And now a third time, a guilty, reckless fugitive in the night, she stole down those stairs into the many-columned hall where she had been feted in state among her guests.  Here her only knowledge was of the stone corridor and the locked door through which the bey had led her, but Ryder knew the way that Aziza had brought him and he turned cautiously toward those wide, curving stairs.

Keeping Aimee a few steps behind him, he went down the soft carpet and peered out at the bottom towards the water gate.  He saw no bars; the gate was open and against the pale square of the water were the black silhouettes of the general and the gateman, both leaning out at some splashing in the river.

He knew a boy’s reckless impulse to shove them both in.  It was an unholy thought his better judgment rejected—­unless driven to it—­yet some prankish element in his roused recklessness would not have deplored the necessity.

If they looked about—!

But they did not stir as, with Aimee’s cold hand in his, he made the tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps.  Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow passage just beyond the stairs.

It might lead to another gate, some service entrance, perhaps, it ran so straight and direct between its walls.

Intuitively that excavator’s sense of his defined the direction.  They were going parallel with the river, although a little way back from the water wall, and in the direction of the men’s part of the palace, the selamlik.

He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to the water’s edge between this part of the palace and the nest building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane.

Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that morning.  To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of the Nile backwaters, that he didn’t need a map of the place for his arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, and clothes and speech were his only real concern.

He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to Aimee—­if she did not discover him.  He wanted merely to see her again, and be sure that she understood her own history—­he had no notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance.

And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word—­and with it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word.