CHAPTER III

AT THE PALACE

That limousine utterly routed the tiny little qualm which had been furtively worming into Arlee's thrill of adventure. Nothing very strange or out-of-the-way, she thought, could be connected with such a modern car; it presented every symptom of effete civilization. Against the upholstery of delicate gray flamed the scarlet poinsettias hanging in wall vases of crystal overlaid with silver tracery; the mirror which confronted her was framed in silver, and beneath it a tiny cabinet revealed a frivolous store of powders and pins and scents. Decidedly the Oriental widow of said sequestration had a car very much up to times. The only difference which it presented from the cars of any modern city or of any modern lady was in the smallness of the window panes, whose contracted size confirmed the stories of the restrictions which Arlee had been told were imposed upon Moslem ladies by even those emancipated masculine relatives who conceded cars.

She peered out of the diminutive windows at the throng of life in the unquiet streets as they halted for the passing of a camel laden with bricks and stones from a demolished building; the poor thing teetered precariously past under such a back-breaking load that the girl felt it would have been a mercy to add the last straw and be done with it. After it bobbed what was apparently an animated load of hay, so completely were this other camel's legs hidden by his smothering burden.

Then the car shot impatiently forward, passing a dog cart full of fair-haired English children, the youngest clasped in the arms of a dark-skinned nurse, and behind the cart ran an indefatigable sais, bare-legged and sinewy, his red headdress and gold-embroidered jacket and blue bloomers flashing in the sun. On the sidewalk a party of American tourists were capitulating to a post-card vender, and ahead of them a victoria load of German sightseers careened around the corner in the charge of a determined dragoman.

Arlee smiled in happy superiority over these mere outsiders. She was not going about the beaten track, peeping at mosques and tombs and bazaars and windows; she was penetrating into the real life of this fascinating city, getting behind the grills and veils to glimpse the inner secrets.

She thought, with a deepening of the sparkle in her blue eyes and a defiant lifting of the pointed chin, of a certain sandy-haired young Englishman and how wrong and reasonless and narrow and jealous were his strictures upon her politeness to young Turks, and she thought with a sense of vindicated pride of how thoroughly that nice young man who had managed to introduce himself last night had endorsed her views. Americans understood. And then her thoughts lingered about Billy and she caught herself wondering just how much he did mean about coming up the Nile again. For upon happening to meet Billy that morning—Billy had devoted two hours and a half to the accident of that happening!—he had joyously mentioned that he was trying to buy out another man's berth upon that boat. It wasn't so much his wanting to come that was droll—teasing sprites of girls with peach-blossom prettiness are not unwonted to the thunder of pursuing feet—but the frank and cheery way he had of announcing it. Not many men had the courage of their desires. Not any men that little Miss Arlee had yet met had the frankness of such courage. And because all women love the adventurous spirit and are woefully disappointed in its masculine manifestations, she felt a gay little eagerness which she would have refused to own. It would be rather fun to see more of him—on the Nile—while Robert Falconer was sulking away in Cairo. And then when she returned she would surprise and confound that misguided young Englishman with her unexpected—to him—presence at the Khedive's ball. And after that—but her thoughts were lost in haziness then. Only the ball stood out distinct and glittering and fairylike.

Thinking all these brightly revengeful thoughts she had been oblivious to the many turnings of the motor, though it had occurred to her that they were taking more time than the car had needed to appear, and now she looked out the window and saw that they were in a narrow street lined with narrow houses, whose upper stories, slightly projecting in little bays, all presented the elaborately grilled façades of mashrubiyeh work which announced the barred quarters of the women, the haremlik.

Arlee loved to conjure up a romantic thrill for the mysterious East by reflecting that behind these obscuring screens were women of all ages and conditions, neglected wives and youthful favorites, eager girls and revolting brides, whose myriad eyes, bright or dull or gay or bitter, were peering into the tiny, cleverly arranged mirrors which gave them a tilted view of the streets. It was the sense of these watching eyes, these hidden women, which made those screened windows so stirring to her young imagination.

