"I must start for Kairouan to-morrow morning. Read this, too."
And she gave him Emile's letter.
"Doesn't that make you feel his loneliness?" she said, when he had
finished it. "And think of it now--now when perhaps he knows that he is
dying."
"You are going away," he said--"going away from here!"
His voice sounded as if he could not believe it.
"To-morrow morning!" he added, more incredulously.
"If I waited I might be too late."
She was watching him with intent eyes, in which there seemed to flame a
great anxiety.
"You know what friends we've been," she continued. "Don't you think I
ought to go?"
"I--perhaps--yes, I see how you feel. Yes, I see. But"--he got up--"to
leave here to-morrow! I felt as if--almost as if we'd been here always
and should live here for the rest of our lives."
"I wish to Heaven we could!" she exclaimed, her voice changing. "Oh,
Maurice, if you knew how dreadful it is to me to go!"
"How far is Kairouan?"
"If I catch the train at Tunis I can be there the day after to-morrow."
"And you are going to nurse him, of course?"
"Yes, if--if I'm in time. Now I ought to pack before dinner."
"How beastly!" he said, just like a boy. "How utterly beastly! I don't
feel as if I could believe it all. But you--what a trump you are,
Hermione! To leave this and travel all that way--not one woman in a
hundred would do it."
"Wouldn't you for a friend?"
"I!" he said, simply. "I don't know whether I understand friendship as
you do. I've had lots of friends, of course, but one seemed to me very
like another, as long as they were jolly."
"How Sicilian!" she thought.
She had heard Gaspare speak of his boy friends in much the same way.
"Emile is more to me than any one in the world but you," she said.
Her voice changed, faltered on the last word, and she walked along the
terrace to the sitting-room window.
"I must pack now," she said. "Then we can have one more quiet time
together after dinner."
Her last words seemed to strike him, for he followed her, and as she was
going into the bedroom, he said: "Perhaps--why shouldn't I--"