She lifted her wet eyes to his.
“I don’t know,” she said, with simple sincerity; and after a minute she added, “But I can’t make up my mind to marry just for the sake of finding out.”
Jack whistled softly.
“So that’s it!” he said at last.
They remained sitting quietly side by side for two or three minutes, and then he spoke again; his voice was gentle, but firm and resolved, and there was a sort of finality about his words which clinched into her heart like an ice-grip.
“Then the best thing to do is just what we’re doing; I know that you wanted to stay and see more of him, but, feeling as you do, that wouldn’t have been right to him or to yourself either. It seems tough on you, but you’ll get over it in a few months, and if it comes to a funeral for Von Ibn—why, it isn’t our funeral, anyway!”
He stood up as he spoke, and smiled and held out his hand to her. She rose, feeling as if some fearful ultimatum had been proclaimed above her head.
“It’s sort of hard, you know,” Jack said, as he assisted her carefully down the steep steps; “it’s awful hard to travel with you and have you never smile and never say anything, and not be able to explain that you feel bad because you won’t marry a man who wants you and whom you want.”
“I married just such a man once upon a time,” she replied sadly.
“Yes,” said Jack; “but I didn’t like that man, and I do like Von Ibn.”