Britton knew every nook of the climbing city, old, by almost a thousand years, in story and conflict. With the lady of pale-gold beauty he had explored all the charming retreats of both towns. They had loitered in the Place Royale amid the orange and lime trees, finding pleasure in watching the cosmopolitan crowds which thronged that oblong space in the centre of the city. The traits of character disclosed by representatives of so many different nations–Moors, Jews and Arabs, Germans, Spaniards, French, Corsicans, Italians and Maltese, and scores of other races–proved very interesting to the English observers.
The mild, balmy Algerian evenings seemed temptations to roam abroad, and the two had grown accustomed to promenade the Bab-el-Ouad and the Bab-azoun, which ran north and south in a parallel direction for half a mile. Those walks down the dim vista of flanking colonnades beneath an ivory moon, the same that lighted the Sahara caravans through the desert tracts, intoxicated senses and blood alike.
They had delved into the djamas, or superior mosques, the mesjids, or inferior ones, and the marabouts, which were the tombs or sanctuaries of the ancient Moorish saints; they had plunged into the market rabbles on the Squares de Chartres, d'Isly and Mahon, lolled in the Parisian-like boulevards and arcades of the new town, sat upon the flat-roofed, prison-windowed houses at sunset to catch the tang of the sweeping sea-wind on their faces, journeyed in the yacht as far as the lighthouse on Cape Matifou and the forbidding brow of Cape Caxine, or stretched their land-legs in the ascent of the narrow, jagged street called the Casbah that led up to the old Moorish fortress of the same name perched high on the steep, and commanding all Algiers.
Standing on the height of the Mustapha Supérieure where the fiacre had left him in front of the hotel piazza, Britton felt as if under some binding spell which the land of the sheik had cast upon him, a spell from which he would not willingly escape, for the delicious, cobwebby fetters only thrilled instead of chafing.
Dismissing his driver with a liberal fee, Britton ran lightly up the steps of the magnificent hostelry, resplendent with blazing lights and ornate structural patterns designed to rival the architectural beauties of the other fashionable resorts that contested for the patronage of the most select people who came to stay at Algiers.
The obsequious concierge, stationed in the hall to look after new-comers, directed a servant to appropriate Britton's coat and hat and bowed the Englishman toward the reception-room with a flood of welcoming French.
The reception-room–which some took the liberty of calling the morning-room–was a cosy, oak-panelled, damask-hung chamber where hotel inmates and visitors could meet or wait for friends. It gave one the impression of being very well appointed with rugs, round tables, leather-covered chairs, cushioned divans, pictures, mantels and window-seats.
At Britton's entrance the solitary occupant of the reception-room rose from a divan. She came forward with a glad, excited light beautifying her face, the filmy, silver-colored gown she wore sweeping gracefully about her slim, exquisite figure.
Quite close to Britton she paused and took hold of the lapels of his coat, smoothing them with her soft white fingers.
Had the lawyer been there to see, this action would have settled once for all the question of Britton's relation to Maud Morris. In her movement was the suggestion of intimate possession never to be mistaken for anything else. It told more than could be expressed in whole chapters of explanation.