The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 41

"Nice little speech," said Falconer in an undertone.

The second voice was raised a trifle resentfully. "Yet was not the very pith of it spoken by Ruskin when he stood upon this identical spot? His words were these, 'At last size tells!'"

Another murmur agreed that it was indeed the pith.

"That's Clara Eversham," said Arlee under her breath. "They came over early with some people from the boat."

"She must be frightfully up on the guide books," muttered Falconer.

"She's a _miner_ in them," Arlee laughed, as they made their way over the rubbishy ground where great beams of stone and fallen statues lay half-buried in the sands.

"They must be very glad to have you back again with them," Falconer told her, trying hard to keep their progress ahead of the others.

"Oh, I don't know!" Honest dubiety spoke in Arlee's tone. "They have mentioned twice how convenient it was to use my stateroom!"

"They felt very badly when you ran away from them in Cairo."

"I was shockingly sudden about that," owned the girl lightly, "but the chance came--Are we going to climb the great pylon now?"

"It will be a jolly high place to see the moon rise."

It _was_ a jolly high place to see the moon rise, and to see all Karnak, and all Luxor, with its high Moslem minaret towering over its crumbling columns, and to see the dark and distant country with its tiny hamlets crouching under humbler mosques and lonely palms, and on the other side the wide and winding Nile with the shadowy cliffs of Thebes beyond. It gave Arlee the dizzying sensation of being suspended between heaven and earth, so high was she above those far-reaching plains, so high above the giant columns beneath her, the vast beamed roofs, the pointing obelisks. It made her breath quicken and her pulses beat.

"Watch the moon," said Falconer in a low tone.

Blood-red it rose behind the dark pile, throwing into sinister relief a gallows-like angle of stone beams, then higher and higher it soared till its resplendent light poured unchecked into the wide courts and broken temples, the unroofed altars and the empty shrines.

"A dead world lighting a dead world," said Arlee under her breath.

"I could read by it," stated Miss Falconer impressively.

Lady Claire glanced up at Billy with a touch of mischief. "Would you like to paint it?" she suggested.

"Heaven forbid!" said Billy soberly.

Falconer said nothing at all, except to Arlee. He was very shrewdly drawing her to the other end of the pylon, seeing that the time of descent was nearly upon them. And when the time arrived, and the English ladies and their stoic escort started down the steep steps, Falconer made no motion of following them. He stood still, his hands in his pockets, and chuckled softly at the sound of his sister's voice, floating lesseningly up to them.

"How Emma is dragoning that William Whatdycallit Hill," he said appreciatively.

"Why do you call him that?" questioned Arlee.

"Oh, that chap is so deuced odd about that name of his. I asked him what the B. stood for, and he looked me in the eye like a fighting c.o.c.k and said for his middle name.... Queer chap--" Suddenly Falconer looked sidewise at Arlee and stopped.

"He is--unusual," she agreed, moving toward the steps.

The curious expression upon Falconer's face deepened. "Let 'em go on," he said jerkily. "I don't want to leave this yet, do you?"

Arlee glanced about hesitantly, without answering, and slowly she let fall the white froth of skirt she had been gathering for the descent.

In silence she looked out over the temple. The moon had paled from fire to molten silver now, and like scattered sparks of it burned the thousand circling stars. She felt very strange and unreal--a tiny figure topping this great gate in the face of the ancient silence....

"We never have a chance for a word together," Falconer was mumbling, with a nervous hand at his mustache.

Her thoughts came fleetly back from the ancient worlds.... Her own was upon her. She turned and laughed at him. "We've talked for three whole days!"

"Have we? But always in some group.... I understand that Hill told you what a couple of donkeys we made of ourselves on your account?"

Anxiously he scanned her face, silver-clear in the moonlight, for signs of ridicule.

But Arlee's smile was very sweet. It made the sandy-haired young man's heart quicken mysteriously. "He told me," she said. "I think it was fine of you."

"Fine? It was lunacy.... He'd got worked up over some horrible story he'd heard," went on the young man in the mingling humor and embarra.s.sment, "and nothing for it but that you'd gone the same way.

And if you'll believe it, he had us prowling around that old palace like a pair of jolly idiots primed to get their heads blown off--and served us jolly well right! He was in luck to get off with nothing but a scratch."

"A scratch--? You mean--you _don't_ mean----?"

"He didn't tell you that?" Falconer was surprised; he had imagined that Billy's narration had led romantically to Billy's wound. He made the American a silent apology. "He was shot in the arm."

"Badly?"

"Of course not badly--he's all right now, isn't he? He said it was a scratch."

Arlee was silent. He had been hurt all the time that he had been riding with her over the desert ... he had been hurt all through those horrible hot hours. And he had said nothing....

"When I think of what that chap got me in for--scaling a man's walls, smas.h.i.+ng in his locks, letting myself down the front of his house like a monkey on a rope! I might have been a dashed school kid again." Resentment and reluctant humor struggled in the young man's speech. "Why, the fellow has the imagination of a detective ... and of course he had some reason." Falconer's thoughts touched on the fair-haired girl of Fritzi's report. "I'll admit he had me worried--until I heard from the Evershams that you were all O.K. You see what bally nonsense you put into young men's heads," he added with a look of meaning.

"He's a very--chivalrous--young man," said Arlee.

"He's a very unbalanced young idiot," contradicted Falconer. "I rather like the chap, himself, you know; he has nerve to spare--but no ballast. He might have set all Cairo talking of you." His voice hardened; "I told him that. I told him you wouldn't thank him for it."

"I do thank him. I thank him with all my heart."

"Well, you've no reason to," Falconer returned in blunt belief.

"Linking your name with that Turk fellow; hinting you were in the palace--he might have started a lot of rotten rumor!"

"What's--rumor?" said the girl in a breathless voice. "He was thinking of--my safety!"

"Well, your safety didn't depend on him, did it?" Sharp jealousy of her defense of the American intruder drove Falconer to unseemly curtness. He gave a short laugh. "You and I," he said, "seem to be always tilting over some chap or other."

A faint smile touched the girl's lips, a sorry little smile, edged with rueful reminiscence ... and strange comparisons. In silence she looked down into the shadowy temple courts where absurdly small-looking people were strolling to and fro, while Falconer stood looking down at her, with something akin to angry wonder in his adoring eyes.

"Why didn't you write to a chap?" he abruptly demanded.

"Why should I?"

"Then you meant to let it go at that?" He drew a sharp breath. "Just the way you flared off from that table--not a word more?"