After dinner Mrs. Boatwright went directly to M. Pourmont in his study and told him that it would be necessary for her to sleep and eat in another building. She would give no reasons, nor would she in any pleasant way soften her demand. Accordingly, the Pourmonts, always courteous, always cheerful, made at once a new arrangement in the crowded compound. Some of the Australian young men were turned out into a tent; and the Boatwrights, accompanied by their assistants, were settled by midnight in the smaller building immediately adjoining the residence. Mr. Boatwright protested a little to his wife, but was silenced. All he could do was to make some extreme effort to treat the Pourmonts with courtesy.
And so Betty, when in the morning she again mustered her courage to enter the dining-room, found them gone. And instantly she knew why... . She couldn't eat. All day forlorn, her mind a cavern of shadows, she put herself in the way of meeting Brachey, but did not find him until late in the afternoon. He was coming in then from the outworks up the hill. She stood waiting just within the gate.
They had been thinking constantly, since the one misunderstanding, of the cablegram that would announce his freedom. In his eagerness he had expected to find it waiting at Ping Yang. Day after day native runners got through to the telegraph station and brought messages for others... To Betty now it seemed the one thing that could arm her against the stern judgment in Mrs. Boatwright's eyes.
Brachey's knickerbockers and stockings were red with mud. He wore a canvas shooting coat of M. Pourmont. He was lean, strong, quick of tread.
They drew aside, into a corner of the wall of sandbags. She saw the momentary light in his tired eyes when they rested on her; gravely beautiful eyes she thought them. Her fingers caught his sleeve; her eyes timidly searched his face, and read an answer there to the question in her heart.
“You haven't heard?”
He slowly shook his head. “No, dear, not yet.”
Her gaze wavered away from him “It's got to come,” he added. “It isn't as if there weren't a positive understanding.”
“I know,” she murmured, but without conviction. “Of course. It's got to come.”
They were silent a moment.