river. And he made himself very detached in manner all that day.
III
It was late on in the spring when they had finished lunch, that he handed her a cable from one of the largest of the Sydney papers asking if he would consider going to Egypt as its correspondent.
Her face lit up, and she became vividly alive in a moment.
“Oh, how wonderful! That’s the very thing, isn’t it?” Her eyes flashed at him. Then she sobered at the look in his.
“Oh, Dane, don’t say you won’t take it!”
“Would that hurt you very much?” He was looking intently at her.
“Good heavens! You wouldn’t think of turning down such a chance, would you?”
“Well, you couldn’t go with me, Val, you know.”
“But, but—I could go in some capacity separately from you. Dad can manage anything, you know. We have all the pull we want. And then we could meet there—really I don’t see—oh, do consider it, Dane.”
She saw his mouth stretch on his teeth. She looked down at the cable again and read the date. It was a week old. She raised her face. She looked at him and past him.
“You’ve refused.”
“Yes, Val, I’ve refused. Don’t look like that, old girl. I cannot bear it.”
He got up from the table, went down the steps into the garden and round the front of the house. “She thinks I’m afraid to go,” he kept saying to himself.
She sat still, feeling that the bottom had fallen out of