The motor whirled out of the narrow street and into one that was much wider and lined by houses that were detached and separated, apparently, by gardens, for there was a frequent waving of palms over the high walls which lined the road. The street was empty of all except an old orange vender, shuffling slowly along, with a cartwheel of a tray on her head, piled with yellow fruit shining vividly in the hot sun. The quiet and the solitude gave a sense of distance from the teeming bazaars and tourist-ridden haunts, which breathed of seclusion and aloofness.

The car stopped and Arlee stepped out before a great house of ancient stone which rose sharply from the street. A high, pointed doorway, elaborately carved, was before her, arching over a dark wooden door heavily studded with nails. Overhead jutted the little balconies of mashrubiyeh. She had no more than a swift impression of the old façade, for immediately a doorkeeper, very vivid in his Oriental blue robes and his English yellow leather Oxfords, flung open the heavy door.

Stepping across the threshold, with a sudden excited quickening of the senses, in which so many things were mingled that the misgiving there had scarcely time to make itself felt, Arlee found herself in a spacious vestibule, marble floored and inlaid with brilliant tile. She had just a glimpse of an inner court between the high arches opposite, and then her attention was claimed by Captain Kerissen, who sprang forward with a flash of welcome in his eyes that was like a leap of palpable light.

"You are come!" he said, in a voice which was that of a man almost incredulous of his good fortune. Then he bowed very formally in his best military fashion, straight-backed from the waist, heels stiffly together. "I welcome you," he said. "My sister is rejoiced.... This stair—if you please."

He waved to a stairway on the left, a small, steep affair, which Arlee ascended slowly, a sense of strangeness mounting with her, in spite of her confident bearing. She had not realized how odd it would feel to be in this foreign house with the Captain at her heels.

There was a door at the top of the stairs standing open into a long, spacious room which seemed shrouded in twilight after the sunflooded court. One entire side of the room was a brown, lace-like screen of mashrubiyeh windows; wide divans stretched beside them, and at the end of the room, facing Arlee, was a throne-like chair raised on a small dais and canopied with heavy silks.

By one of the windows a woman was squatting, a short, stout, turbaned figure, striking a few notes on a tambourine and crooning softly to herself in a low guttural. She raised her head without rising, to look at the entering couple, and for a startled second Arlee had the half hysterical fear that this squatting soloist was the triste and aristocratic representative of the haut-monde of Moslem which the Captain had brought her to see, but the next instant another figure appeared in a doorway and came slowly toward them.

Flying to the winds went Arlee's anticipations of somber elegance. She saw the most amazingly vivid creature that she had ever laid eyes on—a woman, young, though not in her first youth, penciled, powdered, painted, her hair a brilliant red, her gown a brilliant green. After the first shock of scattering amazement, Arlee became intensely aware of a pair of yellow-brown eyes confronting her with a faintly smiling and rather mocking interrogation. The dark of kohl about the eyes emphasized a certain slant diablérie of line and a faint penciling connected with the high and supercilious arch of the brows. Henna flamed on the pointed tips of the fingers blazoned with glittering rings, and Arlee fancied the brilliance of the hair was due to this same generous assistance of nature.

"My soul!" thought the girl swiftly, "they do get themselves up!"

The Captain had stepped forward, speaking quickly in Turkish, with a hard-sounding rattle of words. The sister glanced at him with a deepening of that curious air of mockery and let fall two words in the same tongue. Then she turned to Arlee.

"Je suis enchantée—d'avoir cet honneur—cet honneur inattendu——"

She did not look remarkably enchanted, however. The eyes that played appraisingly over her pretty caller had a quality of curious hardness, of race hostility, perhaps, the antagonism of the East for the West, the Old for the New. Not all the modernity of clothes, of manners, of language, affected what Arlee felt intensely as the strange, vivid foreignness of her.

"My sister does not speak English—she has not the occasion," the Captain was quickly explaining.

"Gracious" thought Arlee, in dismay. She had no illusions about her French; it did very well in a shop or a restaurant, but it was apt to peeter out feebly in polite conversation. Certainly it was no vessel for voyaging in untried seas. There were simply loads of things, she thought discouragedly, the things she wanted most to ask, that she would not be able to find words for.

Aloud she was saying, "I am so glad to have the honor of being here. I am only sorry that my French is so bad. But perhaps you can understand——"

"I understand," assented the Turkish woman, faintly smiling.

