arlee's flower-like face had convinced her of something against all her sorry little reason.

"Well, that is good then," she said. "Try to keep him off. What does he promise you?"

"Promise me? He does not promise anything."

"But he must say something—what is between you—what?" demanded the other impatiently.

Briefly, her shamed cheeks grateful for the shadows, Arlee told of that walk in the garden, of the flowers and the letter, the scene after dinner. And the other girl's eyes grew wider and wider, and then finally she burst into a smothered little laugh.

"Oh, he is mad, that Hamdi!" she whispered. "He is a monster of vanity—'conquest of the spirit'—h'm, I comprehend. That young man has a pride beyond all sense. You dazzle him—he is in love again like a boy. And he must dazzle you. His pride demands a victory not of force alone.... Some men are like that.... Well, that is your chance!"

"My chance?"

"Play with his vanity—fight his force with that!" said this strange initiator into terrible secrets. "He will believe anything of his fascinations—I know him. And if he is so mad for you that he dares all this trouble to have you here, then he is so mad that you can fool him and make him hold back in hopes to gain more from you. Make him think you are coming, as he wishes, heart and body, but still you would wait a little. So you gain time.... Oh, you must be careful! If he loses hope, if you anger him, why the game is over. But if you are careful you can gain a few days——"

"A few days," said Arlee in a tense little voice.

"Well, that is something—since you hate him so!"

"Yes, that is something." Arlee drew a shivering breath, her head drooping, her lashes on her cheeks. Then suddenly, amazingly, her chin came pluckily up, her soft lips set with desperate decision, her eyes turned on her counselor a look of flashing spirit. She was like some young wild thing at bay, harried, defiant, tensely defensive. Something of the pathos of her innocent presence there, in that evil palace, utterly alone, hopelessly defiant, penetrated for an instant the callous acceptances of the little dancer and her eyes softened with facile sympathy, but the impression dulled, and she only nodded her head encouragingly.

"Good! That is the way! Women can always act!" she murmured, slipping off the divan and drawing her fluttering robes about her. "But it is very late and I must go—it is not safe to stay so."

"Where is your room? Could I get to you?"

"No—for you cannot open that panel on the inside—unless you can steal the key from him as I could not! My room—for this present, little one," and her eyes laughed suddenly in challenge, "is up on the top—a little old room all alone. My doors are locked, but there is a panel in my room, too, a panel at the top of tiny stairs, and the lock on that panel is so old and rusty that a knife make it open. So I pushed it open and came down the tiny stairs that end out there in the passage way, and I opened your panel. Now I must steal back, but I shall come again, and we must plan."

"But where does this secret passage go?" Arlee had followed over the bed, and held aside the heavy draperies while the little Baroff was pushing the panel softly and carefully open. Eagerly Arlee peered out into the darkness beyond. "Where does it go?" she repeated.

"It runs above the hall of banquets and into the selamlik," whispered the Viennese. "It opens into Hamdi's rooms, he says, and I know that a servant sleeps always at his door and another is at the foot of the stairs. So it would be madness to try that way."

But Arlee stared thoughtfully into the secret place. "I am glad I know," she said.

"Well, good-by, little one." The Viennese was standing outside now, softly closing the door. For a moment her face remained in the opening. "You will not tell Hamdi that I came—no?" she demanded sharply, and then on Arlee's quick reassurance she nodded, whispered good-by again, and drew back her little face.

The wall rolled into place and a gentle click told of the caught lock. The curtains fell back over the wall. And Arlee was left huddling there alone, feeling that it had all been a dream, but for the heavy scent that lingered in the air and the wild fear beating in her heart.



CHAPTER IX

A DESPERATE GAME

Very slowly the black night grayed down into a wan, spectral morning, and slowly the gray morning paled into a dim mother-of-pearl dawn. And then suddenly the mother-of-pearliness brightened into a shimmering opal, and the ray of pale gold light slanted through the barred window and the bright face of new day peeped over the sill, staring out of countenance the lurking shadows of the night.

And then Arlee's eyes closed, and the heart which had been beating like a frightened rabbit's at every sound and shadow steadied into a rhythm as regular as a clock. She slept like a tired baby; while the light grew brighter and higher, and reached in over the shining dressing table, over the white piano, to rest upon the oblivious face upon the couch and to play with the bright, tangled hair.

