She did not heed this, but “You are going to be gone a great while?” she asked, in turn.
“I don’t know,” he replied, in an uncertain tone, as if troubled to make out whether she was vexed with him or not. “I thought,” he added, “I would go up the Nile this time. I’ve never been up the Nile, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know that. Well,” she added to herself, “I wish you had not come back! You had better not have come back. If you hadn’t come, you would have got my letter. And now it can never be done! No, I can’t go through it all again, and no one has the right to ask it. We have missed the only chance,” she cried to herself, in such keen reproach of him that she thought she must have spoken aloud.
“Is Mrs. Maynard all right again?” he asked.
“Yes, she is very much better,” she answered, confusedly, as if he had heard her reproach and had ignored it.
“I hope you’re not so tired as you were.”
“No, I’m not tired now.”
“I thought you looked a little pale,” he said sympathetically, and now she saw that he was so. It irritated her that she should be so far from him, in all helpfulness, and she could scarcely keep down the wish that ached in her heart.
We are never nearer doing the thing we long to do than when we have proclaimed to ourselves that it must not and cannot be.
“Why are you so pale?” she demanded, almost angrily.