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 negligée 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.
As she was buttering a last crumb of toast the girl re-entered with
a box from the florist. Her white teeth flashing at Arlee in a smile
of admiring interest, she broke the cord with thick fingers and
Arlee found the box full of roses, creamy pink and dewy fresh. The
Captain's card was enclosed, and across the back of it he had
written a message:
I am sending out for some flowers for our guest and I
hope that they will convey to her my greeting. If there
is anything that you would have, it is yours if it is in
my power to give. My sister is indisposed, but will visit
you when her indisposition will permit. This afternoon I
will see you and report the result of our protests to the
authorities. Until then, be tranquil, and accommodate
yourself here.
A tacit apology, thought Arlee, pondering the dull letter a moment,
then dropping it to touch the roses with light fingers. The young
man's wits had evidently returned with the sun. He had utterly lost
them last night with the starshine and the shadows and his Oriental
conception of the intimacy of the situation--but, after all, he had
too much good sense not to be aware of the folly of annoying her.
Her cheeks flushed a little warmer at the memory of the bold words
and the lordly hand on her arm, and her heart quickened in its
beating. She had certainly been playing with fire, and the sparks
she had so ignorantly struck had lighted for her an unforgettable
glimpse of the Oriental nature beneath all its English polish, but
she imagined, very fearlessly, that the spark was out. She was not a
nature that was easily alarmed or daunted; beneath her look of
delicate fragility was a very sturdy confidence, and she had the
implicit sense of security instinct in the kitten whose blithe days
have known nothing but kindness. Yet she felt herself tremendously
experienced and initiated....
She wrote back a word of thanks for the flowers and a request for
writing paper and ink, and when they were brought she wrote three
most urgent letters, and after an instant's hesitation a fourth--to
the Viceroy himself. Feeling that his mail might be bulky, she
marked it "Immediate" in large characters and gave them to the maid,
who nodded intelligently and shuffled away.
It was very odd, she thought then, that she had no letters. By now
the Evershams must surely have written--she had begged them to....
But she was _not_ going to be silly and panicky, she determinedly
informed that queer little catch in her side which came at the
thought of her isolation, and humming defiantly she sat down at the
white piano and opened the score of a light opera which she knew:
Say not love is a dream,
Say not that hope is vain ...
She had danced to that tune last night--no, the night before
last--danced to it with that extraordinarily impulsive young man
from home--for all America was now home to her spirit. And she had
promised to see him last night. She wondered what he had thought of
her absence.... She could imagine the Evershams dolefully deploring
her rashness, yet not without a totally unconscious tinge of proper
relish at its prompt punishment. They were such dismal old dears!
They _would_ complain--they must have made her the talk of the hotel
by now. Robert Falconer would enjoy that! And his sister and Lady
Claire would ask about her, and Lady Claire would say, "How
odd--fancy!" in that rather clipped and high-bred voice of hers....
But she was _not_ going to think about it!
She opened more music, stared wonderingly at the unfamiliar pages,
read the English translation beneath the German lines, then pushed
them away, her cheeks the pinker. They were as bad as French
postcards, she thought, aghast. Whose room was this, anyway? Whose
piano was this? Whose was the lacy negligée she had worn and the
gossamer lingerie the maid had placed in the chiffonier for her? Was
she usurping her hostess's boudoir?
She began to walk restlessly up and down the room, feeling time
interminable, hating each lagging second of delay.
Then came a tray of luncheon, and lying upon it a yellow envelope.
With an eagerness that hurt in its keenness she snatched it up and
tore out the folded sheet. Her eyes leaped down the lines. Then
slowly they followed them again:
I think it very strange of you to leave us like that, but
of course you are your own mistress. We are sorry and
hope it will soon be over and you will join us again,
unless you prefer your other friends, the Maynards. We
have packed your clothes and sent them to Cook's for your
orders, and we have paid your hotel bill. Let us know
when you can join us.
MRS. EVERSHAM.
That was all. No word of real sympathy--no declaration of help.
Passive acceptance of her predicament--perhaps indeed a retributive
feeling of its fitness for her folly. They were annoyed.... Packing
her clothes must have been a bother--so was paying her hotel bill.
