“It is simply inconceivable!” burst from him, and then he shut his jaw hard, as if only one last remnant of will power kept a seething volcano, from explosion.

“What is?”

“How any girl—­in Cairo, of all places!” he continued to explode in little snorts.

“You are speaking of—?” she suggested.

“Of your walking with that fellow—­in broad daylight!”

“Would it have been better in the gloaming?”

The sweet restraint in the young thing’s manner was supernatural.  It was uncanny.  It should have warned the red-headed young man, but oblivious of danger signals, he was plunging on, full steam ahead.

“It isn’t as if you didn’t know—­hadn’t been warned.”

“You have been so kind,” the girl murmured, and poured a cup of tea the Arab had placed at her elbow.

The young man ignored his.  The color burned hotter and hotter in his face.  Even his hair looked redder.

“The look he gave up here was simply outrageous—­a grin of insolent triumph.  I’d like to have laid my cane across him!”

The girl’s cup clicked against the saucer.  “You are horrid!” she declared.  “When we were on shipboard Captain Kerissen was very popular among the passengers and I talked with him whenever I cared to.  Everyone did.  Now that I am in his native city I see no reason to stalk past him when we happen to be going in the same direction.  He is a gentleman of rank, a relative of the Khedive who is ruling this country—­under your English advice—­and he is——­”

“A Turk!” gritted out the young man.

“A Turk and proud of it!  His mother was French, however, and he was educated at Oxford and he is as cosmopolitan as any man I ever met.  It’s unusual to meet anyone so close to the reigning family, and it gives one a wonderful insight into things off the beaten track——­”

“The beaten—­damn!” said the young man, and Billy’s heart went out to him.  “Oh, I beg pardon, but you—­he—­I—­” So many things occurred to him to say at one and the same time that he emitted a snort of warring and incoherent syllables.  Finally, with supreme control, “Do you know that your ‘gentleman of rank’ couldn’t set foot in a gentleman’s club in this country?”

“I think it’s mean!” retorted the girl, her blue eyes very bright and indignant.  “You English come here and look down on even the highest members of the country you are pretending to assist.  Why do you?  When he was at Oxford he went into your English homes.”

“English madhouses—­for admitting him.”

A brief silence ensued.

The girl ate a cake.  It was a nice cake, powdered with almonds, but she ate it obliviously.  The angry red shone rosily in her cheeks.

The young man took a hasty drink of his tea, which had grown cold in its cup, and pushed it away.  Obstinately he rushed on in his mad career.

“I simply cannot understand you!” he declared.