“Laughing at you?...  I am worshipping you,” he said tensely, his eyes on hers, and the fierce words shattered her light defenses to confusion.

Silence gripped her.  She tried to meet his look and smile in mock reproof, but her eyes fled away affrighted, so full of desperate, passionate things was the dark gaze they touched.  She gripped her cold little hands in her lap and looked out beyond the lebbek’s shade into the vivid garden.  The hot sunshine lay orange on the white-sanded paths; the shadows were purple and indigo.  A little lizard had come out from a crack in a stone and was sunning himself, while one bright eye upon them, fixed, motionless, irridescent, warned him of their least stir.  She envied him the safety of his crack....  She herself must meet this crisis—­must turn this tide....

“It is—­so soon,” she faltered.

“Soon?” He had risen and was standing over her.  “Soon?  I was with you on the boat—­I walked by your side—­I danced with you and held you against my heart.  And here in Cairo I walked and talked with you....  And now for three days you have been under my roof, eating at the table with me, alone within these walls, and you call it soon!  Truly, you are beyond belief! Soon!”

“But soon—­for me!” she interrupted swiftly, and sprang to her feet to face him with eyes and lips that smiled without a trace of fear.  Only her cheeks were no longer crimson but white as chalk.  “Too soon—­for me to be sure—­how I feel!  I hadn’t realized—­I hadn’t known—­Oh, you mustn’t hurry me!  You mustn’t hurry me!” She broke off in a confusion he might well misconstrue, and moved nervously away, her back to him.

He stood staring after her, a man not in two minds but in three and four.  Her broken words—­her smiles—­her emotion—­these might well arouse the most flattering surmise, and his vanity and his curiosity were stirred to swift delight.  He broke into a storm of words, of protestations, of eager persuasion and honied flattery, drawing nearer and nearer to her, while she slipped continually away from him.

“You mustn’t hurry me,” she echoed defensively.  “I am not like you—­you Southerners.  I——­”

“You are asleep—­I have told you that you are that sleeping princess,” he broke in, and following after as she turned away from him, he put a quick arm about her, and bending over her, tried to turn her about toward him.  “Do you know how that little sleeping princess was awakened by her prince?” he murmured fatuously, bending closer.

The hat saved her, that coquettish little hat with its jealously guarding brim which bent obstinately lower and lower between them.  And in the instant of his indecision, while he waited for the surrender his vanity expected before exerting the force that would conquer brutally, she broke unexpectedly from his clasp and darted a few steps away from him, whirling about to face him with her head flung back, her eyes on fire, her lips parted in a breathless excitement.