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Updated: June 19, 2025
"And it's so much of a lark for me that I can't keep my mind on the problem of the future. But I have to get you to Luxor by to-morrow night " "And I can't arrive in the rags and tatters of a white silk calling gown," mentioned Arlee cheerfully, surveying her disreputable and most delightful disarray. "I must have trunks and a respectable air and a chaperon, I suppose." "And I won't do at that.
But the girl laughed and shook her head at the question, and at the French and German with which Arlee next addressed her, and answered in soft Turkish, at which it was Arlee's turn to laugh and shake her head. But she felt a little rueful behind her pleasant smiling. She wished she could talk with the girl. She wondered about her.
From the shadows of the room it disclosed came a figure with a quick cry. So suddenly it came, so tumultuously it threw itself toward her that Arlee had a startled vision of bare arms, glittering with jeweled bands, arrested outstretched before her as the low gladness of the cry broke in an angry guttural. Slowly the arms dropped in a gesture of despair.
Mutely Arlee shook her head, seeing only a figure about her own height clad in a dark negligée. Dumfounded she stood watching while her visitor deliberately lighted a candle. "So that is better," she observed, and in the light of the tiny taper between them the two stood facing each other.
"One of our servants is dead," she murmured to Arlee in explanation. "They say now it is the plague." "The plague?" repeated the girl absently. She was thinking what a hideous creature that great Nubian was. Then, more vividly, "The plague?" "You have fear?" said the negligent voice. Arlee nodded frankly. "Oh, yes, I should be terribly afraid of it," she averred. "Aren't you?"
He withdrew to make the attempt, and in his place came Billy with a tray of luncheon. "Just put it down," Arlee said faintly. "I'll eat by and by." Worriedly Billy looked down on the girl. Her eyes closed. Excitement had ebbed, leaving her like some spent castaway on the shores. He dropped on his knees beside her, dipping a clean handkerchief in the jar of cold cream.
She was being deceived ... The quarantine was lifted. How else could the Captain be cantering down the street? He did not look like a man escaping.... Perhaps he had bribed the doorkeeper that which he had declared impossible for Arlee.... But certainly he was deceiving her.
It brought a lump into his throat.... He wanted to bend over her reverently, to lift a strand of that shining hair to his lips, to touch the sandy little hands.... Somehow he managed not to. The moment of longing and of glamor passed. "It's exactly as if we'd been shipwrecked!" said Arlee, looking about with an air of childish delight.
"Oh, quick! come away quick, quick!" she besought. "I came for Arlee Beecher an American girl. Isn't she held here? Isn't she back there?" "What you going to do? What " "I'm going to get her!" he said fiercely. "Tell me " He had caught her and unconsciously shook her as if to shake the words out of her. Furiously she struggled with him. "Let me go. No, no, she is not there! No one is there!
One entire side of the room was a brown, lace-like screen of mashrubiyeh windows; wide divans stretched beside them, and at the end of the room, facing Arlee, was a throne-like chair raised on a small dais and canopied with heavy silks.
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