Part 38 (1/2)
”You'd better invent some nice traveling friend----”
She shook her head in flat refusal. ”I won't. I'm not equal to inventing anything. It's bad enough now to--to tell the _necessary_ lies I have to.” The brightness left her face looking suddenly wan and sorry. ”I suppose it's part of my--punishment--for my dreadful folly,” she said in a low tone.
”It's just part of the coin the world has to be paid in for its conventions,” Billy quickly retorted. ”_Don't_ let it worry you like that--in a day no one will think to question you.”
”I know--but--it's having the memory always there. Always knowing that there is something I can't be honest about--something secret and dreadful----”
She was staring unseeingly out the window, her soft lips twitching.
”The Egyptians were a most sensible people,” said Billy. ”They drew up a list of commandments against the forty-two cardinal sins, and one of them was this, 'Thou shalt not consume thy heart.' That is a religious law against regret--vain, unprofitable, morbid, devastating regret. And you must take that law for your own.”
”Th--thank you.” The low voice was suspiciously wavery. ”I--you see, I haven't had time to think about it till just now--we've been going so fast----”
”And the best thing that could have happened. And now that you have the time to think, you mustn't think _weakly_. It was just a nightmare. And it's over.”
”Just a nightmare.... And it's over,” she repeated. Her eyes lifted to Billy's in a look of ineffable softness and wonder. ”It's over--because _you_ came.”
”I want you to forget that.” The young man spoke with cold curtness in his effort to combat the wild temptation of that moment. ”I only did what anyone else in my place would have done--to have accomplished it is all the grat.i.tude I want. Please don't speak of it to me again. You must forget about it.”
”Forget--as if I could help being grateful as long as I live!”
”But I don't _want_ you to be grateful. It--it's obnoxious to me!”
She was as blankly hurt as a slapped child. Then she looked away, a little pulse in her throat beating fast. ”Then I won't--try to thank you,” she answered in a very small voice, and stared harder and harder out the window.
Billy felt that he had accomplished a tremendous stride. ”A feeling of obligation kills a friends.h.i.+p,” he told her didactically, ”and I want you to be really my friend.”
”I am.” Her voice was distinct, though queerly lack-l.u.s.ter. And she did not look at him again.
He went on: ”The Evershams will be in on the boat about seven. From the station I'll take you straight to the boat, where your stateroom is surely being kept for you. Then to-morrow your trunks will arrive from Cook's, and by the time you are through resting, you will be ready to sally out and meet the world.... I hope my own trunk will make its appearance, too,” he added. ”I telegraphed the hotel to pack my things and send them on.”
She made no comment on the obvious haste with which he had left Cairo. She said slowly, ”I want to do a little mathematics now. What is the shocking sum I owe you?”
He shut his lips in an obstinate line. After a moment she added, ”I can't take _that_, you know.”
It struck him as a trifle ludicrous that dollars were so important among all the rest, but unwillingly enough he understood.
”Won't you just let it stand as it is?” he said under his breath.
”Let me have the whole thing--please.”
”I can't.”
”You mean you won't?”
”I can't,” she repeated inflexibly, and then, with a childish flash, ”Since you dislike me to feel grateful--I should think you would be glad to let me reduce the debt.”
”All right.” He spoke gruffly. ”Then you owe me what you spent just now and what your railroad ticket cost. Not a cent more. For what went before I am absolutely responsible, and I decline to let you pay _my_ debts.”
This time he was inflexible. She repeated, with a spark of resentment, ”It's not fair to let you pay so much----”