By noon the flask of water in Billy's pocket was empty. By noon their mouths were parched and their skins burning. And still on their left there hung the hounding dots, like prowling jackals.

Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. This was an ordeal of a ride that tried the stuff the girl was made of. She was no princess of mystery now, crossing the moonlit sands; she was no gossamer wraith of a girl miraculously with him for a time; she was a very hot and human companion, worried and tired, shutting her dry mouth over any word of complaint, smiling pluckily at him with dusty lips from the shrouding hood of her veil. She was completely and thoroughly a brick.

And Billy's heart ached for her, even while his spirit exulted in her spirit.

"Beastly hot, isn't it?" he gasped, pulling his insufficient cap down over his bloodshot eyes.

Valiantly she smiled. "What's a little—heat?" came joltingly back.

"And rough going."

"What's a little—roughness?"

There wasn't any word good enough for her. There wasn't any word good enough to describe such superhuman courage and sweetness. Billy had credited all beauties with being spoiled. All he had known had been distinctly spoiled, even the near-beauties, and the not-so-near ones, yet here was the most radiantly lovely girl he had ever seen behaving like an angel of grit.

He didn't quite know what else he expected her to do—have hysterics, perhaps, or weep, or reproach him for having taken a wrong way and elected a rash course. He had known that this girl could be a very minx when piqued. But in the graver crises of life she proved herself a thoroughbred. She would go till she dropped and never whimper.

He thought of all she must have been through in that horrible palace, and he marvelled at the swiftness with which her spirit had reverted to blitheness again. The disaster, that might have been so stunning, so irremediable, had passed over her head like lightning that had not struck.... Even the horror of it had seemed yesterday to fade in her like the horror of an evil dream. That was what it had been to her—an evil dream. She was so young, so much of her was still a child, that the full terror had not touched her.

* * * * *

They had come to a road at last, a road which seemed to be leading in from the desert very gradually to the hills upon their left, and it seemed to Billy that it must be a caravan road to Girgeh, and he felt themselves upon the right track. They must keep their lead, and when that lead seemed sufficient, they must put on all possible speed to make the crossing through the hills into the Nile valley ahead of their pursuers. Once more he stirred their lagging camels into a jogging trot....

It was around the middle of the afternoon now, and it had been noon since their tongues had tasted water. Arlee felt her mouth parched and her tongue dry and curling; her skin was feverishly hot; her whole body burned and ached, and her head was giddy with the heat and the hunger. But she thought how little a thing it was to be hot and hungry and tired—when one was free. And she drew the silver shawl closer over her head and wrapped the silken tunic of her frock about her scorching shoulders, and clung tight to the pommel of her big saddle as her beast pounded on and on in his lurching stride.

* * * * *

It had been some time since they had seen the dots, and now the road ahead of them, like the former path they had abandoned, was turning more and more to the left, winding in and out the low and broken foothills, and as they followed its course with increasing security, Billy began to tell himself that their fears had been unfounded and the alarming horsemen were merely following their own route south.

And then he heard a whistle.

A prescience of danger shot through him. His fears returned a hundredfold. Sharply he scanned the way about them, but nothing was in sight. The whistle was not repeated; he could have imagined that he dreamed it. An utter stillness possessed the wilderness.

And then around the corner of a jutting rock ahead of them a horseman trotted, a big black man on a gray horse, and reined in, waiting, facing them. Arlee gave a choking cry.

"The eunuch!" she gasped out.

Behind them Billy flung a lightning glance, and over the heads of the dunes two more riders appeared, converging down upon them from the rear. Three in sight—how many more behind the rocks?

Desperately Billy gripped his bridle rope, and with a wrenching pull and a whack of his guiding stick he turned his camel sharply to the left, snatching at Arlee's bridle rope as the beasts bumped against each other in their surprise.

"Quick—this way," Billy commanded, and with the left hand clutching the girl's rope, with the right he wielded the stick furiously. Out over the sand both camels plunged, goaded into wild speed by such violent measures, and a cheated yell broke from the horsemen and the outcries of pursuit.

While rage at such unreason lasted the camels went like mad, but such speed could not be for long. They had been hard ridden for two days and they were nearly spent. The horsemen behind had drawn together and hung on their trail like three hounds, riding cautiously in the rear, but easily keeping the distance. It occurred to Billy that these pursuers could have changed horses on the way, and must inevitably tire them out. And then?

On and on he beat his poor beasts, racing toward the hills that, just ahead of them, rose sharply from the broken ground, seeking among them some fortress of rocks for a defiant stand.

A tug on the bridle rope nearly jerked it from his hand. Arlee's camel had stumbled; the poor thing was lurching wearily.

"He can't go—any more," the girl cried out pitifully. "He—he's sobbing. Don't beat him—I won't have him beaten!"

"We must get there," he called back, waving at the cliff-like rocks.

"Then go—on foot. I could—run faster."

"No, you couldn't," he shouted fiercely back.

She flared. "Don't you hit him again!"

The maddening absurdity of the quarrel in the face of hostile Africa filled Billy with the futile fury of exasperation. He ground his teeth, glowering at her, and wound her halter rope about his smarting hand. All his hope was concentrated upon the necessity of winning to that rocky shelter before their pursuers overtook them. To him the camels were nothing in the face of such necessity.

They were going slower and slower; his blows had no avail now on either beast. They plodded on. He turned suddenly in his saddle and saw the three riders spreading fan-shape around them, the one in the center nearest. He whipped out his gun and fired at the horse.

His own motion made the ball fly wild, but the horseman drew up instantly, and the other edged discreetly away. And in the ensuing moments the two fugitives gained the base of those cliff-like hills and perceived the dark oblong of a cave mouth.

Down from their exhausted camels they flung themselves, and hand in hand raced to the entrance of the cave. Coolness and blackness received them. Their eyes discovered nothing of the tunnel-like interior.

Putting Arlee some distance within, Billy went to the mouth and stood, his gun in his hand, peering watchfully out. He saw the horsemen draw together for a parley, then one remained on guard while the others circled on separate ways beyond his range of sight. His fear was that one of them might steal alongside the cave and leap unexpectedly into its very mouth upon him, so with taut nerves he crouched expectant.

Behind him Arlee gave a sudden shriek.





CHAPTER XX

A FRIEND IN NEED

He whirled. "I'll fire!" he warned, staring into the dark, but his eyes, dazed with the sun, discerned nothing, and in utter ignorance he faced the black possibilities.

"A man—a hand——" Arlee gasped incoherently.

"Good Lord, what is it?" said a voice so near at hand that both were startled.

"Burroughs!" ejaculated Billy. "Is it you—Burroughs?"

"Yes, it's I, Burroughs," the owner of the voice retorted irritably. "And who the deuce are you?"

"Hill—Billy B. Hill," came the jubilant answer, and "Billy be damned!" said the astonished voice, with sudden joviality, and a dark shape strode up to them. "What on earth are you doing here? And what about that firing? Think I was a robber bold?"

"Well, there are three robber sneaks outside that we are hiding from, so I wasn't sure.... Great Caesar, old scout, but I'm glad to see you! That puts us out of the woods at last.... It's the excavator friend," he added, turning to Arlee. "Burroughs, I present you to Miss Beecher. She and I have been having a thoroughly impossible adventure."

"Let's have a little light upon these introductions," returned the excavator, and a click was heard, and a light jumped out overhead, flooding the tunnel-like place with brightness. In its beams the three stood staring queerly at each other.

Arlee saw a slim, wiry young American, in rough khaki clothes stained with work, a browned, unshaven young man with sleepy looking eyes and a mouth like a steel trap.

What the excavator saw was more surprising. There was his friend Billy, whom two weeks before he had seen off on a Nile steamer returning to Cairo, in tropic splendor of white serge and Panama hat, now a scarlet spectacle of sunburn and dirt, in most disgraceful tweeds, and beside him what Burroughs took to be a child in tatterdemalion white, a silky, fluttering white, which even his untrained observation knew was hardly elected for desert wear. The little girl's hair was hanging tangled over her shoulders, and was much the color of the sand with which her face was coated, and underneath that coating he saw that she was red as a peony with sun and wind. They were a startling pair.

Gravely, with unchanging eyes, he acknowledged the introduction, and then, "What's this about robbers?" he went on. "What kind of a yarn are you putting over?"

"Nothing I want put over on the general public." Billy was thinking very hard. "You're going to be our salvation, Burroughs, but even to you—well, I'll put it briefly. We were having a desert ride and some Turkish fellows who have annoyed her before chased us. There are our camels, just outside. And you can see one of the fellows on horseback keeping watch. The others are somewhere about.... And now, for heaven's sake, get us a drink of water."

Burroughs walked to the door of the tomb and looked out an instant, then he turned and went toward the back, returning with a small native jar full of water.

"I've no glass, but if you can manage this——?" he said to Arlee, and she clutched the cool pottery with two hot little hands and, murmuring a quick affirmative, she put it to her lips.

Then she held it out to Billy.

"I suppose—we mustn't—-drink as much as we want."

"I couldn't," said Billy, after a grateful swallowing. "I'd drain the Nile.... Got a camp here?"

"Yes. You'd have seen my men any other time of day, but we knocked off a while out of the sun," Burroughs explained. "I've rigged up this tomb as living quarters while I'm here. Now what do you want me to do? Would you like a guard?"

"We'd like a guard and a bath and cold cream," said Billy joyfully. "And then we'd like dinner and donkeys."

Burroughs grunted.

"Umph—I should say you'd one donkey already in your party—careering around the desert with a little girl like this," he vouchsafed, and Arlee's eyes widened at his brusque nod at her. She was staring about her now with a curious interest, for all her aching tiredness, gazing wonderingly at the dazzling white walls with their strange and brilliant paintings. She saw they were in a long, deep chamber, from which other openings led to unimagined deeps.