The Captain had brought forward little gilt chairs of a French design which seemed oddly out of place in this room of the East, and the three seated themselves. Out of place, too, seemed the grand piano which Arlee's eyes, roving now past her hostess, discovered for the first time.

"It was so kind of you," began Arlee again as the silence seemed to be politely waiting upon her, "to send your automobile for me."

"Ah—my automobile!" echoed the woman on a higher note, and laughed, with a flash of white teeth between carmined lips. "It pleased you?"

"Oh, yes, it is splendid!" the girl declared, in sincere praise. "It is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen."

"I enjoy it very much—that automobile!" said the other, again laughing, with a quick turn of her eyes toward the brother.

Negligently, rather caressingly, the young man murmured a few Turkish words. She shrugged and leaned back in her chair, the flash of animation gone. "And Cairo—that pleases you?" she asked of Arlee.

Stumbling a little in her French, but resolutely rushing over the difficulties, Arlee launched into the expression of how very much it pleased her. Everything was beautiful to her. The color, the sky, the mosques, the minarets, the Nile, the pyramids—they were all wonderful. And the view from the Great Pyramid—and then she stopped, wondering if that were not beyond her hostess's experience.

In confirmation of the thought the Turkish lady smiled, with an effect of disdain. "Ascend the pyramids—that is indeed too much for us," she said. "But nothing is too much for you Americans—no?"

Her curious glance traveled slowly from Arlee's flushed and lovely face, under the rose-crowned hat, down over the filmy white gown and white-gloved hands clasping an ivory card case, to the small, white-shod feet and silken ankles. Arlee did not resent the deliberate scrutiny; in coming to gaze she had been offering herself to be gazed upon, and she was conscious that the three of them presented a most piquant group in this dim and spacious old room of the East—the modern American girl, the cosmopolitan young officer in his vivid uniform, and this sequestered woman, of a period of transition where the kohl and henna of the odalisque contrasted with a coiffure and gown from Paris.

Slowly and disconnectedly the uninspiring conversation progressed. Once, when it appeared halted forever, Arlee cast a helpless look at the Captain and intercepted a sharp glance at his sister. Indeed, Arlee thought, that sister was not distinguishing herself by her grateful courtesy to this guest who was brightening the tristesse of her secluded day, but perhaps this was due to her Oriental languor or the limitations of their medium of speech.

It was a relief to have the Captain suggest music. At their polite insistence Arlee went to the piano and did her best with a piece of MacDowell. Then the sister took her turn, and to her surprise Arlee found herself listening to an exquisite interpretation of some of the most difficult of Brahms. The beringed and tinted fingers touched the notes with rare delicacy, and brought from the piano a quality so vivid and poignant in appeal that Arlee could dream that here the player's very life and heart were finding their real expression.

The last note fell softly into silence, and with her hands still on the keys the woman looked up over her shoulder at her brother, looked with an intentness oddly provocative and prolonged. And for the first time Arlee caught the quality of sudden and unforeseen attraction in her, and realized that this insolence of color, this flaunting hair and painted mouth might have their place in some scheme of allurement outside her own standards.... And then suddenly she felt queerly sorry for her, touched by the quick jarring bitterness of a chord the woman suddenly struck, drowning the laughing words the Captain had murmured to her.... Arlee felt vaguely indignant at him. No one wanted to have jokes tossed at her when she had just poured her heart out in music.

The Captain was on his feet, making his adieux. Now that the ladies were acquainted, he would leave them to discuss the modes and other feminine interests. He wished Miss Beecher a delightful trip upon the Nile and hoped to see her upon her return, and she could be sure that everything would be arranged for her. When she had had her tea and wished to leave, the motor would return her to the hotel. He made a rapid speech in Turkish to his sister, bowed formally to Arlee over a last au revoir and was gone.

Immediately the old woman entered with a tray of tea things, the same old woman who had been squatting by the window, but who had noiselessly left the room during the music. She was followed by a bewitching little girl of about ten with another tray, who remained to serve while the old woman shuffled slowly away. Arlee was struck by the informality of the service; the servants appeared to be underfoot like rugs; they came and went at will, unregarded.

The tea was most disappointingly ordinary, for the pat of butter bore the rose stamp of the English dairy and the bread was English bake, but the sweetmeats were deliciously novel, resembling nothing Arlee had seen in the shops, and new, too, was the sip of syrup which completed the refreshment.

