"Why did she not tell me?" asked Everest blankly, incredulous still.
"Perhaps she thought it wouldn't be welcome news," grunted the doctor grumpily. He had scant sympathy with Everest's conduct as regarded his cousin, though he had shown such genuine and passionate devotion towards Regina to-day that the doctor was inclined to be lenient.
"May I see her now? Go to her?" Everest asked.
"Yes. She's had a splendid sleep, the best thing in the world for her. Only don't let her talk too much, or excite her in any way."
Everest nodded in assent and went on. A strange feeling of delight, of triumph, of joy in his possession of her, filled suddenly his veins. And she had known it all this time and had not told him! Even, he remembered, she seemed to equivocate a little once when he had questioned her.
He came into the tent with a quick step. The moon rays, softened by the white canvas through which they streamed, filled the interior with pale light, and a small lamp burned at the side of the tent under a shade. Regina was lying with her head raised on a couple of pillows and the soft masses of her fair hair fell over the edge of the bed and in its long waving lines to the floor. The bandages disfigured her upper arm and shoulder, but the other, bare in the intense heat, showed warmly white above the blanket. The extreme pallor of her face threw up in new beauty the sweeping dark lines of her brows and the wide-open, light-filled eyes. She was looking towards the door and saw him enter. His cheek was flushed, his eyes kindling and full of fire. He looked like a man who had drunk exhilarating and unaccustomed wine. He crossed to her. He did not dare to lift her, not even touch her as he longed to do, to crush her to him. He bent over her.
"My very, very own, my life, my soul! I am so glad."
She also did not dare to move her body, but she lifted her bare left arm and put it round his neck.
"Are you?" And her eyes grew radiant and full of intense passion as they searched his face in the tender light. "I could not tell—now—and under all the circumstances ... I thought it might only seem a tie to you, but oh! if you are glad, Everest, I cannot tell you the delight it is to me! To know that I am to have a child by you—the most perfectly beautiful thing I have ever seen!"
"You will marry me now, won't you, for its sake anyway?"