“I will give him twenty thousand pounds, if he will take it.”
“You—you!—will give him—” Her eyes swam with pleasure. “Ah, that is noble! That makes wealth a glory, to give it to those who need it. To save those who are down-trodden, to help those who labour for the good of the world, to—” she stopped short, for all at once she remembered-remembered whence his money came. Her face suffused. She turned to the door. Confusion overmastered her for the moment. Then, anger at herself possessed her. On what enterprise was she now embarked? Where was her conscience? For what was she doing all this? What was the true meaning of her actions? Had it been to circumvent the Khedive? To prevent him from doing an unjust, a despicable, and a dreadful thing? Was it only to help the Soudan? Was it but to serve a high ideal, through an ideal life—through Gordon?
It came upon her with embarrassing force. For none of these things was she striving. She was doing all for this man, against whose influence she had laboured, whom she had bitterly condemned, and whose fortune she had called blood-money and worse. And now...
She knew the truth, and it filled her heart with joy and also pain. Then she caught at a straw: he was no slave-driver now. He had—
“May I not help you—go with you to England?” he questioned over her shoulder.
“Like Alexander Selkirk ‘I shall finish my journey alone,’” she said, with sudden but imperfectly assumed acerbity.
“Will you not help me, then?” he asked. “We could write a book together.”
“Oh, a book!” she said.
“A book of life,” he whispered.
“No, no, no—can’t you see?—oh, you are playing me like a ball!”