"I guess you never were in a place like this before?" Burroughs inquired, and she shook her head dumbly, feeling suddenly too spent for words.

"Can she get a rest here?" said Billy anxiously. "We've had the devil of a ride."

"The place is all hers," returned Burroughs. "I'll send you some food and cold cream—you mustn't wash that sunburn, you know, or you'll be a sorry girl to-morrow—and then you can rest as long as you like. How much of a hurry are you in?" he added to Billy.

"Well, we want to take a train to Luxor to-night. I suppose Girgeh's the next station?"

"You suppose? You are at sea—where did you start from, anyway?" But hastily Burroughs sped from that inquisitive question. "Balliana is your next station," he reported. "You've all the time you want, and I'll take you over myself. Now make yourself as comfortable as you can," he added to Arlee, handing her a big jar of cold cream and lugging forward an armful of rugs. "I'll be back with some food in a jiffy."

"You're very kind," Arlee spoke stanchly, but as soon as the two men stepped from the tomb, she seemed to wilt down into the rugs and lay there, too tired to stir.

Outside Burroughs blew sharply on a whistle, and from the mouth of another cave a file of black boys in ragged robes made a straggling appearance. Burroughs gave orders which resulted in a kindling of fire and the opening of boxes, and then he walked back to where Billy was surveying the weary camels. At a distance, like an equestrian statue, the watching horseman was standing. Burroughs stared hard at the distant Nubian, then stared harder at Billy.

"This is wonderful luck," Billy said to him, very soberly. "I didn't think of you as nearer than Thebes."

"We just heard of some fresh finds here, so I'm combing over the tombs.... But you—it's none of my business, Billy, but what in hell are you doing racing over Egypt with a ten-year old kid?"

"Ten-year-old—Great Caesar, man, that's a real girl! She's grown up! She's old enough to vote—or nearly."

Burroughs stared harder than ever.

Then, "I shouldn't call that an extenuating circumstance," he mentioned wryly.

"Extenuating nothing! Look here, let me——"

"You needn't tell me anything, you know," Burroughs suggested in great indifference.

"Oh, shut up!" Billy spoke with deep disgust. "You've got to help us out of this and then forget the whole business." He paused a moment; then, "Miss Beecher made the mistake of taking a rash ride with me. She was traveling alone, to meet some friends, to Luxor—and the indiscretion is entirely mine, you understand. I got her into it. And then, as I said, a Turkish fellow, that had been making himself objectionable by following her, got his men out after us and chased us down here. Her trunks have gone on to Luxor where those friends are, and we have to find some presentable wraps for her and get her to the first train. Verstehen?"

"Grasped—and forgotten," said his friend laconically. Just for an instant his sleepy gaze touched Billy's rugged face, then fell casually away. "I suppose any comments that occur to me are superfluous?" he pleasantly observed.

"Completely.... And, Lord Harry, but I'm glad to see you!"

"Same here." Burroughs gave Billy's arm a friendly grip and Billy spun fiercely about on him. "Don't you do that again!" he warned. "Take the other one. That's got a—a scratch."

"A scratch? One of those fellows wing you out there? Let me have a look——"

"No, it's all right—it's nothing——"

"Let me see, you old chump——"

"It's all right, I tell you. It's been taken care of—it's just a relic of Cairo."

"Cairo!" Slowly Burroughs let fall the hand he had laid upon Billy's arm. "You do seem to be having a lively trip," he commented, grinning. "Here, hurry up, you rascals, hurry up with that big jug."

Taking the large jar from them, he returned to the tomb, stopping abruptly at sight of Arlee's weary abandon. She half sat up, a frail, exhausted little figure, whose grace was strangely appealing through all her sandy dishevelment.

"Some water—for washing," he stammered.

"You're very thoughtful."

"I'll have to beg your pardon," he blurted, for Burroughs was no squire of dames. "I thought you were a little girl and spoke to you as if——"

"It's just the hairpins that make the difference, isn't it?" said Arlee, with a whimsical smile. "I don't suppose you have any of those in camp that I could borrow?"

He shook his head regretfully. Then his brain seized upon the problem. "Bent wires?" he suggested. "I might try——"

"Do," she besought. "I'll be grateful forever."

He withdrew to make the attempt, and in his place came Billy with a tray of luncheon.

"Just—put it down," Arlee said faintly. "I'll eat—by and by."

Worriedly Billy looked down on the girl. Her eyes closed. Excitement had ebbed, leaving her like some spent castaway on the shores. He dropped on his knees beside her, dipping a clean handkerchief in the jar of cold cream.

"Just let me get this off," he said quietly. "You'll feel better."

Like a child she submitted, lying with closed eyes while with anxious care he took the sand from her delicate, burning skin. He did the same for her listless hands; he brushed back her hair and put water on her temples; he dabbed more cold cream tenderly on the pathetic little blisters on her lips.

"I'm—all right." The blue eyes looked suddenly up at him with a clear smile. "I'm—just resting."

"And now you'll eat a bit?"

Obediently she took the sandwich he made for her, and lifted her head to drink the cup of tea.

"I'm a—nuisance," she murmured.

"You're a brick!" he gave back, with muffled intensity. "You're a perfect brick!"

Then he backed hastily out of her presence, for fear his stumbling tongue would betray him—or his clumsy, longing hands—or his foolish eyes. He felt choking with the tenderness he must not express. He ached with his Big Brother pity for her, and with his longing for her, which wasn't in the least Big Brotherly, and with all the queer, bewildering jumble of emotion that she had power to wake in him.

Very silently he returned to Burroughs, and when he had made a trifle of a toilet and eaten far from a trifle of lunch, the two young men stretched themselves out in the shade, just beyond the entrance of the tomb, conversing in low tones, while around them the labor song of Burroughs' workmen rose and fell in unvarying monotony, as from a nearby hole they carried out baskets of sand upon their heads and poured the contents upon the heap where the patient sifters were at work.

Burroughs talked of his work, the only subject of which he was capable of long and sustained conversation. He dilated upon a rare find of some blue-green tiles of the time of King Tjeser, a third dynasty monarch, and a mummy case of one of the court of King Pepi, of the sixth dynasty, "about 3300 B.C.," he translated for Billy, and then suddenly he saw that Billy's eyes were absent and Billy's pipe was out.

In sudden silence he knocked out the ashes from his own pipe and slowly refilled it. "Congratulations," he ejaculated, and at Billy's slow stare he jerked his head back toward the tomb. "I say, congratulations, old man."

"Oh!" Billy became ludicrously occupied with the dead pipe.

"Nothing doing," he returned decidedly.

"No? ... I thought——"

"You sounded as if you had been thinking. Don't do it again."

"And also I had been remembering," said Burroughs, with caustic emphasis, "knowing that in the past wherever youth and beauty was concerned——"

So successfully had that past been sponged from Billy's concentrated heart, so utterly had other youth and beauty ceased to exist for him, that he greeted the reminder with belligerent unwelcome.

"I tell you it was all an accident," he retorted irritably. "There's nothing more to it.... Hello, our horseman is coming this way again!"

Grateful for the interruption to this ticklish excursion into his sacred emotions, he jumped to his feet and went out to meet the man who was riding slowly toward them, the two others in his train. Burroughs went with him, and a brief parley followed.

"He says," Burroughs translated, "that these are his camels and he is going to take them away. He says you stole them from him at Assiout."

"That's right," Billy confirmed easily. "He can have 'em," and Burroughs, vouchsafing no comment on this curious development, gave the message to the Nubian. Then he turned again to Billy. "He wants: the money for their hire."

"For their——! Of all the dad-blasted, iron-clad cheek! You just tell him for me that he'll get his 'hire' all right if he hangs around me. Tell him I'll have him arrested for molesting and robbing travelers; and tell him to tell his master that if he shows his head near an English girl again I'll have him hanged as high as Haman—and shot to pieces while he swings! The infernal scoundrel——"

Whatever work Burroughs made of this translation it sent the sullen, inscrutable-looking fellow off in silence, his followers leading the recovered camels.

"And may that be the last of them," said Billy B. Hill, in fervent thanksgiving. "Except Kerissen. I've got to meet him again—just once."

* * * * *

Perhaps it was the hairpins. Perhaps it was the bathed face and the sleep-brightened eyes and the rearranged gown. But certainly Burroughs stared in amazement at the slim little figure that issued from the entrance, and a queer, a very queer confusion seized upon him. Not even outrageous sunburn and pathetic blisters could hide Arlee's young loveliness. They only added an utterly upsetting tenderness to the beholder, and a most dangerous compassion.

And just as each man is smitten with madness after the manner of his kind, so Burroughs, the taciturn, was struck into amazing volubility. As they sat about a cracker box of a table at an early supper, he became a perfect fount of information, pouring out to this girl an account of his diggings that would have astounded any of his intimates, and would surely have amazed Billy B. Hill if that young man had been in a condition to notice his friend's performances. But he was wrapped in a personal gloom that had descended on him like a cloud of unreason. The escapade was nearly over. The little girl comrade was gone, the little girl whose face he had so tenderly scrubbed of its grimy sand. A very self-possessed young lady was sitting beside him, drinking her coffee, an utterly lovely and gracious young lady—but unfathomably remote—elusive....

Perhaps, again, it was the hairpins.

Off to town on donkey back the three Americans rode slowly, a native escort filing after, and there in town the bazaars yielded a long pongee dust coat and a straw hat and a white veil, "to escape detection," Arlee gaily said, and a satchel which she filled with mysterious purchases, and then, clad once more in the semblance of her traveling world, safe and sound and undiscovered, she stood upon the station platform, awaiting the train to Luxor.

