The curious expression upon Falconer's face deepened. "Let 'em go on," he said jerkily. "I don't want to leave this yet, do you?"
Arlee glanced about hesitantly, without answering, and slowly she let fall the white froth of skirt she had been gathering for the descent.
In silence she looked out over the temple. The moon had paled from fire to molten silver now, and like scattered sparks of it burned the thousand circling stars. She felt very strange and unreal—a tiny figure topping this great gate in the face of the ancient silence....
"We never have a chance for a word together," Falconer was mumbling, with a nervous hand at his mustache.
Her thoughts came fleetly back from the ancient worlds.... Her own was upon her. She turned and laughed at him. "We've talked for three whole days!"
"Have we? But always in some group.... I understand that Hill told you what a couple of donkeys we made of ourselves on your account?" Anxiously he scanned her face, silver-clear in the moonlight, for signs of ridicule.
But Arlee's smile was very sweet. It made the sandy-haired young man's heart quicken mysteriously. "He told me," she said. "I think it was fine of you."
"Fine? It was lunacy.... He'd got worked up over some horrible story he'd heard," went on the young man in the mingling humor and embarrassment, "and nothing for it but that you'd gone the same way. And if you'll believe it, he had us prowling around that old palace like a pair of jolly idiots primed to get their heads blown off—and served us jolly well right! He was in luck to get off with nothing but a scratch."
"A scratch—? You mean—you don't mean——?"
"He didn't tell you that?" Falconer was surprised; he had imagined that Billy's narration had led romantically to Billy's wound. He made the American a silent apology. "He was shot in the arm."