granted," laughed Arlee softly, "As if
it were part of any day's work! I go about like a girl in a
dream--or a girl _with_ a dream ... a dream of fear, of old palaces
and painted women and darkened windows. It comes over me at night
sometimes. And then I wake and could go down on my knees to you....
I suppose there isn't any more danger from him?" she broke off to
half-whisper quickly.

"He's sick in the Cairo hospital," Billy made haste to inform her.
"I found out by accident. I understand he has a bad fever. So I
think he'll be up to no more tricks--and I'm out the satisfaction
of a little heart-to-heart talk."

"Oh, I told you you couldn't," she cried quickly. "You would make
him too angry. He isn't just--sane."

"Then all I have to do in Egypt is to hunt up my little Imp," said
Billy. "I must see the little chap again--before I go."

He waited--uselessly as he had foretold. She said nothing, and if
the glance he felt upon him was of inquiry he did not look about to
meet it. He was still staring a saturnine Pasht out of countenance.
There was a pause.

Then, "However were you able to think of it all?" said Arlee in slow
wonder. "However were you able to think such an impossible thought
as my imprisonment?"

"Because I was thinking about you," said Billy. Suddenly his tongue
ran away with him. "Incessantly," he added.

She looked up at him. Unguardedly he looked down at her. No one but
a blind girl or a goose could have mistaken that look upon Billy B.
Hill's young face, the frustrate longing of it, the deep desire. The
heart beneath the sky-blue cloak cast off a most monstrous
accumulation of doubts and fears and began suddenly to beat like
mad.

Totally unexpectedly, startlingly amazing, she flung out at him,
"Then what made you stop?"

"Stop?" he echoed. "Stop? I've never stopped! There hasn't been a
moment----"

"There have been three days. Three--horrible--days!"

"Arlee!"

"Do you think I _like_ being snubbed and ignored
and--and--obliterated?" she brought indignantly out. "Do you think I
call that--being friends?"

"I--I wanted to leave you free--not to force your friendship----" he
stammered wildly.

"You couldn't force _mine_," said Arlee Beecher.

"But--but there was Falconer," he protested. "You had to be free
to--to have a choice----"

"A choice? Do you call that a _choice_?"

"I thought you were making it. That first night----"

"I stayed up to dance with _you_," she cried hotly