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"When you wanted to show the letter, I said yes, but " Monny listened no longer. Her eyes were sparkling, as they looked straight into mine. "Antoun Effendi!" she repeated. "Tell me first because, you know, you are his friend what would he think about a case like this? Whatever he is, he's not a Mussulman, I'm sure. Still, he's not one of us " "You're sure he's not a Mussulman?" I echoed.
It was altogether a red-letter day for the camel-boys, quite apart from the fact that they would get rid of their noble benefactors to-morrow; and by way of a climax they had what we supposed to be a bonfire at dark. "Aren't all those white figures wonderful, grouped round the blaze?" asked Monny, who appeared on the whole satisfied with the way in which the desert had taken her.
"We've ordered our own camels, and a tent, and things to eat and drink, so we shan't be any bother to you," Monny went on, as Anthony rather gravely shook hands, his eager brows lifted, his eyes smiling in spite of himself. "We couldn't have done it, if it hadn't been for Slatin Pasha.
We felt, dimly, as if we had had a "warning," and did not yet know how to profit by it. The atmosphere was charged with electricity, as before an earthquake; and we felt that the affair of the hasheesh den might be but a preface to some chapter yet unwritten. Still, it was impossible not to forgive Monny her indiscretion.
It was nearly all for Monny; but Monny must not know, lest she should lose her nerve when it was needed most. That idea of Brigit's, about Monny being mistaken for Esme O'Brien by members of the Organization O'Brien betrayed, had seemed foolish and far fetched, although Esme was hidden from her father's enemies near Monaco, and it was at Monaco that Miss Gilder and Rachel Guest and Mrs.
The difficulty was that, though I could speak Arabic fairly well, I hardly knew the difference between hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic forms; but the limited symbols I was able to employ were so strong in themselves that a few would go a long way: and if they were not as correct as the sentiments they expressed, Monny was not herself a mistress of hieroglyphic style.
It was hers and his, and perhaps Monny's, for Monny had backed Rachel up in creating a wrong impression, as if they two had been playing together, like children, to trick the grown-ups. But I had to find out what had started the ball rolling, because it looked as if that ball had come out of the pocket of Bedr. "I'm glad you're happy," I said, "and my hope is that you'll remain so.
She had lost her puritan primness, and behaved more in accordance with her slanting eyes than with her bringing up. She giggled like a schoolgirl rather than a schoolmistress, tried to make herself look young, and copied Monny in the way she tilted her hat and dressed her hair.
And with an astonished, frightened gurgle in his throat the negro involuntarily fell back. "Run!" Monny breathed, prisoning him where he stood, with the little bright eye of the Browning cocked up at his face. She had to be obeyed then, and they ran, the two of them, flashing past the black man, touching his clothes as they squeezed by, yet he dared not put out a detaining hand.
Yet how obvious that Bedr should take advantage of it for his clients' sake, if those two men were what she sometimes feared! Brigit had never spoken out to Monny what was in her mind about Esme O'Brien. She had known that Monny would laugh, and perhaps say "What fun!"
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