She crumpled the telegram with an angry little hand. Evidently they
had done none of the telephoning she had begged of them. Surely
there would have been time for that, if only they had hurried a
little! She remembered with a sort of hopeless rage their maddening
deliberateness.... Well, they were gone off to the Nile--the
telegram, she saw, had been sent as they were on their way to the
boat--and she had nothing more to hope from them! But surely the
other people, the consul, the ambassador, the mysterious medical
authorities, would understand when they had read her letters.
She sent another note to the Captain, asking to be called when the
doctor came, and then she sat down at the little white table and
began again to write.
But not to Falconer. Never would she beg of him, never, she
resolved, with a tightening of her soft lips. She would never let
him know how miserable she was over this stupid scrape; when she
returned to the hotel she would carry affairs with a high hand and
hold forth upon the interesting quaintness of her experience and the
old-world charm of her hostess. She laughed, in angry mockery. Never
to him, after their quarrel, would she confess herself.
The letter was to a young man whose gray eyes she remembered as very
kind and whose chin as very vigorous. He would do things, she
thought. And he would understand--he was an American. And dimly she
felt that she didn't want him to think she had utterly forgotten
her promise of the evening before last, and she didn't want him to
be filled with whatever dismal impression the Evershams were giving
out. So she dwelt very lightly upon her annoyance at being detained,
and asked him please to see the consul or the English Ambassador or
somebody in power and hurry matters up a little, as her rightful
caretakers had taken themselves off to the Nile. And she said
nothing stupid about the strangeness of her writing to him after
only speaking to him twice and never being really presented. She
merely added, "Please hurry things--I hate being a prisoner," and
sealed and addressed it with a flourish to William B. Hill, and sent
it off by the maid, and felt oddly comforted by the memory of
Billy's vigorous chin.
The heat of the rose-and-white room was stifling now as the slant
sun of afternoon burned through the closed blinds and drawn
hangings. Languidly she curled up upon the sofa and pillowed her
heavy head on the scented silk, and so, drowsing with fitful dreams,
she lost the sense of the lagging hours.
She roused to find the maid at hand with more water jars, and, when
she had bathed, the girl reappeared and beckoned her to follow.
Perhaps the doctor was below, thought Arlee; perhaps the consulate
had sent for her! With flying feet she followed down the dark old
stairs and across the anteroom into the dim salon, only to find a
candle-lighted table set for dinner in the middle of the room and
Captain Kerissen bowing ceremoniously beside it.
In the blankness of her disappointment she scarcely grasped what he
was saying about the dinner hour being early and his sister being
indisposed. She interrupted with a breathless demand for news:
"And my letters--surely there has been time for answers!"
"Answers, yes," he replied, "but not such as I could wish for your
sake."
"You mean----?"
"The English have written to me and request that I cease to trouble
the department with my importunities. For I myself had written to
them again, that I might find grace in your eyes by accomplishing
your desires. They say to me that it is useless. The plague is more
serious than the convenience of my visitors, and all must be done
according to rule. When there is no danger you may depart."
The crash of hopes went echoing to the farthest reaches of her
consciousness. But pride stiffened her to dissemble, and she tried
to smile as she mechanically accepted the Captain's invitation to be
seated at the little candle-lighted table.
"There was no word to me personally?" she asked.
"None, but the telegram which came this morning. I judged that it
was not of a significance, for you did not send me a report."
"No--it was not of a significance," she repeated, with a ghost of a
little smile. "It was from the Evershams."
"Ah! Their condolences, I think?... And is it that they still make
the Nile trip?"
"Yes.... They went this morning." She spoke hesitantly, averse to
having this eager-eyed young host perceive how truly deserted she
was. "They expect me to take the express train later and join them."
"It is only a night's ride to Assouan." He spoke soothingly. "But
you are not eating, Miss Beecher. I recommend this consommé."
It was worth the recommending. Miss Beecher spooned it slowly, then
demanded, "Why was I not called when the doctor came?"
