The Fortieth Door | Page 6

is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am,
monsieur, only a black domino!"
It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the loveliest
voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes.
He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot--alas!--Jinny Jeffries.
He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense of well-being,
and--at the music's beginning--of a small palm pressed again to his, a
light form within his arm ... of shy, enchanting eyes out from the
shrouding black.
"Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. The
others are almost all unmasked."
Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness.
She shook her head as they spun lightly about a corner.
"Perhaps, monsieur, I have an unfortunate nose."
"My nerves are strong."
"But why afflict them?" Prankishly her eyes sparkled up at him over
the black veil that made her a mystery. "Enjoy the present, monsieur!"
"Are you enjoying it?"

Her lashes dropped, like black butterflies. She was a changeling of a
girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her wrist
watch, a slender blaze of platinum and diamonds.
"The present--yes," she said in a muffled little voice.
He bent his head to hear her through the veil.
A tormenting curiosity was assailing him. It had become not enough to
know that she was young and slender, with enchanting eyes and a
teasing spirit of wit.... Vaguely he had thought her to be French, one of
the quaint jeunes filles so rarely taken traveling.
But who was she? A child at her first ball? But what in the world was
she doing, back in the palms, away from her chaperon?
He realized, even in the cloud of his fascination, that French jeunes
filles are not wonted to lurk about palms at a ball.
Was she a little Cinderella, then, slipping among the guests? Some poor
companion, stealing in for fun?... She was too young. And there was
that watch, that glitter of diamonds upon her wrist.
"Have you just come to Cairo?"
She shook her head. "For some time--I have been here."
"Up the Nile yet?"
"The Nile--no, monsieur."
"But you are going?"
"That--that I do not know. Sometime, perhaps."
She sounded guarded.... He hurried into revelations.
"I am staying not far from Cairo, myself. I am an excavator--on an
expedition from an American museum."

"Ah, you dig?"
"Well, not personally.... But the expedition digs.... We've had some
bully finds."
"And you came from America--to dig in the sands?" The black domino
laughed softly. "For how long, monsieur?"
"This is my second year."
Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I cannot
understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find--what buried
secret--?"
"Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly.
"That, too, is--is buried, monsieur!"
"But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently,
and danced the music out.
As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell still
bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the girl draw
a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, blazing watch; when
she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam of panic.
"How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time is
a--a very sudden thing!"
Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient
young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he
had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as life?
How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting eyes ...
listened to a gay little voice....
Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very
suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet.
But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet.

He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again.
Then, as if with a determination of the spirit, they smiled up at him.
"Monsieur the American," said the black domino, "you have been most
kind to an--an incognita--of a masque. I hope that you dig out of your
sands all the secrets that you most desire."
"You sound as if you were saying good-bye," said Jack Ryder with
quick denial in his blood.
The smile in her eyes flickered.
"Perhaps I have kept you too long from the other guests."
He shook his head. "They don't exist."
"Ah! I will give you the chance to say such nice things to them."
"But I never say nice things--unless I mean them!"
"Never--monsieur?"
"Never. I am very careful what I say," he assured her, even as he had
assured another girl, in what different meaning, hours