“Paul, Paul!” she cried joyfully. But there was a look on his face which dashed her joy. Marguerite was quick in those days to fall from a high buoyancy of spirit to forebodings and alarm. This miracle of her happiness was balanced on so fine a needle point that sometime it must drop and break into a thousand useless shining splinters. “Why aren’t you going?” she asked suspiciously.
“Because of the rain.” Paul Ravenel explained. “The departure of the Mission is postponed for three days.”
“Only for three days?” Marguerite repeated with a wistful droop of the corners of her mouth.
“It won’t leave after three days,” said Paul. “It won’t leave Fez for a long while.”
He spoke very gravely and after a moment of silence Marguerite disengaged herself gently from his embrace. A trace of the haggard look which had once been so familiar upon her face was visible there again: so visible that Paul wondered whether some hint of the threatened massacre had not been given to her by Selim or the negresses.
“Yes, you were in great trouble when you came into the court to-night, and when I asked you why, you put me off with an excuse. The truth now, Paul, please!” she pleaded though she caught her breath at the thought of what the truth might mean to her.
“You have courage, Marguerite.”
The girl’s eyelids closed and fluttered over her eyes.
“I shall need it?”
“Yes.”