The Palace of Darkened Windows | Page 5

up that "but" most eagerly, and recounted multiple
and deplorable instances of nasal countrywomen doing the East and
monopolizing the window seats in compartments, and Miss Eversham
supplied details and corrections.
Still Miss Beecher said nothing. She had a dreamy air of not belonging

to the conversationalists. But from an inscrutable something in her
appearance, Billy judged she was not unentertained by his sufferings.
At the first pause he addressed her directly. "And how do you like
Cairo?" was his simple question. That ought, he reflected, to be an
entering wedge.
The young lady did not trouble to raise her eyes. "Oh, very much," said
she negligently, sipping her coffee.
"Oh, very well!" said Billy haughtily to himself. If being her fellow
countryman in a strange land, and obviously a young and cultivated
countryman whom it would be a profit and pleasure for any girl to
know, wasn't enough for her--what was the use? He ought to get up and
go away. He intended to get up and go away--immediately.
But he didn't. Perhaps it was the shimmery gold hair, perhaps it was the
flickering mischief of the downcast lashes, perhaps it was the
loveliness of the soft, white throat and slenderly rounded arms.
Anyway he stayed. And when the strain of waltz music sounded
through the chatter of voices about them and young couples began to
stroll to the long parlors, Billy jumped to his feet with a devastating
desire that totally ignored the interminable wanderings of Clara
Eversham's complaints.
"Will you dance this with me?" he besought of Miss Arlee Beecher,
with a direct gaze more boyishly eager than he knew.
For an agonizing moment she hesitated. Then, "I think I will," she
concluded, with sudden roguery in her smile.
Stammering a farewell to the Evershams, he bore her off.
It would be useless to describe that waltz. It was one of the ecstatic
moments which Young Joy sometimes tosses from her garlanded arms.
It was one of the sudden, vivid, unforgettable delights which makes
youth a fever and a desire. For Billy it was the wildest stab the sex had
ever dealt him. For though this was perhaps the nine thousand nine

hundred and ninety-ninth girl with whom he had danced, it was as if he
had discovered music and motion and girls for the first time.
The music left them by the windows.
"Thank you," said Billy under his breath.
"You didn't deserve it," said the girl, with a faint smile playing about
the corners of her lips. "You know you stared--scandalously."
Grateful that she mentioned only the lesser sin, "Could I help it?" he
stammered, by way of a finished retort.
The smile deepened, "And I'm afraid you listened!"
He stared down at her anxiously. "Will you like me better if I didn't?"
he inquired.
"I shan't like you at all if you did."
"Then I didn't hear a word.... Besides," he basely uttered, "you were
entirely in the right!"
"I should think I was!" said Arlee Beecher very indignantly. "The very
notion--! Captain Kerissen is a very nice young man. He is going to get
me an invitation to the Khedive's ball."
"Is that a very crumby affair?"
"Crumby? It's simply gorgeous! Everyone is mad over it. Most tourists
simply read about it, and it is too perfect luck to be invited! Only the
English who have been presented at court are invited and there's a girl
at the Savoy Hotel I've met--Lady Claire Montfort--who wasn't
presented because she was in mourning for her grandmother last year,
and she is simply furious about it. An old dowager here said that there
ought to be similar distinctions among the Americans--that only those
who had been presented at the White House ought to be recognized.
Fancy making the White House a social distinction!" laughed the
daughter of the Great Republic.

"I wonder," said Billy, "if I met a nice Turkish lady, whether she would
get me an invitation? Then we could have another waltz----"
"There aren't any Turkish ladies there," uttered Miss Beecher
rebukingly. "Don't you know that? When they are on the
Continent--those that are ever taken there--they may go to dances and
things, but here they can't, although some of them are just as modern as
you or I, I've heard, and lots more educated."
"You speak," he protested, "from a superficial acquaintance with my
academic accomplishments."
"Are you so very--proficient?"
"I was--I am Phi Beta Kappa," he sadly confessed.
Her laugh rippled out. "You don't look it," she cheered.
"Oh, no, I don't look it," he complacently agreed. "That's the lamp in
the gloom. But I am. I couldn't help it. I was curious about things and I
studied about them and faculties pressed honors upon me. I am even
here upon a semi-learned errand. I