Barres whistled and sang alternately as he tied his evening tie before
his looking glass.
"_And I care not, I,
Who ever she be
I could not love her more!_"
he chanted gaily, examining the effect and buttoning his white
waistcoat.
Westmore, loitering near and waiting for him, referred again,
indignantly, to Renoux's report concerning the presence of Freund and
Lehr at the Northbrook railway station.
"If I catch them hanging around Thessa," he said, "I'll certainly beat
them up, Garry.
"Deal with anything of that sort directly; that's always the best way.
No use arguing with a Hun. When he misbehaves, beat him up. It's the
only thing he understands."
"Well, it's all right for us to do it now, as long as the French
Government knows where Thessa is," remarked Barres, drawing a white
clove-carnation through his buttonhole. "But what do you think of that
dirty swine, Tauscher, planning wholesale murder like that? Isn't it
the fine flower of Prussianism? There's the real and porcine boche for
you, sombre, savage, stupidly ferocious, swinishly persistent, but
never quite cunning enough, never sufficiently subtle in planning his
filthy and murderous holocausts."
Westmore nodded:
"Quite right. The _Lusitania_ and Belgium cost the Hun the respect of
civilisation, and are driving the civilised world into a common
understanding. We'll go in before long; don't worry."
They descended the stairs together just as dinner was announced.
Mrs. Barres said laughingly to her son:
"Your father is still fishing, I suppose, so in spite of his
admonition to me by letter this morning, I sent over one of the men
with some thermos bottles and a very nice supper. He grumbles, but he
always likes it."
"I wonder what Mr. Barres will think of me," ventured Dulcie. "He left
such a pretty little rod for me. Thessa and I have been examining it.
I'd like to go, only--" she added with a wistful smile, "I have never
been to a real party."
"Of course you're going to the Gerhardts'," insisted Lee, laughing.
"Dad is absurd about his fishing. I don't believe any girl ever lived
who'd prefer fishing on that foggy lake at night to dancing at such a
party as you are going to to-night."
"Aren't you going?" asked Thessalie, but Lee shook her head, still
smiling.
"We have two young setters down with distemper, and mother and I
always sit up with our dogs under such circumstances."
Personal devotion of this sort was new to Thessalie. Mrs. Barres and
Lee told her all about the dreaded contagion and how very dreadful an
epidemic might be in a kennel of such finely bred dogs as was the
well-known Foreland Kennels.
Dog talk absorbed everybody during dinner. Mrs. Barres and Lee were
intensely interested in Thessalie's description of the Grand Duke
Cyril's Russian wolfhounds, with which she had coursed and hunted as a
child.
Once she spoke, also, of those strange, pathetic, melancholy
Ishmaelites, pitiable outcasts of their race--the pariah dogs of
Constantinople. For, somehow, while dressing that evening, the distant
complaint of a tethered beagle had made her think of Stamboul. And she
remembered that night so long ago on the moonlit deck of the _Mirage_,
where she had stood with Ferez Bey while, from the unseen, monstrous
city close at hand, arose the endless wailing of homeless dogs.
How strange it was, too, to think that the owner of the _Mirage_
should this night be her host here in the Western World, yet remain
unconscious that he had ever before entertained her.
* * * * *
Before coffee had been served in the entrance hall, the kennel master
sent in word that one of the pups, a promising Blue Belton, had turned
very sick indeed, and would Mrs. Barres come to the kennels as soon as
convenient.
It was enough for Mrs. Barres and for Lee; they both excused
themselves without further ceremony and went away together to the
kennels, apparently quite oblivious of their delicate dinner gowns and
slippers.
"I've seen my mother ruin many a gown on such errands," remarked
Garry, smiling. "No use offering yourself as substitute; my mother
would as soon abandon her own sick baby to strangers as turn over an
ailing pup to anybody except Lee and herself."
"I think that is very splendid," murmured Dulcie, relinquishing her
coffee cup to Garry and suffering a maid to invest her with a scarf
and light silk wrap.
"My mother _is_ splendid," said Garry in a low voice. "You will see
her prove it some day, I hope."
The girl turned her lovely head, curiously, not understanding. Garry
laughed, but his voice was not quite steady when he said:
"But it all depends on you, Dulcie, how splendid my mother may prove
herself."
"On _me_!"
"On your--kindness."
"My--_kindness_!"
Thessalie came up in her pretty carnation-rose cloak, esquired by the
enraptured Westmore, expressing admiration for the clothing adorning
the very obvious object of his devotion:
"All girls can't wear a thing like that cloak," he was explaining
proudly; "now it would look like the devil on you, Dulcie, with your
coppery hair and----"
"What exquisite tact!" shrugged Thessalie, already a trifle restive
under his constant attendance and unremitting admiration. "Can't you,
out of your richly redundant vocabulary, find something civil to say
to Dulcie?"
But Dulcie, still preoccupied with what Barres had said, merely gave
her an absent-minded smile and walked slowly out beside her to the
porch, where the headlights of a touring car threw two broad beams of
gold across the lawn.
It was a swift, short run through the valley northward among the
hills, and very soon the yellow lights of Northbrook summer homes
dotted the darkness ahead, and cars were speeding in from every
direction--from Ilderness, Wythem, East and South Gorloch--carrying
guests for the Gerhardts' moonlight spectacle and dance.
Apropos of the promised spectacle, Barres observed to Dulcie that
there happened to be no moon, and consequently no moonlight, but the
girl, now delightfully excited by glimpses of Hohenlinden festooned
with electricity, gaily reproached him for being literal.
"If one is happy," she said, "a word is enough to satisfy one's
imagination. If they call it a moonlight spectacle, I shall certainly
see moonlight whether it's there or not!"
"They may call it heaven, too, if they like," he said, "and I'll
believe it--if you are there."
At that she blushed furiously:
"Oh, Garry! You don't mean it, and it's silly to say it!"
"I mean it all right," he muttered, as the car swung in through the
great ornamental gates of Hohenlinden. "The trouble is that I mean so
much--and _you_ mean so much to me--that I don't know how to express
it."
The girl, her face charmingly aglow, looked straight in front of her
out of enchanted eyes, but her heart's soft violence in her breast
left her breathless and mute; and when the car stopped she scarcely
dared rest her hand on the arm which Barres presented to guide her in
her descent to earth.
It may have been partly the magnificence of Hohenlinden that so
thrillingly overwhelmed her as she seated herself with Garry on the
marble terrace of an amphitheatre among brilliant throngs already
gathered to witness the eagerly discussed spectacle.
And it really was a bewilderingly beautiful scene, there under the
summer stars, where a thousand rosy lanterns hung tinting the still
waters of the little stream that wound through the clipped greensward
which was the stage.
The foliage of a young woodland walled in this vernal scene; the
auditorium was a semi-circle of amber marble--rows of low benches,
tier on tier, rising to a level with the lawn above.
The lantern light glowed on pretty shoulders and bare arms, on laces
and silks and splendid jewels, and stained the sombre black of the men
with vague warm hues of rose.
Westmore, leaning over to address Barres, said with an amused air:
"You know, Garry, it's Corot Mandel who is putting on this thing for
the Gerhardts."
"Certainly I know it," nodded Barres. "Didn't he try to get Thessa for
it?"
Thessalie, whose colour was high and whose dark eyes, roaming, had
grown very brilliant, suddenly held out her hand to one of two men
who, traversing the inclined aisle beside her, halted to salute her.
"Your name was on our lips," she said gaily. "How do you do, Mr.
Mandel! How do you do, Mr. Trenor! Are you going to amaze us with a
miracle in this enchanting place?"
The two men paid their respects to her, and, with unfeigned
astonishment and admiration, to Dulcie, whom they recognised only when
Thessalie named her with delighted malice.
"Oh, I say, Miss Soane," began Mandel, leaning on the back of the
marble seat, "you and Miss Dunois might have helped me a lot if I'd
known you were to be in this neighbourhood."
Esme Trenor bent over Barres, dropping his voice:
"We had to use a couple of Broadway hacks--you'll recognise 'em
through their paint--you understand?--the two that New York screams
for. It's too bad. Corot wanted something unfamiliarly beautiful and
young and fresh. But these Northbrook amateurs are incredibly
amateurish."
Thessalie was chattering away with Corot Mandel and Westmore; Esme
Trenor gazed upon Dulcie in wonder not unmixed with chagrin:
"You've never forgiven me, Dulcie, have you?"
"For what?" she inquired indifferently.
"For not discovering you when I should have."
She smiled, but the polite effort and her detachment of all interest
in him were painfully visible to Esme.
"I'm sorry you still remember me so unkindly," he murmured.
"But I never do remember you at all," she explained so candidly that
Barres was obliged to avert his amused face, and Esme Trenor reddened
to the roots of his elaborate hair. Mandel, with a wry grin, linked
his arm in Trenor's and drew him away toward the flight of steps which
was the stage entrance to the dressing rooms below.
"Good-bye!" he said, waving his hat. "Hope you'll like my moonlight
frolic!"
"Where's your bally moon!" demanded Westmore.
As he spoke, an unseen orchestra began to play "_Au Claire de la
Lune_," and, behind the woods, silhouetting every trunk and branch and
twig, the glittering edge of a huge, silvery moon appeared.
Slowly it rose, flashing a broad path of light across the lawn,
reflected in the still little river. And when it was in the position
properly arranged for it, some local Joshua--probably Corot
Mandel--arrested its further motion, and it hung there, flooding the
stage with a witching lustre.
All at once the stage swarmed with supple, glimmering shapes: Oberon
and Titania came flitting down through the trees; Puck, scintillating
like a dragon-fly, dropped on the sward, seemingly out of nowhere.
It was a wonderfully beautiful ballet, with an unseen chorus singing
from within the woods like a thousand seraphim.
As for the play itself, which began with the calm and silvered
river suddenly swarming alive with water-nymphs, it had to do,
spasmodically, with the love of the fairy crown-prince for the very
attractive water-nymph, Ythali. This nimble lady, otherwise, was
fiercely wooed by the King of the Mud-turtles, a most horrid and
sprawling shape, but a clever foil--with his army of river-rats,
minks and crabs--to the nymphs and wood fairies.
Also, the music was refreshingly charming, the singing excellent, and
the story interesting enough to keep the audience amused until the
end.
There was, of course, much moonlight dancing, much frolicking in the
water, few clothes on the Broadway principals, fewer on the chorus,
and apparently no scruples about discarding even these.
But the whole spectacle was so unreal, so spectral, that its shadowy
beauty robbed it of offence.
That sort of thing had made Corot Mandel famous. He calculated to the
width of a moonbeam just how far he could go. And he never went a
hair's breadth farther.
Thessalie looked on with flushed cheeks and parted lips, absorbed in
it all with the savant eyes of a professional. She also had once
coolly decided how far her beauty and talent and adolescent effrontery
could carry her gay disdain of man. And she had flouted him with
indifferent eyes and dainty nose uplifted--mocked him and his
conventions, with a few roubles in her dressing-room--slapped the
collective face of his sex with her insolent loveliness, and careless
smile.
Perhaps, as she sat there watching the fairy scene, she remembered her
ostrich and the German Embassy, and the aged Von-der-Goltz Pasha, all
over jewels and gold, peeping at her through thick spectacles under
his red fez.
Perhaps she thought of Ferez, too, and maybe it was thought of him
that caused her smooth young shoulders the slightest of shivers, as
though a harsh breeze had chilled her skin.
As for Dulcie, she was in the seventh heaven, thrilled with the dreamy
beauty of it all and the exquisite phantoms floating on the greensward
under her enraptured eyes.
No other thought possessed her save sheer delight in this revelation
of pure enchantment.
So intent, so still she became, leaning a little forward in her place,
that Barres found her far more interesting and wonderful to watch than
Mandel's cunningly contrived illusions in the artificial moonlight
below.
And now Titania's trumpets sounded from the woods, warning all of the
impending dawn. Suddenly the magic fairy moon vanished like the flame
of a blown-out candle; a faint, rosy light grew through the trees,
revealing an empty stage and a river on which floated a single swan.
Then, from somewhere, a distant cock-crow rang through the dawn. The
play was ended.
Two splendid orchestras were alternating on the vast marble terraces
of Hohenlinden, where hundreds of dancers moved under the white
radiance of a huge silvery moon overhead--another contrivance of
Mandel's--for the splendid sphere aglow with white fire had somehow
been suspended above the linden trees so that no poles and no wires
were visible against the starry sky.
And in its milky flood of light the dancers moved amid a wilderness of
flowers or thronged the supper-rooms within, where Teutonic
architectural and decorative magnificence reigned in one vast,
incredible, indigestible gastronomic apotheosis of German kultur.
Barres, for the moment, dancing with Thessalie, pressed her fingers
with mischievous tenderness and whispered:
"The moonlit way once more with you, Thessa! Do you remember our first
dance?"
"Can I ever thank God enough for that night's folly!" she said, with
such sudden emotion that his smile altered as he looked into her dark
eyes.
"Yet that dance by moonlight exiled you," he said.
"Do you realise what it saved me from, too? And what it has given
me?"
He wondered whether she included Westmore in the gift. The music
ceased at that moment, and, though the other orchestra began, they
strolled along the flowering balustrade of the terrace together until
they encountered Dulcie and Westmore.
"Have you spoken to your hostess?" inquired Westmore. "She's over
yonder on a dais, enthroned like Germania or a Metropolitan Opera
Valkyrie. Dulcie and I have paid our homage."
So Barres and Thessalie went away to comply with the required
formality; and, when they returned from the rite, they found Esme
Trenor and Corot Mandel cornering Dulcie under a flowering orange tree
while Westmore, beside her, chatted with a most engaging woman who
proved, later, to be a practising physician.
Esme was saying languidly, that anybody could fly into a temper and
kick his neighbours, but that indifference to physical violence was a
condition of mind attained only by the spiritual intellect of the
psychic adept.
"Passivism," he added with a wave of his lank fingers, "is the first
plane to be attained on the journey toward Nirvana. Therefore, I am a
pacifist and this silly war does not interest me in the slightest."
The very engaging woman, who had been chatting with Westmore, looked
around at Esme Trenor, evidently much amused.
"I imagined that you were a pacifist," she said. "I fancy, Mr. Mandel,
also, is one."
"Indeed, I am, madam!" said Corot Mandel. "I've plenty to do in life
without strutting around and bawling for blood at the top of my
lungs!"
"Thank heaven," added Esme, "the President has kept us out of war.
This business of butchering others never appealed to me--except for
the slightly unpleasant sensations which I experience when I read the
details."
"Oh. Then unpleasant sensations so appeal to you?" inquired Westmore,
very red.
"Well, they _are_ sensations, you know," drawled Esme. "And, for a man
who experiences few sensations of any sort, even unpleasant ones are
pleasurable."
Mandel yawned and said:
"The war is an outrageous bore. All wars are stupid to a man of
temperament. Therefore, I'm a pacifist. And I had rather live under
Prussian domination than rush about the country with a gun and sixty
pounds of luggage on my back!"
He looked heavily at Dulcie, who had slipped out of the corner on the
terrace, where he and Esme had penned her.
"There are other things to do more interesting than jabbing bayonets
into Germans," he remarked. "Did you say you hadn't any dance to spare
us, Miss Soane? Nor you either, Miss Dunois? Oh, well." He cast a
disgusted glance at Barres, squinted at Westmore through his greasy
monocle in hostile silence; then, taking Esme's arm, made them all a
too profound obeisance and sauntered away along the terrace.
"What a pair of beasts!" said Westmore. "They make me actually ill!"
Barres shrugged and turned to the very engaging lady beside him:
"What do you think of that breed of human, doctor?" he inquired.
She smiled at Barres and said:
"Several of my own patients who are suffering from the same form of
psycho-neurotic trouble are also peace-at-any-price pacifists. They do
not come to me to be cured of their pacifism. On the contrary, they
cherish it most tenderly. In examining them for other troubles I
happened upon what appeared to me a very close relation between the
peculiar attitude of the peace-at-any-price pacifist and a certain
type of unconscious pervert."
"That passivism is perversion does not surprise me," remarked Barres.
"Well," she said, "the pacifist is not conscious of his real
desires and therefore cannot be termed a true pervert. But the
very term, passivism, is usually significant and goes very deep
psychologically. In analysing my patients I struck against a buried
impulse in them to suffer tyrannous treatment from an omnipotent
master. The impulse was so strong that it amounted to a craving and
tried to absorb all the psychic material within its reach. They did
not recognise the original impulse, because that had long ago been
crushed down by the exactions of civilised life. Nevertheless,
they were tortured and teased, made unsettled and wretched by a
something which continually baffled them. Deep under the upper crust
of their personalities was concealed a seething desire to be
completely, inevitably, relentlessly, unreservedly overwhelmed by a
subjugation from which there was no escape."
She turned to Westmore:
"It's purely pathological, the condition of those two self-confessed
pacifists. The pacifist loves suffering. The ordinary normal person
avoids suffering when possible. He endures it only when something
necessary or desirable cannot be gained in any other way. He may
undergo agony at the mere thought of it. His bravery consists in
facing danger and pain in spite of fear. But the extreme passivist,
who is really an unconscious pervert, loves to dream of martyrdom and
suffering. It must be a suffering, however, which is forced upon him,
and it must be a personal matter, not impersonal and general, as in
war. And he loves to contemplate a condition of complete captivity--of
irresponsible passivity, in which all resistance is in vain."