Her hostess had said but little during the repast, remaining silent, with an air of polite attention, her eyes fixed upon her caller with a gaze the girl found bafflingly inscrutable. Now as the girl rose to go, the Turkish woman suddenly revived her manners of hostess and suggested a glimpse of some of the other rooms of the palace. "Our seclusion interests you—yes?" she said, with a half-sad, half-bitter smile on her scarlet lips, and Arlee was conscious of a sense of apologetic intrusion battling with her lively curiosity as she followed her down the long chamber and through a curtained doorway to the right of the throne-like chair, into a large and empty anteroom, where the sunlight streaming through the lightly screened window on the wall at the right reminded Arlee that it was yet glowing afternoon.

She lingered by the window an instant, looking down into the court which she had glimpsed from the vestibule. Across the court she saw a row of windows which, being unbarred, she guessed to be on the men's side of the house, and to the left the court was ended by a sort of roofed colonnade.

Her hostess passed under an elaborate archway, and Arlee followed slowly, passing through one stately, high-ceiled, dusty room into another, plunged again into the twilight of densely screening mashrubiyeh. There were views of fine carving, painted ceilings, inlaid door paneling, and rich and rusty embroideries where the name of Allah could frequently be traced, but Arlee was ignorant of the rare worth of all she saw; she stared about with no more than a girl's romantic sense of the old-time grandeur and the Oriental strangeness, mingled with a disappointment that it was all so empty and devoid of life.

This part of the palace was very old, her hostess said uninterestedly; these were the rooms of the dead and gone ladies of the dead and gone years. One of the Mamelukes had first built this wing for his favorite wife—she had been poisoned by her rival and died, here, on that divan, the narrator indicated, with a negligent gesture.

Wide-eyed, Arlee stared about the empty, darkened rooms and felt dimly oppressed by them. They were so old, so melancholy, these rooms of dead and gone ladies. How much of life had been lived here, how much of hope had been smothered with these walls! What aching love and fiery hate had vibrated here, only to smolder into helpless ennui under the endless weight of tedious days.... She shivered slightly, oppressed by the dreams of these ancient rooms, dreams that were heavy with realities.

Slowly she moved back after her hostess, who had pushed back a panel in one wall, and Arlee stepped beside her within the tiny, balcony-like enclosure the panel had revealed, one side of which was a wooden lace-work of fine screening, permitting one to see but not be seen. Pressing her face against the grill, Arlee found she was looking down into a long and spacious hall, lined with delicate columns bearing beautiful, pointed arches, and brilliant with old gilding and inlay.

This was the colonnade which she had seen forming one side of the court; it was the hall of banquets, she was told, and connected this wing of the palace, the haremlik, with the selamlik, the men's wing, across the way. Here in old times the lord of the palace gave his feasts, and this nook had been built for some favorite to view the revels.

Arlee stared down into the great empty hall with an involuntary quickening of the breath. How desolate it was, but how beautiful in its desolation! What strange revels had taken place there to the notes of wild music, what girls had danced, what voices had shouted, what moods had been indulged! She thought of the men who had made merry there ... and then she thought of the women, generations of women, who had stood where she was standing, pressing their young faces against the grill, their bright eyes peering, peering down. She felt their soft little silken ghosts all about her, their bangles clinking, their perfumes enveloping her sense—lovely little painted dolls, their mimic passions helpless in their hearts....

Dreaming, she turned and in silence retraced her way after her hostess, loitering by the window in the anteroom to watch a veiled girl drawing water at the old well in the center, an old well rich in arabesques.

How much happier, thought Arlee, were these serving maids in the freedom of their poverty than the cloistered aristocrats behind their darkened windows. She wondered if that strange figure beside her, half Moslem, half modern, envied the little maid the saucy jest which she flung at a bare-footed boy idling beside a dozing white donkey. As she watched the old-world quiet of the picture was broken. Some one, the doorkeeper, she thought, from his vivid robes and yellow shoes, came running across the court, shouting something at the girl which sent her flying to the house, her jar forgotten, and another man, an enormous Nubian with blue Turkish bloomers, short red jacket and a red fez, hurried across the court toward the haremlik.

