t her ways ... He had known then the volatile
stuff that she was made of--and had succumbed to it!

But he _had_ succumbed. On that point he was most disastrously
certain. The memory of the young girl possessed him. Her beauty
haunted him, that spring-like beauty with its enchanting youth and
gaiety. And the spirit that animated that beauty, that young,
blithe, innocently audacious spirit which looked out on the world
with such sunnily trustful eyes, drew him with a golden cord.

* * * * *

He smoked many a pipe over it that night, his feet on the open
window ledge, his eyes on the far-spreading flat roofs, the distant
domes and minarets darkly silhouetted against the sky of softest,
deepest blue. The stars were silver bright. They spangled the heaven
with the radiance they never give to northern skies; they gleamed
like bright, wild creatures on their unearthly revels.... It would
be glorious camping in the desert on a night like this ... Heaven be
praised, he had not bought that berth ... Alexandria ... the
Maynards ... the desert ...

He knocked out the ashes from his last pipe and rose briskly. His
decision was made, but its success was on the knees of the great god
Luck.

CHAPTER VII

BILLY HAS HIS DOUBTS

The encounter in the bazaars that Thursday afternoon brought one
more result to young Hill besides the bruise upon his chin and the
privilege of bowing to Lady Claire and her vigilant chaperon, and
the presence of Lady Claire's little handkerchief in his coat
pocket.

It brought a young German, scrupulously sober, soberly apologetic,
in formal state to Billy's hotel upon Friday morning, whose card
announced him to be Frederick von Deigen and whose speech proclaimed
him to be utterly aghast at his own untoward behavior.

"I was not myself," he owned, with a sigh and a melancholy twist of
his upstanding mustaches. "I had been lunching alone--and it is bad
to lunch alone when one has a sadness. One drinks--to forget.... But
you are too young to understand." He waved his hand in compliment to
Billy's youth, then continued, with increasing energy, "But when I
find what _dummheit_ I have done--how I have so rudely addressed the
young Fraeulein with you, and have used my fists upon you, even to
the point of hurling you upon the street--I have no words for my
shame."

"Oh, it wasn't exactly a hurl," Billy easily amended. "There was a
banana peel where my heel happened