“Je suis enchantee—­d’avoir cet honneur—­cet honneur inattendu——­”

She did not look remarkably enchanted, however.  The eyes that played appraisingly over her pretty caller had a quality of curious hardness, of race hostility, perhaps, the antagonism of the East for the West, the Old for the New.  Not all the modernity of clothes, of manners, of language, affected what Arlee felt intensely as the strange, vivid foreignness of her.

“My sister does not speak English—­she has not the occasion,” the Captain was quickly explaining.

“Gracious” thought Arlee, in dismay.  She had no illusions about her French; it did very well in a shop or a restaurant, but it was apt to peeter out feebly in polite conversation.  Certainly it was no vessel for voyaging in untried seas.  There were simply loads of things, she thought discouragedly, the things she wanted most to ask, that she would not be able to find words for.

Aloud she was saying, “I am so glad to have the honor of being here.  I am only sorry that my French is so bad.  But perhaps you can understand——­”

“I understand,” assented the Turkish woman, faintly smiling.

The Captain had brought forward little gilt chairs of a French design which seemed oddly out of place in this room of the East, and the three seated themselves.  Out of place, too, seemed the grand piano which Arlee’s eyes, roving now past her hostess, discovered for the first time.

“It was so kind of you,” began Arlee again as the silence seemed to be politely waiting upon her, “to send your automobile for me.”

“Ah—­my automobile!” echoed the woman on a higher note, and laughed, with a flash of white teeth between carmined lips.  “It pleased you?”

“Oh, yes, it is splendid!” the girl declared, in sincere praise.  “It is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen.”

“I enjoy it very much—­that automobile!” said the other, again laughing, with a quick turn of her eyes toward the brother.

Negligently, rather caressingly, the young man murmured a few Turkish words.  She shrugged and leaned back in her chair, the flash of animation gone.  “And Cairo—­that pleases you?” she asked of Arlee.

Stumbling a little in her French, but resolutely rushing over the difficulties, Arlee launched into the expression of how very much it pleased her.  Everything was beautiful to her.  The color, the sky, the mosques, the minarets, the Nile, the pyramids—­they were all wonderful.  And the view from the Great Pyramid—­and then she stopped, wondering if that were not beyond her hostess’s experience.

In confirmation of the thought the Turkish lady smiled, with an effect of disdain.  “Ascend the pyramids—­that is indeed too much for us,” she said.  “But nothing is too much for you Americans—­no?”