“Oh, Charlie!” sighed Cecil, but in a moment her face changed and grew firm; “I can’t do it—it would be wrong. Why, Charlie, you forget that I am pledged to stay here for more than two years and a half still. I can’t leave my post. My duty is here, and yours, I suppose, is at Bandr Abbas. When Azim Bey’s education is finished, then I shall be at liberty to leave Baghdad, and then——”
“Can’t you come now, dear?” he pleaded. “I don’t want to persuade you if it is really your duty to stay, but I think that Azim Bey’s conduct has not been so considerate that you need strain matters on his account. Think of our going home together, Cecil, and seeing all your people again.”
“Don’t,” murmured Cecil, brokenly; “you make me so miserable, Charlie. You can’t think how I want to see Whitcliffe again, and all of them. But I mustn’t go. It isn’t right. I can’t break my promise. You know you wouldn’t respect me yourself if I did such a thing. So I must stay, and you must go. Besides, there is another reason. If you resigned now, and stayed at Basra, and went home afterwards, instead of going to Bandr Abbas, they would say you were afraid of the cholera, and I couldn’t bear that any one should think that of you. No, I have some consideration for you, Charlie dear, though I have got you into such trouble. I was thinking as we came along that it might have been better for you if you had never met me at all.”
“Not a bit of it!” cried Charlie. “Never think that again, Cecil. Why, before I met you I was a regular loafer, just doing a spell of work in one place and then getting myself sent on somewhere else, and never settling down. But now I have something to work for, something to look forward to. I should have missed the chief good of my life if I had never met you. No, dear, knowing you has done everything for me, and I am as thankful as I can be for it now, and I always shall be. As for this trouble, no doubt it comes because otherwise I should be too happy.”
“Your time is nearly up, Cecil,” said Lady Haigh. “Don’t you want to give Charlie any cautions about taking care of himself at Bandr Abbas?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Cecil. “I know he will do his duty wherever he is, and I also know that he will remember me and not let himself be careless about taking proper precautions, and that sort of thing.”
“And every evening,” said Charlie, “I shall go up to the wind-tower and look in the direction of Baghdad, and imagine that you are standing on the roof of the Palace and looking towards Bandr Abbas.”
“When she will probably be having her tea with Azim Bey quietly in the cellar,” said Lady Haigh. “Don’t be sentimental, Charlie. I detest sentiment.”
“When you leave Bandr Abbas, do you think it possible that you will be allowed to come back here?” asked Cecil.
“I’m afraid not,” said Charlie. “It’s not likely, is it, Cousin Elma? No; I may be sent somewhere else in the Gulf, or to Aden, if Sir Dugald is kind enough to give me a good character, but this business with the Pasha will probably prevent my ever coming back to Baghdad.”