It was a day or two after this conversation that a light cloud seemed to float across his lover"s happiness with Betty. He could not tell the exact moment when it came, nor from what quarter it journeyed. But he felt the obscuring of the sun and the lessening of the lovely warmth of intimacy. He was chilled and alarmed, and at night, when he was alone with Betty in the stern of the _Hatasoo_ bidding her good-bye, he could not refrain from saying:--
"Betty, is anything the matter?"
"The matter, Jack?"
"Yes. Are you quite happy to-day? Quite as happy as you were yesterday?"
"I suppose so--I believe so."
But she did not speak with a perfect conviction, and Bellairs was more gravely troubled.
"I am certain something is wrong," he persisted. "I have done something that has offended you, or said something stupid. What is it? Do tell me."
"I can"t. There is nothing to tell. Really, there is not."
"You would tell me if there was?"
"Of course."
"And you love me as much as ever?"
"Oh, yes."
He looked into her eyes, asking them mutely to tell him the truth. And he thought their expression was strangely cold. The light had surely faded out of them. He kissed her silently and went forward. Clarice was standing there looking at the rising moon.
"Good-night," he said, holding out his hand.
"How grave you look," she answered, not seeing the hand.
"The moonlight makes people look unnatural."
"It does not reach the deck yet."
"Good-night," he said again, and he went down the stairs.
She looked after him with a smile. When he had gone, she turned her head and called.
"Betty!"
"Yes!"
"Come here and sit with me. Let us watch the moon. Don"t talk. I want to think--and to make you think--as I do."
The cloud which Bellairs had fancied he noticed did not dissolve in the night. It was not drawn up mysteriously into the sun to fade in gold. On the contrary, next day he could no longer pretend to himself that his anxiety as a lover rendered him foolishly self-conscious, dangerously observant of the merest trifles. There really was a change in Betty, and a change which grew. He became seriously alarmed. Could it be possible that the ardent pa.s.sion which she had displayed in the first moments of their engagement was already subsiding as cynics say pa.s.sion subsides after marriage? Such a supposition seemed ridiculous. The ardour which has never fulfilled itself is not liable to cool. And Betty was a young girl who had not known love before. If she tired of it after so short an experience of its delights, she could be nothing less than a wholly unnatural and distorted being. And she was strangely natural. Bellairs rode out alone with her along the built-up brown roads into the desert, and tried to interest her, but she was abstracted and seemed deep in thought. Often she didn"t hear what he was saying, and when she did hear and replied, her answers were short and careless, and rather dismissed than encouraged the subject to which they were applied. Bellairs, at last, gave up attempting to talk, and from time to time stole a cautious glance at her pretty face. He noticed that it wore a puzzled expression, as if she were turning over something in her mind and could not come to a conclusion about it. She did not look exactly sad, but merely grave and distrait. At length he exclaimed, determined to rouse her into some sort of comradeship:--
"You never caught that headache, did you?"
"Clarice"s, you mean? No."
"Is it coming on now?"
"Oh, no. I feel perfectly well. What made you think it was?"
"You won"t talk to me, and you look so preternaturally serious. I am sure I have unwittingly offended you?"
"No, you haven"t. You are just as you always are, better to me than I deserve."
"You deserve the best man in the world."
"I already have the best woman."
"Mdlle. Leroux?"
"Yes; Clarice."
"You admire her very much."
"Of course. I would give anything to be like her."
Bellairs hesitated a moment. Then he said with a slight, uneasy laugh:--
"But you are wonderfully like her."
Betty looked surprised.
"I don"t see how," she answered.
"No, because we never see ourselves. But when I first knew you both, I was immensely struck by the curious resemblance between you, in mind, in the things you said, in the things you did, the people you liked."
"We both liked you."
"Yes."
"It would have been strange if we had both loved you!" Betty said, musingly.
Bellairs laughed again, and gave his horse a cut with the whip. "I only wanted one to do that," he said, not quite truthfully. "And, thank G.o.d, I have got my desire."
Betty did not answer.
"Haven"t I?" he persisted.
"You know whether you have or not," she answered. "How beautiful the sunset is going to be to-night. Look at the light over Karnak."
She pointed towards the temple with her whip. Bellairs felt a crawling despair that numbed him What did it all mean? Was he torturing himself foolishly, or was this instinct which gnawed at his heart a thing to be reckoned with? When he left Betty at the dahabeeyah, he walked slowly, in the gathering shadows, along the path which skirts the dingy temple of Luxor. This change in Betty was simply inexplicable. In no way could he account for it. She had not the definite, angry coldness of a girl who had made a dreadful mistake and hated the man who had led her to make it. No; she seemed rather in a state of mental transition. She was setting foot on some bridge, which, Bellairs felt, led away from the sh.o.r.e on which she had been standing with him. Was her first transport of love and joy a pretence? He could not believe so. He knew it was genuine. That was the puzzle which he could not put together. And then he tried to comfort himself by thinking deliberately of the many moods that make the feminine mind so full of April weather, of how they come and pa.s.s and are dead. All men had suffered from them, especially all lovers. He could not expect to be exempt--only, till now, Betty had seemed so utterly free from moods, so steadily frank, eager, charming, responsive. Bellairs finally argued himself into a condition of despair, during which he came to a resolve of despair. He silently decided to seek a quiet interview with Clarice, and ask her what was the matter with Betty. After all, there was no reason why he should not take this step. Clarice had evidently not cared deeply for him. Otherwise, she would not have accepted his desertion with such truly agreeable fort.i.tude. Theirs had been a pa.s.sing flirtation--nothing more. And, indeed, their intimacy gave him the right to consult her, while her close knowledge of Betty must render her an infallible judge of any reasons which there might be to render the latter"s conduct intelligible.
Bellairs did not have to wait long before he put his resolve into practice. That evening Betty, who had become more and more abstracted and silent, got up soon after dinner, and said she was tired, and was going to bed. Bellairs tried to get a moment with her alone, but she frustrated the attempt by holding out her hand to him in public and markedly bidding him good-night before Lord and Lady Braydon. When she had disappeared, Bellairs sought Clarice, who was downstairs in the saloon writing letters. Clarice looked up from the blotting-pad as he entered.