"Is there nothing I can do?" he said at last, moving aside and standing square and steady. "Nothing I can say or do to make it easier for you?"
He shook his head. "I will go away if you like, though I don't see why I should."
"Then it would only be giving up one thing more to please me," she answered with a little sad smile. "Why should you give up anything, when I can give--nothing! Ah, Philip, Philip! If you had only taken poor Dick's will and were free to go,--if you chose."
He frowned moodily. "I should not choose, so it would make no difference; except that you think there would be one. I cannot see it. As for the will, I'm afraid it is hopeless; but if you like I can take leave and try. Afzul might come with me."
"If I like!" she echoed in despair. "If I like! It always comes back to that."
The slow tears overflowing her tired eyes cut him to the quick, though in sober truth he thought them needless. "It must,--seeing that I love you. Why should you shrink from the truth, Belle? Great Heavens! what have you or I done that we should be ashamed of ourselves?"
"Don't let's speak of it, Philip," she cried in a sort of terror. "It is all my fault, I know; but I cannot help it. It is no use saying I am wrong; everything is wrong from beginning to end."
And though he fretted and fumed, argued and appealed, nothing he could say sufficed to re-assure her. Rightly or wrongly she could not view the situation as he viewed it. She was galled and chafed on every side; nor could he fail to see during the next four days that his presence only brought her additional misery. She seemed unable to take anything naturally, and she shrank equally from seeming to avoid being alone with him, or from being alone. Yet, with true womanly inconsequence, she shrank most of all when he told her that he had made up his mind to go, and not to return until she sent for him. They were walking up and down the new dam, which curved across a bend in the sandy reach, waiting for her husband who with Afzul and his gang of bandits was busy seeing to a strengthening of the side nearest the river. A red sun was setting over the jagged purple shadow of the Suleiman Hills, and flaring on the still pools of water below the embankment.