"But one escaped?" questioned the girl, breaking the silence which had followed the cessation of his voice. "Is it true that one really escaped?"
"Anym-bey—yes, he was the only one that escaped that massacre. He had a fierce horse which gave him pain to mount, and he was still in the courtyard of the palace when he heard the outburst of shots and then the cries. He comprehended. Stripping his turban from his head he bound it over the eyes of his stallion and, spurring to a gallop, he dashed out over the parapet of the Citadel and down—down—down! Magnificent! He did not die of it, but alas! he did not escape. Wounded as he was he managed to reach the house of a relative, but the soldiers of the Sultan tracked him there and seized him.... He was killed."
"Oh, the pity—after that splendid dash!" Arlee stopped and looked around her, at the strange shadowy room hung with its old embroideries and latticed with its ancient screening. "This room makes it all so real, somehow," she murmured. "I didn't believe it all when the dragoman told me—probably because he showed me the mark of the horse's hoof in the stone of the parapet! I thought it was all a legend—like the mark."
"Did he show you, too, the bulrush where Moses was found and the indentures in the stones in the crypt of the Coptic Church where Saint Joseph and Mary sat to rest after the flight into Egypt?" laughed the Captain. And, with a teasing smile, "Ah, what imbeciles they think you tourists!"
But Arlee merely laughed with him, while the old woman changed the plates for dessert. Her spirits had brightened mercurially. This was really interesting.... Uneasiness had vanished.
"Is that an old Mameluke throne?" she asked, pointing to the raised chair upon the dais, with its heavy, dusty draperies.
The Captain glanced at it and shook his head, smiling faintly. "No, that is the throne of marriage." He pushed away his sweet and lighted a cigarette. "That is where sits the bride when she has been brought to the home of her husband—there she holds her reception. Those are the fêtes to which the English ladies come in such curiosity." His smile was not quite pleasant.
"You cannot blame them for feeling a real—interest," said Arlee hesitantly.
"Their interest—pah!" he flung back excitably and made a violent gesture with his cigarette. "They peer at the bride with their haggard eyes, and they say, 'What! You have not seen your husband till to-day! How strange—how strange! Has he not written to you? Suppose you do not like him,' and they laugh and add, 'Fancy a girl among us being married like that!'... The imbeciles—whose own marriages are abominations!"
For a moment Arlee was silent, instinct and impulse warring within her. The man was a maniac upon those subjects, and it was madness to exchange a word with him—but her young anger darted through her discretion.