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Updated: June 19, 2025
"Really?... So soon?" she cried very childishly, and again he bowed. But this time she caught his smile. "Really so soon, little Arlee." To his amazement she burst into prankish laughter. "Oh, you are romantic!" she gave back.
So this, he thought rapidly, was the foreign girl in Kerissen's house, and Arlee, bless her little golden head, was safe where she planned, in Alexandria. A warm glow of happiness enveloped him at that. "Now tell me all about it," he demanded again. "You are running away from Kerissen?" "Oh, yes," she cried eagerly. "You must not let him catch us. We are safe yes?"
The tea was most disappointingly ordinary, for the pat of butter bore the rose stamp of the English dairy and the bread was English bake, but the sweetmeats were deliciously novel, resembling nothing Arlee had seen in the shops, and new, too, was the sip of syrup which completed the refreshment.
The phrase suggested Arlee. And the situation was not dissimilar. He felt a positive sympathy for the big blond fellow in his pronounced clothes and glossy boots and careful boutonnière.... He smiled in friendly fashion. "She'll come along yet," he prophesied, "and if she doesn't, just you go out after her. I wouldn't take too many chances in the waiting game." The German shook his head.
His voice was no louder; it was even lower, but it took on a note of authority. Arlee was silent, a chill creeping up about her heart like a rising tide.... "You are a flower upon a height," he said, and his tones were soft again and gently caressing, "laughing at others because you know you are so high above them, and so proud.
Indeed, Arlee thought, that sister was not distinguishing herself by her grateful courtesy to this guest who was brightening the tristesse of her secluded day, but perhaps this was due to her Oriental languor or the limitations of their medium of speech. It was a relief to have the Captain suggest music. At their polite insistence Arlee went to the piano and did her best with a piece of MacDowell.
"But, dear me, can't you have some one in the banquet hall to shoo the soldiers away?" Arlee argued persuasively. "Since the rest of the household has the court, it seems awfully selfish not to let the ladies have the garden for their airing." "It may be managed," he assented. "It has always been done, for the garden is for the ladies.
As she was buttering a last crumb of toast the girl re-entered with a box from the florist. Her white teeth flashing at Arlee in a smile of admiring interest, she broke the cord with thick fingers and Arlee found the box full of roses, creamy pink and dewy fresh.
He knitted his brows over it. "Why, the steamer leaves Assiout at noon of the fifth day that was yesterday." "Oh! I must have passed them on the Nile," cried Arlee. "Maragha is where they stopped last night. To-day they'll be steaming along steadily and stop to-night at Desneh. To-morrow night they'll be at Luxor." "And they stay three days at Luxor?" "The steamer does, I believe.
He followed on the very heels of the announcement, his sword clanking, his spurs jingling, as he bounded up the stairs and hurried through the long, dim drawing-room toward them. "You have heard?" he cried in English as they came to meet him. "You have heard?" "Of the plague!" Arlee answered, wondering at his agitation. "Yes, your sister just told me. Is it really the plague?"
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