Beside her, two very quiet young men responded but feebly to the flow of spirits that had amazingly succeeded her exhaustion. Burroughs was suddenly suffering from a depression most unfamiliar to his practical mind, which caused him to moon about his work for days and made his depleted jar of cold cream a wincing memory, and Billy was increasingly glum.

It was all over now. The girl, who for two winged days had been so magically his gypsy comrade, was returning to her own world, the world in which he played so infinitesimal a part. For very pride's sake now he could never force himself upon her ... as he might before ...

He stared down at her eagerly, hopefully, for a sign of regret at the ending of this strange companionship, much as a big Newfoundland might watch for a caress from a cherished but tyrannic hand, but not a scrap of regret was evidenced. She was as blithe as a cricket. Her only pang was for discovery.

"You're sure," she murmured as Burroughs left them to interview the station clerk, "you're sure they'll never know?"

"I'm positive," he stolidly responded. "Just stick to your story."

"The Evershams won't question—they are never interested in other people," she mused, with thankfulness. "But Mr. Falconer——"

"Won't have a doubt," said Billy firmly. His gloom closed in thickly about him.

* * * * *

It was a local, a train of corridor compartments. In one, marked "Ladies Alone," Arlee was ensconced, with an Englishwoman and her maid, and two pleasant German women, and in another Billy B. Hill sat opposite some young Copts and lighted pipe after pipe. When the train started out on the High Bridge across the Nile to the eastern bank, he came out in the corridor to look out the wide glass windows there, and found Arlee beside him.

"How do you do?" she said brightly. "How nice to meet accidentally like this—you see, I'm rehearsing my story," she added under her breath.

"Let's see if you have it straight," he told her.

"I arrive on a local which left Cairo this morning.... Did I come alone?"

"You'd better invent some nice traveling friend——"

She shook her head in flat refusal. "I won't. I'm not equal to inventing anything. It's bad enough now to—to tell the necessary lies I have to." The brightness left her face looking suddenly wan and sorry. "I suppose it's part of my—punishment—for my dreadful folly," she said in a low tone.

"It's just part of the coin the world has to be paid in for its conventions," Billy quickly retorted. "Don't let it worry you like that—in a day no one will think to question you."

"I know—but—it's having the memory always there. Always knowing that there is something I can't be honest about—something secret and dreadful——"

She was staring unseeingly out the window, her soft lips twitching.

"The Egyptians were a most sensible people," said Billy. "They drew up a list of commandments against the forty-two cardinal sins, and one of them was this, 'Thou shalt not consume thy heart.' That is a religious law against regret—vain, unprofitable, morbid, devastating regret. And you must take that law for your own."

"Th—thank you." The low voice was suspiciously wavery. "I—you see, I haven't had time to think about it till just now—we've been going so fast——"

"And the best thing that could have happened. And now that you have the time to think, you mustn't think weakly. It was just a nightmare. And it's over."

"Just a nightmare.... And it's over," she repeated. Her eyes lifted to Billy's in a look of ineffable softness and wonder. "It's over—because you came."

"I want you to forget that." The young man spoke with cold curtness in his effort to combat the wild temptation of that moment. "I only did what anyone else in my place would have done—to have accomplished it is all the gratitude I want. Please don't speak of it to me again. You must forget about it."

"Forget—as if I could help being grateful as long as I live!"

"But I don't want you to be grateful. It—it's obnoxious to me!"

She was as blankly hurt as a slapped child. Then she looked away, a little pulse in her throat beating fast. "Then I won't—try to thank you," she answered in a very small voice, and stared harder and harder out the window.

Billy felt that he had accomplished a tremendous stride. "A feeling of obligation kills a friendship," he told her didactically, "and I want you to be really my friend."

"I am." Her voice was distinct, though queerly lack-luster. And she did not look at him again.

He went on: "The Evershams will be in on the boat about seven. From the station I'll take you straight to the boat, where your stateroom is surely being kept for you. Then to-morrow your trunks will arrive from Cook's, and by the time you are through resting, you will be ready to sally out and meet the world.... I hope my own trunk will make its appearance, too," he added. "I telegraphed the hotel to pack my things and send them on."

She made no comment on the obvious haste with which he had left Cairo. She said slowly, "I want to do a little mathematics now. What is the shocking sum I owe you?"

He shut his lips in an obstinate line. After a moment she added, "I can't take that, you know."

It struck him as a trifle ludicrous that dollars were so important among all the rest, but unwillingly enough he understood.

"Won't you just let it stand as it is?" he said under his breath. "Let me have the whole thing—please."

"I can't."

"You mean you won't?"

"I can't," she repeated inflexibly, and then, with a childish flash, "Since you dislike me to feel grateful—I should think you would be glad to let me reduce the debt."

"All right." He spoke gruffly. "Then you owe me what you spent just now and what your railroad ticket cost. Not a cent more. For what went before I am absolutely responsible, and I decline to let you pay my debts."

This time he was inflexible. She repeated, with a spark of resentment, "It's not fair to let you pay so much——"

"It was my adventure," said Billy firmly.

She said, "Very well," in a voice that puzzled him. He felt she was annoyed. And he realized more than ever that he could never take advantage of her indebtedness to make her pay with her companionship. It was becoming a queer tangle.... He felt they had suddenly slipped out of tune.... She seemed to be escaping him—withdrawing ...

He wondered, very unhappily, with no fine glow of altruism at all, if he had rescued her for another man. Those things happened, they happened with dismal frequency. Billy distinctly recalled the experience of a college friend who had carried a girl out of a burning hotel, to have her wildly embrace an unstirring youth below. Yes, such things happened. But he had never contemplated having anything like that happen to him.

He contemplated it now, however, contemplated it long and bitterly, when Arlee had gone back to her compartment and he sat silent in his beside the chattering Copts while the train rattled on and on. There would be three days at Luxor before the boat proceeded upon its southern journey. And then——

Three days.... Three miserable, paltry, insufficient days, blighted by the chaperoning Evershams.... Frantically he hoped against his dark foreboding that one menace at least might be averted—that by now Luxor would have ceased to shelter a certain sandy-haired young Englishman.



CHAPTER XXI

CROSS PURPOSES

Luxor was warm and drowsy with afternoon sun. Motionless the fronds of the tall palms along the water front; motionless the columns of the temple reflected in the blue Nile. Even the almost continuous commotion of the landing stage was stilled.

The two big Nile steamers, of rival lines, lay quietly at rest, emptied of their tourists, and on the embankment the dragomans, the donkey boys, the innumerable venders, were lounging in the shade at dominoes or dice.

In the big white hotels facing the river many drawn blinds spoke of napping travelers, and in the shade of the garden of the Grand other travelers were whiling away the listless inertia of the hour before tea.

"I suppose it's quite too early?" murmured a girl at one of the tables, in the shade of a big acacia. Her companion, fussing with a pastel sketch, answered absently, without looking up, "Oh, quite," and then with a note of brisker attention, "I thought we were waiting for Robert?"

"Do you think he'll be back? It's such a trip to the Tombs of the Kings, you know!"

"To be sure he'll be back!" Miss Falconer spoke with asperity. "And why he wanted to go over it again—it's odd you didn't care to go, too, Claire," she added, most inconsequently. "It was such an excellent opportunity—and you had already spoken of wishing to go again."

"But not so exhaustively. They are doing the entire programme. I only wanted some particular things."

"You could have done them."

"And it was hot."

"It must have been just as hot in the bazaars with Mr. Hill."

"Was it?"

This was purposeful vagueness and Miss Falconer's crayon snapped. She made a sound of annoyance, then began gathering her sketching things tidily together. Presently, "He's rather an agreeable person, that young American, after all," she cannily observed.

"Why, after all?" Lady Claire was implacably aloof.

"Well, first impressions, you know——"

"My first impressions of Mr. Hill were very delightful." The English girl laughed softly, her eyes full of reminiscent amusement. "He was a deus ex machina to me—I quite jumped at him, I assure you!"

"You don't have to assure me!" was the elder lady's unspoken comment. She had been in a state of chronic irritation, ever since that Friday noon when Billy B. Hill's tall figure had appeared in the hotel dining room. And hurrying Claire away from the conversation he was promptly evoking, she had encountered Arlee Beecher and the Evershams streaming with the other passengers from their boat to see the temple of Luxor, a wonderfully gay and excited Arlee, so radiant in the happiness of her own safe world again that she was bright gladness incarnate.... Instantly Robert had reverted to his alarming infatuation ... and Lady Claire had most shamelessly welcomed the American. It was all unspeakably annoying....

Aloud Miss Falconer observed, "I wonder what brought Mr. Hill back to the Nile."

"I wonder," said Lady Claire pleasantly. "But it makes it very nice for us, doesn't it?" she continued amiably. "He knows quite everything about temples."

"And particularly nice for Miss Beecher—though I can't say she is treating him very well. However, that may be their way. 'Romance apart from results,' was, I believe, his phrase."

Lady Claire was silent. But not overlong. "You really think——?" she suggested tranquilly.

"He came on the same train."

"Coincidence. He mentioned he did not see her in the train till Balliana."

"Umph!" Miss Falconer drew out of her bag the especial knitting which she reserved for the Sabbath, and her fingers flew with expressive spirit. "It's scandalous," she said at length. "Girls gadding about the face of the earth—picking up chaperons when they remember them."

"It's their way, you know."

"Oh, yes, it's their way. And their men seem to like it. Mr. Hill didn't seem to consider it even unusual.... But as I said, he's hardly a judge," Miss Falconer went on unsparingly. "The man's bewitched. He never takes his eyes off her."