The lady stepped toward the screening and called down; the man stopped, raised his head, and shouted back a jargon of excited gutturals, waving his arms in vehement gesturing. His mistress interrupted with a brief question, then with another, then nodding her head indifferently to herself, she called down an order, apparently, and turned away.

"One of our servants is dead," she murmured to Arlee in explanation. "They say now it is the plague."

"The plague?" repeated the girl absently. She was thinking what a hideous creature that great Nubian was. Then, more vividly, "The plague?"

"You have fear?" said the negligent voice.

Arlee nodded frankly. "Oh, yes, I should be terribly afraid of it," she averred. "Aren't you?" And then she reflected, as she saw the inscrutable smile playing about the older woman's lips, that she must be witnessing that fatalistic apathy of the East that she had read about.

But there was nothing apathetic about the Captain. He followed on the very heels of the announcement, his sword clanking, his spurs jingling, as he bounded up the stairs and hurried through the long, dim drawing-room toward them.

"You have heard?" he cried in English as they came to meet him. "You have heard?"

"Of the plague!" Arlee answered, wondering at his agitation. "Yes, your sister just told me. Is it really the plague?"

"So say those damned doctors—pardon, but they are such imbeciles!" He made an angry gesture with his clenched hand. His face was tense and excited. "They say so. And there is another sick ... Dieu, what a misfortune! Truly, there was illness about us, a little, but who thought——"

"I shall run back to my hotel," said Arlee lightly, "before I catch one of your germs."

"To the hotel—a thousand pardons, but that is the thing forbidden." The young man made a gesture, with empty palms outspread, eloquent of rebellion and despair. "Those doctors—those pig English—they have set a quarantine upon us!"

CHAPTER IV

A SORRY GUEST

"A quarantine?" said Arlee Beecher, in a perfectly flat little voice.

Again the young man exercised his power of gesture, his dark eyes seeming to plead his own helpless desire to mitigate his words.

"Truly a quarantine. It is tyranny, but what can one do? They will hear nothing—they set their guard and it is finished—bien simple. We are their prisoners."

"Prisoners?" Her mind appeared but a hollow echo of his words. Her heart was dropping, dropping sickishly, into unending space. Then meaning stabbed her like a dentist's needle, and a pandemonium of incredulity and revolt clamored through every nerve in her body. "Why you can't mean—I'm going back to the hotel this instant! I haven't seen your servant!"

"That is nothing to them. They have no reason—heads of pigs! No one must leave or they shoot—the tyrants, the imbecile tyrants! But their day will not be forever—Islam will not endure——"

It was of no moment to Arlee Beecher what Islam would not endure. Her heart was galloping now like a runaway horse, but her voice rang with quick reaction from that first sickening shock.

"What nonsense," she said positively. "They wouldn't shoot me. Why didn't you call me when the English doctor was here. I could have explained then. But now—now I had better telephone, I suppose. Either to the doctor or the English ambassador—or the American consul. I'll make them understand in a jiffy. Where is your telephone, please?"

"Alas, not in the palace." The young captain's look of regret deepened.

"But—but you telephoned your sister! You telephoned her this afternoon."

"Ah, yes, but I spoke to a telephone which is in a palace near here—the palace of my uncle. I sent a servant with the message. But I can send a message to that palace," he offered eagerly, "and they can telephone for you. Or I can send notes out to all the people you wish. The soldiers will call boys to deliver them."

Across the girl's perfectly white face a tremor of panic darted; then she bit her lips very hard and stared very intently past the Captain's green and gold shoulder. She had totally forgotten the sister who had sunk on a divan beside them, her brown eyes rimmed in their dark pencilings turning from one to the other as if to read their faces.

"I'll just speak to those soldiers, myself," said Arlee decidedly. "I'll make them understand." She left them there, their eyes upon her and sped down the long room to the door which the Captain's hurried entrance had left half open. She disappeared down the steps.

In three minutes she was back, a flame in the frightened white of her cheeks, a flame in the frightened blue of her eyes.

"Captain Kerissen," she called, and he took a step nearer to her, his face alert with sympathy, "Captain Kerissen, that is a native soldier! He is at the bottom of the stairs—with a bayonet—and he will not let me pass. He doesn't know a word I say. Please come and tell him."

