“Ah, here is Mrs. Crespin!” Traherne said with an effort.
She took a few steps towards them, holding out her draperies a little, as gleefully as a child in new festival robes. “Behold the Paris model!” she bade them.
“My eye, Lu, what a ripping frock!” was Antony’s comment.
“Talk of magic, Major!” Traherne laughed, turning and speaking as if never a shadow of quarreling had hung over them. “There’s something in what our friend says.”
“What’s that? What about magic?” Mrs. Crespin demanded, accepting the chair that Crespin moved towards her.
“We’ll tell you afterwards,” her husband promised. “Let’s have your adventures first.” He spoke lightly, but he was anxious.
“No adventures precisely—only a little excursion into the Arabian Nights,” she laughed.
“Do tell us!” Traherne urged.
“Well,” she began, a little nervous now, Traherne thought, but evidently not without enjoyment of the experience, “my guide—the woman you saw—led me along corridor after corridor, and upstairs and downstairs, till we came to a heavy bronze door where two villainous looking blacks, with crooked swords, were on guard. I didn’t like the looks of them a bit; but I was in for it, and had to go on. They drew their swords and flourished a sort of salute, grinning with all their teeth. Then the ayah clapped her hands twice, some one inspected us through a grating in the door, and the ayah said a word or two—”
“No doubt, ‘Open Sesame!’” Traherne suggested.