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Page 30
Suddenly she was frightened. He did not look like a man who wholly
surrenders his desires. His eyes seemed to say to her, "Wait--the
last word has not been spoken!" She felt her knees trembling.
With an effort she got out, "It is granted--but never again--must
you misunderstand. An American girl----"
She stopped. There was a lump in her throat. Across a bright,
familiar veranda she could hear a clear, sharp voice answer,
"American goose!" She saw a lean tanned face burn red with anger. A
wave of loneliness went through her. The irony of it was pitiless.
How right Robert Falconer had been!
He was staring down at the table beside him, frowning, considering.
She saw with peculiar distinctness how the cigarette he had dropped
had burned a hole in the fine linen. One of the candles was dripping
lopsidedly. She thought some one ought to right it. She wondered if
that soft step, hesitating, behind the curtains, was the serving
woman's, and she turned toward that doorway.
"I don't think I care for any coffee," she said, with an air of
careless finality. "I think I will go back to my room. Good
evening."
He followed her to the doorway, drawing aside the curtains as she
passed into the anteroom, and opening the door at the foot of the
steps, with an answering, "Good evening," and an added, "Till
to-morrow, Mademoiselle." And then, as the door closed below her,
she paused on the dark stairs and huddled against the wall,
listening to the faint footfalls from below, crossing and
recrossing. Then, when the silence seemed continual, she tiptoed
down the stairs again, softly pushed open the unlatched door, stole
across the anteroom to the curtained doorway and peered in.
The salon was empty, and in its center the supper table stood
stripped of its cloth and candles. Only the pale light from the
windows dispelled the growing dark. Like a little white wraith Arlee
fled through the room and turned the handle of the door at the head
of the _haremlik_ stairs. The door was locked.
She shook the handle, first cautiously, then with increasing
violence, then she ran back into the room to the nearest window,
staring down through the screen. It would have been a steep jump
down into the street, but her tense nerves would have dared it
instantly. Her hands tore at the _mashrubiyeh_, but the tiny
spindles and delicate curves held sound and firm. She beat against
it with fierce little fists; she leaped against it with all her
trifling weight. It did not yield an inch. Was there iron in all
that delicacy? Or was that old wood impregnable in its grim trust?
Wildly she glanced back into the room. Suppose she took a chair and
beat at this carving--could she clear a way before the servants
came? Could she take the jump successfully? She gazed down into the
street, estimating the fall, trying to calculate the hurt.
As she gazed, her eyes grew fixed and filled with utter amazement.
Down the street, on a black horse that arched his curving neck and
danced on light, fleet feet, rode a man in a uniform of green and
gold. He sat erect, his clear-cut profile toward her. The next
instant his horse, side-stepping at a blowing paper, turned his face
into view. It was Captain Kerissen.
Some one was stirring in the anteroom, and Arlee darted to the left
of the throne-chair and through the door there which stood ajar.
She was in a dim salon, like the one that she had left, but smaller,
and across from her was another door. She flew toward it, wild with
the hope of escape, and it opened before her eager hands.
From the shadows of the room it disclosed came a figure with a quick
cry. So suddenly it came, so tumultuously it threw itself toward her
that Arlee had a startled vision of bare arms, glittering with
jeweled bands, arrested outstretched before her as the low gladness
of the cry broke in an angry guttural. Slowly the arms dropped in a
gesture of despair. She saw a face, distorted, passionate, grow
haggard beneath its paint in the reversal of hope.
"Madame!" stammered Arlee to that strange figure of her hostess.
"Madame--Oh, pardon me," she cried, snatching at her French, "but
tell me how I can go away from here. Tell me----"
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