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.

Billy took a quick step forward and touched the man on the arm. "Let this lady pass, please," he said.

The German confronted him with blood-shot blue eyes that ceased to smile and clearly welcomed the belligerency.

"Gott! Who are you?" he derided. "Get out—get out the way."

"Get out yourself," said Billy, and stepping in front of the fellow he extended a rigid arm, leaving a passage for the girl behind him.

"Oh, thank you," he heard her say, and as he half turned his head at the grateful murmur he felt a sudden staggering blow on the side of his face. He whirled about, on guard, and as the man struck again, lunging heavily in his intoxication, Billy knocked up the fist as it came.

"You silly fool!" he said impatiently, and as the man made a blind rush upon him he caught him and by main force flung him off, but his own foot struck something slippery and he lurched and went down, with a wave of intense disgust, into the dirt of the bazaars. He heard a chorus of cries and imprecations about him; he jumped up instantly, looking for his assailant, but the German was clinging to the front of the jewelry booth. "Meet you—satisfaction—honor," he was saying stupidly.

A native policeman elbowed his way through the throng, urging some Arabic question upon Billy, who caught its import and replied with the few sentences of reassurance at his command, pointing to the banana peel as the cause of all. A fat dragoman had suddenly appeared from nowhere and was hurriedly attempting to lead away the intoxicated one.

"You in charge of him? Take him to his hotel and throw him in the tub," said Billy curtly, and the dragoman replied with profound respect that he would do even as the heaven-born commanded.

Brushing off his clothes Billy shouldered his way out of the throng and was met by two bright and grateful eyes and a slim, bare, outstretched hand.

"Thank you so much—I am so sorry," said the musical voice.

"You shouldn\'t have waited," said Billy, with a prompt pressure of the friendly little hand. "It might have been a real row."

"I couldn\'t run away," she said in serious protest at such ingratitude. "I had to see what happened to you. And I am so sorry about your clothes."

"Not hurt a particle—I chose a fortunate place to drop," he returned lightly, but distinctly chagrined that he had dropped.

"It was so fine of you," she answered, "just to parry him like that—when he\'d been drinking. I saw what you did." And then she added, very matter-of-factly, "And I\'m afraid your nose is bleeding, too."

Billy put up a startled hand. In the general soreness he had not noticed that warm trickle. His whole face turned as scarlet as the shameless blood. Frantically he rummaged with the other hand.

The girl thrust a square of white linen upon him. "Please take mine—it will ruin your clothes if it gets on them."

Her immense practicality refused to be embarrassed in the least. Feeling immensely foolish Billy accepted hers, but then he discovered his own handkerchief and stuffed hers away into his pocket.

"You\'re a trump," he said heartily. "And it\'s all right now—all but the swelling, I suppose." He sounded rueful. He had remembered his engagement for the evening.

Her head a little aslant, the girl regarded him critically. "N-no, it doesn\'t seem to be swelling," she observed. "Of course it\'s a little red but that will pass."

They were walking side by side out of the narrow street and now, on a crowded corner, they paused and looked around. "I left Miss Falconer at the Maltese laces," she murmured, and to the laces they turned their steps.

Miss Falconer was still bargaining. She was a middle aged lady, Roman nosed and sandy-haired, and she brought to Billy in a rush the realization that she was "sister" and the girl was Lady Claire Montfort. The story of the encounter and Billy\'s hero part, related by Lady Claire, appeared most disturbing to the chaperon.

"How awkward—how very awkward," she murmured, several times, and Billy gathered from her covert glance upon him that part of the awkwardness consisted in being saddled with his acquaintance. Then, "Very nice of you, I\'m sure," she added. "I hope the creature isn\'t lingering about somewhere.... We\'d better take a cab, Claire—I\'m sure we\'re late for tea."

"Let me find one," said Billy dutifully, and charging into the medley of vehicles he brought forth a victoria with what appeared to be the least villainous looking driver and handed in the ladies.

"Savoy Hotel, isn\'t it?" he added thoughtlessly, and both ladies\' countenances interrogated him with a varying nuance of question.

"I remember noticing you," he hastily explained. "I\'m not exactly a private detective, you know,"—the assurance seemed to leave Miss Falconer cold—"but I do remember people. And then I heard you spoken of by Miss Beecher."

