* * * * *

Back toward the Libyan hills runs the canal El-Souhagich, and as it curves to the north a reach of sand sweeps down from the higher ground, interrupting the succession of green fields.  Several jagged rocks have tumbled from the limestone plateaus above and increased the grateful bit of shade which the half dozen picturesque palms do not sufficiently bestow.

Here the runaways breakfasted upon the roast pigeon, dates and tangerines they had bought from the curious villagers, and here Billy, his back against a rock, was smoking a meditative cigar over the situation.  Beside him, tied to a palm, knelt the camels, and before him, nibbling a last tangerine, Arlee was sitting.

“We have to rest the beasts a bit.”  This from Billy, suggestive of a conscience pricking at this holiday delay.  “And then——­”

“Then—?” echoed Arlee cheerfully.

“Then, what in the world am I going to do with you?”

“With me?”

“Yes.  It’s simple enough, I suppose, getting back to the city—–­but if you don’t want your friends to know——­”

The quick shadow in her eyes distressed him.  “I don’t,” she cried sharply.  “At first—­I might have made a lark out of it—­but afterwards....  No, I don’t want to go explaining and explaining forever and ever.  Can’t I just reappear?”

“You can reappear from Alexandria,” he said.  “He, himself,” his tone changed as he reluctantly brought Kerissen into the beauty of that morning, “has arranged it very neatly for you.  You can just have been camping in the desert—­and true enough that is!—­with those friends of yours whom the Evershams don’t know.  Only your reappearance has to be—­managed a bit.”

Very carefully she tore the tangerine skin into very little bits, her head bent over it.  Then she flung the fragments far from her with a gesture of rebellion.  “I hate fibs,” she said explosively.  And then, “But I hate explanations more!” She hesitated, stealing a quick glance under her lashes at his frowning face.

“And some people,” she stammered, “might—­might not—­understand—­they would feel that—­some people would——­”

“Some people are great fools, undoubtedly,” Billy promptly agreed.  But back of the some people he saw Falconer in her mind, and Falconer’s instinctive distaste of all strangeness and sensation.

“I have a perfect right to keep it from—­them,” she went on argumentatively, and then with an upward glance, “Haven’t I?”

“Good Lord, yes!  It was your adventure; it doesn’t concern another soul in this wide world.”

“You know,” said Arlee, locking and unlocking her fingers, “you know, some people wouldn’t take it all for granted the way—­you do....  And it was very horrid.”

“It’s over,” said he crisply, “except I’d like to pound him to a jelly.”

“I couldn’t bear to speak of him before,” said the girl, “but now it seems all far away and nightmarish....  And I’d like to tell you how it was—­a little.”