The psychology of a woman is intriguing in its very naivete, and now
as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking
costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes
alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation and a hot
pride were mingled, I wondered and felt sick at heart. Desirable she
was beyond any other woman I had known, and I called myself witling
coward, to have avoided putting my fortune to the test on that fatal
day of my departure for Mesopotamia. For just as she looked at me now
she had looked at me then. But to-day she was evidently on the point
of setting out--I did not doubt with the purpose of meeting Eric
Coverly; on that day of the irrevocable past she had been free and I
had been silent.
"You nearly missed me, Jack," she said gayly. "I was just going out."
By the very good-fellowship of her greeting she restored me to myself
and enabled me to stamp down--at least temporarily--the monster
through whose greedy eyes I had found myself considering the happiness
of Eric Coverly.
"I am afraid, Isobel," I replied, "that what I have to tell you is not
by any means pleasant--although--"
"Yes?" she prompted, noting how I hesitated.
"Although it means that you are now the future Lady Coverly."
The bright color left her cheeks. That some black tragedy underlay my
words she had intuitively perceived, but I could see that she failed
to grasp the whole meaning of my bald statement.
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