Down in the court of Rameses, Lady Claire and Hill were straying. A most opportune old bachelor, passing with a party of acquaintances, had diverted even Emma Falconer from her dragoning, and the young English girl and her American escort were left for the time to their own devices.
Not much was said. Claire, who had been fitfully gay all afternoon, grew still as a church mouse now as they paced back and forth in the shadows, stealing a slant glance from time to time at Billy\'s set and silent face. She wondered a little at his absorption. But chiefly she was thinking that she had never seen him look so handsome ... with his brows knitted and his clear-cut lips pressed sharply together ... but the boy of him somehow kept by that wilful lock of black hair over his forehead.
To Billy it seemed that the bitterest drop of the cup was at his lips. Those two—upon the pylon—were they never coming down? He was waiting for them in every nerve, and yet he shrank from the look he might read upon their faces. He thought, very grimly, that this could mean but one thing, and that thing was the end forever and ever, for him.... His heart was sick in him and he longed most desperately to break away from these other women and the sham of talk and dash off to dark solitude where the primitive man could have his way, could tramp and fight and curse and sob and break his heart in decent privacy. He faced with loathing the refinements of torture which civilization imposes.
But the game had to be played. He was no quitter, he told himself fiercely; he could stand up and take his punishment like a man. She was not for him. He had loved her from the first, he had loved her so that he had been clairvoyant to her peril, he had risked his neck for her a dozen times and snatched her from a life that was a death-in-life—and yet she was not for him. She was for a man who had not believed in her danger, had not bestirred himself.... Black, seething bitterness was boiling in Billy B. Hill. Darkly, through a fog, he heard the outer man replying to some speech from the girl beside him.
He understood, he told himself in a burst of despairing anguish, how Kerissen could have plotted for her. Almost he longed to be a scrupleless Oriental and carry her off across his saddle bow.... And then he brought himself up short.
Was that all she meant to him, he asked himself with the sweat of pain on his forehead beneath that black lock which was finding such favor in Lady Claire\'s eyes—was that all she meant to him?—a prize to be won? One man had tried to steal her; he had wished to earn her—but she was a gift beyond all price and the giving lay in her own heart alone.... And if Falconer was the man for her, then at least he, Billy B. Hill, was man enough to stand up and be glad for her and be humbly grateful to the end of his days that he had been able to save her ... and give her her happiness. For it was really he who had given it to her. And in that thought Billy Hill\'s young heart expanded, and his soul stretched itself to such unwonted heights that it seemed to push among the stars.
"It is an unforgettable night," said the girl in the rose cloak.
He thought that was just the word for it, and a wryly humorous glint was in the look he gave her. And he thought that she, too, was playing the game mighty stanchly, and had been playing it bravely these three days, since her conquering little rival had made her reappearance. His heart warmed toward her in understanding and compassion. They were comrades in affliction. He was not the only one in the world who was not getting the heart\'s desire.
Aloud he answered, "And the last night for me."
Lady Claire looked up quickly. Her voice showed her struck with sudden surprise. "You are going—so soon?"
"To-morrow."
"To Assouan?" Odd sharpness edged the question.
He waited a perceptible moment, though his resolution had been taken. "Back to Cairo."
"Oh ... How long shall you be there?"
"Just till I get sailings. It\'s time for me to be off. I\'m really a working person, you know, not a playing one."
"You make bridges—and dams—and things, don\'t you?" she questioned vaguely.
"Bridges—and dams—and things."
"Why don\'t you wait here for your sailings?" she asked impersonally after another pause. "It\'s so much more attractive here than Cairo."
"I\'d like to." He thought of next Friday—and Arlee\'s return—and the masked ball. For a moment temptation urged. Then he threw back his head with a gesture of decision. "But I can\'t. It\'s impossible."
Now Lady Claire did not know that he was thinking of next Friday—and Arlee\'s return—and the masked ball. She only knew that he spoke with a curious fierceness, and that his eyes were very bright. And something in the girl, something strange and acknowledged that had been so fitfully gay and light these three days, quickened in mysterious excitement.
"Nothing is impossible," she gave back, "to a man!"
Billy thought she was resenting the conventions of the restricted sex. She could not make any open advance toward Falconer while he, as man, could make all the open advances to Arlee he was willing to—but in this case his hands were tied. A man cannot inflict himself upon a girl who may not feel herself free to reject him. He laughed, with sorry ruefulness.
"There\'s a whole lot," he observed, "that is impossible to a man who tries to be one," and then, oblivious of any construction she might choose to put upon this cryptic utterance, he strolled moodily on, in brooding silence.
