The Fortieth Door

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary. ORG - - He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every flinching nerve in him protested. A masked ball - a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all preening and peacocking! Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a bright delight. She was a very engaging girl - that was the mischief of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence.