“Oh, I don’t know!” Honest dubiety spoke in Arlee’s tone.  “They have mentioned twice how convenient it was to use my stateroom!”

“They felt very badly when you ran away from them in Cairo.”

“I was shockingly sudden about that,” owned the girl lightly, “but the chance came—­Are we going to climb the great pylon now?”

“It will be a jolly high place to see the moon rise.”

* * * * *

It was a jolly high place to see the moon rise, and to see all Karnak, and all Luxor, with its high Moslem minaret towering over its crumbling columns, and to see the dark and distant country with its tiny hamlets crouching under humbler mosques and lonely palms, and on the other side the wide and winding Nile with the shadowy cliffs of Thebes beyond.  It gave Arlee the dizzying sensation of being suspended between heaven and earth, so high was she above those far-reaching plains, so high above the giant columns beneath her, the vast beamed roofs, the pointing obelisks.  It made her breath quicken and her pulses beat.

“Watch the moon,” said Falconer in a low tone.

Blood-red it rose behind the dark pile, throwing into sinister relief a gallows-like angle of stone beams, then higher and higher it soared till its resplendent light poured unchecked into the wide courts and broken temples, the unroofed altars and the empty shrines.

“A dead world lighting a dead world,” said Arlee under her breath.

“I could read by it,” stated Miss Falconer impressively.

Lady Claire glanced up at Billy with a touch of mischief.  “Would you like to paint it?” she suggested.

“Heaven forbid!” said Billy soberly.

Falconer said nothing at all, except to Arlee.  He was very shrewdly drawing her to the other end of the pylon, seeing that the time of descent was nearly upon them.  And when the time arrived, and the English ladies and their stoic escort started down the steep steps, Falconer made no motion of following them.  He stood still, his hands in his pockets, and chuckled softly at the sound of his sister’s voice, floating lesseningly up to them.

“How Emma is dragoning that William Whatdycallit Hill,” he said appreciatively.

“Why do you call him that?” questioned Arlee.

“Oh, that chap is so deuced odd about that name of his.  I asked him what the B. stood for, and he looked me in the eye like a fighting cock and said for his middle name....  Queer chap—­” Suddenly Falconer looked sidewise at Arlee and stopped.

“He is—­unusual,” she agreed, moving toward the steps.

The curious expression upon Falconer’s face deepened.  “Let ’em go on,” he said jerkily.  “I don’t want to leave this yet, do you?”

Arlee glanced about hesitantly, without answering, and slowly she let fall the white froth of skirt she had been gathering for the descent.

In silence she looked out over the temple.  The moon had paled from fire to molten silver now, and like scattered sparks of it burned the thousand circling stars.  She felt very strange and unreal—­a tiny figure topping this great gate in the face of the ancient silence....