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Page 24
He did not pause for such foolish questionings. "Why do you not wish
me to tell you what you are?" he said reproachfully. "Is it because
you doubt that I mean it?"
"Because I am not used to such compliments--and I would rather not
hear them now. I am your guest and I am very tired. I must go in."
It was very dark in the garden. And it was still and unutterably
lonely. Only the stars burned above them in the heavens; only the
light wind of the desert stirred. From the far distance the muffled
beat of the tom-tom sounded. Surely, thought Arlee, surely she was
dreaming.... This could not be Arlee Beecher, here with this
man--this Turk.
"I must go in," she repeated, with a heightening of assurance.
As he looked down at her for a moment that chill dread seemed to
lay its icy hands on her very heart as she glimpsed something of the
tumult within his eyes. She had a vision of him as a man capable of
all, reckless, impassioned, poised upon the brink of some desperate
plunge.... Then the hands of consequences seemed to lay compelling
hold upon him; the fire was extinguished; the vision gone like a
mirage. His eyes were friendly, his lips smiling, as he bowed to
her, in deferential courtesy, to all appearances a gentleman of her
world.
"I must not tire my guest," he said, and stood aside to let her pass
up the narrow stone steps.
"We shall have other walks," he added, and the chill, delicate
menace of those words went with Arlee Beecher to the rose and white
room, and kept her sorry company through the long and restless
hours.
CHAPTER V
WITHIN THE WALLS
Again the knocking, muffled but softly insistent, and Arlee's eyes,
heavy with tardy sleep, came slowly open, resting blankly on the
glittering strangeness of the room. The daylight was streaming in
the wide windows, striking brightly on the white enameled furniture
which had glimmered so ghost-like through the wakeful darkness of
the night, and flung back in dancing points of color from the
mirrors and the glass and gold of toilet pieces. The air was hot and
close, as if the first freshness of the morning was already past.
Again through the heavy door came the knocking and the soft
reassurance of a girl's voice. Arlee sprang from the couch where she
had lain down that night, not undressed, but with her white frock
exchanged for the neglig�e she had found laid out for her among
other things, and hurried toward the door where she had piled two
chairs to supplement the lock--a foolish-looking barricade in the
shining light of day, she thought, her lips lifting whimsically.
The young Turkish maid entered with a huge jar of water which she
emptied into the bath, returning to the door to take in another and
yet another and another from some unseen porter, and pouring these
into the bath, she added a spray of perfume and laid out powders and
towels, smiling the while at Arlee, with the fascinated interest of
a child.
"Do you speak English?" said Arlee eagerly.
But the girl laughed and shook her head at the question, and at the
French and German with which Arlee next addressed her, and answered
in soft Turkish, at which it was Arlee's turn to laugh and shake her
head. But she felt a little rueful behind her pleasant smiling. She
wished she could talk with the girl. She wondered about her. She had
very handsome dark eyes, though perhaps overbold at times, but her
lips were thick and her nose was flattened as if generations of
_yashmak_-wearing women had crushed every hope of contour.
The cool freshness of the water was grateful to her senses. It was a
plunge back into sanity and normal life again, drowning those ghosts
of vague foreboding and anxieties which had kept such unpleasant
vigil with her, and when the Turkish girl returned with a tray,
Arlee was able to sit and eat breakfast with a trace of amusement at
the oddity of the affair--sipping coffee in this Parisian boudoir
overlooking an Egyptian garden.
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