Chapter XXVIII

He woke from restless and bitter dreams, feeling stiff and a little cold. The moon was sinking in the sky, and only patches of white light fell now upon the decks. He raised himself in his chair to look about him. A woman was leaning against the port bulwark looking out over the desert. As his eyes fell upon her figure he moved uneasily, and a shiver passed through his limbs. She turned, and began to walk towards him into the darkness of the shadow. His eyes rested on her face--and he gasped. He thought “I am dreaming.”

She seemed like a tender vision of slumber and of memory, stepping to him out of the night. He rubbed his eyes, and got up very gently from his chair. She stopped, and he could see her lips quiver, she was so close to him. He held out his hands silently--he was afraid that at some word of his she would vanish, as she had come, into the night. She took one step, and touched him--her lips parted.

“I have come, you see,” she said, and she leaned against him. His arms were round her, his face was buried in her hair, but no word passed his lips.

“I’ve come to do what you wish, after all. I couldn’t help it--something there”--and she touched her chest with her hand--“there wasn’t any other place for me, you see.”

She spoke like a tired child, and rubbed her cheek softly against his shoulder. Then suddenly she raised her face, tender and mysterious in the gloom, and kissed him on the lips. Tears ran silently down his face, and she kissed them. She raised her arms, drew his head down to her breast, and held it there. And, while they stood, the hot wind soughed faintly above them; once, the bell rang out two sharp strokes, the cry of the watchman fled weirdly into the night, and the ship slept again to the hum of her screw and the bubble of the silver water. And now great shadows stalked along the cold sands, like the uneasy thoughts of a dream; and sometimes a feeble cry would speak to them out of the heart of the desert.

Giles raised his head at last, and holding her fast in his arms whispered, “Tell me!”

“I belong to you. I knew it when you were gone. I belonged to you ever since--that night.” Her cheek was hot against his own, and he could feel the beating of her heart. “I will be your wife, darling; I will do anything you tell me, I won’t ever hurt you again.”

He could only say, “Sh!” and stroke her face gently with his hand. He looked at it under its little, soft grey cap, as it rested against his shoulder. Her eyes glanced up at him, large, and full of loving light, and then drooped like a sleepy child’s under their heavy lids. He was dumb with the passion of tenderness which filled him for the frail girl, who had come to him from so far. How marvellously sweet to him was every tiny trembling of her slender body, every breath that came through her parted lips! How dear, every whisper of her voice!

He said in a husky voice: “How did you come, my little one?”

She rested a hand on his chest, and pulled at the button of his coat.

“I was afraid I shouldn’t catch you, they told me to come from Marseilles. I was very lucky, there was a boat, and I came to Alexandria and Cairo. When I got to Ismailia, I was just in time; I told my maid to ask if you were on board, and then I came, and I’m so tired.”

She dropped her head on his shoulder again with a little sigh.

“I have come,” she said, “and oh! _I love you so_.”

His face quivered with a throbbing tenderness that was like pain. With each beat of his heart the muffled footfall of the watch officer sounded across and across the deck above; and, ghostly in the slanting light of the moon, some dhows glided past in the tow of a tiny, puffing launch. His arms closed round her till her heart beat against him; and a great shudder of passion ran through his frame.

“By all the life in me, child,” he said huskily, “I will make up to you for the past--we will wipe it out together.”

She looked up at him, and for a moment her eyes seemed to brim over with the tenderness in them, then they gazed at him, suddenly dark and profound, out of a sad little face. A tiny wisp of her hair fell loose across her ear.

“Yes--if we can.” Her voice, hushed and uncertain, was like a prayer to Fate, but her hand touched his cheek with soft fingers. “Who knows?”

The wind carried the whisper away into the remoteness of the desert.

THE END

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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

ym wife=> my wife {pg 257}