“You are going, aren’t you? You promised——”
“Of course I am.”
“Then I’ll drive you over. May I call for you?”
“All right. Come at ten.”
“We shan’t have finished our bridge by then. Say ten-thirty.”
And eyes exchanged their meaning signals. The group dismounted and dispersed. Arabs standing under the lebbekh trees, or squatting on the pavements before their dim-lit booths, watched them with faces of gleaming bronze. Rivers gave his bridle to a donkey-boy, and moved across stiffly after the long ride to help the girl dismount. “You feel tired?” he asked gently. “It’s been a long day.” For her face was white as chalk, though the eyes shone brilliantly.
“Tired, perhaps,” she answered, “but exhilarated too. I should like to be there now. I should like to go back this minute—if some one would take me.” And, though she said it lightly, there was a meaning in her voice he apparently chose to disregard. It was as if she knew his secret. “Will you take me—some day soon?”
The direct question, spoken by those determined little lips, was impossible to ignore. He looked close into her face as he helped her from the saddle with a spring that brought her a moment half into his arms. “Some day—soon. I will,” he said with emphasis, “when you are—ready.” The pallor in her face, and a certain expression in it he had not known before, startled him. “I think you have been overdoing it,” he added, with a tone in which authority and love were oddly mingled, neither of them disguised.
“Like yourself,” she smiled, shaking her skirts out and looking down at her dusty shoes. “I’ve only a few days more—before I sail. We’re both in such a hurry, but you are the worst of the two.”
“Because my time is even shorter,” ran his horrified thought—for he said no word.