As she stood there something moved, a shadow fell on the sand some fifty yards away from the tent door and then she saw Everest's figure walking slowly as if he were pacing up and down. Beyond him she could see the closed faces of two other tents, they were those of Sybil and her brother. In an instant the scene of the afternoon and its whole import came back to her, and she held suddenly the canvas edge of the door in her cold hand. She looked at the moving figure closely. Up and down, up and down it walked and she could see his hands were clenched sometimes at his sides and sometimes one hand would be raised and drawn across his eyes as if to clear away some painful thought.
Regina turned from the door and found her way back trembling to the bed. She could not tell him now. It was too late. What a bitter irony of fate! What a cruel mockery to send her certainty now, when her lips were closed and he was only thinking of and desiring another! She reached the bed and threw herself upon it in a passion of bitter tears. All their talk, their own dear intimate conversations, came back upon her like knives cutting into her brain. How she had looked forward to the joy it would give him! How she had dreamed of the expression that would cross his beautiful face! How she had cherished the idea of this pleasure she had in store for him! And now, how could she tell? It would, perhaps, be no pleasure, it would bring to him only a sense of bondage, a feeling that he was bound. Already he was pacing there, tortured by thoughts as pitiless and savage as the desert lions, already he was torn between his honour and his desire. Should she add to his burden?—carry out to him a chain and fetter with which to bind his feet already longing perhaps to go from her? No, a hundred times no; not now. The happy secret, the joyous hope transformed into bitter pain, she would lock up in her own breast as long as she could.
If she could have but told him sooner! If she could have had that delight in London before they left, or on board that magic boat he had fitted up for her! The intense joy of it then! Would it have made any difference, she wondered. No; nothing, she thought, would have helped her.
Everest did not come back, she lay in the silver light of the tent alone, in an agony of grief and pain; her pillow drenched with tears.
CHAPTER IX IN THE DARK WATCHES
The camp was in a state of excitement; the natives in a whirl of breathless jabber, even the stolid Englishman slightly fluttered. Lion had been seen and heard at last—seen with the naked eye and heard by the fleshy ear. It was no question of imagination, nor of rumour, nor of excited fancy this time. It was true, genuine, solid fact. A small party of the native servants had been out reconnoitring some distance from the new camp into which they had just moved, and while returning at sunset, as they came up to the brow of a long low line of rocky hills, a tawny form had been seen swinging along over the gilded ripples of the sandy plain towards them and somewhere far on the left of them had disappeared amongst the rock and scrub.
The reconnoitring band had hurried back to camp, bursting with importance and triumph, and since their arrival with the news the whole party was a-buzz and astir with excitement.
There was a unanimous wish to go out that very night. They had all been tantalised and irritated so long now by lion stories that came to nothing, and wearied by every other kind of shooting than that which they wanted and had come out for, that they all burned with the same enthusiasm to catch the chance now it had come. The men called upon Everest to come and talk matters over with them in the gun-room tent, away from the women, and he went, leaving Regina cleaning her rifle and looking over her cartridge belt in their sleeping tent. Her eyes had sparkled when she had heard the news. She had no wish to kill a lion for herself, nor acquire as an indifferent hearthrug the beautiful golden coat that fitted him so perfectly, but the joy of going side by side with Everest into danger, and perhaps being of service to him, of even possibly saving his life, seemed to make every nerve and fibre within her glow like hot steel.