Paul stooped and kissed her hair.
“Marguerite, I wouldn’t have left you there for anything in the world. From the moment I saw you there was no world for me, except the world in which you and I moved step by step and hand-in-hand.”
CHAPTER XVI
Marguerite’s Way Out
Gradually the attack upon the Consulates died away. The waving light from the blaze of torches in the ring of streets about that quarter diminished, and darkness came again to the watchers upon the roof top. They sat huddled together in silence. Marguerite’s broken sobbing had ceased. Above them the bright stars wheeled in a sky of velvet. Only away to the north, where the beleaguered post still held out at the Bab-el-Mahroud, was there now any sound of firing, or any faint clamour of voices. The troubled city rested, waiting for daylight.
Paul became conscious that Marguerite was stirring out of the abandonment of grief in which she had lain. He felt her supple body stiffen in his arms. Some idea, some plan perhaps, had occurred to her of which he must beware; all the more because she did not speak of it. He was pondering what that plan might be, when above their heads, in their very ears it seemed, the first mueddin on the balcony of his minaret launched over the city his vibrant call to prayer.
The sound startled them both so that they clung together.
“Don’t move,” whispered Paul.
“The Companions of the Sick!” said Marguerite, in a low voice. “My dear, we shall need them to-night as much as any two in Fez.”
They waited for a few moments. Then they crept swiftly and silently to the hatchway and closed it above their heads. In Marguerite’s room Paul lighted the candles. Marguerite was wearing the little frock of white and silver in which she had dressed the night before, and she let the dark cloak slip from her shoulders and fall about her feet.