He held out his hand before turning to leave the boudoir. Maud Morris snatched it rather than took it, apprehension in her eyes.
"Good-bye, Rex?" she whispered. "You can't go from me. Think of how we've cared. Think of the invisible ties."
Britton's mouth hardened, showing his disgust. Her speech came nearer rousing him to voluble contempt than any inherent feeling.
"Ties!" he exclaimed severely. "Ignominy upon a marriage bond is no tie. It is rather a matter of expiation!"
His words had the intonation of farewell, and he laid one hand on the portières, but Maud Morris rushed forward with a cry, holding him with a passionate caress which was either the height of consummate acting or the essence of mad desire.
Her touch thrilled Britton for one vivid, insane moment, and he stood like a man in a dream listening to her vociferous pleading.
"Take me with you!" she cried. "Biskra is two days by rail, Sidi Okba two hours more by carriage–then the desert! The Sahara, Rex, do you hear? No one shall ever find us!"
Britton's brain swung slowly back through bewilderment at the mention of detail, and he stared at her with a gradual horror growing in his eyes as his idol ground itself to dust.
"The desert, dear,–and oblivion," she murmured again.
A hundred scenes flashed before his sight. One stood out–the picture of Trascott waiting for him, his fine face plunged in anxiety and a strong prayer in his generous heart. This psychic vision completed Britton's revulsion, and he violently pushed the woman away.