"But he does not come! Perhaps he is afraid"--the young man's brows
and shoulders rose expressively--"but certainly he does not risk
himself. If a servant is ill we are to tell a soldier and the sick
one will be taken away to the house of plague--_bien simple_. It is
so hard that I am helpless for you," he said, with sympathetic
concern, then added, with an air of boyish confession, "although I
do not deny that it is happiness for me to see you here."
The look in his eyes forced itself upon her. And the secret sense of
discomfort intruded like a third presence at the little table.
In a clear voice of dry indifference: "That's very polite of you,"
she remarked, "but I imagine you are pretty furious, too, to be kept
pent up in somebody else's house like this."
"But this is not somebody else's house," he smiled, his eyes
observant of her quick glance and look of confusion. "I am _chez
moi_."
"Oh! I thought--I was visiting your sister."
"My sister lives with me. She is a widow--and we are both alone."
"She does not seem to care for company."
"She is indisposed. She regrets it exceedingly." The young man
looked grave and solicitous. "But I trust your comfort is not being
neglected?"
"Oh, my comfort is being beautifully attended to, thank you, but my
patience is wearing itself out!" Arlee spoke with a blithe
assumption of humor.
"I wish that I could extend the resources of my palace for you."
"You must tell me about the palace. I shall want to picture it to my
friends when I tell them about it. It's very old, isn't it? It must
have seen a great deal of life."
"Ah, yes, it has seen life--and what life! _Quelle vie!_" A flash of
real enthusiasm dispelled the suave indolence of his handsome
features.
"Have you seen those old rooms? Those rooms that were built by the
Mamelukes? There is nothing now in Cairo like them."
"I thought them very beautiful," said the girl. "Tell me about those
Mamelukes who lived here."
"They were _men_," he said with pride, his eyes kindling, "men who
lived as kings dare not live to-day!" The subject of those old days
and those old ancestors of his was evidently dear to the young
modern, and he launched into an animated sketch of those times,
trying to picture for Arlee something of the glowing pageant of the
past. And as she listened she found her own high spirit stirring in
sympathy with the barbaric strength of those old nobles, riding to
battle on their fiery Arab steeds, waging their private wars,
brooking no affront, no command, working no other man's will.
"They knew both power and beauty," he declared, "like the Medici of
Florence. There are no leaders like that in the modern world. To-day
beauty is beggared, and power is lusterless.... And taste? Taste is
a hundred-headed Hydra, roaring with a hundred tongues!"
"While in the old days in Cairo it only roared with the tongues of
Mamelukes?" Arlee suggested, a glint of mischief in her smile.
He nodded. "It should be the concern of nobles--not of the rabble.
That is why I should hate your America--where the rabble prevail."
"It's not nice of you to call me a rabble," said Arlee, busy with
her plate of chicken. "But I want to hear more about your old
Mamelukes. Is the story true about the Sultan's being so afraid of
them that he had them taken by surprise and killed?"
"He did well to fear them," said Kerissen. "And he, too, was a
strong man who had the power to clear his own path. Those nobles
were in the path of Mohammed Ali. They were too strong for him, he
knew it--and they knew it and were not afraid. On one day they were
all assembled at the Citadel, at the ceremony which Mohammed Ali was
giving in honor of his son, Toussoum. It was the first of March, in
1811, and my ancestor, the father of my father's father, rode out
from this palace, through the gate by the court, which is the old
gate, in his most splendid attire to greet his sovereign's son. The
emerald upon his turban was as large as a man's eye, and his sword
hilt was studded with turquoise and pearls and the hilt was a blazon
of gold. His robes were of silk, gold threaded, and his horse was
trapped with gold and silver and a diamond hung between her eyes....
The Mamelukes were fêted and courted, and then, as they were leaving
the Citadel--you have been up there?" he broke off to question, and
Arlee nodded, her eyes wide and intent like a listening child's,
"and you recall that deep, crooked way between the high walls,
between the fortified doors? Imagine to yourself that deep way
filled with men on horseback, quitting the Citadel, having taken
leave of their Sultan--they were a picture of such pride and pomp as
Egypt has never seen again. And then the treachery--the great gates
closed before them and behind them, the terrible fire upon them from
all sides, the bullets of the hidden Albanians pouring down like the
hosts of death--the uproar, the cries of horses, the shouts of the
trapped men, and then all the tumult dying, dying, down to the last
moan and hiccough of blood."
