"I—I was hungry," stammered Marishka helplessly. "I—I am sorry to bother you."
"If you will return to the room within, I will bring food at once," she said stolidly. And so Marishka, once more balked in her enterprise, went back to the Harim. Strong as she was, armed anew with the sudden strength of desperation, she knew that even if she could use her strength she was no match for this massive creature who, in the selamlik nearby, perhaps had men within call. She went to the windows and peered out into the street. There was no one in sight, except a tall man in black who carried an umbrella. She watched him a moment through the carved screen, but he went up the street and disappeared around a corner. The garden seemed to be deserted. Would the gate to the street be locked? She made an effort to move the lattice of meshrebiya, but it was nailed fast to the main wood work of the house. Her case was hopeless. There was nothing to do but wait upon the clemency—the mercy of Captain Goritz. A new idea of her captor was being born in her, of a creature who differed from the courteous German official of Vienna and Agram. His eyes haunted her, the dark eyes set just a little obliquely in his head, a racial peculiarity which she had not been able to identify. She knew now. They were Oriental, like Zubeydeh's, like those of the man at the door below, alien, hostile and cruel. And yet it was curious how the smile in them had disarmed her and she remembered, with a futile glow of returning hope, that she had not feared him, that she had even had the temerity to defy him. But her courage had ebbed—she could not have defied him now and in the darkness while she waited for Yeva she feared him—feared him.
It seemed strange that Yeva had not returned. She had been gone an hour or more and the Hotel Europa could not be a great distance away. As the moments passed she gave up the other hope of persuading the girl, when she returned, to go back at once to the hotel and reclaim the note, before Hugh could get it. Could anything have happened to her? Marishka wanted her—the sound of a voice, the touch of a feminine hand, her airs and graces—the foibles of a child perhaps, but intensely virile in their childishness and intensely human. It seemed that even Yeva was to be denied to her.
For when Zubeydeh brought lights and food the woman made no comment upon the absence of the girl—a confirmation of Marishka's suspicions that Zubeydeh was aware of the conspiracy and what was to come of it. But as Marishka made a pretense of eating what the woman had brought, she summoned courage to inquire.
"Yeva went out into the city by the passage to the street. She has not yet returned?"
"I do not know," she said in her heavy colorless voice.
The woman lied. Marishka knew it by the shifting glance of her eye.
"Will you kindly inform His Excellency—I need mention no names—that I should be very glad if he would meet me at his convenience——"
"Excellency is not here," said the woman.
"Well, when he comes, I should be grateful if you will deliver my message."