But seeing this, she also saw her own share in what had occurred. At the moment of Gordon's deepest humiliation she had driven him away from her. Her pride had conquered her love, and instead of flinging herself into his arms as she ought to have done, whether he was in the right or in the wrong, when everybody else was trampling upon him, she had insulted him with reproaches and turned her back upon him in his disgrace.
That scene came back to her, too—Gordon at the door of the General's house, with his deadly white face and trembling lips, stammering out, "I couldn't help it, Helena—it was impossible for me to act otherwise," and then, bareheaded as he was, and with every badge of rank and honour gone, staggering across the garden to the gate.
When she thought of all this now it seemed to her that, if anybody had been to blame for her father's death, it was not Gordon, but herself. His had been the hand, the blind hand only, but the heart that had wrought the evil had been hers.
"Oh, it cannot be! it shall not be!" she continued to say to herself, and just as she had tried to undo her work with Ishmael when he was bent on going into Cairo, so she determined to do the same with Gordon, now that he had stepped into Ishmael's place. Her opportunity came soon.
A little before mid-day of the day following the meeting of the Sheikhs, she was alone in the guest-room, sitting at the brass table that served her as a desk—Ishmael being in the camp, Zenoba and the child in the town, and old Mahmud still in bed—when Gordon came out of the men's quarter and walked towards the door as if intending to pass out of the house.
He had seen her as he came from his bedroom, with one of her hands pressed to her brow, and a feeling of inexpressible pity and unutterable longing had so taken possession of him, with the thought that he was soon to lose her—the most precious gift life had given him—that he had tried to steal away.
But instinctively she felt his approach, and with a trembling voice she called to him, so he returned and stood by her side.
"Why are you doing this?" she said. "You know what I mean. Why are you doing it?"
"You know quite well why I am doing it, Helena. Ishmael was determined to go to his death. There was only one way to prevent him. I had to take it."
"But you are going to death yourself—isn't that so?"