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Page 32
She woke with a smothered cry. In the darkness a hand had touched
her.
CHAPTER VI
A GIRL IN THE BAZAARS
Billy slapped on his hat with a clap of violence. She might have
just _seen_ him! Then he got up and marched down the steps. There
was no more use in camping on that veranda. There was no more use in
guarding that entrance. When a girl went whirling off in a
limousine, "all dolled up" as his academic English put it, that girl
wasn't going to be back in five minutes. And anyway he'd be blessed
if he lay around in the way any longer like a doormat with "Welcome"
inscribed upon the surface.
So this spurt of masculine shame at his swift surrender to her, and
his masculine resentment at being ignored as she went by, sent him
hurrying down the street resolved not to return till dinner.
From habit his steps took him to the bazaars. But the zest of that
bright pageant was dulled for him. The color was gone even from the
red canopies, and the excitement had vanished from the din of
noises, the interest fled from the grave figures squatting in their
cubby holes of shops draped with silky rags or sewing upon scarlet
slippers. He listened apathetically to the warring shouts of the
donkey boys and the anathemas of a jostled water carrier stooping
under his distended goatskin, then dodged out of the way of a
goaded donkey and turned into one of the passages where the
four-footed could not penetrate.
For a few moments the bargaining over a silver bracelet between two
beturbaned and berobed Arabs caught the surface of his attention,
and as the wrangling became a bedlam of imprecations, and the
explosive gestures made physical violence a development apparently
of mere seconds, Billy's eyes brightened and he estimated chances.
But as he picked his favorite there was one final frenzy of fury,
and then--peace and joy, utter calm on the wild waters! One Arab
counted out the coins from a little leather bag about his neck and
the other passed over the bracelet, and with mutual salaams and
smiling speeches, behold! the affair was accomplished.
Disgustedly Billy turned away. Then on the other side of him he
heard a voice, a sweet and rather high voice, with a musical
intensity of inflection that was as English as the Union Jack.
"Yes, it's _sweetly_ pretty," the voice was saying irresolutely,
"but I don't think I _quite_ care to--not at _that_ price."
"I--I will buy it for you--yes?" said another voice. "It is made for
you--so 'sweetly pretty' as you say."
Billy turned. A slim, tall girl in a dark blue frock was standing
before a counter of Oriental jewelry, her head turned, with an air
of startled surprise, to the man on the other side of her who had
just spoken. He was a short, stout, blond man, heavily flushed,
showily dressed, with a fulsome beam in his light-blue eyes and an
ingratiating grin beneath his upturned straw-colored mustaches.
The girl turned her head away toward the shop-keeper and put back
the turquoise-studded buckle she held in her hand. "No, I do not
care for it," she said in a steady voice whose coldness was for the
intruder and turned away.
Billy had a glimpse of scarlet cheeks and dark lashed eyes before
the blond young man again took his attention.
"You do not like it--no?" he said, blocking her path, his face
thrust out to smile into hers. "But I buy you anything you wish--I
make you one present----"
The girl gave a quick look about. But she was in a pocket; for there
was no other exit to that line of shops but the path he was
blocking. All about her the dark-skinned venders and shoppers, the
bearded men, the veiled women, the impish urchins, were watching the
encounter with beady eyes of malicious interest.
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