“It seems to me it’s business first with him, too,” remarked Mr. Bindane, looking vacantly before him.
“Oh, rot!” replied his wife. “From what Muriel says it appears that he had promised the old Sheikh that his son should hold office after him; and he’s going to keep his word.”
That night Muriel confessed the whole truth to her friend, only exacting the promise that she would not tell of her humiliation to Benifett. She related the events without emotion, her voice steady and the expression of her face calm. It was as though she were telling the story of some other woman in whom she felt no personal interest. It was as though Daniel had now passed entirely out of her life.
“I’m going to marry the first man who proposes to me,” she said, setting her jaw.
“Well, you’ll have to look sharp about it,” Kate replied. “He’s coming to carry you off by the hair in a month’s time, and don’t you forget it.”
Muriel put out her hand quickly, and touched her friend’s arm. “No, you don’t understand him,” she said. “He’s not a bit that sort of man....”
She checked herself, feeling that she had no desire to be inveigled into discussing his character.
Next morning, soon after breakfast, the start was made on the return journey to the Nile. Muriel, after a long sleep, was quite recovered from her fatigue; but she did not feel happy, and the wide vistas of the desert did not make the same appeal to her as on the outward journey. She felt herself to be very much older, very much more subdued; and there was, as it were, a veil between her eyes and the beauty of the wilderness.
Moreover, she was very self-conscious. It seemed to her that she had lost caste; and, now that all the alarums and excursions were over, she was not a little dismayed at the affront she had put upon the conventions. Benifett Bindane’s attitude to her was non-committal, but in his evasion of the subject of her adventures he displayed an awkwardness which she found almost insulting.
And then the natives.... She felt as though many pairs of eyes were upon her, and more than once it seemed to her that she was not being treated with the same deference as formerly.
Once, when her camel had lagged behind the others, she found herself riding beside the Egyptian secretary of the expedition, a young man who evidently regarded his personal appearance with favour; and it seemed to her that he turned his dark eyes upon her with a boldness which she had not previously observed.