Tom leaned forward, bringing his face in front of her own, and closer to it. He looked hard into her eyes a moment. In the depths of her steady gaze he saw shadows, far away, behind the open expression. There was trouble in her, but it was deep, deep down and out of sight. The eyes of some one else, it seemed, looked through her into his. An older world came whispering across the sunlight and the sand.
'Lettice,' he said quietly, 'there's something new come into your life these last few weeks—isn't there?' His voice grated—like machinery started with violent effort against resistance. 'Some new, big force, I mean? You seem so changed, so different.' He had not meant to speak like this. It was forced out. He expressed himself badly too. He raged inwardly.
She smiled, but only with her lips. The shadows from behind her eyes drew nearer to the surface. But the eyes themselves held steady. That other look peered out of them. He was aware of power, of something strangely bewitching, yet at the same time fierce, inflexible in her… and a kind of helplessness came over him, as though he was suddenly out of his depth, without sure footing. The Wave roared in his ears and blood.
'Egypt probably—old Egypt,' she said gently, making a slow gesture with one hand towards the river and the sky. 'It must be that.' The gesture, it seemed to him, had royalty in it somewhere. There was stateliness and dignity—an air of authority about her. It was magnificent. He felt worship in him. The slave that lies in worship stirred. He could yield his life, suffer torture for days to give her a moment's happiness.
'I meant something personal, rather,' he prevaricated.
'You meant Tony. I know it. Didn't you, Tom?'
His breath caught inwardly. In spite of himself, and in spite of his decision, she drew his secret out. Enchantment touched him deliciously, an actual torture in it.
'Yes,' he said honestly, 'perhaps I did.' He said it shamefacedly rather, to his keen vexation. 'For it has to do with Tony somehow.'
He got up abruptly, tossed his cigarette over the wall into the river, then sat down again. 'There's something about it—strange and big. I can't make it out a bit.' He faltered, stammered over the words. 'It's a long way off—then all at once it's close.' He had the feeling that he had put a match to something. 'I've done it now,' he said to himself like a boy, as though he expected that something dramatic must happen instantly.
But nothing happened. The river flowed on silently, the heat blazed down, the leaves hung motionless as before, and far away the lime-stone hills lay sweltering in the glare. But those hills had glided nearer. He was aware of them,—the Valley of the Kings,—the desolate Theban Hills with their myriad secrets and their deathless tombs.