"Miss Beecher, it is useless for me to tell him anything," said the young Turk with a ring of quiet conviction. "I have been talking to that one—and to the others. They are at every entrance. It is as I told you—we are prisoners."

"Surely you can tell him that I am a guest—you can bribe him to turn his head, to let me slip by——"

"He would be shot if he let you out that street door. He has his orders to keep the ladies in their quarters and it is death to him to disobey. That is the discipline—and the discipline has no mercy—particularly upon the native soldiers." His tone held bitterness. "It is useless to resist the soldiers. You must resign yourself to remain a guest until I can obtain word to one who can render assistance.... Will it be so hard?" he added sympathetically, as she stood silent, her lips pressed quiveringly together. "My sister will do everything——"

"Of course I can't stay here," broke in Arlee in her clear, positive young tones. "I must get back to the Evershams—and we are going up the Nile to-morrow morning. Can you get a message to that doctor at once? And have someone go and telephone from the next house to the consul and ambassador—and I'll write them notes, too."

Her voice broke suddenly. On what wings of folly she had come alone to this place! Her bright adventure was a stupid scrape. Oh, what mischance—what mischance! She was chokingly ashamed of the predicament—to be penned up by a quarantine in a Moslem household. She was angry, defiant and humiliated at once. What would the Evershams say—and Robert Falconer——

She had never waited for anything as she waited for the answers to the passionately urgent notes she sent out. She had written the doctor, the ambassador, the consul, the Evershams. And then she walked up and down, up and down that long, dim room which grew darker and darker with the fading light and counted off the seconds and the minutes and the hours with her pulsing heart beats. She had never known there was such suspense in the world. It was comparable to nothing in her girl's life—the only faint analogy was in the old school-time when she thought she had failed in the history examination and her roommate had gone to the office to find out for her. She remembered walking the floor then, in a silly panic of fear. But she had not failed—she had just squeaked through and it would be like that now. Someone would come to tell her that everything was all right and laugh with her at her foolish fright. But underneath this strain of fervent reassurance ran a cold little current like an underground brook, a seeping chill of dread and vague fear and strange amazement that she should be here in this lonely palace, peering out of darkened windows, waiting and listening.

This time it was the Captain's steps, coming up the stairs. Perceptive of her impatience, he had left her to herself, till he could bring word. Now she stood, listening to the nearing jingle that accompanied his footsteps, her hands clasped involuntarily against her breast in rigid tension. And when she saw his face through the dusk, saw the courteous deprecation of it, the solicitous sympathy, she did not need his words to tell her that it was not yet all right.

There was nothing to be done. Legal and medical authorities united in insisting that no one, not even the guest, should leave the palace until the fear of spreading the infection was past. This might be modified in a day or two, but for the present they were too frightened to make exceptions.

And they were going up the Nile Friday morning, Arlee remembered numbly. And this was Thursday night.

"Did the Evershams—did they answer my letter?" she said with dry lips.

The Evershams, it seemed, had not been at the hotel. Perhaps when they had read the letter they would be able to do something about it.

"They'll just talk!" cried Arlee passionately, her breast heaving.

She wanted to scream, she wanted to rave, she wanted to fly down the stairs and hurl herself recklessly against that barring bayonet. But because there was pride and spirit behind her delicate loveliness she shut the door hard upon those imps of hysteria and with high-held head and palely smiling lips she thanked the Captain for the hospitality he was extending in his sister's name. Yes, thank you, she would rejoin them at dinner. Yes, thank you, she would like to go to her room now.

A serving maid, called by her hostess, conducted her—the blue-robed girl, she thought, that she had seen drawing water at the well. A black shawl hung from her head and dangling in its folds the yashmak ready to be slipped on at the approach of the men before whom she must appear veiled. Her bare feet were thrust into scarlet slippers, and as she moved silver anklets were visible, hanging loosely over slim, brown ankles. Shuffling slightly, yet with an erectly graceful carriage, the girl led the way into the ante-room again, pulled open one of the closed doors in the opposite wall and passed up an encased staircase wrapped in darkness. They emerged into the dusk of a long, dim hall, where hanging lamps from the ceiling shed a mild luster and a strong smell of oil, and passing one or two doors on the right, the maid pushed, open one that was rich in old gilding.

Crossing the threshold Arlee felt that she was crossing the centuries again into her own time.

The room was a glitter of white and rose; the windows, unscreened, admitted the warm glow of late afternoon, and windows and doorway and bed were smothered in rose and white hangings. A white triple-mirrored dressing-table gleamed with gold and ivory pieces; a white fur rug was stretched before a rose silk divan billowy with plump pillows, and an open door beyond gave a view of shining tile and a porcelain bath. Near her was a baby grand piano in white enamel—reminding her of one she had seen in the White House—and she noted absently a pile of gaudily covered music upon it betokening tunes different from the Brahms she had heard downstairs.

The maid indicated a pitcher of hot water in the bathroom—evidently pipes and faucets played no part with the shining tub—and then stepped outside, closing the door.

After an instant's hesitation, Arlee took off her hat and bathed her face and hands, then moved slowly to the dressing table to glance at her hair. Hesitantly she picked up the shining brush and stared at the flourish of an unintelligible monogram upon the back. Whose brush was this? Whose room was she in? The place, vivid, silken, scented, was fairly breathing with occupancy.

She laid down the brush without using it, touched her hair with absent fingers, and crossed to the windows. She looked down into a garden, a deep tangle of a garden, presided over by a huge lebbek tree that threw a pall of shadow upon the faintly moving flowers beneath.

The place seemed a riot in neglect, for across the white sanded paths thick creepers had flung their arms, and vines and climbers were scaling the gnarled limbs of the acacia trees and covering the high walls beyond. She was looking to the west where the rose and gold of sunset still hung breathless on the painted air, though the sun was hidden below the fringe of palms which rose above the wall, and for a moment that still brilliance of the sky above the sharply silhouetted palms made her heart quicken in forgetfulness.

And then her hands became aware of the bars she had been unconsciously clasping, white-painted bars extending across the window. They were of iron.

Not even here was there freedom, she thought with a throb of dread, not even here where one faced dark gardens and blank walls and the empty west.

Somehow that dinner had passed, that queer dinner in the candle light between the silent, painted woman and the politely talkative young man, and passed without a word from outside for the girl whose nerves were fraying with the suspense. The old woman and the little girl had served them with a meal which would have been judged delicious in any European hotel and though Arlee's nerves were tricky her young appetite was not and she ate and talked with a determined little air of trying to dissipate the strangeness of the situation.

And with the coffee came inspiration. She began to plan ... half listening to the Captain's amiable efforts to entertain her with an account of the palace, and of its history under Ismail, the Mad Khedive, who had occupied it for some months, tearing down and building in his feverish way, only to weary at the first hint of completion. She was wondering why in the world the inspiration had not arrived at once. Perhaps something in this fatalistic air, this stupid acceptance of authority had numbed her.

With alacrity she accepted the Captain's suggestion of a stroll in the garden, and was relieved when the silent sister did not rise to accompany them, but remained in the candle-light with her coffee and cigarette. She found the woman's lightly mocking, watchful eyes, the enigmatic smile upon the carmined lips, increasingly hard to bear. That woman didn't like her—she had failed, somehow, to propitiate her hostile curiosities.

Back through the old empty rooms of the past, the Captain led her, and passing by the screened alcove from which Arlee had looked down into the ancient banquet hall he came to a small dark painted door which he unlocked. The door opened upon a flight of worn and narrow stone steps descending into the garden.

It had been night in the palace of darkened windows but in the garden it was yet day, although the rose and gold of sunset had faded to paling pinks and translucent ambers and in the east the stars were shining in the deepening blue. It was the same garden on which her windows opened; Arlee recognized the huge lebbek tree in the center, the row of acacias, and the palms against the farthest wall. It was a very old garden. Those trees must have seen many, many years, she thought, and felt again that sense of vague oppression and melancholy which the lonely rooms of the palace had given her; that row of acacias which cast such crooked shadows over the path had been planted by very long-ago hands.

So she thought fleetingly, then stared about, her concern for other things. Captain Kerissen lighted a cigarette; over his cupped hands his eyes followed hers searchingly.

"That is the hall of banquets?" she said, pointing to the raised colonnade.

"Ah, yes—you are quick to learn!" he complimented.

"And could we walk through that into the courtyard?"