The first knocking upon the door did not disturb that sleep, and it was a long time before the knock was again sounded. Then Arlee heard and sprang to her feet in a lightning rush of consciousness. It was Mariayah again, and the water jars which already looked familiar to her, and after the water jars appeared more roses and with the roses a letter.

Those roses came, the letter explained, to droop their heads before her loveliness, which put theirs to shame. They would greet her as humbler sisters greet a fairer. For they were roses of a day, but she was the Rose of Life. The capitals were Kerissen's own. And then abruptly the letter demanded:

Did I frighten you last night? Is it so strange to you that you have magic to make a man forget all the barriers of your convention? Do you not know you have an enchantment which distills in the blood and changes it to wine? You are the Rose of Life, the Rose of Desire, and no man can look upon you without longing. But you must not be angry at me for that, for I am your slave, and would strew roses always to soften the world for your little feet.... Fortune has made you my guest. Will you not smile upon me while Fortune smiles? Luncheon will be in the garden, for it is cool and fresh today.

The mask was slipping. Only a flimsy veil of sentiment now over his rash will. Only a light pretense of her freedom, of his courtesy. He was beginning to declare himself....

But she must not let him suspect that she knew. She must not.

Her spirit responded fiercely to this tense demand upon it. The dread, the panic of the night was gone. The fear that had shaken her was beaten down like a cowardly dog. Excitement burned in her blood. Everything depended upon her coolness and her wit, upon a look, perhaps, the turn of a phrase, the droop of an eye, and she was passionately resolved that neither coolness nor wit should fail her, nor words nor looks nor eyes betray the heart of her. She would play her role with every breath she drew.

* * * * *

She crossed the room at the luncheon summons in the nervous tensity of mood that an actress might go to play a part in which her career would live or die. Every half hour with Kerissen was now a duel, every minute was a stroke to be parried, and she flung herself into that duel with the desperate exhilaration of such daring. Her hands were icy, and her cheeks were flaming with the excitement which consumed her, but she revealed no other trace of it, and she wondered to herself at the inscrutable fairness of the face which, looked back at her from the glass.

None of the record of those frightened, sleepless hours was written there, none of her furious pride, her fixed intensity. Only the soft shadows under the blue eyes gave her face a look of added delicacy for all the unnatural flare of brilliant color, and a faint wistfulness in those eyes seemed to overlay the smiles she practiced, like a cloud shadow on a brook. And never, never, in all her glad, care-free days, had she been as distractingly pretty as she was that moment. With an angry little pang she recognized it, pinning on the lace hat with its enchanting rose, and then desperately she resolved to employ it and added two of Kerissen's pink roses to the costume.

She thought the scene was very like a stage, when she came out through the narrow door which the old woman unlocked from a key she carried on a girdle, and slowly descended the stone steps. Beneath the wide-spreading lebbek a low table was laid for luncheon with two wicker chairs beside it. The green of the fresh turf was as vivid as stage grass; the lilies loomed unreally large and white; the poinsettias flaunted like red paper flowers behind the vivid picture that the Captain made in a dazzling buff and green uniform picked out with gold. His bow was theatric, so was the deep look of exaggerated admiration he bent upon her—it was strange to remember that her danger was not theatric also. But that was deadly real, and real, too, was the sudden surge of color into the young man's sallow face.

"You are kind to my roses—if not to me," he said quickly, and held out his hand for the brief little clasp she accorded.

"Your roses are dumb and have said nothing to make me cross," she laughed lightly, and looked swiftly about her. "How lovely this is," she ran on, "and how charming to feel a breeze. That room is rather warm and close.... Is you sister still too ill to come?"

And scarcely waiting for the assent which he began to frame with his searching eyes upon her, she added, "I am afraid I made her angry last night by intruding upon her. But I heard her voice and ran back to her room to ask after her. She wouldn't let me stay at all."

It was droll how natural her voice sounded, she thought. His eyes held their fixed scrutiny in an instant, then dropped carelessly away, as he drew forward the wicker chairs. "She is a nerveuse, you understand," he said with an air of indolent resignation, "and one can do nothing for that sort of thing. A crisis comes—one must wait for it to pass.... She regrets that condition.... And she wished me to present her regrets to you," he added suavely, "for that reception of you last night. She was ill and did not expect you—and she did not wish you to see her in that condition."