The name acted curiously upon them. They looked at each other. Then they looked at Billy. Miss Falconer spoke.

"Perhaps we can drop you at your hotel," said she. "Won\'t you get in?"

He got in, facing them a little ruefully with his damaged countenance, and subtly aware that this accession of friendliness was not a gush of airy impulse.

"You know Miss Beecher then?" said Miss Falconer with brisk directness.

"Slightly," he said aloud. To himself he added, "So far."

"Ah—in America?"

"No, in Cairo."

Miss Falconer looked disappointed. "But perhaps you know her family?"

"No," said Billy. He added humorously, "But I\'ll wager I could guess them all right."

"Can you Americans do that for one another? That is more than we can venture to do for you," said the lady, and Billy was aware of irony.

"We know so little about your life, you see," the girl softened it for him, with a direct and friendly smile, and then gazed watchfully at her chaperon. She was a nice girl, Billy decided emphatically.

"How would you construct her family?" was the elder lady\'s next demand.

"Oh, big people in a small town," he hazarded carelessly. "The kind of place where the life isn\'t wide enough for the girl after all her \'advantages\' and she goes abroad in search of adventure."

"Adventure," repeated Miss Falconer thoughtfully. She seemed to have an idea, but Billy was certain it was not his idea.

He hastened to clarify the light he had tried to cast upon his upsetting little countrywoman. "All life, you know, is an adventure to the American girl," he generalized. "She is a little bit more on her own than I imagine your girls are," and for the fraction of a second his eyes wandered to the listening countenance of Lady Claire, "and that rather exhilarates her. And she doesn\'t want things cut and dried—she wants them spontaneous and unexpected—and people, just as people, interest her tremendously. I think that\'s why she\'s so unintelligible on the Continent," he added thoughtfully. "They don\'t understand there that girlish love of experience as experience—enjoyment of romance apart from results."

"Romance apart from results," repeated Miss Falconer in a peculiar voice.

"I don\'t believe you quite get me," said Billy hastily. He felt foolish and he felt resentful. And if these English women couldn\'t understand the bright, volatile stuff that Arlee was made of, he certainly was not going to talk about it. But Miss Falconer had one more question for him.

"When you say big people in a small town do you mean her father would be a sort of country squire?"

"More probably a captain of industry," Billy smiled.

"A captain—Oh, that is one of your phrases!"

"One of our phrases," he laughed, and then parried, "I thought you were acquainted with Miss Beecher?"

"Quite slightly," said Miss Falconer in an aloof tone. "My brother came over on the same ship with her—he came to join us here."

Billy experienced a flood of mental light. The brother—at the hotel he had discovered that his name was Robert Falconer—was coming to join his elder sister and her young charge. He had come on the same steamer as Miss Beecher. Ergo, he was staying at the hotel where Miss Beecher was and not with his sister. Billy comprehended the anxiety of the lady with the Roman nose. He looked at Lady Claire with a certain sympathy.

He caught her own eyes reconnoitering, and they each looked hastily away.

Again Miss Falconer returned to her attack. "Then you really know nothing positive of Miss Beecher\'s family?"

"Nothing in the world," said Billy cheerfully. "But why not ask Miss Beecher?"

The lady made no reply. "Miss Beecher is a beautiful girl," said Lady Claire hastily. "She\'s so beautiful that I suppose we are all rather curious about her—of course people will ask about a girl like that!"

"Of course," said Billy, and Lady Claire, perceiving that he resented this catechism about his young countrywoman, and Miss Falconer perceiving that nothing was to be gotten out of him, the conversation was promptly turned into other channels, the vague, general channels of comment upon Cairo.

The Evershams dined alone. Alternately, from their table to the doorway went Billy\'s eager eyes, but no vision with shining curls and laughing eyes appeared. Evidently she had stayed to dine with whatever people she had gone to see. Robert Falconer was watching that table, too.... Perhaps she would not return till late; perhaps he would have only a tiny time with her that evening.... And he had not been able to buy out that man\'s berth upon the steamer....

Consommé and whitebait, b?uf r?ti and haricots vert and crême de cérises succeeded one another in deepening gloom. The whole dinner over, and she had not appeared!

He went out to the lounge and smoked with violence. Presently he saw the Evershams in the doorway talking to Robert Falconer, and he jumped up and hurried to join them. As he approached he heard the word Alexandria spoken fretfully by Mrs. Eversham.

"Good evening, good evening," said Billy hurriedly to the ladies, and being a young man of simple directness, undeterred by the glacial tinge of the ladies\' response—they had not forgotten his defection of the evening before when they were entertaining him so nicely—he put the question which had been tormenting him all evening, "Where is Miss Beecher to-night?"

"Alexandria," said Mrs. Eversham again, and this time there was a hint of malicious satisfaction in her voice.

"Alexandria?" Billy was incredulous. "Why I—I understood she was to go up the Nile to-morrow morning."

"She was, but she has changed her mind. She had word from some friends of hers while we were out this afternoon and she flew right off to join them."

"You mean she isn\'t going up the Nile at all now?"

"I haven\'t an idea what she is going to do. She is not in our care any longer. And I don\'t suppose the boat company will do anything about her stateroom at this late date—certainly she can\'t expect us to go to any trouble about it."

"She left us half her packing to do," Clara Eversham contributed, addressing Falconer with plaintive mien, "and her hotel bill to pay. She is the most unexpected creature!"

Two young men silently and heartily concurred.

"What was her hurry?" Billy demanded.

"Oh, she\'s going camping in the desert with them—that sort of thing would fascinate her, you know. Her telegram wasn\'t very clear. She just sent a wire from the station, I think, or from Cook\'s, with some money for her bill by the boy. So careless, trusting him like that!"

"I don\'t suppose he brought it all," Mrs. Eversham declared. "You see, she didn\'t say how much she was sending—just said it was enough for her bill."

Billy looked at Falconer. He admired the stolidity of that sandy-haired young man\'s countenance. He envied the unrevealing blankness of his eyes.

"May I ask where she is stopping in Alexandria?" he persisted.

Mrs. Eversham shook her head. "She didn\'t give any address—the best hotel, I suppose, whatever that is."

"The Khedivial," Falconer supplied.

"She just said to send her things to Cook\'s and to write to her there and she would write when she came back. She had been expecting to meet those friends, the Maynards, later, but we had no idea that she was going to run off with them like this. It\'s very upsetting."

"We shall miss her," said Clara Eversham suddenly, with a note of sincerity that made Billy warm to her a trifle. So he bestirred himself getting their after dinner coffee and remembered to send Mohammed for the cream for her, and listened with a show of attention to their interminable anecdotes and corrections. But his mind was off on the way to Alexandria....

Not a word of farewell. Of course, they had not exactly arrived, in those twenty-four hours, at a correspondence stage, but still she had made a positive engagement for that evening—and she had known he was trying to buy that berth. Only that morning she had listened to his account of his endeavors with a mischievous light in her blue eyes and a prankish smile edging her pink lips ... and she might, after that, have left just a line to tell him to cancel his arrangements.... But what could he expect from such a tricksy sprite of a girl? Only twenty-seven hours before he had seen her, flagrantly tardy, nonchalantly unrepentant, first mock and then annihilate the worthy and earnest young Englishman who had endeavored to correct her ways ... He had known then the volatile stuff that she was made of—and had succumbed to it!

But he had succumbed. On that point he was most disastrously certain. The memory of the young girl possessed him. Her beauty haunted him, that spring-like beauty with its enchanting youth and gaiety. And the spirit that animated that beauty, that young, blithe, innocently audacious spirit which looked out on the world with such sunnily trustful eyes, drew him with a golden cord.

He smoked many a pipe over it that night, his feet on the open window ledge, his eyes on the far-spreading flat roofs, the distant domes and minarets darkly silhouetted against the sky of softest, deepest blue. The stars were silver bright. They spangled the heaven with the radiance they never give to northern skies; they gleamed like bright, wild creatures on their unearthly revels.... It would be glorious camping in the desert on a night like this ... Heaven be praised, he had not bought that berth ... Alexandria ... the Maynards ... the desert ...

He knocked out the ashes from his last pipe and rose briskly. His decision was made, but its success was on the knees of the great god Luck.