The Palace of Darkened Windows | Page 5

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 wanted to have a look at the diggings a friend of mine is making at Thebes and several looks at the dam at Assouan, for I am by way of being an engineer myself--a beginning engineer."
"You have been up the Nile, then?"
"Yes, I'm just back. Now I'm going to see something of Cairo before I leave."
"We start up the Nile day after to-morrow," said she.
"The day after--" he stopped.
'Twas ever thus. Fate never did one good turn but she sneaked back and jabbed him unawares. She was a tricksy jade.
"That's--that's gloomy luck," said Billy, and felt outraged. "Why, how about that Khedive ball thing?"
"Oh, that's when we come back."
She was coming back, then. Hope lifted her head.
"When will that be?"
"In three weeks. It takes about three weeks to go up to