flung out in disordered
curls, she fell at last into the deep sleep of exhausted youth.

She woke with a smothered cry. In the darkness a hand had touched
her.

CHAPTER VI

A GIRL IN THE BAZAARS

Billy slapped on his hat with a clap of violence. She might have
just _seen_ him! Then he got up and marched down the steps. There
was no more use in camping on that veranda. There was no more use in
guarding that entrance. When a girl went whirling off in a
limousine, "all dolled up" as his academic English put it, that girl
wasn't going to be back in five minutes. And anyway he'd be blessed
if he lay around in the way any longer like a doormat with "Welcome"
inscribed upon the surface.

So this spurt of masculine shame at his swift surrender to her, and
his masculine resentment at being ignored as she went by, sent him
hurrying down the street resolved not to return till dinner.

From habit his steps took him to the bazaars. But the zest of that
bright pageant was dulled for him. The color was gone even from the
red canopies, and the excitement had vanished from the din of
noises, the interest fled from the grave figures squatting in their
cubby holes of shops draped with silky rags or sewing upon scarlet
slippers. He listened apathetically to the warring shouts of the
donkey boys and the anathemas of a jostled water carrier stooping
under his distended goatskin, then dodged out of the way of a
goaded donkey and turned into one of the passages where the
four-footed could not penetrate.

For a few moments the bargaining over a silver bracelet between two
beturbaned and berobed Arabs caught the surface of his attention,
and as the wrangling became a bedlam of imprecations, and the
explosive gestures made physical violence a development apparently
of mere seconds, Billy's eyes brightened and he estimated chances.
But as he picked his favorite there was one final frenzy of fury,
and then--peace and joy, utter calm on the wild waters! One Arab
counted out the coins from a little leather bag about his neck and
the other passed over the bracelet, and with mutual salaams and
smiling speeches, behold! the affair was accomplished.

Disgustedly Billy turned away. Then on the other side of him he
heard a voice, a sweet and rather high voice, with a musical
intensity of inflection that was as English as the Union Jack.

"Yes, it's _sweetly_ pretty," the voice was saying irresolutely,
"but I don't think I _quite_ care