The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 38

"You'd better invent some nice traveling friend----"

She shook her head in flat refusal. "I won't. I'm not equal to inventing anything. It's bad enough now to--to tell the _necessary_ lies I have to." The brightness left her face looking suddenly wan and sorry. "I suppose it's part of my--punishment--for my dreadful folly," she said in a low tone.

"It's just part of the coin the world has to be paid in for its conventions," Billy quickly retorted. "_Don't_ let it worry you like that--in a day no one will think to question you."

"I know--but--it's having the memory always there. Always knowing that there is something I can't be honest about--something secret and dreadful----"

She was staring unseeingly out the window, her soft lips twitching.

"The Egyptians were a most sensible people," said Billy. "They drew up a list of commandments against the forty-two cardinal sins, and one of them was this, 'Thou shalt not consume thy heart.' That is a religious law against regret--vain, unprofitable, morbid, devastating regret. And you must take that law for your own."

"Th--thank you." The low voice was suspiciously wavery. "I--you see, I haven't had time to think about it till just now--we've been going so fast----"

"And the best thing that could have happened. And now that you have the time to think, you mustn't think _weakly_. It was just a nightmare. And it's over."

"Just a nightmare.... And it's over," she repeated. Her eyes lifted to Billy's in a look of ineffable softness and wonder. "It's over--because _you_ came."

"I want you to forget that." The young man spoke with cold curtness in his effort to combat the wild temptation of that moment. "I only did what anyone else in my place would have done--to have accomplished it is all the grat.i.tude I want. Please don't speak of it to me again. You must forget about it."

"Forget--as if I could help being grateful as long as I live!"

"But I don't _want_ you to be grateful. It--it's obnoxious to me!"

She was as blankly hurt as a slapped child. Then she looked away, a little pulse in her throat beating fast. "Then I won't--try to thank you," she answered in a very small voice, and stared harder and harder out the window.

Billy felt that he had accomplished a tremendous stride. "A feeling of obligation kills a friendship," he told her didactically, "and I want you to be really my friend."

"I am." Her voice was distinct, though queerly lack-l.u.s.ter. And she did not look at him again.

He went on: "The Evershams will be in on the boat about seven. From the station I'll take you straight to the boat, where your stateroom is surely being kept for you. Then to-morrow your trunks will arrive from Cook's, and by the time you are through resting, you will be ready to sally out and meet the world.... I hope my own trunk will make its appearance, too," he added. "I telegraphed the hotel to pack my things and send them on."

She made no comment on the obvious haste with which he had left Cairo. She said slowly, "I want to do a little mathematics now. What is the shocking sum I owe you?"

He shut his lips in an obstinate line. After a moment she added, "I can't take _that_, you know."

It struck him as a trifle ludicrous that dollars were so important among all the rest, but unwillingly enough he understood.

"Won't you just let it stand as it is?" he said under his breath.

"Let me have the whole thing--please."

"I can't."

"You mean you won't?"

"I can't," she repeated inflexibly, and then, with a childish flash, "Since you dislike me to feel grateful--I should think you would be glad to let me reduce the debt."

"All right." He spoke gruffly. "Then you owe me what you spent just now and what your railroad ticket cost. Not a cent more. For what went before I am absolutely responsible, and I decline to let you pay _my_ debts."

This time he was inflexible. She repeated, with a spark of resentment, "It's not fair to let you pay so much----"

"It was _my_ adventure," said Billy firmly.

She said, "Very well," in a voice that puzzled him. He felt she was annoyed. And he realized more than ever that he could never take advantage of her indebtedness to make her pay with her companionship. It was becoming a queer tangle.... He felt they had suddenly slipped out of tune.... She seemed to be escaping him--withdrawing ...

He wondered, very unhappily, with no fine glow of altruism at all, if he had rescued her for another man. Those things happened, they happened with dismal frequency. Billy distinctly recalled the experience of a college friend who had carried a girl out of a burning hotel, to have her wildly embrace an unstirring youth below.

Yes, such things happened. But he had never contemplated having anything like that happen to him.

He contemplated it now, however, contemplated it long and bitterly, when Arlee had gone back to her compartment and he sat silent in his beside the chattering Copts while the train rattled on and on. There would be three days at Luxor before the boat proceeded upon its southern journey. And then----

Three days.... Three miserable, paltry, insufficient days, blighted by the chaperoning Evershams.... Frantically he hoped against his dark foreboding that one menace at least might be averted--that by now Luxor would have ceased to shelter a certain sandy-haired young Englishman.

CHAPTER XXI

CROSS PURPOSES

Luxor was warm and drowsy with afternoon sun. Motionless the fronds of the tall palms along the water front; motionless the columns of the temple reflected in the blue Nile. Even the almost continuous commotion of the landing stage was stilled.

The two big Nile steamers, of rival lines, lay quietly at rest, emptied of their tourists, and on the embankment the dragomans, the donkey boys, the innumerable venders, were lounging in the shade at dominoes or dice.

In the big white hotels facing the river many drawn blinds spoke of napping travelers, and in the shade of the garden of the Grand other travelers were whiling away the listless inertia of the hour before tea.

"I suppose it's _quite_ too early?" murmured a girl at one of the tables, in the shade of a big acacia. Her companion, fussing with a pastel sketch, answered absently, without looking up, "Oh, quite,"

and then with a note of brisker attention, "I thought we were waiting for Robert?"

"Do you think he'll be back? It's _such_ a trip to the Tombs of the Kings, you know!"

"To be sure he'll be back!" Miss Falconer spoke with asperity. "And why he wanted to go over it again--it's odd you didn't care to go, too, Claire," she added, most inconsequently. "It was such an excellent opportunity--and you had already spoken of wishing to go again."

"But not so exhaustively. They are doing the entire programme. I only wanted some particular things."

"You could have done them."

"And it was hot."

"It must have been just as hot in the bazaars with Mr. Hill."

"Was it?"

This was purposeful vagueness and Miss Falconer's crayon snapped.

She made a sound of annoyance, then began gathering her sketching things tidily together. Presently, "He's rather an agreeable person, that young American, after all," she cannily observed.

"Why, after all?" Lady Claire was implacably aloof.

"Well, first impressions, you know----"