"I've come!"
Emil's voice trembled. The blood beat in his temples.
"How long have you been here?" he questioned, as he opened his hand grudgingly and released her fingers. "How much have I missed of you?"
She ignored the form of the question. "Oh, I've not been here long, I think," with disconcerting calmness, "though when I have a book I lose all track of time."
At this unexpectedly repressing manner, he moved a few paces off.
"What is your book?" he inquired after a pause.
"'Impressions of the Nile Country,'" and she made a motion as if to hand him the volume. But he kept his face away. Thereupon she plucked a spear of grass and placed it carefully between the pages, while a peculiarly significant and feminine expression played about her mouth.
"Oh," she sighed with sudden fervour, "how I should like to travel! particularly how I should love to travel in Egypt."
"But why Egypt?" and he swung round.
"The sphinx;" she explained briefly. "It sits there gazing before it forever and forever, and it never reveals the secret of the hands that fashioned it, while the sun scorches it and the sands blow over it and will finally throttle it, I suppose, but it will never tell."