"But one escaped?" questioned the girl, breaking the silence which
had followed the cessation of his voice. "Is it true that one really
escaped?"
"Anym-bey--yes, he was the only one that escaped that massacre. He
had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in
the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and
then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head
he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop,
he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down--down--down!
Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape.
Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but
the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He
was killed."
"Oh, the pity--after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked
around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old
embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room
makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it
all when the dragoman told me--probably because he showed me the
mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it
was all a legend--like the mark."
"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the
indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where
Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?"
laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles
they think you tourists!"
But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the
plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was
really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.
"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised
chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.
The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No,
that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and
lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been
brought to the home of her husband--there she holds her reception.
Those are the fêtes to which the English ladies come in such
curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.
"You cannot blame them for feeling a real--interest," said Arlee
hesitantly.
"Their interest--pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violent
gesture with his cigarette. "They peer at the bride with their
haggard eyes, and they say, 'What! You have not seen your husband
till to-day! How strange--how strange! Has he not written to you?
Suppose you do not like him,' and they laugh and add, 'Fancy a girl
among us being married like that!'... The imbeciles--whose own
marriages are abominations!"
For a moment Arlee was silent, instinct and impulse warring within
her. The man was a maniac upon those subjects, and it was madness to
exchange a word with him--but her young anger darted through her
discretion.
"They are _not_ abominations!" she gave back proudly.
"But I know--I know--have I not been at marriages in England?" he
declared, with startling fierceness. "Men and women crowd about the
bride; they press in line and kiss her; bearded mouths and shaven
lips, young and old, they brush off that exquisite bloom of
innocence which a husband delights to discover. Her lips are soiled,
_fanée_.... And then the man and woman go away together into a
public hotel or a train, and the people laugh and shout after them,
and hurl shoes and rice, with a great din of noise. I have heard!"
He stopped, looked a moment at the flushed curve of Arlee's averted
face, the droop of her shadowy lashes which veiled the confusion and
anger of her spirit, and then, leaning forward, his eyes still upon
her, he spoke in a lower, softer tone, caressing in its inflections.
"With us it is not so," he said. "We have dignity in our rejoicing,
and delicacy in our love. The bride is brought in state to the home
of her husband, no eyes in the street resting upon her, and there,
in his home, her husband welcomes her and retires with his friends,
while she holds a reception with hers. Later the husband will come
home and greet her, and he wooes her to him as tenderly as he would
gather a flower that he would wear. He is no rude master, no tyrant,
as you have been taught to think! He wins her heart and mind to him;
it is the conquest of the spirit!... I tell you that our men alone
understand the secret of women! Is not the life he gives her better
than what you call the world? The woman blooms like a flower for her
husband alone; his eyes only may dwell upon the beauty of her face;
for him alone, her lips--her lips----"
The young man's voice, grown husky, died away. A dreadful stillness
followed, a stillness vibrating with unspoken thought. Her eyes
lifted toward him, then fled away, so full of strange, dark,
desirous things was the look she encountered. Abruptly he rose--he
was coming toward her, and she struggled suddenly to her feet,
battling against the cold terror which held her dumb and unready.
She flung one arm out before her and found it grasped by hands that
were hot and burning. The touch shot her with a fierce rage that
cleared her brain and unlocked her lips.
"Is that--the conquest of the spirit?" she gasped, and for an
instant the white-hot scorn in her eyes, flashing into his, hid any
hint of the fear in her.
Involuntarily his grasp relaxed, and violently she wrenched her arm
away and stood facing him, a little white-clad image of war, her
eyes blazing, her breast heaving, a defiant child in her intrepidity
who gave him back look for look.
In his eyes there glowed and battled a conflict of desires. For one
moment they seemed flaming at her from the dark, like some wild
creature ready to spring; the next moment they were human,
recognizable. She read there grudging admiration, arrested ardor,
irresolution, dubiety, and secret calculation.
