Commander Merrill took a couple of long, swift strides towards the chair in which Nitocris was leaning back with her hands pressed to her eyes. He picked her up bodily, as he might have picked a child of seven up, put her protesting hands aside, and slowly and deliberately kissed her three times squarely on the lips as if he meant it; and the third time her lips moved too. Then he whispered:
"Good-bye, dear, for the present, at any rate!"
After which he deposited her tenderly in the chair again, and, with just one last look, turned and walked with quick, angry strides across the lawn and round the semi-circular carriage-drive, saying some things to himself between his clenched teeth, and thinking many more.
A few yards outside the gate he came face to face with the Professor.
"Good-morning, sir," said Merrill, with a motion of his hand towards his hat.
"Oh, good-morning, Mr Merrill," replied the Professor a little stiffly, for relations between them had been strained for some considerable time now. "I presume you have been to the house. I am sorry that you did not find me at home, but if it is anything urgent and you have half an hour to spare——"
He stopped in his speech, silenced by a shock of something like shame. He was prevaricating. He knew perfectly well that "it" was the most urgent errand a man could have, next to his duty to his country, that had brought the young sailor to his house. Twenty-four hours ago he would not have noticed such a trifle: but it was no trifle now; for to his clearer vision it was a sin, an evasion of the immutable laws of Truth, utterly unworthy of the companion of Nitocris the Queen in that other existence which he had just left.
"You have seen Niti, I suppose?" he continued, with singular directness.
"Yes," replied Merrill. "You will remember that the week was up this morning, and so I called to learn my fate, and your daughter has told me. I presume that your decision is final, and that, therefore, there is nothing more to be said on the subject."
"My decisions are usually final, Mr Merrill, because I do not arrive at them without due consideration. I am deeply grieved, as I have told you before, but my decision is a deduction from what I consider to be an unbreakable chain of argument which I need not trouble you with. Personally and socially, of course, it would be impossible for me to have the slightest objection to you. In fact, apart from your execrable fighting profession, I like you; but otherwise, as you know, I cannot help looking at you as the survival of an age of barbarism, a hark-back of humanity, for all the honour in which that trade is held by an ignorant and deluded world; and so for the last time it is my painful task to tell you that there can be no union between your blood and mine. Outside that, of course, there is no reason why we should not remain friends."