So she had noticed that!... Not for nothing were those bright, gray eyes of hers! Not for nothing the red hair.
"Well, I rather think it did," he said deliberately. "That girl was a child who hadn't danced in four years--so she said, and I believe her."
And Jinny received what he intended to convey. "Stepped on your buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?... But why bolt? There were other girls who _had_ danced within four years--"
"I went into the garden," he murmured. "The fact is, I was feeling awfully--queer," he brought out in an odd tone.
Queer was a good word for it. He let it go at that. He couldn't do better.
Jinny looked suddenly uncertain. Her pique was streaked with compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away, and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be suspicious of any disappearance--but there was certainly an accent of embarrassed sincerity about him.
Perhaps he _had_ been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged.
She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with you."
"H'm--it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp after myself--"
But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you at dances you don't want to go to?"
"I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny felt suddenly ashamed of herself.
"Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know, till we come back from the Nile."
"I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly he didn't intend--
But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands. "Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view.
"We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out, carelessly, "and if you get through in time--"
Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in time--
She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel to dine with her.