"Embarrassment is an emotion rare to find among your ladies—it is the dewy bloom upon your own perfect innocence.... Ah, I wish you spoke my language! I could tell you many things——"
"Your English is excellent," said the white-faced girl. "Did you learn it at Oxford or before?"
He did not pause for such foolish questionings. "Why do you not wish me to tell you what you are?" he said reproachfully. "Is it because you doubt that I mean it?"
"Because I am not used to such compliments—and I would rather not hear them now. I am your guest and I am very tired. I must go in."
It was very dark in the garden. And it was still and unutterably lonely. Only the stars burned above them in the heavens; only the light wind of the desert stirred. From the far distance the muffled beat of the tom-tom sounded. Surely, thought Arlee, surely she was dreaming.... This could not be Arlee Beecher, here with this man—this Turk.
"I must go in," she repeated, with a heightening of assurance.
As he looked down at her for a moment that chill dread seemed to lay its icy hands on her very heart as she glimpsed something of the tumult within his eyes. She had a vision of him as a man capable of all, reckless, impassioned, poised upon the brink of some desperate plunge.... Then the hands of consequences seemed to lay compelling hold upon him; the fire was extinguished; the vision gone like a mirage. His eyes were friendly, his lips smiling, as he bowed to her, in deferential courtesy, to all appearances a gentleman of her world.
"I must not tire my guest," he said, and stood aside to let her pass up the narrow stone steps.
"We shall have other walks," he added, and the chill, delicate menace of those words went with Arlee Beecher to the rose and white room, and kept her sorry company through the long and restless hours.