"He's sick in the Cairo hospital," Billy made haste to inform her. "I found out by accident. I understand he has a bad fever. So I think he'll be up to no more tricks—and I'm out the satisfaction of a little heart-to-heart talk."
"Oh, I told you you couldn't," she cried quickly. "You would make him too angry. He isn't just—sane."
"Then all I have to do in Egypt is to hunt up my little Imp," said Billy. "I must see the little chap again—before I go."
He waited—uselessly as he had foretold. She said nothing, and if the glance he felt upon him was of inquiry he did not look about to meet it. He was still staring a saturnine Pasht out of countenance. There was a pause.
Then, "However were you able to think of it all?" said Arlee in slow wonder. "However were you able to think such an impossible thought as my imprisonment?"
"Because I was thinking about you," said Billy. Suddenly his tongue ran away with him. "Incessantly," he added.
She looked up at him. Unguardedly he looked down at her. No one but a blind girl or a goose could have mistaken that look upon Billy B. Hill's young face, the frustrate longing of it, the deep desire. The heart beneath the sky-blue cloak cast off a most monstrous accumulation of doubts and fears and began suddenly to beat like mad.
Totally unexpectedly, startlingly amazing, she flung out at him, "Then what made you stop?"
"Stop?" he echoed. "Stop? I've never stopped! There hasn't been a moment——"
"There have been three days. Three—horrible—days!"