“They can read for themselves, can’t they?  And talk to each other.  And—­well, what do you girls do with your education anyway?  You don’t lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball room.”

“Who wants us to?  But we do bring something to committees and clubs and—­and welfare work,” Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly.  “And we are always into arguments at dinners.  While these girls, they can’t dine out, they haven’t anybody but themselves to argue with, and it doesn’t matter a straw politically what they think—­they can’t even change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers imposed.

“If I were one of these girls,” she declared positively, “I wouldn’t bother about Kant and chemistry and history—­I’d stuff myself full of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened outside.  Or else I’d be miserable.”

“Perhaps they are miserable.”

“They ought to fight.  Think, think,” said Jinny dramatically, “of marrying some man you’ve never seen—­the way that lovely girl is doing.  Suppose she doesn’t like him?  Suppose he’s dull and cranky and mean and greedy?  Suppose he bores her?  Suppose she actually hates him?  Why, Jack, it’s horrible!  And yet she submits—­she submits to it—­”

“Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn’t a soul on earth to help her?  How would you fight, I wonder—­”

“Well, you don’t need to shout about it!  That woman’s looking now—­that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes.”

Nervously Jinny glanced around.

“It’s a fearful lark,” she murmured, “but I don’t believe I’d ever have had the nerve if I’d realized....  What do you suppose they would do, Jack, if they found you out?...  Those big blacks look so—­so uncivilized.”

Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash.

“He has on English oxfords,” said Ryder lightly.  “That’s a saving
something.  But they aren’t going to find out.....  I have an idea we
ought to make our getaway now, and that we had better not go
together.  You go first and then I’ll stroll along, and whisk off
these duds in some quiet corner....  I have to meet a man to-night,
but I’ll probably see you to-morrow.  And don’t,” he entreated,
“don’t as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
breathe a word of my being here like this to any one—­any
time—­anywhere.  I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it.  So
be wary.”

“Oh, I shall!” Jinny Jeffries promised vividly and with a last look about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened.