Nor was he in to luncheon.  That was rank extravagance because he was paying at pension rates.  His extravagance, however, was no affair of hers.  Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or his non-appearance.  It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, well, opportunities.

She was not going to be in Cairo forever.  Not much longer, in fact.  There were adages about gathering rosebuds while ye may and making hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe.

Other men did, reflected Jinny Jeffries with a proud lift of her ruddy head.  Only somehow, the other men—­

Well, Jack was provokingly attractive!  Only of course, if he was going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions—­

Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New York and promised her society for a foursome at bridge in the hotel lounge that evening.

Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worth while....  And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker the next day.  He had ideas about excursions.

It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was pleased to call her complete indifference.  She recalled the vigor of Ryder’s warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder.

She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before she went away.

Of course nothing could happen.  He had done nothing to give himself away.  He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings.

But still, it would have been better if he had gone....

Those turbaned women had looked queerly at them when they were talking so long in the window.  Perhaps it was not simply at the intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental.  Perhaps their voices had been unguarded or Jack’s tones had awakened suspicion.  Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with the bride.  She remembered a Frenchwoman who had come to interrupt that talk who had looked rather sharply at Jack....  And that dreadful eunuch was always staring....

She thought of a great many things now, more and more things every minute.

And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be the first to ridicule her alarm.  He was probably enjoying himself, staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself....  Still his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now nor had he called at the hotel and he certainly didn’t have an extensive supply of clothes and linen upon him beneath the mantle.

Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black tennis shoes which he had thought would go appropriately with a woman’s robes.  Absurd, to think of him as spending two days in tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and buy more when he had plenty of footgear in his hotel room.