"Come, Ferdinand! No, you get in first. I hate being passed and trodden on when once I'm in, and I take up so much room."
That night, when Charmian was safely in her bedroom and had locked the door against imaginary intruders, she cried, bitterly, impetuously:
"If only Rades had not sung Petite Fille de Tombouctou!"
That song seemed to have put the finishing touch to desires which would never be gratified. Charmian could not have explained why. But such music was cruel when life went wrong.
"Why won't he come? Why won't he come?" she murmured angrily.
Then she looked at herself in the glass, and thought she realized that from the first she had hated Claude Heath.
CHAPTER VIII
A fortnight later The Wanderer lay at anchor in the harbor of Algiers. But only the captain and some of the crew were on board. Mrs. Shiffney, Max Elliot, and Paul Lane had gone off in a motor to Bou-Saada. Alfred Waring, the extra man who had come instead of Claude Heath, had run over to Biskra to see some old friends, and Charmian and Susan Fleet were at the Hôtel St. George at Mustapha Supérieur.
Charmian was not very well. The passage from Marseilles had been rough, and she had suffered. As she had never before seen Algiers she had got out of the expedition to Bou-Saada. And Susan Fleet had, apparently, volunteered to stay with her, but had really stayed, as she did a great many things when she was with Mrs. Shiffney, because there was no one else to do it and Mrs. Shiffney had told her so.