"And you——?" She looked up at him with a startled, vivid blush that stained her soft skin from throat to brow. "You must have been to a great deal of expense——"
"Not a bit. Please don't——"
"But I must. When I get to a bank. I still have my letter of credit with me," she said thankfully, "but it didn't do me any good in that wretched palace. It was just paper to them. I showed it to the girl once and tried to make her understand."
"The first station we find we'd better wire for your trunks to be sent by express to Cook's at Luxor—or to the Grand Hotel. And then you can take the train straight to Luxor and buy some clothes there."
"But the train—I can't travel in this! And there would be people on it who would talk——"
"Had we better make it to Assiout then?" said Billy doubtfully. "Once in the city, of course, you'd be safe——"
"How far is Assiout from Luxor? Where are we now?"
"We're Alice in Wonderland about that. Somewhere about twenty-five or thirty miles south of Assiout, I should say. It must be nearly a hundred and twenty, as the crow flies, from Assiout to Thebes—that's right across from Luxor, you know."
Arlee was silent a moment. She lifted a handful of shining sands and let them run down from her fingers in fine dust. "It's such a pity," she mused, "when we've such a good start——"
Billy stared.