Gathering her long skirt over her arm that it might not impede her movements, she ran headlong down the street, slipping on the horrible cobbles. Very soon she heard the hue and cry after her, and knew she must quickly be overtaken, for her high-heeled shoes caught in the treacherous interstices between the stones and nearly threw her down. Passing the mouth of another street, a desperate expedient suggested itself. The door of the first house stood open, and she slipped inside, hearing her pursuers rage by. As soon as the last was past the door, she crept out, and ran down the side street, more slowly now, for one shoe had lost its heel, and she could only get on with difficulty. Before she reached the end of the street she heard the shouts of the mob growing nearer again, and knew that they must have discovered her evasion. Two narrow passages between overhanging houses were before her, and she darted down the nearest, which was unsavoury to a degree. It ended at last, and she came out on a wide open space, surrounded by squalid hovels, the outlines of which were just discernible by the dull glare in the sky. Panting, she paused for a moment, took off the shoe which still possessed a heel, and tried vainly to hammer it off with a stone. It was beyond her efforts, and she pushed back her hair, tied her handkerchief across her face below the eyes, so that it hung down like an Egyptian face-veil, and turned the skirt of her evening gown over her head, hoping that she might pass for a Roumi woman, whose veil would be a safeguard to her in the event of meeting any Moslem. Happily for her peace of mind, it did not occur to her that the frills of silk and lace at the edge of the lining would betray her at once, and she began to limp across the open space, which she recognised as the remains of a Roman amphitheatre which forms one of the sights of Therma.
She had scarcely emerged from the shadow of the houses when she heard footsteps behind her. She stopped, but they came on, and she broke into a feeble run, hearing the footsteps following and coming nearer. She thought she heard a voice, but she drew the skirt more closely over her head and tottered on, until the treacherous heel caught in something and she fell. The footsteps approached at a run, and she shut her eyes and waited for death.
“I’m awfully sorry I frightened you,” said a voice in English. “Can I help you in any way?”
The revulsion of feeling was so great that Eirene crouched helplessly where she had fallen, and looked up at her questioner. With a gasp of relief, such as she had never expected to feel in the circumstances, she recognised the blue eyes bent upon her.
“Oh, Captain Wylie!” she sobbed.
“Why, who is it?” he asked, helping her up. “Is it possible—not Miss Eirene?—I mean the Princess.”
“Oh, yes,” she cried, pulling off the handkerchief; “and there is a crowd trying to kill me, and I can’t get away. Oh, what shall I do?”
“Gently,” said Wylie, drawing her back into the shadow of the houses. “Are you hurt? You seemed to walk lame.”
“It’s my shoes. I have only one heel left.” She took off the shoe, and he amputated the offending heel with his knife.
“I can’t promise to get you back to the Consulate,” he said, steering her across the corner of the open space, “for most of the outrages have taken place in the foreign quarter, and the troops are out, and firing wild. I like the Roumis generally, but to-night I must confess I would as soon meet a mob as soldiers. It’s natural enough after what has happened.”