better make absolutely
_sure_."

He looked down on her with sorry humor in his face. "Do I need to
make _surer_?" He nodded in the direction of the giant gateway.
"They've had time to settle the divisions of the Balkans up there."

"Oh, yes, they've had time!" She seemed speaking at sudden laughing
random. "But _we've_ had the same time and you see we haven't
settled anything with it--not even that you're to stay. Yes, you'd
better make _sure_, Mr. Hill."

Billy was hardly heeding. A laugh had caught his ears, a light high
laugh like the tinkle of a little silver bell through the darkness.
In the shadows behind them he made out a man and a woman arm in arm.

"Just a moment," he begged of Lady Claire. "May I leave you here a
moment? I must see those--I think I know----" Without listening to
her automatic permission he was gone.

The next moment he had laid his hand on the arm of the man with the
woman. Both spun quickly about. A babble of explanation broke out.

"_Ach, mein freund, mein freund_----"

"Oh, it is Billy----"

"How _gut_ to find you here----"

"Our American Billy."

The last voice, piquantly foreign, was the voice of Fritzi Baroff.
And the first voice gutterally foreign was the voice of Frederick
von Deigen. Arm in arm, flushed, happy, sentimental, the two began
talking in a breath, thanking Billy for the letter he had sent von
Deigen which had brought them together, and apologizing for their
hasty flight--"a honeymoon upon the Nile," the German joyfully
explained.

Discreetly Billy forbore to make any discoveries as to the exact
status of their "honeymoon." The German's face was very honestly
happy, and the little dancer was brimming with restless life and
vivacity.

"It was the picture in my watch--_hein_? The picture I carry night
and day," Frederick repeated in needless explanation, and was about
to draw out the picture when Billy restrained him.

He had a favor to ask. The American girl of Kerissen's palace had
escaped unharmed and returned to her friends who were ignorant of
all. She was this moment in the ruins. It would be a great shock to
her to meet Fritzi, to have Fritzi recognize her. On the morning she
would be gone. Would Fritzi----"

"Fritzi must disappear--for the night?" said the little Viennese
smiling wisely, but with a trace of cynicism. "The little American
must not be reminded--h'm? We will go.... For you have done so much
for me, you big, strange, platonic Mr. Billy