Arlee nodded frankly. "Oh, yes, I should be terribly afraid of it,"
she averred. "Aren't you?" And then she reflected, as she saw the
inscrutable smile playing about the older woman's lips, that she
must be witnessing that fatalistic apathy of the East that she had
read about.

But there was nothing apathetic about the Captain. He followed on
the very heels of the announcement, his sword clanking, his spurs
jingling, as he bounded up the stairs and hurried through the long,
dim drawing-room toward them.

"You have heard?" he cried in English as they came to meet him. "You
have heard?"

"Of the plague!" Arlee answered, wondering at his agitation. "Yes,
your sister just told me. Is it really the plague?"

"So say those damned doctors--pardon, but they are such imbeciles!"
He made an angry gesture with his clenched hand. His face was tense
and excited. "They say so. And there is another sick ... _Dieu_,
what a misfortune! Truly, there was illness about us, a little, but
who thought----"

"I shall run back to my hotel," said Arlee lightly, "before I catch
one of your germs."

"To the hotel--a thousand pardons, but that is the thing forbidden."
The young man made a gesture, with empty palms outspread, eloquent
of rebellion and despair. "Those doctors--those pig English--they