"I'm sure I don't blame him." Lady Claire's tone was most successfully admiring. "She's too wonderful, isn't she, with those great blue eyes and that astonishing hair! I'm sure Robert is bewitched, too!"

"Nonsense!" But Miss Falconer's tone was too vigorous, betraying the effort to rout a palpable enemy. "What nonsense!" she repeated. "He's civil—naturally—when you haven't a moment for him. The boy has pride. Too much." The knitting needles clicked warningly.

"Civil!" The girl's low laughter was mocking. "Dear Miss Falconer, you are such an euphuist!"

Miss Falconer looked up, a trifle startled. Her young charge was more than a match for her in irony, but the elder lady did not lack for solid perseverance, and she charged on undeterred.

"Of course the girl's pretty—too pretty. And Robert's a man—he has eyes in his head and likes to please them. And she knows who he is and draws him on."

"I don't think Miss Beecher cares a twopence who Robert is," said Lady Claire honestly. "When I told her he was going to stand for Roxham she answered that she had a very poor opinion of M.P.s—from reading Mrs. Ward. I can't quite see what she meant—but as for her drawing him on, a moment ago, dear, you were accusing her of luring Mr. Hill back from Cairo."

"I said he followed. I daresay she lured, too. The second string——"

"Then it's quite nice of me, isn't it, to carry off her second string to the bazaars and prevent her playing him against Robert!"

Lady Claire laughed mischievously, in a flight of daring so foreign to her usual reticence that Miss Falconer grimly perceived that she was changed indeed. She thought helplessly that it was a great pity that young people couldn't be treated as the children they were—smacked and made to do what was best for them.

"And after all this dreadful gossiping how can we face our guests at tea?" the girl continued in mock chiding.

"If they are much later we shall not be facing them at all," the older woman declared. "I shall certainly have my tea at the proper time."

The sight of an Arab servant with a tray of dishes had stirred her to this declaration, and promptly she gave her order. In the middle of it, "I'm always late!" said a merry voice, and little Miss Beecher and Falconer were standing on the grass beside them.

"This time we had no following engagement," said Miss Falconer, unpleasantly reminiscent of another tea time in Cairo, ten days before, but even with her resentment of this American girl's intrusion into her long-cherished plans, she could not prevent the softening of her regard as she gazed upon her.

"You don't look as if you had been riding very hard at the Tombs of the Kings," she observed, in reluctant admiration.

"Oh, but we have! We did quite a lot of Tombs—not anything like thoroughly, of course!—and then we rode back early and made ourselves tidy for your tea party," Arlee blithely explained, and Miss Falconer perceived that her brother Robert had returned to the hotel without seeking them out, had arrayed himself in fresh white flannels and returned to the boat to escort Miss Beecher across the road into the hotel garden.

Absently she sighed. Her eyes fell away from the peach-blossom prettiness of Arlee's lovely face to the subtle simplicity of her white frock of loosely woven silk, and she wondered if that heavy embroidery meant money—or merely spending money. And then she looked across at Lady Claire, and sighed again for her dream of an aristocratic alliance.

"Mrs. Eversham—?" she thought to inquire.

"They're having the vicar—or is it the rector?—to tea. They asked him this morning before your message came," Arlee explained. She did not explain that the vicar, or the rector, had imagined, in accepting, that she, too, was to be of that tea party on the boat and was even now inquiring zealously of her of the Evershams.

"Here's Mr. Hill," said Lady Claire.

Miss Falconer stirred; there was room for the fifth chair between her and Arlee. Lady Claire also stirred; there was room between her and Robert Falconer. And there Billy B. Hill seated himself after a general exchange of greetings.

"How were the bazaars?" said Arlee gaily across the table.

"You mean the department store of Mr. Isaac Cohen," Billy laughed back. "They are all under him, you know."

"Not really!" Falconer exclaimed, in disillusionment. "It rather takes it out, doesn't it, to know it is so commercialized."

"What did you expect—it is the twentieth century," Miss Falconer retorted, putting aside her knitting as the tea things arrived.

"Sometimes it is," said Arlee.

"I think it's more so than ever, here," declared Lady Claire. "Egypt's so frightfully civilized——"

"Not when you're camping in the desert."

Again that funny little smile flitted over Arlee's face; not once did she glance at Billy, but for all her air of unconsciousness he felt that she was subtly sharing her thoughts with him and a quick spark of gladness flashed in him.

Those had been three horrible days for Billy B. Hill.

Friday morning he had been practically a prisoner until his trunks had arrived. He had emerged upon a spectacle of England triumphant—Robert Falconer escorting Arlee to the temple of Luxor. Later that afternoon he had called upon Arlee upon the boat to find Falconer still there, and the Evershams very much so.

Robert Falconer had accompanied him back to the hotel. There was something that he wanted to ask, and he asked it bluntly, but with embarrassment. Had Billy said anything at all to Arlee of that nonsense at the palace?

Here was a contingency for which Billy was not provided. He made no provisions for this with Arlee.

"Have you?" he parried.

"Not a word," said the young Englishman. "We've not mentioned the fellow's filthy name. But I wondered——"

"I did tell her we got worried one night, and tried to get into his palace like a pair of brigands," Billy answered slowly.

"She must have thought us great fools," the sandy-haired young man replied disgustedly. Clearly he felt that Billy had flourished this story before Arlee to appear romantic, and he winced at its absurdity.

"Oh, no—she just thought of it as a lark on our part," Billy went on. "I didn't let her in for the horrible details—I don't think she's likely to mention it to you. Or you to her," he added.

"Rather not." The young Englishman was emphatic. "I'm sorry you said anything about it." Then he looked at Billy, a crinkle of amusement in his eyes. "Rather a sell, you know—what?"

"I should say so!" returned Billy, with a hearty appearance of chagrin, and a laugh cemented the understanding.

That was all between them concerning the escapade.

Billy had raced back to the boat, and secured an earnest fifteen minutes with Arlee, who promised unlimited care, and then forced upon him the wretched sovereigns that she owed. She was feeling desperately spent and tired after her day of excitement, and declared herself unequal to the dance upon the boat that evening. Anxiously Billy had urged her to rest, and he spent a drifting and distracted evening roaming alone in the temple of Luxor listening to the distant music from the boat—thinking of Arlee.... Later he had learned that she remained up for at least two dances with Falconer.

So much for Friday. Saturday had been worse. Arlee had said on Friday night that she would join the passengers in the all-day excursion to the Tombs of the Kings, and Billy had somehow found himself in an arrangement with Lady Claire and Falconer to go with them. Then Arlee had not gone. Mrs. Eversham reported that she had a headache, and Falconer had very promptly dropped out of the party, leaving Billy with Lady Claire upon his hands, and so he went, and he and Lady Claire and the Evershams and about sixty other passengers had a brisk and busy day of it. When he returned just before dinner he saw Arlee, apparently headacheless, upon the deck of the steamer, chatting to Falconer.

That night she had attended the dance at the hotel under Miss Falconer's wing. Billy had danced with her twice, and between times his pride had kept him aloof—she might just have made one sign! But though her bright friendliness was ever responsive; though she was instantly, submissively, ready to accept his invitations or fulfill his requests, he felt that there was something strangely lacking.

The gay spark of her coquetry was gone; she did not tease or play with him; animated as she was in company, when they were alone together a constraint fell upon her.

Miserably he felt that he reminded her of unhappy scenes and that she would be secretly relieved when he was gone.

So now he was absurdly glad to hear her declare, in answer to Lady Claire's questionings, "Oh, but the desert is wonderful! I loved it in spite of——"

"In spite of—?" Lady Claire echoed.

"The sand," said Arlee promptly. But under her lashes, her eyes came, at last, half-scared, to Billy's face.

"But the sand is the desert," Lady Claire was murmuring.

"It's only part of it," Billy took it upon himself to answer. "Space is the biggest part—and then color. And sometimes—heat."

"You spent quite a time on the desert edge with some excavators, didn't you?" said the English girl, and Billy fell into talk with her about his friend's work, and Falconer and his sister engrossed Arlee.

And to-night was the very last night of her stay at Luxor. To-morrow the boat would take her on out of his life—unless he pursued her along the Nile, a foolish, unwanted intruder.... The three days here had all slipped from his clumsy grasp—they seemed to have put a widening distance between them.... He heard Falconer calculating that the boat would touch again at Luxor for the next Friday night. There seemed to be talk of a masked ball....

Billy leaned suddenly across the table.

"You have forgotten it's the best of the moon to-night?" he asked. "You must let me take you to see it on Karnak."

Falconer gave him a very blank look.

"We've already planned for that," said he.

"We'll all go," cried Arlee, with instant pleasantness. "We mustn't miss it for anything."

"You haven't seen the moon on the temple yet?" Billy inquired of Lady Claire in the pause that ensued.

"Only once—four nights ago. But it wasn't full then."

Billy remembered that moon acutely. It had lighted two fugitives across a waste of sand. He saw a little figure swaying rhythmically high upon a camel, a quaint, old-world figure in misty white, with a shimmering silver veil—like Rebecca coming across the desert, he thought oddly. Then he looked up and saw a most modern figure in white across the table, nibbling a cress sandwich, and laughing at some jest of the Englishman's....

With a start he realized that Lady Claire was waiting for an answer.

"I beg your pardon. You asked——?"

"If you had seen the temple in moonlight, Mr. Hill."

"Not Karnak—only Luxor—night before last."

"Only Luxor!" The girl beside him laughed. "How spoiled you are, Mr. Hill! Only Luxor!"

It came to Billy, with the force of revelation, that it was going to be only a great many things for him after this.... Those wild days in the desert had seen to that, with devastating completeness.... Girls were only other girls—and delight in them a lost word. This charming one beside him, with the friendly eyes where a faint shadow of wistfulness underlay the surface brightness, was only Lady Claire....

He wondered if he was going on like this forever. He wondered if he was everlastingly to carry this memory about with him, like a bullet.... Suddenly he felt enraged at himself, at his dumb pain and useless longings, and with a stanch semblance of animation he flung himself into the flow of talk which this pretty English girl was so ready to offer him.



CHAPTER XXII

UPON THE PYLON

Two miles of Sphinxes in the moonlight—a double row of them on each side of the way from the temple of Luxor—and then a towering pylon overhead. Karnak was reached.

Out of the victoria jumped two young men in evening clothes, one sandy-haired with a slight moustache, the other black-haired and clean shaven, and handed out three ladies. The first lady was middle-aged and haughty featured, in a black evening gown overhung with a black and gold Assiout shawl; the second was a tall girl in a rose cloak, the third was a small girl, and her cloak was a delicate blue.

There was a pause at the pylon for the presentation of the little red entrance books, and then the gate closed behind them, and the five moved cautiously forward into the shadowy dark of the confusion of the ruins. Beside the blue-cloaked girl bent the sandy-haired young man; the black-haired young man was between the rose-cloaked girl and the lady with the Roman nose.

"You must be our dragoman, Mr. Hill; I understand you are up on all this," said the lady, adhering closely to his side. "Where are we now?"

"Temple of Khonsu," said Billy with bitter brevity. Ahead of them Arlee's blonde head was uptilted toward Falconer's remarks.

"Khonsu? I never heard of him! Or is it her?" Lady Claire laughingly demanded.

"Khonsu is the son of the god, Amon, or Amon-Ra, and the goddess, Mut, and so is the third person of the trinity of Thebes," Billy pedagogically recited, his eyes on the little white shoes ahead picking their delicate way over the fallen stones. "This temple at Karnak is the temple of the god Amon, and so it was natural for old Rameses the third to put the temple to Khonsu under the father's wing like this—but it spoils the effect of the entrance from this pylon. You don't get Karnak's bigness at a burst—but wait till you reach the court ahead. Then you'll see Karnak."

And then they did see it—as much as one view can give of that vast desolation. Ahead of them, shadowy and mysterious in the velvet dark and silver pallor of the stars, loomed the columns of the great court, huge monoliths that dwarfed to pigmies the tiny groups of people dotting the ground about them, trying to say something appropriate.

The place had been made for dead and gone gods, giants of gods, and their spirits stalked now through its waste spaces, dominating and ironic. There was an air about the place that seemed to scorn the facile awe it woke in the breasts of the beholders and that fleered at the human banalities upon their lips.

"There are no words for a spot like this," said a voice near them.

"Silence is fittest," corroborated a second voice.

"Thomas Hardy once said, speaking of the heavens," said the first voice again, "'There is a size at which dignity begins; farther on there is a size at which grandeur begins; farther on there is a size at which solemnity begins; farther on a size at which awfulness begins; farther on a size at which ghastliness begins.' Surely that was written unknowingly for this temple of Karnak?"

A fluttering murmur from the group confirmed this thought.

"Nice little speech," said Falconer in an undertone.

The second voice was raised a trifle resentfully. "Yet was not the very pith of it spoken by Ruskin when he stood upon this identical spot? His words were these, 'At last size tells!'"

Another murmur agreed that it was indeed the pith.

"That's Clara Eversham," said Arlee under her breath. "They came over early with some people from the boat."

"She must be frightfully up on the guide books," muttered Falconer.

"She's a miner in them," Arlee laughed, as they made their way over the rubbishy ground where great beams of stone and fallen statues lay half-buried in the sands.

"They must be very glad to have you back again with them," Falconer told her, trying hard to keep their progress ahead of the others.

"Oh, I don't know!" Honest dubiety spoke in Arlee's tone. "They have mentioned twice how convenient it was to use my stateroom!"

"They felt very badly when you ran away from them in Cairo."

"I was shockingly sudden about that," owned the girl lightly, "but the chance came—Are we going to climb the great pylon now?"

"It will be a jolly high place to see the moon rise."

* * * * *

It was a jolly high place to see the moon rise, and to see all Karnak, and all Luxor, with its high Moslem minaret towering over its crumbling columns, and to see the dark and distant country with its tiny hamlets crouching under humbler mosques and lonely palms, and on the other side the wide and winding Nile with the shadowy cliffs of Thebes beyond. It gave Arlee the dizzying sensation of being suspended between heaven and earth, so high was she above those far-reaching plains, so high above the giant columns beneath her, the vast beamed roofs, the pointing obelisks. It made her breath quicken and her pulses beat.

"Watch the moon," said Falconer in a low tone.

Blood-red it rose behind the dark pile, throwing into sinister relief a gallows-like angle of stone beams, then higher and higher it soared till its resplendent light poured unchecked into the wide courts and broken temples, the unroofed altars and the empty shrines.

"A dead world lighting a dead world," said Arlee under her breath.

"I could read by it," stated Miss Falconer impressively.

Lady Claire glanced up at Billy with a touch of mischief. "Would you like to paint it?" she suggested.

"Heaven forbid!" said Billy soberly.

Falconer said nothing at all, except to Arlee. He was very shrewdly drawing her to the other end of the pylon, seeing that the time of descent was nearly upon them. And when the time arrived, and the English ladies and their stoic escort started down the steep steps, Falconer made no motion of following them. He stood still, his hands in his pockets, and chuckled softly at the sound of his sister's voice, floating lesseningly up to them.

"How Emma is dragoning that William Whatdycallit Hill," he said appreciatively.

"Why do you call him that?" questioned Arlee.

"Oh, that chap is so deuced odd about that name of his. I asked him what the B. stood for, and he looked me in the eye like a fighting cock and said for his middle name.... Queer chap—" Suddenly Falconer looked sidewise at Arlee and stopped.

"He is—unusual," she agreed, moving toward the steps.

The curious expression upon Falconer's face deepened. "Let 'em go on," he said jerkily. "I don't want to leave this yet, do you?"

Arlee glanced about hesitantly, without answering, and slowly she let fall the white froth of skirt she had been gathering for the descent.

In silence she looked out over the temple. The moon had paled from fire to molten silver now, and like scattered sparks of it burned the thousand circling stars. She felt very strange and unreal—a tiny figure topping this great gate in the face of the ancient silence....

"We never have a chance for a word together," Falconer was mumbling, with a nervous hand at his mustache.

Her thoughts came fleetly back from the ancient worlds.... Her own was upon her. She turned and laughed at him. "We've talked for three whole days!"

"Have we? But always in some group.... I understand that Hill told you what a couple of donkeys we made of ourselves on your account?" Anxiously he scanned her face, silver-clear in the moonlight, for signs of ridicule.

But Arlee's smile was very sweet. It made the sandy-haired young man's heart quicken mysteriously. "He told me," she said. "I think it was fine of you."

"Fine? It was lunacy.... He'd got worked up over some horrible story he'd heard," went on the young man in the mingling humor and embarrassment, "and nothing for it but that you'd gone the same way. And if you'll believe it, he had us prowling around that old palace like a pair of jolly idiots primed to get their heads blown off—and served us jolly well right! He was in luck to get off with nothing but a scratch."

"A scratch—? You mean—you don't mean——?"

"He didn't tell you that?" Falconer was surprised; he had imagined that Billy's narration had led romantically to Billy's wound. He made the American a silent apology. "He was shot in the arm."

"Badly?"

"Of course not badly—he's all right now, isn't he? He said it was a scratch."

Arlee was silent. He had been hurt all the time that he had been riding with her over the desert ... he had been hurt all through those horrible hot hours. And he had said nothing....

"When I think of what that chap got me in for—scaling a man's walls, smashing in his locks, letting myself down the front of his house like a monkey on a rope! I might have been a dashed school kid again." Resentment and reluctant humor struggled in the young man's speech. "Why, the fellow has the imagination of a detective ... and of course he had some reason." Falconer's thoughts touched on the fair-haired girl of Fritzi's report. "I'll admit he had me worried—until I heard from the Evershams that you were all O.K. You see what bally nonsense you put into young men's heads," he added with a look of meaning.

"He's a very—chivalrous—young man," said Arlee.

"He's a very unbalanced young idiot," contradicted Falconer. "I rather like the chap, himself, you know; he has nerve to spare—but no ballast. He might have set all Cairo talking of you." His voice hardened; "I told him that. I told him you wouldn't thank him for it."

"I do thank him. I thank him with all my heart."

"Well, you've no reason to," Falconer returned in blunt belief. "Linking your name with that Turk fellow; hinting you were in the palace—he might have started a lot of rotten rumor!"

"What's—rumor?" said the girl in a breathless voice. "He was thinking of—my safety!"

"Well, your safety didn't depend on him, did it?" Sharp jealousy of her defense of the American intruder drove Falconer to unseemly curtness. He gave a short laugh. "You and I," he said, "seem to be always tilting over some chap or other."

A faint smile touched the girl's lips, a sorry little smile, edged with rueful reminiscence ... and strange comparisons. In silence she looked down into the shadowy temple courts where absurdly small-looking people were strolling to and fro, while Falconer stood looking down at her, with something akin to angry wonder in his adoring eyes.

"Why didn't you write to a chap?" he abruptly demanded.

"Why should I?"

"Then you meant to let it go at that?" He drew a sharp breath. "Just the way you flared off from that table—not a word more?"

"Why didn't you write?" the girl parried.

"I did," indignantly. "Twice—to Alexandria."

"Oh.... I didn't get them."

"I wrote, all right. I was so stirred up over that alarm of Hill's that I urged you to answer me at once. And when you didn't, and when I heard you had written the Evershams, well, I thought I knew what I had to think.... When I met you here Friday I half expected you to cut me, upon my word!"