"Undoubtedly."

"And this side is the haremlik," she murmured, glancing up at the windows upon the third floor which she felt were those of that rose and white room. Much of the rest of the wing, she saw, extending down to the high wall at right angles to it, was in a ruinous and dilapidated condition. "What is there?" she asked.

"The rooms the Khedive Ismail left unfinished. They are of no use."

"And on the other side?" she persisted, pointing towards the wall that was the continuation of the men's wing, which stopped at the colonnade.

"On the other side is the palace of another man, and on the other side of that, ending the road is a cimitère—what you say, cemetery."

"And back of that wall?" She nodded at the one behind the palms, running parallel to the banquet hall.

"Back of that a canal, Mademoiselle, and across are other palaces.... You study the geography, it appears?"

"Indeed I do!" She turned towards him, her face bright with eagerness. Her light curls were blown about her forehead by a breeze, hot and dry, that seemed to mingle the odors of the desert with a piercing sweetness which it drew from the deep throats of the lilies swaying beside the path. "And I think that is going to be the way out for me." Her quick nod was for the wall behind the palms. "I want you to do me a great big favor, Captain Kerissen, that will make me your debtor for life! You must help me break out of this quarantine this very night?"

Not the ghost of a fear of failure to persuade him lurked in those bright, dancing eyes. Not the ghost of a fear of failure haunted those confident, smiling lips.

He sucked on his cigarette a moment, then slowly blew a thin ring of blue smoke. He appeared interested in watching it.

"What is it—this idea?" he murmured.

"Well, you may have a better one but mine is just to climb that wall, as soon as it gets dark. If you just get a ladder, or a pile of chairs I am sure I can manage it—and then I'll be back at the hotel in an hour!"

He took out his cigarette and shook his head at her. "You would drop, like the plum of Haydee, into the arms of the soldier who is guarding on the other side.... Shall I tell you the story of that plum?"

"A soldier guarding—a native soldier?"

"Yes."

"Then—then please won't you see if you can bribe him?" she shamelessly pleaded, anxiously clasping and unclasping her hands. "Please, Captain Kerissen, you must help me to run away to-night. I can't be shut up like this—I can't give up the Nile trip and besides—Oh, I really must be back at that hotel to-night!... If that soldier is sure no one else will see him I know you can persuade him to look away just a little minute while I slip down and run off!"

"Ah, no, no, my dear Miss Beecher, there is no hope of that." The young man started walking down the path and Arlee walked beside him, her eyes fixed on his face, incredulous of the denial that they were reading there. "He would think it a test, a trap—not for one minute is it to be thought of! Now could I let you go alone in that place by the canal. There is danger—you do not understand——"

"Oh, I understand, but I can take care of myself!" Across her pleading flashed the ironic thought of how excellently she had taken care of herself in coming there that very afternoon! "Just let me get over that wall and I can find my way—and if you cannot bribe the man we can wait till it is darker and then, when he is at the other end, why I can be down and off in a jiffy!"

"He would shoot," said the Captain. "He has his order. I have talked with them.... And what would the authorities say when they send here the doctor to-morrow and you are gone?"

"Say—say—Oh, what does it matter what they say? Tell them that I ran away without your knowledge. Surely——"

"But your name has been given as detained. They would not let you reappear in the world——"

"You leave that to me! I know it would be all right—once I was there. Please do this for me, Captain Kerissen—please! I know that in a great palace like this there must be many, many ways where one could slip into the streets——"

"In all this palace there are but three doors—the door in the vestibule by which you entered, the great door to its right, under the arch into the court, and the little door from the garden to the canal." He waved his cigarette at the wall ahead of them, towards which they were slowly walking. "And all those three doors are barred upon the outside and there is a soldier before each one—and the soldier that you saw within the vestibule, watching us there."

"But—but the windows." She remembered the mashrubiyeh, but went on resolutely, "I mean, the windows on the men's side. Aren't there any windows in that part which are open?"

"The selamlik is a short wing and looks into the court." A note of impatience sounded in his voice. He tossed away his cigarette which fell, a burning spark, in the shadows. Already, as they talked, it had grown darker, and the impatient tropic night was stealing on them. "It is no use," he repeated. "There is no way out for you—or any of us."