Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that
morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about
the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of
the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his
arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out,
and clothes and speech were his only real concern.

He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to
Aimee--if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her
again, and be sure that she understood her own history--he had no
notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption
of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance.

And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of
his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that
hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word--and with
it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word.

And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal
had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in
her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration.
He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion.

And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to
happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about
saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would
know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about
in--the little more that tips the scale between safety and
destruction.

But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess.

The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while
another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward
regions of the place.

He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when
they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at
least.

He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a
fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of
inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions.
If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps
the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding.

At the head of the stairs a door stood half ajar. Through the crack
he strained his eyes, but his anxious glance met only the darkness
of utter night. Not a gleam of light. And not a sound--e