After a pause, "Of course," said Lady Claire in so gentle a little voice that it seemed to glide undisturbingly among his silent meditations, "of course, a man has his—pride."
"I hope so," said the young man briefly. He understood her to be probing for his reason for abandoning the chase; he understood that for her own sake she would like to see him successful with Arlee, and he was queerly sorry to be failing to help her there. But he had done all that he could....
The girl spoke again, her face straight ahead, her shadowy eyes staring out into the moonlight. "Is it—money?" she said in the same little breath of a voice.
"Money!" Billy threw back the words in surprise, half contemptuous, "Oh, Lord, no, it\'s not money! I haven\'t much of it now, but I\'m going to make a bunch of the stuff—if I want to." He spoke with na?ve and amazing confidence which somehow struck astounded belief into the listener. "There\'s enough of it there, waiting to be made—no, it\'s not money—though perhaps one might well think it ought to be. I suppose my work might strike a girl as hard for her," he went on, considering aloud these problems of existence, "for it\'s here to-day and there to-morrow—now doing a building in a roaring city and now damming up some reservoir deep in the mountains—but it always seemed to me that the girl who would like me would like that, too. It\'s seeing so much of life—and such real life! Oh, no," he said, and though a trace of doubt had struck into his voice, "that in itself wouldn\'t be what I\'d call impossible—not for the right girl."
"But your work—would it always be in America?" said Lady Claire.
"Oh, always. It has to be, of course."
"Oh.... And—and—you—have to have—that work?"
"Why, of course, I have to have it!" Billy was bewildered, but entirely positive. "That\'s my work—the thing I\'m made to do. I couldn\'t earn my salt selling apartment houses."
"Oh, no, no," the girl hurriedly agreed.
A long, long silence followed, a silence in which he was entirely oblivious to her imaginings. The moonlight lay heavy as dreams about them; her thoughts went darting to and fro like fluttering swallows.... She felt herself a stranger to herself.... She looked up at him with a sudden deer-like lift of her head, and then looked swiftly away.
"Don\'t go," she said in a quick, low voice. "Don\'t go—yet. Even things that look impossible—can be made to come right."
He understood that she was pleading with him, partly for the sake of her own chance with Falconer, but the sympathy flicked him on the raw. He was sorry for her, sorry for the queer, strained look in her face, sorry for the voice so full of feeling, but he couldn\'t do anything to help her.
In silence he shook his head and was astounded at the look of sudden proud anger she darted at him.
"You\'re a mighty real friend to take such an interest in my luck," he said quickly, with warm liking in his voice, "and I only wish you could play fairy godmother and give me my wish—but you can\'t, Lady Claire, and apparently she won\'t, and that is the end of the matter. I have to take off my hat to the Better Man."
Lady Claire did not gasp or stammer or question. She did none of the dismayedly enlightening things into which a lesser poise might have tottered. After an inconsiderable moment of silence she merely uttered her familiar, "Oh!" and uttered it in a voice in which so many things were blended that their elements could hardly be perceived.
She added hurriedly, "I\'m sorry if I\'ve seemed to—to intrude into your affairs."
"My affairs are on my sleeve," answered Billy and wondered at the quick look she gave him.
"Oh, no—not at all," she answered a little breathlessly. "I\'m sure they haven\'t seemed so to me—but then I\'m stupid." She stopped for a moment of hot wonder at that stupidity. She had not believed Miss Falconer—had thought her prejudiced ... maneuvering.... Like lightning she reviewed the baffling interchange of sentences, then glanced up at Billy\'s silent absorption. She felt queerly grateful for his innocent density. "And perhaps she\'s stupid, too," she told him. "You\'d better make sure. You\'d 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!" Dazzlingly she smiled on him, her dark eyes quizzically provocative.
"You\'re not at the Grand?"
"No, not that." She named another. "You come see me, when that girl goes—h\'m?"
Billy caught the German\'s eyes upon him, in their depths a faint trouble, a vague appeal. He comprehended that the infatuated young man had engaged in the tortuous business of keeping sparks from tinder.
"I\'m gone to-morrow," he replied.
"Maybe in Vienna?" went on the dancer. "We go soon—another day or so maybe—and then back over the water to that life I left! Oh, my God, how happy I am to go back to it all—to dance, to sing—Oh, I could kiss you, Mr. Billy, if it would not make you so shock!" she added with a malicious little laugh. "You know the news—about him—h\'m?"
"Hi............