"I want to save the good name of the Consul-General also. He is my father, and though he no longer thinks of me as his son, I want to save him from ... from himself."
"I can do it too," he added eagerly. "At this moment I am perhaps the only man who can. I am nobody now—only a runaway and a deserter—but I can cross the line of fire and so give warning."
"But, Gordon, don't you see——"
"Oh, I know what you are going to say, Helena—I must die for it. Yes! Nobody wants to do that, if he can help it, but I can't! Listen!"
She raised her eyes to his—they seemed to be ablaze with a kind of frenzy.
"Death was the penalty of what I did in Cairo, and if I did not stay there to be court-martialled and condemned, was it because I wanted to save my life? No; I thought there was nothing left in my life that made it worth saving. It was because I wanted to give it in some better cause. Something told me I should, and when I came to Khartoum I didn't know what fate was before me, or what I had to do, but I know now. This is what I have to do, Helena—to go back to Cairo instead of Ishmael, and so save England and Egypt and my father and these poor Moslem people, and prevent a world of bloodshed."
Then Helena, who in her nervousness had been scraping her feet on the sand, said in a halting, trembling voice—
"Was this what you wanted to say to me, Gordon?"
"Yes, but now I want you to say something to me."
"What is that?" she asked, trembling.