"Do you know, they disgust me, those two!" said Westmore angrily. "I
never could endure anything abnormal. And now that I know Esme is--and
that big lout, Mandel--I'll keep away from them. Do you blame me,
doctor?"
"Well," she said, much amused and turning to go, "they're very
interesting to physicians, you know--these non-resisting, pacifistic
perverts. But outside a sanatorium I shouldn't expect them to be very
popular." And she laughed and joined a big, good-looking man who had
come to seek her, and who wore, in his buttonhole, the button of the
French Legion of Honour.
Thessalie had strolled forward along the terrace by herself,
interested in the pretty spectacle and the play of light on jewels and
gowns.
Westmore, busy in expressing to Barres his opinion of Esme and Mandel,
did not at the moment miss Thessalie, who continued to saunter on
along the balustrade of the terrace, under the blossoming row of
orange trees.
Just below her was another terrace and an oval pool set with tiny jets
which seemed to spray the basin with liquid silver. Silvery fish, too,
were swimming in it near the surface, sometimes flinging themselves
clear out of water as though intoxicated by the unwonted lustre which
flooded their crystal pool.
To see them nearer, Thessalie ran lightly down the steps and walked
toward the shimmering basin. And at the same time the head and
shoulders of a man in evening dress, his bosom crossed by a sash of
watered red silk, appeared climbing nimbly from a still lower level.
She watched him step swiftly upon the terrace and cross it diagonally,
walking in her direction toward the stone stairs which she had just
descended. Then, paying him no further attention, she looked down into
the water.
He came along very near to where she stood, gazing into the
pool--peered at her curiously--was already passing at her very
elbow--when something made her lift her head and look around at him.
The mock moonlight struck full across his features; and the shock of
seeing him drove every vestige of colour from her own face.
The man halted, staring at her in unfeigned amazement. Suddenly he
snarled at her, baring his teeth in her shrinking face.
"_Kismet dir!_" he whispered, "it ees _you_!... Nihla Quellen!
_Now_ I begin onderstan'!... Yas, I now onderstan' who arrange it
that they haf arrest my good frien', Tauscher! It ees _you_, then!
Von Igel he has tol' me, look out once eef she escape--thees yoong
leopardess----"
"Ferez!" Thessalie's young figure stiffened and the colour flamed in
her cheeks.
"You leopardess!" he repeated, every tooth a-grin again with rage,
"you misbegotten slut of a hunting cheetah! So thees is 'ow you
strike!... Ver' well. Yas, I see 'ow it ees you strike at----"
"Ferez!" she cried. "Listen to _me_!"
"I 'ear you! Allez!"
"Ferez Bey! I am not afraid of you!"
"Ees it so?"
"Yes, it is so. I _never_ have been afraid of you! Not even there on
the deck of the _Mirage_, that night when you tapped the hilt of your
Kurdish knife and spoke of Seraglio Point! Nor when your scared spy
shot at me in the corridor of the Tenth Street house; nor afterward at
Dragon Court! Nor now! Do you understand, Eurasian jackal! Nor _now_!
Anybody can see what _Heruli_ whelped you! What are you doing in
America? Kassim Pasha is your den, where your _rayah_ loll and scratch
in the sun! It is their _Keyeff_! And yours!"
She took a quick step toward him, her eyes flashing, her white hand
clenched:
"_Allah Kerim_--do you say? _El Hamdu Lillah!_ Do you take yourself
for the _muezzin_ of all jackals, then, howling blasphemies from some
_minaret_ in the hills? Do you understand what they'd do to you in
the _Hirka-i-Sherif Jamesi_? Because you are _nothing_; do you
hear?--nothing but an Eurasian assassin! And Moslem and Christian
alike know where _you_ belong among the lost pariahs of Stamboul!"
The girl was utterly transfigured. Whatever of the Orient was in her,
now blazed white hot.
"What have I done to you, Ferez? What have I ever done to you that
you, even from my childhood, come always stepping noiselessly at my
skirt's edge?--always padding behind me at my heels, silent, sinister,
whimpering with bared teeth for the courage to bite which God denies
you!"
