“We can always send Selim out,” he added.
Marguerite’s eyes lightened.
“We will send him out, Paul,” she exclaimed. “Do you know what has been troubling me? We haven’t a window upon any street. We are here at the bottom of a well with nothing but our ears to warn us of danger. We can see nothing.”
Paul looked at her anxiously. She was nervous, the flutter of her hands feverish, and her voice running up and down the scale as though she had no control over it. Paul reached across the table and laid his hand upon her arm.
“You poor little girl!” he said gently. “These are trying days. But there won’t be many. The wireless here will have got into touch already with Moinier’s column near Meknes. The troops, too, at Dar-Debibagh may do something,” and ever so slightly his voice faltered when he spoke of the troops, yet not so slightly but that Marguerite noticed it. “They have some guns,” he went on hurriedly, and again Marguerite noticed the hurry, the desire to cover up and hide that little spasm of pain which had stabbed him when he thought of his men. “Yes, the guns!” he said. “There will be an end to that infernal twittering on the roof tops when the guns begin to talk.”
“Paul, you should have been with your men,” said Marguerite, and he answered her with a kind of violent obstinacy which drew her eyes in one swift glance to his face. “I am on leave.”
He changed his tone, however, immediately.
“We will send Selim into the town for news,” he said cheerfully, “and we will go up on to the roof.”
Selim was bidden to knock twice, and, after a tiny interval, once more upon his return. Paul stood behind the door listening to make sure that the tunnel was empty before he opened it. Then he let him go, and locked and barred the door again.
“Come,” he said to Marguerite and, picking up some cushions, they went upstairs to the roof. Marguerite had followed Paul’s example, and was dressed in Moorish clothes; the house was higher by a storey than any which adjoined it, and the roof itself was enclosed in a parapet waist-high. They crouched upon the cushions behind the wall and cautiously looked over it.