The Sword of Fate Read Free Page B

with a puzzled lift of the delicately arched eyebrows set wide above her eyes.
    “Unconscious.”
    “Ten minutes—no, more than that. I was looking out of the window when the accident occurred and I called to them to carry you in here at once; but it must have taken me a quarter of an hour to bathe the wound and bandage your head.”
    Those were not her actual words, but just the sense of what she said. Her English was fluent but far from perfect, and she had a most entrancing accent, so it would be quite impossible for me to attempt to reproduce here the subtle charm of her voice.
    I thanked her and tried to sit up but she pushed me back and told me that I must lie still until the military ambulance arrived to take me away.
    In spite of the acute pain, which now seemed to be lifting and lowering the top of my skull, this piece of news did not please me a little bit. I said that I didn’t want to go to hospital. If I might remain where I was for a while I should be quite all right later to go back in a taxi to my hotel.
    But she shook her head. While her servants had been fetching her the water and bandages with which to treat my head, she had already telephoned to the hospital, so the ambulance was on its way.
    I could hardly refuse to depart in it when it turned up, and I realised then that I might not have long with this lovely person who had so suddenly been thrust into my life. If I wished to see her again, I must make the best of my time.
    Her name, it transpired, was Daphnis Diamopholus, and as I had supposed, she was a Greek. Her family, as I learned later,was one of those which had been established in Alexandria for countless generations; in fact, they had come over in the days when the Greek Ptolemies, of which Cleopatra was the last, had been the reigning dynasty of Egypt; thus forming an aristocracy older by a thousand years than that of the English families whose forebears had crossed from Normandy with William the Conqueror.
    Having thanked her for her ministrations and assured her that my head hardly hurt at all, although, actually, it was giving me the very devil, I asked her if she would allow me to show my appreciation of her kindness by giving her lunch next day at the Hotel Cecil.
    To my surprise, her chin shot up and she gave me a haughty look accompanied by a curt refusal. Of course, it is true that we had not been formally introduced, so perhaps it did appear that I was rather rushing my fences, but I had been careful to word the invitation with almost formal politeness and I saw no reason why she should put on such a disdainful air about it.
    “Whatever’s the matter?” I enquired anxiously. “Have I said something that I shouldn’t?”
    “I regret,” she replied, “if I appeared rude without cause, for the moment I had forgotten that you could hardly be expected to know our social customs. It probably sounds very old-fashioned to you, but in Alexandria Greek girls of good family never go out unchaperoned, and it is regarded as an insult for a man to suggest it.”
    “It’s my turn to apologise.” I managed to raise a smile. “But don’t you find that awfully dull?”
    “No,” she smiled back. “I have many girl friends and er …” her eyes held a faint twinkle, “we see as much as we wish of men at entertainments in private houses.”
    “That’s all very well,” I said, “but I want to thank you properly for bandaging me up and everything. And I want to see you again.”
    “You have thanked me quite enough already for the very little that I’ve done,” she said demurely.
    “What about my calling on you here?”
    “My mother would probably receive you. It is only by chance that I happen to be in alone this afternoon. But my mother does not encourage young men who are outside our own social sphere, so having accepted your thanks on my behalf she would, I am certain, have you shown out again.”
    “Do you mean that I wouldn’t even be allowed to see you?” I