It was a local, a train of corridor compartments. In one, marked "Ladies Alone," Arlee was ensconced, with an Englishwoman and her maid, and two pleasant German women, and in another Billy B. Hill sat opposite some young Copts and lighted pipe after pipe. When the train started out on the High Bridge across the Nile to the eastern bank, he came out in the corridor to look out the wide glass windows there, and found Arlee beside him.
"How do you do?" she said brightly. "How nice to meet accidentally like this—you see, I'm rehearsing my story," she added under her breath.
"Let's see if you have it straight," he told her.
"I arrive on a local which left Cairo this morning.... Did I come alone?"
"You'd better invent some nice traveling friend——"
She shook her head in flat refusal. "I won't. I'm not equal to inventing anything. It's bad enough now to—to tell the necessary lies I have to." The brightness left her face looking suddenly wan and sorry. "I suppose it's part of my—punishment—for my dreadful folly," she said in a low tone.
"It's just part of the coin the world has to be paid in for its conventions," Billy quickly retorted. "Don't let it worry you like that—in a day no one will think to question you."
"I know—but—it's having the memory always there. Always knowing that there is something I can't be honest about—something secret and dreadful——"
She was staring unseeingly out the window, her soft lips twitching.