"But I didn't!" She laughed softly. "I remembered you—perfectly."

"Oh, you did, did you?... You've acted as if that was about all you did remember."

"I've been very, very nice to you!"

"But with a difference," he insisted resentfully. "Didn't you know I must have written? You didn't think I wanted to let it stop there, did you? You didn't think I meant that nonsense at tea——"

"Please don't go back to that," said the girl hurriedly. "We've been good friends these three days without bringing it up—don't let us do it now."

"Well, I don't enjoy thinking about it." His voice was sharp with feeling. "You gave me the most miserable time of my life."

"I was very horrid."

"You told me you didn't give a piastre for what I thought!"

"I said I didn't give half a piastre!" murmured Arlee irrepressibly, with a wicked dimple.

Reluctantly he grinned. "Well?" he put to her questioningly.

"Well?"

Their eyes met, sparkling, combative.

"You do, don't you?"

"What?"

"You do give a piastre for what I——"

"I'm afraid I do. I'm afraid I give a good many piastres for what everyone thinks." The girl's smile had suddenly faded; her eyes lowered and sought the far horizons.

In the silence he came a little closer to her. "Then Arlee—Arlee, dear——"

She started, and turned hurriedly. "We must go down——"

"Why must we?"

"They'll be waiting."

"Let 'em. They'll be glad of the chance if they can get away from Emma.... I want to talk to you."

"I think Mr. Hill is quite as nice as Lady Claire," flashed Arlee in a childish voice.

"Claire seems to agree with you." Falconer spoke lightly, but underneath sounded the note of the disgruntled male ... resentful of the defection of even the girls he left behind him. He added, with his fatal gift of truculent expression, "But that's perfectly absurd."

"Why absurd?" Arlee's voice held careful calm. The flash in her eyes was hidden.

Falconer made a gesture of extreme exasperation. To waste these precious moonlight moments in trifling debate was the very height of maddening futility.

"Oh, the chap's a feather-headed adventurer. What's the use of talking about him?... But that's aside the mark. I want——"

"You mustn't call him an adventurer!" The flash was far from hidden now. Her wide eyes blazed challenge at the disconcerted young man. "It's not fair. It's not true."

"Oh, I don't mean it in any—any financial sense," the harassed Falconer gave back. "But you can't expect me to take him seriously after his exploits in Cairo? He's flighty. He goes off like a rocket. He has illusions—but——"

"If you are going to slander him because of what he did for me—" Arlee's voice was shaking.

"Oh, can't you see that's the key to his character!"

"Yes, I do see it." She sounded triumphant now. For a moment her eves met his full of bright defiance; she hung fire, half scared, then blazed into her revelation.

"For I was in that palace."

"What? What?" Falconer questioned in sheer vacancy of shock.

"I said—I was in that palace, Kerissen's palace."

"What!" came from him again, but now in twenty different intonations, with absolute incredulity struggling for dominance.

Desperately she rushed on, her voice shaken but passionate.

"I tell you it is so. He got me there by a trick, a call upon his sister. And he kept me by another trick, pretending a quarantine. I was trapped there. The messages and all the Alexandria story were Kerissen's frauds. He wanted to marry me. I'd have been there to-night if it hadn't been for Billy Hill—that adventurer, as you call him!"

It was impossible. It was unthinkable. Falconer stood staring down at this girl whose white, upturned face, so amazingly ethereal and childish, met his astounded gaze with unfaltering fixity, and from his stiff lips dropped disjointed words and phrases, ejaculations of denial, of disbelief.

She swept them utterly aside in her complete affirmation. "It's all true—every bit."

"You—in that man's palace!" He was very pale, but into her white face there surged a sudden flood of color, crimsoning it from brow to throat.

"He didn't—hurt me," she stammered. "He was—quite mad—but he didn't—hurt me."

She heard Falconer draw his breath with a queer, whistling sound. He pushed back his hat and drew his hand over his forehead.

"It's—impossible," he persisted thickly, but there was bitter relief in his voice. "The blackguard—the filthy blackguard!"

"Don't, don't, please don't! I can't bear to think of him. I've done with even the thought of him.... He was trying to make me marry him. I told you he was quite mad."

Sharply Falconer pulled himself together, in the tense effort to meet this horrible astonishment like a man.

"And Hill got you out?"

"Yes.... He got me out."

"But the Evershams—they don't know——?"

"No, no, I've told no one. I'm not going to tell anyone. No one knows of it but you and me—and Billy Hill."

"That's right." He drew another long breath, this time in sharp relief. The color was coming back to his face, splotching it unevenly. "You mustn't tell anyone. You don't know how a beastly thing like that would spread. You mustn't let anyone have a hint. Not even my sister."

Arlee's eyes were in shadow. Her voice came slowly. "They would think so badly of me?"

"No—not of you—but it's the kind of thing, the impossible things—A girl simply can't afford——"

"She can't afford to have even speculation against her," Arlee finished quietly, but a little pulse in her throat was beating away like mad. She knew he spoke the simple truth, but the taste of it was bitter as gall to her mouth. However she had humbled herself in secret self-communion, she had known no such shame as this.... She felt cheapened ... tarnished....

"It's beastly—but she can't," he jerkily agreed, but with evident relief at her sensible understanding. Perhaps he had remembered Billy's fearful prophecy of the conversation with which the adventure would supply her. "But of course nobody has a notion——"

"Not a notion. And I shan't give them any—not till I'm a white-haired old lady in Mechlin caps, and then I shall make up for lost time by boring all my world with the story of my romantic youth and the wild deeds done for me!" She laughed airily, pride high in her face, hiding her secret hurts.

"And Hill got you out," Falconer repeated, with a sudden twinge of jealous envy in his young voice. "He—he's a lucky one."

"I'm the lucky one," Arlee flashed. "Think of the glorious luck for me that sent him to paint there, outside the palace, where a maid mistook him, and so gave a message. Why, it was a chance in a million, in ten million—and it happened!"

"Happened?" Falconer looked at her a minute before continuing. Then he asked quietly, "He told you that he just—happened—there?"

"Yes, he said by accident. He was painting——"

Now Falconer was an honest young man—and a gentleman. Deliberately he brushed away his rival's generous subterfuge. "He doesn't paint," he told her. "He did that for an excuse—for a reason to stay outside the palace. No chance directed it."

"Why, how—how did he know? Before——"

"He guessed. He was uneasy from the beginning—he made conjectures and set himself to verify them."

After a moment, "I never knew—that!" said Arlee in slow wonder.

"Well, you know now," returned Falconer with a sense of grim justice to the man he had belittled.

In the silence the girl moved toward the steps. He made a gesture to stay her.

"You're not going—yet?"

"Yet?" she echoed, faintly mocking. "It's hours."

"But—but we can never see this again," he argued, weakly, parrying with himself.

"We won't—forget it."

The words held a too-keen prophecy for him. He looked at her in heart-beating uncertainty, and it seemed to him that all his future was waiting on that moment. Should he speak? Should he utter that which had been so near utterance when her astounding revelation had stopped him?... After all, he knew nothing of her—but that she was lovely and wilful and enchanting—with a capacity for risk—and a dire disregard of consequences.... She was volatile, unstable, bewildering—so he thought stiffeningly as he looked at her, but he looked too long.

She was the very spirit of loveliness in the silver moon, her hair a crown of light, her eyes deep with shadowy wistfulness, her lips half sad, half tender.... He felt the blood burn hot in his face, and took a quick step to bar the way.

"You must wait to hear what I was saying," he said, with a ring of new command.

She gave him a sudden, startled look, and moved as if to pass him.

"You were saying—nothing," she answered proudly.

"I was saying—everything," he gave back incoherently. "Oh, Arlee, do you think that story stops me! Don't you know—how much I want you?" and with sudden vehemence he bent to clasp her in his arms.



CHAPTER XXIII

THE BETTER MAN

Down in the court of Rameses, Lady Claire and Hill were straying. A most opportune old bachelor, passing with a party of acquaintances, had diverted even Emma Falconer from her dragoning, and the young English girl and her American escort were left for the time to their own devices.

Not much was said. Claire, who had been fitfully gay all afternoon, grew still as a church mouse now as they paced back and forth in the shadows, stealing a slant glance from time to time at Billy's set and silent face. She wondered a little at his absorption. But chiefly she was thinking that she had never seen him look so handsome ... with his brows knitted and his clear-cut lips pressed sharply together ... but the boy of him somehow kept by that wilful lock of black hair over his forehead.

To Billy it seemed that the bitterest drop of the cup was at his lips. Those two—upon the pylon—were they never coming down? He was waiting for them in every nerve, and yet he shrank from the look he might read upon their faces. He thought, very grimly, that this could mean but one thing, and that thing was the end forever and ever, for him.... His heart was sick in him and he longed most desperately to break away from these other women and the sham of talk and dash off to dark solitude where the primitive man could have his way, could tramp and fight and curse and sob and break his heart in decent privacy. He faced with loathing the refinements of torture which civilization imposes.

But the game had to be played. He was no quitter, he told himself fiercely; he could stand up and take his punishment like a man. She was not for him. He had loved her from the first, he had loved her so that he had been clairvoyant to her peril, he had risked his neck for her a dozen times and snatched her from a life that was a death-in-life—and yet she was not for him. She was for a man who had not believed in her danger, had not bestirred himself.... Black, seething bitterness was boiling in Billy B. Hill. Darkly, through a fog, he heard the outer man replying to some speech from the girl beside him.

He understood, he told himself in a burst of despairing anguish, how Kerissen could have plotted for her. Almost he longed to be a scrupleless Oriental and carry her off across his saddle bow.... And then he brought himself up short.

