"From Miss Dodd—what are you laughing at, David? From Miss Todd, I mean. How could you talk of burying yourself when you have such happiness before you? But, David, why do you laugh?"
With this reproof she tilted her head. That did not trouble me. I had so often seen her tilt her head in the same scornful way in the old days. And I laughed on joyfully at her calm assurance that I was going back to Gladys Todd.
"Gladys Todd is now Mrs. Bundy," I said.
"Oh!" Penelope exclaimed, and her voice changed to one of sympathy. "I am sorry, David. I see now what you meant by the Sudan."
"Didn't you know that Gladys Todd had jilted me years ago?" I asked.
"Why, no," she answered. "How should I? You never told me."
"I was on my way to tell you one day," said I. "And then——"
I stopped. Remembering why I had not told Penelope, I deemed it wiser to be evasive. I remembered, too, that in my joy at seeing her again I had been taking it for granted that she was still Penelope Blight. The gulf between us, which had been closing so fast, yawned again. "Tell me," said I in undisguised eagerness, "are you married, Penelope?"
Then she laughed, and in the gay ring of her laughter, I read her answer. She stepped back to a stone bench and seated herself, and I took a place beside her, watching as she made circles in the sand with the point of her parasol. There were a thousand commonplace questions that I might have asked her, but I was contented with the silence. It mattered little to me how she came there. It was enough that she was at my side. It mattered little to me that Bennett and his brother might have settled their dispute long since and be hunting for me, for I had made my farewell to them. I was home. I intended to stay at home. So I, too, fell to making circles in the sand, with my stick.
Then Penelope looked up and asked me: "David, how do you come to be here, in this out-of-the-way Italian town? I thought you were in the Sudan. Uncle Rufus told me that you were in the Sudan. That is how I happened to hear it. He always insists on reading to me everything of yours he can find—rather bores me, in fact, sometimes—not, of course, that I haven't been interested in what you were doing."