The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 42

"Why didn't you write?" the girl parried.

"I did," indignantly. "Twice--to Alexandria."

"Oh.... I didn't get them."

"I wrote, all right. I was so stirred up over that alarm of Hill's that I urged you to answer me at once. And when you didn't, and when I heard you _had_ written the Evershams, well, I thought I knew what I had to think.... When I met you here Friday I half expected you to cut me, upon my word!"

"But I didn't!" She laughed softly. "I remembered you--perfectly."

"Oh, you did, did you?... You've acted as if that was about all you did remember."

"I've been very, _very_ nice to you!"

"But with a difference," he insisted resentfully. "Didn't you know I must have written? You didn't think I wanted to let it stop there, did you? You didn't think I meant that nonsense at tea----"

"Please don't go back to that," said the girl hurriedly. "We've been good friends these three days without bringing it up--don't let us do it now."

"Well, I don't enjoy thinking about it." His voice was sharp with feeling. "You gave me the most miserable time of my life."

"I was very horrid."

"You told me you didn't give a _piastre_ for what I thought!"

"I said I didn't give half a _piastre_!" murmured Arlee irrepressibly, with a wicked dimple.

Reluctantly he grinned. "Well?" he put to her questioningly.

"Well?"

Their eyes met, sparkling, combative.

"You do, don't you?"

"What?"

"You do give a _piastre_ for what I----"

"I'm afraid I do. I'm afraid I give a good many _piastres_ for what everyone thinks." The girl's smile had suddenly faded; her eyes lowered and sought the far horizons.

In the silence he came a little closer to her. "Then Arlee--Arlee, dear----"

She started, and turned hurriedly. "We must go down----"

"Why must we?"

"They'll be waiting."

"Let 'em. They'll be glad of the chance if they can get away from Emma.... I want to talk to you."

"I think Mr. Hill is quite as nice as Lady Claire," flashed Arlee in a childish voice.

"Claire seems to agree with you." Falconer spoke lightly, but underneath sounded the note of the disgruntled male ... resentful of the defection of even the girls he left behind him. He added, with his fatal gift of truculent expression, "But that's perfectly absurd."

"Why absurd?" Arlee's voice held careful calm. The flash in her eyes was hidden.

Falconer made a gesture of extreme exasperation. To waste these precious moonlight moments in trifling debate was the very height of maddening futility.

"Oh, the chap's a feather-headed adventurer. What's the use of talking about him?... But that's aside the mark. I want----"

"You mustn't call him an adventurer!" The flash was far from hidden now. Her wide eyes blazed challenge at the disconcerted young man.

"It's not fair. It's not true."

"Oh, I don't mean it in any--any _financial_ sense," the hara.s.sed Falconer gave back. "But you can't expect me to take him seriously after his exploits in Cairo? He's flighty. He goes off like a rocket. He has illusions--but----"

"If you are going to slander him because of what he did for me--"

Arlee's voice was shaking.

"Oh, can't you see that's the key to his character!"

"Yes, I do see it." She sounded triumphant now. For a moment her eves met his full of bright defiance; she hung fire, half scared, then blazed into her revelation.

"_For I was in that palace._"

"What? What?" Falconer questioned in sheer vacancy of shock.

"I said--I was in that palace, Kerissen's palace."

"_What!_" came from him again, but now in twenty different intonations, with absolute incredulity struggling for dominance.

Desperately she rushed on, her voice shaken but pa.s.sionate.

"I tell you it is so. He got me there by a trick, a call upon his sister. And he kept me by another trick, pretending a quarantine. I was trapped there. The messages and all the Alexandria story were Kerissen's frauds. He wanted to marry me. I'd have been there to-night if it hadn't been for Billy Hill--that adventurer, as you call him!"

It was impossible. It was unthinkable. Falconer stood staring down at this girl whose white, upturned face, so amazingly ethereal and childish, met his astounded gaze with unfaltering fixity, and from his stiff lips dropped disjointed words and phrases, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of denial, of disbelief.

She swept them utterly aside in her complete affirmation. "It's all true--every bit."

"You--in that man's palace!" He was very pale, but into her white face there surged a sudden flood of color, crimsoning it from brow to throat.

"He didn't--hurt me," she stammered. "He was--quite mad--but he didn't--hurt me."

She heard Falconer draw his breath with a queer, whistling sound. He pushed back his hat and drew his hand over his forehead.

"It's--impossible," he persisted thickly, but there was bitter relief in his voice. "The blackguard--the filthy blackguard!"

"Don't, don't, please don't! I can't bear to think of him. I've done with even the thought of him.... He was trying to make me marry him.

I told you he was quite mad."

Sharply Falconer pulled himself together, in the tense effort to meet this horrible astonishment like a man.