"You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your feet," said the young man huskily.
He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, I—you—it's not fair—" he muttered incoherently.
He had meant—ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the desert—to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth....
Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him.
"It's not fair to you," he said desperately—and drew closer.
For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him ... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the gleam of a butterfly's wing.
No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very flame of youth.
"Sweet, I'll be on the ship—I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed and at her low murmur, "Ready—?" he gave back, "Ready—for love," with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them.
"But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish gleam of laughter, "but—love?"
His last resolve went to the winds.