Was that all she meant to him, he asked himself with the sweat of pain on his forehead beneath that black lock which was finding such favor in Lady Claire's eyes—was that all she meant to him?—a prize to be won? One man had tried to steal her; he had wished to earn her—but she was a gift beyond all price and the giving lay in her own heart alone.... And if Falconer was the man for her, then at least he, Billy B. Hill, was man enough to stand up and be glad for her and be humbly grateful to the end of his days that he had been able to save her ... and give her her happiness. For it was really he who had given it to her. And in that thought Billy Hill's young heart expanded, and his soul stretched itself to such unwonted heights that it seemed to push among the stars.

* * * * *

"It is an unforgettable night," said the girl in the rose cloak.

He thought that was just the word for it, and a wryly humorous glint was in the look he gave her. And he thought that she, too, was playing the game mighty stanchly, and had been playing it bravely these three days, since her conquering little rival had made her reappearance. His heart warmed toward her in understanding and compassion. They were comrades in affliction. He was not the only one in the world who was not getting the heart's desire.

Aloud he answered, "And the last night for me."

Lady Claire looked up quickly. Her voice showed her struck with sudden surprise. "You are going—so soon?"

"To-morrow."

"To Assouan?" Odd sharpness edged the question.

He waited a perceptible moment, though his resolution had been taken. "Back to Cairo."

"Oh ... How long shall you be there?"

"Just till I get sailings. It's time for me to be off. I'm really a working person, you know, not a playing one."

"You make bridges—and dams—and things, don't you?" she questioned vaguely.

"Bridges—and dams—and things."

"Why don't you wait here for your sailings?" she asked impersonally after another pause. "It's so much more attractive here than Cairo."

"I'd like to." He thought of next Friday—and Arlee's return—and the masked ball. For a moment temptation urged. Then he threw back his head with a gesture of decision. "But I can't. It's impossible."

Now Lady Claire did not know that he was thinking of next Friday—and Arlee's return—and the masked ball. She only knew that he spoke with a curious fierceness, and that his eyes were very bright. And something in the girl, something strange and acknowledged that had been so fitfully gay and light these three days, quickened in mysterious excitement.

"Nothing is impossible," she gave back, "to a man!"

Billy thought she was resenting the conventions of the restricted sex. She could not make any open advance toward Falconer while he, as man, could make all the open advances to Arlee he was willing to—but in this case his hands were tied. A man cannot inflict himself upon a girl who may not feel herself free to reject him. He laughed, with sorry ruefulness.

"There's a whole lot," he observed, "that is impossible to a man who tries to be one," and then, oblivious of any construction she might choose to put upon this cryptic utterance, he strolled moodily on, in brooding silence.

After a pause, "Of course," said Lady Claire in so gentle a little voice that it seemed to glide undisturbingly among his silent meditations, "of course, a man has his—pride."

"I hope so," said the young man briefly. He understood her to be probing for his reason for abandoning the chase; he understood that for her own sake she would like to see him successful with Arlee, and he was queerly sorry to be failing to help her there. But he had done all that he could....

The girl spoke again, her face straight ahead, her shadowy eyes staring out into the moonlight. "Is it—money?" she said in the same little breath of a voice.

"Money!" Billy threw back the words in surprise, half contemptuous, "Oh, Lord, no, it's not money! I haven't much of it now, but I'm going to make a bunch of the stuff—if I want to." He spoke with naive and amazing confidence which somehow struck astounded belief into the listener. "There's enough of it there, waiting to be made—no, it's not money—though perhaps one might well think it ought to be. I suppose my work might strike a girl as hard for her," he went on, considering aloud these problems of existence, "for it's here to-day and there to-morrow—now doing a building in a roaring city and now damming up some reservoir deep in the mountains—but it always seemed to me that the girl who would like me would like that, too. It's seeing so much of life—and such real life! Oh, no," he said, and though a trace of doubt had struck into his voice, "that in itself wouldn't be what I'd call impossible—not for the right girl."

"But your work—would it always be in America?" said Lady Claire.

"Oh, always. It has to be, of course."

"Oh.... And—and—you—have to have—that work?"

"Why, of course, I have to have it!" Billy was bewildered, but entirely positive. "That's my work—the thing I'm made to do. I couldn't earn my salt selling apartment houses."

"Oh, no, no," the girl hurriedly agreed.

A long, long silence followed, a silence in which he was entirely oblivious to her imaginings. The moonlight lay heavy as dreams about them; her thoughts went darting to and fro like fluttering swallows.... She felt herself a stranger to herself.... She looked up at him with a sudden deer-like lift of her head, and then looked swiftly away.

"Don't go," she said in a quick, low voice. "Don't go—yet. Even things that look impossible—can be made to come right."

He understood that she was pleading with him, partly for the sake of her own chance with Falconer, but the sympathy flicked him on the raw. He was sorry for her, sorry for the queer, strained look in her face, sorry for the voice so full of feeling, but he couldn't do anything to help her.

In silence he shook his head and was astounded at the look of sudden proud anger she darted at him.

"You're a mighty real friend to take such an interest in my luck," he said quickly, with warm liking in his voice, "and I only wish you could play fairy godmother and give me my wish—but you can't, Lady Claire, and apparently she won't, and that is the end of the matter. I have to take off my hat to the Better Man."

Lady Claire did not gasp or stammer or question. She did none of the dismayedly enlightening things into which a lesser poise might have tottered. After an inconsiderable moment of silence she merely uttered her familiar, "Oh!" and uttered it in a voice in which so many things were blended that their elements could hardly be perceived.

She added hurriedly, "I'm sorry if I've seemed to—to intrude into your affairs."

"My affairs are on my sleeve," answered Billy and wondered at the quick look she gave him.

"Oh, no—not at all," she answered a little breathlessly. "I'm sure they haven't seemed so to me—but then I'm stupid." She stopped for a moment of hot wonder at that stupidity. She had not believed Miss Falconer—had thought her prejudiced ... maneuvering.... Like lightning she reviewed the baffling interchange of sentences, then glanced up at Billy's silent absorption. She felt queerly grateful for his innocent density. "And perhaps she's stupid, too," she told him. "You'd better make sure. You'd better make absolutely sure."

He looked down on her with sorry humor in his face. "Do I need to make surer?" He nodded in the direction of the giant gateway. "They've had time to settle the divisions of the Balkans up there."

"Oh, yes, they've had time!" She seemed speaking at sudden laughing random. "But we've had the same time and you see we haven't settled anything with it—not even that you're to stay. Yes, you'd better make sure, Mr. Hill."

Billy was hardly heeding. A laugh had caught his ears, a light high laugh like the tinkle of a little silver bell through the darkness. In the shadows behind them he made out a man and a woman arm in arm.

"Just a moment," he begged of Lady Claire. "May I leave you here a moment? I must see those—I think I know——" Without listening to her automatic permission he was gone.

The next moment he had laid his hand on the arm of the man with the woman. Both spun quickly about. A babble of explanation broke out.

"Ach, mein freund, mein freund——"

"Oh, it is Billy——"

"How gut to find you here——"

"Our American Billy."

The last voice, piquantly foreign, was the voice of Fritzi Baroff. And the first voice gutterally foreign was the voice of Frederick von Deigen. Arm in arm, flushed, happy, sentimental, the two began talking in a breath, thanking Billy for the letter he had sent von Deigen which had brought them together, and apologizing for their hasty flight—"a honeymoon upon the Nile," the German joyfully explained.

Discreetly Billy forbore to make any discoveries as to the exact status of their "honeymoon." The German's face was very honestly happy, and the little dancer was brimming with restless life and vivacity.

"It was the picture in my watch—hein? The picture I carry night and day," Frederick repeated in needless explanation, and was about to draw out the picture when Billy restrained him.

He had a favor to ask. The American girl of Kerissen's palace had escaped unharmed and returned to her friends who were ignorant of all. She was this moment in the ruins. It would be a great shock to her to meet Fritzi, to have Fritzi recognize her. On the morning she would be gone. Would Fritzi——"

"Fritzi must disappear—for the night?" said the little Viennese smiling wisely, but with a trace of cynicism. "The little American must not be reminded—h'm? We will go.... For you have done so much for me, you big, strange, platonic Mr. Billy!" Dazzlingly she smiled on him, her dark eyes quizzically provocative.

"You're not at the Grand?"

"No, not that." She named another. "You come see me, when that girl goes—h'm?"

Billy caught the German's eyes upon him, in their depths a faint trouble, a vague appeal. He comprehended that the infatuated young man had engaged in the tortuous business of keeping sparks from tinder.

"I'm gone to-morrow," he replied.

"Maybe in Vienna?" went on the dancer. "We go soon—another day or so maybe—and then back over the water to that life I left! Oh, my God, how happy I am to go back to it all—to dance, to sing—Oh, I could kiss you, Mr. Billy, if it would not make you so shock!" she added with a malicious little laugh. "You know the news—about him—h'm?"

"Him?"

"Kerissen—that devil fellow. He is in Cairo with a fever—in the hospital there. A man who come from that hospital just tells us—just by accident he tell us. A bad fever, too!" She laughed in satisfaction. "I hope he burn good and hard up," she added, with energetic spite, "and teach him not to act like a wild man. That man say he got a bad hand," she added, with a shrewd glance at Billy.

The young man merely grunted. "I hope he has," he replied. "It matches the rest of him. Good night."

"Good night—for the now—h'm, Mr. Billy?" and with a quick little clasp of his big hand and a gay little backward look the girl was gone into the shadows upon the arm of her jealous cavalier.

Three people were waiting at the statue foot where he had left the English girl.

