She sighed and moved languidly. The robe fell back, revealing her hands. They were grazed and wounded.
Pouring water on his handkerchief from the pitcher, he bathed them gently. Just as he had finished, she opened her eyes.
“You won't leave me?”
“You'll find me sitting here,” he assured her, “just like this when you waken.”
Smiling faintly, she drowsed off obediently as a child.
All day she lay huddled in the corner, oblivious and spent with exhaustion. This must be the first long sleep she had snatched for several days and nights. Crouched beside the window, he guarded her. The Major might return. Varensky might send help. He himself could do nothing till after nightfall. The only food was the broken loaf of bread on the shelf beside the pitcher. He did not dare to touch it; when she woke, she would be hungry. The downs poured in a steady blaze of light. A fly drummed against the panes. On distant hillsides sheep were grazing; he envied them their freedom.
He could go if he liked. As the monotony dragged on, the temptation strengthened. He was under no obligation to make himself an outlaw. If he were to slip away, he would not rouse her. Within the hour he could be speeding up to London. Once there he would be of importance—the one man, at least in some statesmen's estimate, who could solve the European situation. For this woman he was sacrificing the happiness of millions. The fleshpots of Egypt could be his for the claiming. If he stayed and she were arrested, he would be held as her accomplice. Self-interest and altruism urged him to escape. He owed nothing to her. Women had always been for him an enemy country, forbidden and enticing. They had been what darkest Africa was to the explorer, a forest-world of treacherous loveliness. In imagination he had always been approaching their borders, fascinated by the gleam of uplifted faces. But like Varensky, whose life was a constant challenging of terror, in this one matter he had been cowardly. Since the first false woman of his early manhood—?
Why was it, this sudden clamor to possess the thing which all his years he had avoided? Was it because he felt the rising tide of loneliness and knew that the years were gaining on him? All this autumn day, as the silver clearness of morning faded into the deep gold of afternoon, he sat motionless, considering. Up to now he had maintained his pride, flattering himself that it was he who was doing the refusing. He had told himself arrogantly that he would succeed first—succeed immensely; after that he could have any woman for the asking. But could he? He was losing his faculty for sharing. Merely to marry a woman was not to win her. The illusion of ecstasy!
He glanced over to the corner where she lay sleeping. She was the symbol of the feminine half of the world whom he had disregarded. It was she who had roused him, with her parched voice and instinctive passion.
He studied her—her golden face, her cruel lips, her thin, sweet profile. He noticed the delicate firmness of her arms, the fineness of her throat, the tenderness of her molding. At every point she made him aware of his incompleteness.