The man stood almost motionless, moistening his dry lips with his
tongue, but his eyes moved continually, stealing uneasy glances around
him and upward, where, on the main terrace above them, the heads of
the throng passed and repassed.
"Nihla," he said, "for all thees scorn and abuse of me, you know, in
the false heart of you, why it ees so if I have seek you."
"You dealer in lies! You would have sold me to d'Eblis! You thought
you _had_ sold me! You were paid for it, too!"
"An' still!" He looked at her furtively.
"What do you mean? You conspired with d'Eblis to ruin me, soul and
body! You involved me in your treacherous propaganda in Paris. Through
you I am an exile. If I go back to my own country, I shall go to a
shameful death. You have blackened my honour in my country's eyes. But
that was not enough. No! You thought me sufficiently broken, degraded,
terrified to listen to any proposition from you. You sent your agents
to me with offers of money if I would betray my country. Finding I
would not, you whined and threatened. Then, like the Eurasian dog you
are, you tried to bargain. You were eager to offer me anything if I
would keep quiet and not interfere----"
"Nihla!"
"What?" she said, contemptuously.
"In spite of thees--of all you say--I have love you!"
"Liar!" she retorted wrathfully. "Do you dare say that to me, whom you
have already tried to murder?"
"I say it. Yas. Eef it has not been so then you were dead long time."
"You--you are trying to tell me that you spared me!" she demanded
scornfully.
"It ees so. Alexandre--d'Eblis, you know?--long time since he would
have safety for us all--thees way. Non! Je ne pourrais pas vouz tuer,
moi! It ees not in my heart, Nihla.... Because I have love you long
time--ver' long time."
"Because you have _feared_ me long time, ver' long time!" she mocked
him. "That is why, Ferez--because you are afraid; because you are only
a jackal. And jackals never kill. No!"
"You say thees-a to me, Nihla?"
"Yes, I say it. You're a coward! And I'll tell you something more. I
am going to make a complete statement to the French Government. I
shall relate everything I know about d'Eblis, Bolo Effendi, a certain
bureaucrat, an Italian politician, a Swiss banker, old Von-der-Goltz
Pasha, Heimholz, Von-der-Hohe Pasha, and you, my Ferez--and you,
also!
[Illustration: HE CAME TOWARD HER STEALTHILY]
"Do you know what France will do to d'Eblis and his scoundrel friends?
Do you guess what these duped Americans will do to Bolo Effendi? And
to you? And to Von Papen and Boy-ed and Von Igel--yes, and to
Bernstorff and his whole murderous herd of Germans? And can you
imagine what my own doubly duped Government will surely, surely do,
some day, to you, Ferez?"
She laughed, but her dark eyes fairly glittered:
"_My_ martyrdom is ending, God be thanked! And then I shall be free to
serve where my heart is ... in Alsace!... Alsace!--forever French!"
In the white light she saw the sweat break out on the man's
forehead--saw him grope for his handkerchief--and draw out a knife
instead--never taking his eyes off her.
She turned to run; but he had already blocked the way to the stone
steps; and now he came creeping toward her, white as a cadaver,
distracted from sheer terror, and rubbing the knife flat against his
thigh.
"So you shall do thees--a filth to me--eh, Nihla?" he whispered with
blanched lips. "It ees on me, your frien', you spring to keel me, eh,
my leopardess? Ver' well. But firs' I teach you somethings you don'
know!--thees-a way, my Nihla!"
He came toward her stealthily, moving more swiftly as she put the
stone basin of the pool between them and cast an agonised glance up at
the distant terrace.
"Jim!" she cried frantically. "Jim! Help me, Jim!"
The gay din of the music above drowned her cry; she fled as Ferez
darted toward her, but again he doubled and sprang back to bar the
stone steps, and she halted, white and breathless, yet poised for
instant flight.
Again and again she called out desperately for aid; the noise of the
orchestra smothered her cry. And if, indeed, anybody from the terrace
above chanced to glance down, it is likely that they supposed these
two were skylarking merrymakers at some irresponsible game of
catch-who-can.
Suddenly Thessalie remembered the lower level, where the automobiles
were parked, and from which Ferez had first appeared. She could escape
that way. There were the steps, not very far behind her. The next
instant she turned and ran like a deer.
And after her sped Ferez, his broad, thin-bladed knife pressed flat
against the crimson sash across his breast, his dead-white visage
distorted with that blind, convulsive fear which makes murderers out
of cowards.