She added hurriedly, “I’m sorry if I’ve seemed to—­to intrude into your affairs.”

“My affairs are on my sleeve,” answered Billy and wondered at the quick look she gave him.

“Oh, no—­not at all,” she answered a little breathlessly.  “I’m sure they haven’t seemed so to me—­but then I’m stupid.”  She stopped for a moment of hot wonder at that stupidity.  She had not believed Miss Falconer—­had thought her prejudiced ... maneuvering....  Like lightning she reviewed the baffling interchange of sentences, then glanced up at Billy’s silent absorption.  She felt queerly grateful for his innocent density.  “And perhaps she’s stupid, too,” she told him.  “You’d better make sure.  You’d better make absolutely sure.”

He looked down on her with sorry humor in his face.  “Do I need to make surer?” He nodded in the direction of the giant gateway.  “They’ve had time to settle the divisions of the Balkans up there.”

“Oh, yes, they’ve had time!” She seemed speaking at sudden laughing random.  “But we’ve had the same time and you see we haven’t settled anything with it—­not even that you’re to stay.  Yes, you’d better make sure, Mr. Hill.”

Billy was hardly heeding.  A laugh had caught his ears, a light high laugh like the tinkle of a little silver bell through the darkness.  In the shadows behind them he made out a man and a woman arm in arm.

“Just a moment,” he begged of Lady Claire.  “May I leave you here a moment?  I must see those—­I think I know——­” Without listening to her automatic permission he was gone.

The next moment he had laid his hand on the arm of the man with the woman.  Both spun quickly about.  A babble of explanation broke out.

“Ach, mein freund, mein freund——­”

“Oh, it is Billy——­”

“How gut to find you here——­”

“Our American Billy.”

The last voice, piquantly foreign, was the voice of Fritzi Baroff.  And the first voice gutterally foreign was the voice of Frederick von Deigen.  Arm in arm, flushed, happy, sentimental, the two began talking in a breath, thanking Billy for the letter he had sent von Deigen which had brought them together, and apologizing for their hasty flight—­“a honeymoon upon the Nile,” the German joyfully explained.

Discreetly Billy forbore to make any discoveries as to the exact status of their “honeymoon.”  The German’s face was very honestly happy, and the little dancer was brimming with restless life and vivacity.

“It was the picture in my watch—­hein?  The picture I carry night and day,” Frederick repeated in needless explanation, and was about to draw out the picture when Billy restrained him.

He had a favor to ask.  The American girl of Kerissen’s palace had escaped unharmed and returned to her friends who were ignorant of all.  She was this moment in the ruins.  It would be a great shock to her to meet Fritzi, to have Fritzi recognize her.  On the morning she would be gone.  Would Fritzi——­”