"Don't," said Margaret.
There fell a pause between them, and she could hear his breathing. She remembered the expression on Ford's face when he had questioned her as to whether she did not experience a repulsion at a Kafir's proximity to her, and tried now to find any such aversion in herself. They stood in an intimate nearness, so that she could not have moved from her place without touching him; but there was none. Whoever had it for a pedestal of well and truly laid local virtues, she had it not.
"This is good-by, of course," said the Kafir, in his pleasant low tones. "I 'll never see you again, but I 'll never forget how good and beautiful you were to me. I must n't keep you out here, or there are a hundred things I want to say to you; but that 's the chief thing. I 'll never forgive myself for what has happened, but I 'll never forget."
"There 's nothing you need blame yourself for," said Margaret eagerly. "It 's been worth while. It has, really. You 're somebody and you 're doing something great and real, while the people in here are just shams, like me. Oh," she cried softly; "if only there was something for me to do."
"For you," repeated the Kafir. "You must be—what you are; not spoil it by doing things."
"No," said Margaret. "No. That 's just chivalry and nonsense. I want something to do, something real. I want something that costs—I don't care what. Even this silly trouble I 'm in now is better than being a smiling goddess. I want—I want—"
Her mind moved stiffly and she could not seize the word she needed.
"It would be wasting you," Kamis was saying. "It would be throwing you away."
"I want to suffer," she said suddenly. "Yes—that 's what I want. You suffer—don't you? That woman in Capetown will have to suffer; everybody who really does things suffers for it; and I want to."
"Do you?" said Kamis, with a touch of awkwardness. "But—what woman in Capetown do you mean?"