But Lady Claire stood still.  Billy had fairly forgotten all about her, and now as he turned suddenly from the clowning with her chaperon, he found her gaze being transferred from his picture to himself.  It was a very steady gaze, calm-eyed and deliberate.

“I’m afraid you’re making game of us!” she said, in her musical, high-bred tones, her clear eyes disconcertingly upon him.  “Aren’t you?” she gently demanded.

“That’s not fair.”  Billy was uncomfortable and looked away in haste.  He felt a grin coming.

Perhaps he was a shade too late, for Lady Claire laughed suddenly and with a note of curious delight.

“You’re too amusing!” she said.  “What made you?...  How did you think of it all?...  Are you just beginning?”

“Oh, I began twenty years ago,” he smiled back, “but I haven’t done anything in the meantime.”

Again she laughed with that ring of mischievous delight.  “However you could think of it all!  I shan’t tell on you—­but she’ll never be done wondering.”  She turned away, her pretty face still bright with humor, and then she turned back hesitantly toward him.

“It is hot here in this sun,” she said.  “It can’t be good for you.  Shall we drive you back?”

She had lovely eyes, dark, smoky-blue under black lashes, and when they held a gentle, half-shy, half-proud invitation, as they did then, they were very unsettling eyes....  And it was hot on that infernal camp stool.  And there was a crick in the back of his neck and his errand was glaringly a fool’s errand....

He half rose, and as he did so the door in the palace opened a crack and a veiled face peered furtively out.  Billy sat down again.

“No, thank you,” he said, “I think I’d better do a little more of this.”

In such light ways is the gate of opportunity closed and opened.  Everything that happened afterwards with such appalling startlingness hung on that instant’s decision.

For the moment he felt himself a donkey as Lady Claire turned quietly away and the victoria rattled off with brisk finality.  Then the door opened again, and again the girl peered out, and furtively, stealthily slipped just outside.

Billy caught up a pad and a pencil and called out a request to sketch her, holding up some silver.  Instantly she assumed a fixed pose, with a nervous giggle behind her veil, and he came quickly near her, pretending to be drawing.  Her dark, curious eyes met his with questioning significance, and he threw all caution aside and plunged into his demands.

Did she want to earn money, he said quickly, in the Arabic he had been preparing for such an encounter, and on her eager assent, he asked if there was a foreign lady in the palace, an American.

The flash of her eyes told him that he had struck the mark before her half-frightened words came.

His heart quickened with excitement.  He might have suspected this thing—­but he had not really believed it!  He asked, stammering in his haste, “Does she want to get away?”