Her suggestion that he should go away from her for some months, while she worked in Egypt on her desert pictures, came to him like the voice of Providence, offering to him the opportunity to carry out his plan for ridding himself once and for all of Dolly by divorce; and his mind was made up on the instant.
“Very well,” he said. “I’ll go away—though not because I feel the slightest doubt about my love for you. I’ll go to Larnaca to-morrow: some people from the hotel are going then, so as to catch the steamer the day after....”
She interrupted him. “Oh Jim, must it be to-morrow?”
He looked up quickly at her. “Do you care?” he asked, eagerly.
She had begun to reply, and he was hanging upon her words, when the native servant made his appearance. Jim clapped his hand to his head in a frenzy of exasperation. “Confound you!—what do you want?” he shouted to the man.
“I suppose he’s come to tell us it’s high time to be going,” said Monimé, laughing in his face.
Jim picked up a stone and hurled it viciously over the wall into the void beyond. He would willingly have leapt upon the inoffensive servant and throttled him where he stood.