“I expected an attack. Si El Hadj Arrifa would have seen that you were sent safely down to the coast. My agents there would have taken care of you. You would of course never want for anything again.”
“I should want for everything,” said Marguerite slowly. “I don’t think, Paul, that I could go on living. . . . I was told of a girl . . . when her husband died, she dressed herself in her wedding gown—I couldn’t do that, my dear,” she interpolated with a little whimsical smile. “Then she lay down on her bed and took poison. . . . I often think of that girl.”
“Marguerite, you shouldn’t. It’s morbid. You are young. Even if I went—” but there came a stubborn look upon Marguerite Lambert’s face against which he was well aware his finest arguments would beat in vain. “I’ll discuss that with you when it’s necessary,” he said. “To-night my friend Si El Hadj Arrifa warned me that not only was the Mission to be attacked on its way to the coast, but that there would also be a rising here.”
He had Marguerite’s attention now. She looked at him with startled eyes.
“In Fez?”
“Yes.”
“That will mean—?”
“Yes, let us face it. A massacre.”
Marguerite shivered and caught Paul’s hand. She looked about the court outside the lighted room in which they sat. There were shadowy corners which daunted her. She looked upwards, straining her ears. But the ceaseless chant of the mueddin on the minaret of the Karouein mosque alone broke the silence of the night.
“When is it to be?” she whispered, as though the fanatics were already gathered about her door.