Jill, feeling almost faint from suppressed emotion and a revival of hunger, stood a little on one side watching them.  An Eastern dancing house is a strange place in which to make the final decision of one’s life, but in just such a spot she made hers.  She knew that she had only to make up the tale of a lost boat, and something would be done for her; in fact she could probably go as lady’s maid to the Americans on their tour de monde, having overheard them complaining bitterly of their own French maid who had not been retrieved at Algiers.  But her whole soul suddenly rising in mutiny against the stultifying civilisation of the West, she finally made up her mind to stay with the strangers until the hour came when she could slip out of the hotel where they were staying the night, into oriental liberty, and glamour, and unknown possibilities.  So she sat next the marchese at dinner, whose love-making was on exactly the same line as his clothes, and having found out from the maid in the ladies’ room just how to get to the end of the town in which was situated the Camel King’s house, she waited for a desirable opportunity, and slipped out of the hotel on the pretence of looking at the stars, knowing that her unwitting hosts would think she had simply gone to bed.

CHAPTER IX

Jill’s memory being of the kind which retains only the pleasant word and act, the disagreeable episode of the afternoon had completely evacuated that cell which in one second can raise us through the bluest ether to the heaven as understood by the prayer-book, or send us diving to the mud flats of the ocean bed to co-habit for a time with wingless and non-temperamental oddities.

Having stopped several times to discover by ear and eye if she was being followed from the hotel, and being satisfied that the sight of her dressing-case had in no wise aroused the hall porter’s curiosity, she propped her luggage against the base of a palm tree growing casually in the middle of a small street and proceeded to take her bearings.

“Somehow it seemed quite easy to find when the maid was explaining,” she communed to herself as she dug a hatpin afresh into her hat as is the way of woman when at a loss.  “How stupid of me to try a short cut, because she distinctly said I was to stick to the main street until I came to two mosques side by side, and then to turn off sharply to the right.  Oh! well, I turned off too soon and am lost—­and I don’t like these little streets—­no! not one little bit, but that big red star hangs right over the house so I can but follow it—­here goes!”

She picked up her case, and then drew back quickly behind the tree as a white-robed figure slowly crossed the street, turned up another and disappeared.

“Oh!  Moll and Jack, what on earth would you think if you knew I was alone in Egypt.  Alone! but free! free! at last, quite, quite free!”