He had a favor to ask. The American girl of Kerissen's palace had escaped unharmed and returned to her friends who were ignorant of all. She was this moment in the ruins. It would be a great shock to her to meet Fritzi, to have Fritzi recognize her. On the morning she would be gone. Would Fritzi——"
"Fritzi must disappear—for the night?" said the little Viennese smiling wisely, but with a trace of cynicism. "The little American must not be reminded—h'm? We will go.... For you have done so much for me, you big, strange, platonic Mr. Billy!" Dazzlingly she smiled on him, her dark eyes quizzically provocative.
"You're not at the Grand?"
"No, not that." She named another. "You come see me, when that girl goes—h'm?"
Billy caught the German's eyes upon him, in their depths a faint trouble, a vague appeal. He comprehended that the infatuated young man had engaged in the tortuous business of keeping sparks from tinder.
"I'm gone to-morrow," he replied.
"Maybe in Vienna?" went on the dancer. "We go soon—another day or so maybe—and then back over the water to that life I left! Oh, my God, how happy I am to go back to it all—to dance, to sing—Oh, I could kiss you, Mr. Billy, if it would not make you so shock!" she added with a malicious little laugh. "You know the news—about him—h'm?"
"Him?"
"Kerissen—that devil fellow. He is in Cairo with a fever—in the hospital there. A man who come from that hospital just tells us—just by accident he tell us. A bad fever, too!" She laughed in satisfaction. "I hope he burn good and hard up," she added, with energetic spite, "and teach him not to act like a wild man. That man say he got a bad hand," she added, with a shrewd glance at Billy.
The young man merely grunted. "I hope he has," he replied. "It matches the rest of him. Good night."