Afterwards | Page 2

his voice. "I will keep my word. You shall not fall into their hands. I promise you that."
She sighed faintly, and made room for him beside her on the rough seat.
"That is settled, then. And now, just for this last half-hour, let us pretend that we are in no danger, that we are waiting for our friends, the friends we ran away from at the picnic--yesterday."
Something in her own words startled her, and she broke off abruptly.
"Well?" He smiled at her. "Let us pretend. How shall we begin?"
"Was it only yesterday?" Her accent thrilled him through and through. "Did we really start out from my uncle's bungalow yesterday morning? How gay we were, weren't we--all the twenty of us ... you and I leading because our horses were the best and I knew the way...."
"Yes--and all the smart young officers looking daggers at me because I had carried you off!" His tone was admirably light.
"Nonsense!" Hilda Ryder actually laughed, and in the dim and gloomy hut her laughter sounded almost uncanny. "I'm sure no one was in the least envious! You see, we were new friends--and it is such a treat to meet someone new out here!"
"Yes. By Jove, we'd only met twice, hadn't we? Somehow I was thinking we were quite old friends, you and I! But as you say, I was a new-comer, this was my first visit to the East. Rather a change, India and the snows, from a slum in Shoreditch!"
"Shoreditch? Did you really live in a slum?"
"Rather--and quite enjoyed it!" He laughed at her incredulous face. "It was experience, you see--disease flourishes in many and divers forms down there, and although I couldn't contemplate staying there for ever, the time wasn't wasted."
"And then--you left your slum?"
"Yes. I wanted more time to myself." He threw back his head as he talked, and swept the curly black hair off his brow with an impatient hand. "You see I had visions--oh, purely futile ones, I daresay--but I had a great idea of finding a cure for a certain disease generally considered incurable----" He broke off suddenly.
"Well? You have found it?" Her tone was eager.
"Not yet--but I shall!" In his enthusiasm he had forgotten the present, forgotten the horror which was coming nearer with great strides as the morning brightened in the sky. He saw only the future--not the immediate future--death, with his back against the wall of the courtyard, his face turned to the rising sun; but the splendid, strenuous future, when after good years of toil, of experience, even of suffering, he should make the great discovery which should free mankind from one of its most grievous foes, and add a precious treasure to the scientific storehouse of the world....
"It's a difficult task--almost superhumanly difficult!" His black eyes snapped at the thought of the difficulties in the way. "But thank God I'm young and full of hope--the hope that belongs to youth--and with luck I believe I'll win through in the end...."
A sudden shaft of rosy light, striking slantwise through the windowless aperture in the wall, brought him to a standstill.
"Sunrise! My God--I--I'd forgotten!" In an instant the youth and enthusiasm were wiped out of his face as by a ruthless hand, and he started to his feet. "Miss Ryder, forgive me! I've been talking like a fool, and you sit there listening like an angel, while all the time----"
"Hush, please!" She laid her hand on his arm, and through the sleeve of his thin riding-suit he felt the chill of her slender fingers. "It isn't time--yet. Let us pretend until the last minute. You know--you haven't asked me what I intend--intended"--for a second she faltered--"to make of my life!"
Inwardly cursing his own folly, Anstice sat down again beside her and took her hand in his as a brother might have done.
"Well, what is ... was...." He, too, bungled over the tense, but she pretended not to notice his confusion. "What are you going to be--or do? I hope your dreams are as wild as mine!"
"Not quite!" Her tone robbed the words of all offence. "Mine are very humble dreams, I'm afraid! You see"--for a second her voice shook, but she steadied it and continued to speak--"there's a man in Egypt whom I am--was--oh, what can I say?--whom I was to marry--some day."
"Really? You're engaged?" A fresh pang of pity shot through his heart.
"Yes. He's an engineer--in the Irrigation Department--and the best man in all the world!" For a moment love triumphed over death, and its glory illuminated the gloom of that fatal place of imprisonment with a hint of immortality. "That's my ambition, Dr. Anstice--to love him and marry him, and be a true and faithful wife--and perhaps"--her voice sank a note--"perhaps in time to bear his children. That"--said Hilda Ryder, and now her eyes were