Part 42 (1/2)

Meanwhile, she tiptoed back to her bed, and sat on the edge of it, to wait. At last the thread of light, fine as a red-gold hair, vanished from the door; but as it disappeared a line of moonlight was drawn in silver along the crack. Victoria must have left her windows wide open, or there would not have been light enough to paint this gleaming streak.

Saidee sat on her bed for nearly half an hour, trying to concentrate her thoughts on the present and future, yet unable to keep them from flying back to the past, the long-ago past, which lately had seemed unreal, as if she had dreamed it; the past when she and Victoria had been all the world to each other.

There was no sound in the next room, and when Saidee was weary of her strained position, she crossed the floor on tiptoe again, to shut the door. But she could not resist a temptation to peep in.

It was as she had expected. Victoria had left the inlaid cedar-wood shutters wide open, and through the lattice of old wrought-iron, moonlight streamed. The room was bright with a silvery twilight, like a mysterious dawn; but because the bed-linen and the embroidered silk coverlet were white, the pale radiance focused round the girl, who lay asleep in a halo of moonbeams.

”She looks like an angel,” Saidee thought, and with a curious mingling of reluctance and eagerness, moved softly toward the bed, her little velvet slippers from Tunis making no sound on the thick rugs.

Very well the older woman remembered an engaging trick of the child's, a way of sleeping with her cheek in her hand, and her hair spread out like a golden coverlet for the pillow. Just so she was lying now; and in the moonlight her face was a child's face, the face of the dear, little, loving child of ten years ago. Like this Victoria had lain when her sister crept into their bedroom in the Paris flat, the night before the wedding, and Saidee had waked her by crying on her eyelids. Ca.s.sim's unhappy wife recalled the clean, sweet, warm smell of the child's hair when she had buried her face in it that last night together. It had smelled like grape-leaves in the hot sun.

”If you don't come back to me, I'll follow you all across the world,”

the little girl had said. Now, she had kept her promise. Here she was--and the sister to whom she had come, after a thousand sacrifices, was wis.h.i.+ng her back again at the other end of the world, was planning to get rid of her.

Suddenly, it was as if the beating of Saidee's heart broke a tight band of ice which had compressed it. A fountain of tears sprang from her eyes. She fell on her knees beside the bed, crying bitterly.

”Childie, childie, comfort me, forgive me!” she sobbed.

Victoria woke instantly. She opened her eyes, and Saidee's wet face was close to hers. The girl said not a word, but wrapped her arms round her sister, drawing the bowed head on to her breast, and then she crooned lovingly over it, with little foolish mumblings, as she used to do in Paris when Mrs. Ray's unkindness had made Saidee cry.

”Can you forgive me?” the woman faltered, between sobs.

”Darling, as if there were anything to forgive!” The clasp of the girl's arms tightened. ”Now we're truly together again. How I love you! How happy I am!”

”Don't--I don't deserve it,” Saidee stammered. ”Poor little Babe! I was cruel to you. And you'd come so far.”

”You weren't cruel!” Victoria contradicted her, almost fiercely.

”I was. I was jealous--jealous of you. You're so young and beautiful--just what I was ten years ago, only better and prettier.

You're what I can never be again--what I'd give the next ten years to be. Everything's over with me. I'm old--old!”

”You're not to say such things,” cried Victoria, horrified. ”You weren't jealous. You----”

”I was. I am now. But I want to confess. You must let me confess, if you're to help me.”

”Dearest, tell me anything--everything you choose, but nothing you don't choose. And nothing you say can make me love you less--only more.”

”There's a great deal to tell,” Saidee said, heavily ”And I'm tired--sick at heart. But I can't rest now, till I've told you.”

”Wouldn't you come into bed?” pleaded Victoria humbly. ”Then we could talk, the way we used to talk.”

Saidee staggered up from her knees, and the girl almost lifted her on to the bed. Then she covered her with the thyme-scented linen sheet, and the silk coverlet under which she herself lay. For a moment they were quite still, Saidee lying with her head on Victoria's arm. But at last she said, in a whisper, as if her lips were dry: ”Did you know I was sorry you'd come?”

”I knew you thought you were sorry,” the girl answered. ”Yet I hoped that you'd find out you weren't, really. I prayed for you to find out--soon.”

”Did you guess why I was sorry?”

”Not--quite.”

”I told you I--that it was for your sake.”