“Two hours and a quarter. We must really be going. They’ll be wondering what has become of us.”
“Really not. They won’t trouble their heads about us. A little longer. Heaven knows when I shall get you all to myself like this again,” he pleaded. “And—Why, Lilian—darling—what is it?” For she had suddenly grown very white.
“You are tired,” he went on. “The heat and the climb have been too much for you. What a ruffian I was to have made you come! But it’s shady and cool here, let’s wait a little longer; the rest will do you good.”
“No, I am not tired; but we will wait a little longer. I—I have something to say to you, and this is a good opportunity of saying it.”
“Yes. What is it?”
“Do you remember our compact?” she went on, with a sort of shiver, and speaking in a dead, mechanical voice. “Have you forgotten it—that night by the water? I had no right to bind you to such a one-sided agreement. It was not fair to you. I only thought of myself, and it was selfish of me—sinfully selfish—to ask you to consent to such a thing.”
“Selfish! You selfish? Well, what next?”
There was silence for a moment. Before—beneath them lay the beautiful valley, its abrupt slopes and iron-bound krantzes soft in the golden sunshine. A couple of crimson-winged louris flitted among the tree-tops beneath, and the hum of insects floated up with a faint and far-away sound. Behind—above them yawned the gloomy cave, those whited relics of primeval barbarism lying silent and ghastly on the shadowed floor, the sole witnesses of this conflict of love in all its heart-wrung hopelessness. What a mocking irony of circumstances is that which has caused such a scene in the drama of civilisation—civilisation in its highest and most refined phase, to be enacted here in this savage spot, where lie the dead bones of the most degraded of the human race.
“Yes, selfish. I valued your society, your friendship, so much, I could not bear to lose it. I was afraid you would leave me, then and there; and, oh! I have never known what real chivalrous sympathy was till I met you, and I have needed it so. Yet I might have known what would be the result of tasking you to the utmost of your strength—beyond it, rather. Well, our compact,” she went on, in an altered voice, as if nerving herself for an effort. “You have not kept to it. You must not talk to me as you have been doing lately—to-day even. You must not—”
She turned half away; she felt faint and sick at heart and dared not look at him. What would he say to her? Suddenly something struck her on the shoulder, just behind the neck. The concussion was of the nature of a blow, rather quick than violent. She turned upon her companion, lost in a kind of scared wonder.