"What? What?" Falconer questioned in sheer vacancy of shock.
"I said—I was in that palace, Kerissen's palace."
"What!" came from him again, but now in twenty different intonations, with absolute incredulity struggling for dominance.
Desperately she rushed on, her voice shaken but passionate.
"I tell you it is so. He got me there by a trick, a call upon his sister. And he kept me by another trick, pretending a quarantine. I was trapped there. The messages and all the Alexandria story were Kerissen's frauds. He wanted to marry me. I'd have been there to-night if it hadn't been for Billy Hill—that adventurer, as you call him!"
It was impossible. It was unthinkable. Falconer stood staring down at this girl whose white, upturned face, so amazingly ethereal and childish, met his astounded gaze with unfaltering fixity, and from his stiff lips dropped disjointed words and phrases, ejaculations of denial, of disbelief.
She swept them utterly aside in her complete affirmation. "It's all true—every bit."
"You—in that man's palace!" He was very pale, but into her white face there surged a sudden flood of color, crimsoning it from brow to throat.
"He didn't—hurt me," she stammered. "He was—quite mad—but he didn't—hurt me."
She heard Falconer draw his breath with a queer, whistling sound. He pushed back his hat and drew his hand over his forehead.