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The next instant the door closed softly, and Meryl found herself alone in the room, face to face with Peter Carew. There were a few tense seconds in which they each seemed trying to realise the other; and then she understood. She went slowly towards him, seeing with unerring tuition all the love in his eyes, and without knowing it held out both hands.
What he had fought to keep out of his face before was now flooding through it. Never at any moment, even when he first loved Meryl, had he looked at her as he now looked at Diana.
Diana maintained her rôle of gay inconsequence because it pleased her best. "It all sounds very superior and all that rot, and I'm sure Meryl would call you a hero; but I should swear myself black and blue in your shoes, and that's about what you do pretty often, I expect." His smile grew fresher and more genuine. "It doesn't do much good though." "O yes it does. Don't tell me!
She contented herself with letting Diana know that he had admitted he loved Meryl. In the meantime she waited anxiously for Carew to return, but heard no word of him until the Sunday afternoon. In reply to an urgent little note he came to see her. She had wondered if he would be changed at all; if his new position would shed a ray of gladness in his steady eyes.
The other man loves her, but he has not told her so. I do not know that he ever will. He is a proud, obstinate Englishman, and has no position and no money. Apparently he is ready to let Meryl wreck her life, rather than bless his with herself and her fortune. Some men are like that. It is a mixture of pride and heroics very difficult for a well-meaning cousin like myself to cope with.
Anyhow, he hesitated no more, until he stood at her side and looked into her eyes with that direct gaze that Meryl so unexpectedly found disconcerting. But the sensation passed rapidly, and in its place came a quiet content. Whether he had avoided her all day or not, at least he came now entirely of his own initiative, and for the time it was enough.
Meryl had left her little guide-book with her father, and wanted to postpone the temple until she had it. Diana said it was too hot to attempt the Acropolis Hill. In the end they separated. Meryl strolled towards the Acropolis and Diana sought the cool shadiness of the temple.
Pym grasped it with unwonted warmth. "Good-bye, sir," said the soldier simply. "Good-bye, Carew; I have been glad to meet you," answered the millionaire. And then as the horseman rode away without one backward look, he walked slowly along the little path to the tents. At breakfast he broke the news quite simply, but once more he did not look at Meryl.
Omar was one of her favourites, and sixteen years ago he was very little known compared with to-day." Meryl felt the colour ebbing from her face, and averted her eyes. Without any telling, she knew that this woman he had loved sixteen years ago was the cause of that mysterious shadow on his life to-day.
And then the dainty, light humour that had been hers as well as Diana's!... What had become of it?... It seemed now as if Diana had absorbed it all, for Meryl was nearly always quiet, while the younger girl was almost boisterous. And yet even in Diana there was a note that puzzled him. She was so jumpy and uncertain. Childishly gay one moment, and cuttingly brilliant the next.
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