Then he put both hands behind him and bowed with ceremony.
"The spirit," he remarked dryly, "is worth the conquest."
She said proudly, "You would not like your English friends to know
how you treat a guest!"
At that she saw his lip curl in irony--at the mention of the
English, perhaps, or in disdain at the appearance of fearing a
threat, however powerful that threat might be. He answered with
calmness, "It is not the English I am considering.... Nor have I
treated my guest so ill, _chère petite mademoiselle_.... If for the
moment I mistook my cue--that look within your face--I ask grace for
my stupidity."
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----"
"_C'est toi--va-t-en!_" the woman answered in a voice of smothered
fury. She made a menacing gesture toward the door. "_Va-t-en_."
Suddenly her voice rose in a passion of angry phrases that were
indistinguishable to the girl, and then she broke off as suddenly
and flung herself down upon a couch. From behind her the old woman
came shuffling forth and put a hand on Arlee's arm, and Arlee felt
the muscles of that hand as strong and rigid as a man's. Utterly
confused and bewildered, the girl suffered herself to be led back
through the rooms to the foot of her stairs.
"Mariayah!" screamed the old woman, and after a moment the voice of
waiting-maid answered from above, and then as Arlee dumbly ascended
the stairs, the voice of the old woman rose with her in shrill
admonition.
It was the voice of a jailer, thought the white-lipped girl, and
that little, dark-skinned maid who waited upon her so eagerly, with
such sidelong glances of strange interest, was the tool of a jailer.
And though the turning of the key in her own hand gave her a
momentary sense of refuge from them, it was but a false illusion of
the moment. There was neither refuge nor safety here. She was being
deceived ...
The quarantine was lifted.
How else could the Captain be cantering down the street? He did
not look like a man escaping.... Perhaps he had bribed the
doorkeeper--that which he had declared impossible for Arlee....
But certainly he was deceiving her.
Like a swollen river bursting its banks, her racing mind, wild with
suspicion, surged out of its simple channels and swirled in every
direction.... What did he mean? What was he trying to do? Keep her
in ignorance of the outside world, detain her as long as he dared
while the Evershams' absence left her friendless, and inflict his
dreadful love-making upon her? Perhaps he thought that he could
fascinate her!
She laughed aloud, but it was such a ghostly little laugh that it
set her nerves jumping. She stopped in her feverish pacing of the
floor; she tried to control her racing mind, she tried to be very
calm and to plan.
Had he sent all those letters she had written? Steadily she stared
at the possibility that he had not. But at least the Evershams knew
where she was. Even the meager warmth of their telegram was like an
outstretched hand through the dark. She clung tight to it.
It was absurd to be frightened. He would never dare to annoy
her--never, in his sober senses. When they were alone together he
had lost his head, but that was accident--impulse...
She rolled the divan against the locked door. She piled two chairs
upon it.
No, of course, she had nothing really to fear from him. He was too
wise not to understand the gulf between them. To-morrow she would
confront him flatly with his deceit; she would array the power of
the authorities behind her race. She would sweep instantly from that
ill-omened palace. There would be no more philandering.
Her lips moved as she silently rehearsed the mighty speeches that
she would make, and all the while as she leaned there against a
window, staring strangely through the candle-light at the barricade
before the door, she could think of nothing but how mad and unreal
it all seemed--like some bad dream from which she would wake in an
instant.
But she did not wake. The dream persisted, and the iron bars across
her window were very tangible. Down below her in the garden the old
lebbek tree rustled stealthily in the stillness. Gusty clouds hid
the stars. In the distance the interminable tom-tom beat.
She cast herself into the bed and cried convulsively, like a
desperately frightened child, while the awful sense of terror and
utter loneliness seemed to be rolling over and over her, like an
unending sea. Her sobbing racked her from head to foot. She cried
until she was spent with weakness. Then, her wet face still pressed
against the pillow and her tangled hair flung out in disordered
curls, she fell at last into the deep sleep of exhausted youth.
She woke with a smothered cry. In the darkness a hand had touched
her.