“We never have a chance for a word together,” Falconer was mumbling, with a nervous hand at his mustache.

Her thoughts came fleetly back from the ancient worlds....  Her own was upon her.  She turned and laughed at him.  “We’ve talked for three whole days!”

“Have we?  But always in some group....  I understand that Hill told you what a couple of donkeys we made of ourselves on your account?” Anxiously he scanned her face, silver-clear in the moonlight, for signs of ridicule.

But Arlee’s smile was very sweet.  It made the sandy-haired young man’s heart quicken mysteriously.  “He told me,” she said.  “I think it was fine of you.”

“Fine?  It was lunacy....  He’d got worked up over some horrible story he’d heard,” went on the young man in the mingling humor and embarrassment, “and nothing for it but that you’d gone the same way.  And if you’ll believe it, he had us prowling around that old palace like a pair of jolly idiots primed to get their heads blown off—­and served us jolly well right!  He was in luck to get off with nothing but a scratch.”

“A scratch—?  You mean—­you don’t mean——?”

“He didn’t tell you that?” Falconer was surprised; he had imagined that Billy’s narration had led romantically to Billy’s wound.  He made the American a silent apology.  “He was shot in the arm.”

“Badly?”

“Of course not badly—­he’s all right now, isn’t he?  He said it was a scratch.”

Arlee was silent.  He had been hurt all the time that he had been riding with her over the desert ... he had been hurt all through those horrible hot hours.  And he had said nothing....

“When I think of what that chap got me in for—­scaling a man’s walls, smashing in his locks, letting myself down the front of his house like a monkey on a rope!  I might have been a dashed school kid again.”  Resentment and reluctant humor struggled in the young man’s speech.  “Why, the fellow has the imagination of a detective ... and of course he had some reason.”  Falconer’s thoughts touched on the fair-haired girl of Fritzi’s report.  “I’ll admit he had me worried—­until I heard from the Evershams that you were all O.K.  You see what bally nonsense you put into young men’s heads,” he added with a look of meaning.

“He’s a very—­chivalrous—­young man,” said Arlee.

“He’s a very unbalanced young idiot,” contradicted Falconer.  “I rather like the chap, himself, you know; he has nerve to spare—­but no ballast.  He might have set all Cairo talking of you.”  His voice hardened; “I told him that.  I told him you wouldn’t thank him for it.”

“I do thank him.  I thank him with all my heart.”

“Well, you’ve no reason to,” Falconer returned in blunt belief.  “Linking your name with that Turk fellow; hinting you were in the palace—­he might have started a lot of rotten rumor!”

“What’s—­rumor?” said the girl in a breathless voice.  “He was thinking of—­my safety!”