Muriel looked at him in surprise. “O Daniel,” she whispered, “there’s no hurry, is there? The Bindanes won’t be going back for a fortnight.”
Her low voice set his heart beating for a moment, but he did not take the real significance of her words.
“Well,” he said. “I suppose it will be all right for you to be here for a day or two; and then we can ride straight to Cairo and be married by special licence or whatever they call it.” He lifted her fingers to his lips. “Oh, darling, in less than a week you’ll be my wife!”
Muriel stared at him, wide-eyed. It was as though she had suddenly awakened from a dream. “Oh, but the family will be horrified,” she said. “Everybody will expect a proper wedding in London: after we get home—in May or June. You’ll have to make that concession to the world, my darling.”
Daniel laughed. “Yes, but what about our compromising situation, here?” he asked. “Don’t you see, my sweet, what I mean? Your bolting from the Bindanes is to me a sort of sacred and wonderful thing that you have done, because you’ve put your fate irrevocably in my hands. To my way of thinking we are already married, because you have openly abandoned everything and come to me; but I’m not going to give anybody the chance to question our acts. We belong to each other, and the quicker the position is regularized, so to speak, the better.”
“But who is to find out?” she said. “If I stay with you till the Bindanes come, nobody will hear of it in Cairo.”
He looked quickly at her, his brows drawn together. “What d’you mean?” he asked, as though he could not follow the workings of her mind.
She laughed. “I mean, I’ve arranged it all,” she answered. “Kate is to say I was ill, and that I came to you so as not to be a nuisance to them. She can prevent her husband ever giving me away, and I should think you could manage the others, or at any rate keep them from talking until we’re married.”
He did not answer, but his eyes were fixed upon her. She got up from their chair, and put her hands about his neck. “This is to be our wonderful fortnight, darling,” she whispered. “It is to be our secret.”
He lifted her arms from his shoulders, holding her wrists. “I don’t understand,” he said, and his voice was hard.