"And I won't be able to see you," he said suddenly.
"But you have seen me, monsieur, these many days--"
"Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard, I've marched beside a mummy case--and--and we've said so little--"
It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been achieved, they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, nebulous, vague....
"And I have never said Thank you," she murmured. "I--I think I began by saying Thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education had proceeded to the Ts!"
"If--if only you never want to unsay it," he muttered. "You don't know what's ahead--life's so uncertain--"
"No, I do not know what is ahead," she told him, "but I am free--free for whatever will come."
The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned face.
"Anything is better than that man," she vowed. "Even if my aunt, that Madame Delcassé, should not like me--you see, I have thought of everything, and I am not afraid."
"Like you--? She'll love you," said Ryder bitterly. "She'll go mad over you and give you all she has--she'll marry you to a count--"
"Another marriage?" Aimée raised brows of mockery. "But I am through with the marriages of convenience--"
"You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your feet," said the young man huskily.
He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, I--you--it's not fair--" he muttered incoherently.
He had meant--ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the desert--to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth....
Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him.
"It's not fair to you," he said desperately--and drew closer.
For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him ... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the gleam of a butterfly's wing.