"I should not have gone," acknowledged Arlee, "but, as I said, I heard voices from the ante-room and thought I would like to see her.... That pretty little maid she gave me does not speak any English, so I cannot send any messages."

"But you can write them."

"My French spelling is worse than my pronunciation!" She laughed amusedly. "I wish you would find me an interpreter to put my polite remarks into polite sounding phrases. I know I put things like a First Reader!"

He smiled. "You do not put them like a First Reader to me. We do not need an interpreter.... Unless I need one to speak to you?"

"Oh, no, your English is wonderful!" She waited an instant, then took a breathless plunge. "Have you any more news for me?" she demanded, forcing the note of expectancy. It would be suspicious, indeed, if she did not ask that. But what if he had decided to throw the pretense aside——

"Not one word of news more," he said slowly.

She felt him watching her as she looked down on her plate. The pretty little girl was passing a platter of pigeon: Arlee did not speak until she had helped herself, then she said in a voice touched faintly with chagrin, "Well, the English are not very gallant toward ladies in misfortune, are they? I feel furiously snubbed.... Of course Mrs. Eversham never was much of a writer, but they might send over my letters from the hotel. The last mail ought to have brought a lot from that big brother of mine."

"Ah, yes, that big, grown-up, married brother who is so satisfied with all you do!"

She felt she had been unfortunate in her rash confidences.

"He won't be so pleased when he learns how I wasted a perfectly good Nile ticket," she remarked. "And Big Brother is rather fierce when he isn't pleased."

His eyes smiled, as if he understood and despised her suggestion. "Cairo and your America are not so near," he observed negligently, "that an incident here is a matter of immediate knowledge there."

She felt the danger of seeming to threaten him. "Oh, I'd 'fess up," she said lightly, playing with her food. "There—shoo—go away!" she cried suddenly, with a militant gesture about her plate. "That's one thing I hate about Egypt—the flies!"

"I hope that is the only thing you hate," said the young man blandly.

"Isn't that enough? There are so many of them!"

He laughed with real amusement at her petulance. "Is there netting enough in your room?" he inquired. "Would you like more for your bed?"

"Oh, no, I'm all right, thank you. The flies are chiefly bothersome at meals. This is certainly their paradise."

"But is there anything you would like—to make you happy here? I will get it for you. Would you not like some books, some music, some new clothes——"

"I don't wonder you ask! But really this white gown will last a little longer—Cairo is so clean. No, thank you, there is nothing I need bother you about—Oh, yes, there really is one book that I would like—a Turkish or an Arabic dictionary. I have always meant to learn a little of the language and this would seem the opportunity."

In the pause in which he appeared to be consuming pigeon she could feel him weighing her request, foreseeing its results.

"I shall be most happy to teach you," was what he said, but she knew she would never have that dictionary. And so one plan of the morning went flying to the winds. But she snatched at the next opening she saw and plunged into interested questions about the Turkish language, asking the words for such things as seemed spontaneously to occur to her—wall, palace, table—numbers—days of the week—repeating the pronunciation with the earnestness of a diligent young pupil, until she felt that her memory had all it could hold. And distrust, always ready now like a prompter in the box, suggested most upsettingly that perhaps he was not giving the right words. She resolved to experiment upon Mariayah.

He reverted, with increasing emphasis, upon his desire to make her happy in the palace, to surround her with whatever she desired, and swiftly she availed herself of this second opening.

"Yes, indeed, there is something that would make me happier, if you don't mind, please," she added with a droll assumption of meekness. "You don't know how horrid it is for me to be caged in one room and not be out of doors, and I would love to come down into the garden when I want to. Won't you give me a key to that door? That is, if it is always locked."

"Generally it is not," he said readily, "but now with the soldiers about it is safer. You see, the soldiers can approach the garden through the open banquet hall"—and he nodded to the colonnade behind them—"and though it is forbidden, one cannot foretell their obedience."

To one who knew those soldiers were chimerical acquiescence was maddening.

"But, dear me, can't you have some one in the banquet hall to shoo the soldiers away?" Arlee argued persuasively. "Since the rest of the household has the court, it seems awfully selfish not to let the ladies have the garden for their airing."

"It may be managed," he assented. "It has always been done, for the garden is for the ladies. Whenever you wish to be in the garden you have but to send word, and the household will remain in the court, as is, indeed, the custom."