"They've come at last, Mr. Hill," Lady Claire's voice struck very gaily upon him, "and Miss Falconer has just come to tell us we must see the colored lights in the great court—and then go home. So hurry!"

She turned as she spoke and put her arm suddenly through Falconer's who was standing next her. "Come on," she lightly commanded, and promptly led the way.

That was something like a fairy godmother! Into Billy's eyes flashed a warm light of gladness. Some moments out of that wretched evening should yet be his own, bitter-sweet as they were in their sharp finality.

He turned to the blue-cloaked figure at his side. "Do you like colored fire?" he demanded. "Won't you come and see something else—something I've wanted to see and to have you see with me? It's near the way out. We can meet them at the pylon."

Of course she acquiesced. That was part of the cursed restraint between them, he was reminded, to have her accept so obediently any point-blank request of his. But for the nonce he was glad. He wanted those few minutes desperately.

"What is it?" she murmured.

"I'll show you," and then, as he turned from the way they had come and followed a winding path that dipped lower and lower between the dune-like piles of sand, "It's the Sacred Lake," he explained. "Perhaps you've seen it in the daytime—but I've been wanting to see it at night."

"I think I just caught the glint of it from the pylon," she observed.

"You had time to," said Billy, trying to twinkle down at her in friendly fashion.

She did not twinkle back. She looked as suddenly guilty as a kitten in the cream, and Billy's heart smote him heavily. He did not speak again till they had rounded a corner and their path had brought them out upon the shore of the Sacred Lake.

Like a little horseshoe it circled about three sides of the ruined temple of the goddess Mut, inky-black and motionless with the stars looking up uncannily like drowned lights from its still waters, and inky-black and motionless, like guardian spirits about it, sat a hundred cat-headed women of grim granite. It was a spot of stark loneliness and utter silence, of ancient terror and desolate abandonment; the solitude and the blackness and the aching age smote upon the imagination like a heavy hand upon harp strings.

"Who are—they?" Arlee spoke in a hushed voice, as if the cat-headed women were straining their ears.

"They're mysteries," said Billy, speaking in the same low tone. "Generally they're said to be statues of the Goddess Pasht or Sehket—but it's a riddle why the Amen-hotep person who built this temple to the goddess Mut should have put Sehket here. Sehket is in the trinity of Memphis—and Mut in that of Thebes. And so some people say that this is not Pasht at all, but Mut herself, who was sometimes represented as lion-headed. Between a giant cat and a lion, you know, there's not much of difference."

"I like Pasht better than Mut," said Arlee decidedly.

"There you agree with Baedecker."

"What did Pasht do?"

"She was goddess of girls," said Billy, "and young wives. She got the girls husbands and the wives—er—their requests. Girls used to come down here at night and make a prayer to her and cast an offering into the waters."

"And then they had their prayer?"

"Infallibly."

"I'd like a guardian like that," said Arlee, with a sudden mischievous wistfulness that played the dickens with Billy's forces of reserve. "Do you think she'd grant my prayer?"

"Have you one to make?" said Billy, staring very hard for safety at the monstrous images.

"They look as if they were coming alive," he added.

The moon had come up over an obstructing roof and now flashed down upon them; a ripple of light began to swim across the star-eyes in the inky waters; a finger of quicksilver seemed to be playing over the scarred faces of the granite goddesses.

"They never died," said Arlee positively. "They're just waiting their time. Can't you see they know all about us?... They particularly know that you are the most deceiving young man they ever saw! Why didn't you tell me you were shot in the arm?" she finished rapidly.

"What?... Where did you hear that?"

"Mr. Falconer enlightened me."

"I wish Falconer would keep his stories to himself," said Billy ungratefully. "It's just a——"

"Scratch," said Arlee promptly. "That's always a hero's word for it."

Billy turned scarlet. He felt hot back to his ears.

"And why did you tell me that you happened to be painting outside the palace?" went on the unsparing voice. "You let me think it was all accident—and it was all you, just you!"

"Good Lord," groaned Billy, effecting merriment over his discomfiture, "Is there anything else he told you?... Look here, you shouldn't have been talking about it," he said with sudden anxiety.

Arlee smiled. "It's all over," she said. "I told him everything."

Billy's heart missed a beat, and then hurried painfully to make up for it. He felt a curious constriction in his throat. He tried to think of something congratulatory to say and was lamentably silent.

"Why did you deceive me so?" she continued mercilessly. "Because my gratitude was so obnoxious to you? Were you so afraid I would insist upon flinging more upon you?"

"That's a horrid word, obnoxious," said Billy painfully.

"I thought so," thrust in a pointed voice.

"I only meant," he slowly made out, "that a sense of—of obligation is a stupid burden—and I didn't want you to feel you had to be any more friendly to me than your heart dictated. That is all. It was enough for me to remember that I had once been privileged to help you."

"You—funny—Billy B. Hill person," said the voice in a very serious tone. Billy continued staring at the unwinking old goddess ahead of him. "You take it all so for granted," laughed Arlee softly, "As if it were part of any day's work! I go about like a girl in a dream—or a girl with a dream ... a dream of fear, of old palaces and painted women and darkened windows. It comes over me at night sometimes. And then I wake and could go down on my knees to you.... I suppose there isn't any more danger from him?" she broke off to half-whisper quickly.

"He's sick in the Cairo hospital," Billy made haste to inform her. "I found out by accident. I understand he has a bad fever. So I think he'll be up to no more tricks—and I'm out the satisfaction of a little heart-to-heart talk."

"Oh, I told you you couldn't," she cried quickly. "You would make him too angry. He isn't just—sane."

"Then all I have to do in Egypt is to hunt up my little Imp," said Billy. "I must see the little chap again—before I go."

He waited—uselessly as he had foretold. She said nothing, and if the glance he felt upon him was of inquiry he did not look about to meet it. He was still staring a saturnine Pasht out of countenance. There was a pause.

Then, "However were you able to think of it all?" said Arlee in slow wonder. "However were you able to think such an impossible thought as my imprisonment?"

"Because I was thinking about you," said Billy. Suddenly his tongue ran away with him. "Incessantly," he added.

She looked up at him. Unguardedly he looked down at her. No one but a blind girl or a goose could have mistaken that look upon Billy B. Hill's young face, the frustrate longing of it, the deep desire. The heart beneath the sky-blue cloak cast off a most monstrous accumulation of doubts and fears and began suddenly to beat like mad.

Totally unexpectedly, startlingly amazing, she flung out at him, "Then what made you stop?"

"Stop?" he echoed. "Stop? I've never stopped! There hasn't been a moment——"

"There have been three days. Three—horrible—days!"

"Arlee!"

"Do you think I like being snubbed and ignored and—and—obliterated?" she brought indignantly out. "Do you think I call that—being friends?"

"I—I wanted to leave you free—not to force your friendship——" he stammered wildly.

"You couldn't force mine," said Arlee Beecher.

"But—but there was Falconer," he protested. "You had to be free to—to have a choice——"

"A choice? Do you call that a choice?"

"I thought you were making it. That first night——"

"I stayed up to dance with you," she cried hotly. "You never came back!"

"But the next day——"

"I wanted to go. But I couldn't keep up any more. I had to rest.... And you went with Lady Claire!"

"Why, I had to! We'd planned. But when we came back, he was on deck with you——"

"Yes, and I was waiting up—to see you. And you only took two dances that night——"

"You didn't seem to want me to——"

"I never guessed you wanted them! I had my pride, too. I wasn't going to be in the way—because you'd rescued me. I thought you didn't want me in the way!"

"Arlee—my girl—my precious girl——"

"No, I'm not. I'm not."

"Yes, you are," he said fiercely. "I don't care if you are engaged to Falconer or not, I'm going to tell you so."

"I'm not engaged to Falconer," she protested.

He blurted in bewilderment. "Then what in the world were you doing up there on that pylon?"

Her elfish laughter disconcerted him. "Do you think one has to get engaged if she stays on a pylon?... We were getting not engaged."

"I thought—I thought you liked him," he said bewilderedly.

"I did. I do, I mean—but not that way. He—he—Oh, I really like him," she cried tremulously, "but not—we've had it all out and everything's all over. I'm sorry—sorry—but he'll be really glad bye and bye. For my story shocked him terribly.... And then there's Lady Claire. He didn't like to have her down with you even when he was up with me." She laughed softly. "Oh, I shouldn't have let him be so friendly here but I did like him and you—you were so—so hateful."

The moon and stars whirled giddily around him as he put his arms about her. Like a man in a dream he drew her to him.

"I love you—love you," he said huskily over the bright maze of hair.

"You don't!" came with muffled intensity from the hidden lips. "You said to that man—when I was in that cave—'Nothing doing!'"

"It wasn't his affair—I hadn't a hope.... Oh, my dear, my dear, I've been breaking my heart——"

"And I've had such a perfectly h-hateful three days," sobbed the voice.

His arms closed tighter about her, incredible of their happiness.

"Oh, Arlee, I can't tell you—I haven't words——"

"I've had deeds!" she whispered.

Through his rocking mind darted a memory of her earlier speech to him. "You said you didn't want words. Arlee—will you?"

She flung back her head and looked up at him, her face a flower, her eyes like stars tangled in the bright mist of her hair.

"Billy, what's your middle name?"

"Bunker.... I can't help it, dear. They wished it on me and asked me not to let it go. But Bunker Hill——!"

"It's a wonderful name, Billy! A perfectly irresistible name!" Her eyes laughed up at him through a dazzle of tears, and prankishly over her curving lips hovered a mischievous dimple. "It's a name—that—I—simply—can't—do—without—Billy Bunker Hill!"

The dimple deepened then fled before its just deserts. For if ever a dimple deserved to be caught and kissed that was the one.

THE END