which some day or another--after a long and
wondrous period--both were agreed, must come. But, consoling herself
with the thought that she would be prepared, she had always set the day
on so distant an horizon that it had no terrors for her. Now it suddenly
dismayed her, a terror close at hand. Here on this crowded balcony
joyous with lights and gay voices and invaded by all the subtle
invitations of a summer night above the water! Oh no, it was not
possible!

Luttrell put his hand to his breast pocket and Stella watched and
listened now with all her soul. More than once during dinner she had
seen him touch that pocket in an abstraction. He drew from it two
papers, one the cablegram which he had received from Cairo, the other
Hardiman's reply. He handed her the first of the two.

"This reached me this morning."

Stella Croyle studied the paper with her heart in her mouth. But the
letters would not be still.

"Oh, what does it mean?" she cried.

"It offers me service abroad."

Stella's face flushed and turned white. She bent her head over the
cablegram.

"At Cairo," she said, with a little gasp of relief. After all Cairo was
not so far. A week, and one was at Cairo.

"Further south, in the Sudan--Heaven knows where!"

"Too far then?" she suggested. "Too far."

"For you? Yes! Too far," Luttrell replied.

Stella lifted a tragic face towards him; and though he winced he met her
eyes.

"But you are not going! You can't go!"

Luttrell handed to her the second paper.

"You never wrote this," she said very quickly.

"Yet it is what I would have written."

Stella Croyle shot one swift glance at Sir Charles Hardiman. She had
recognised his handwriting. Hardiman was in Luttrell's cabin while the
rest of the party waited on the deck and the launch throbbed at the
gangway. If a woman's glance had power, he would have been stricken that
instant. But she wasted no more than a glance upon the worldly-wiseman
at the head of their table. She turned again to the first telegram.

"This is an answer, this cablegram from Cairo?"

"Yes."

"To a cable of yours?"

"Sent three days ago."

The answers she received were clear, unhesitating. It was a voice from a
rock speaking! So utterly mistaken was she; and so completely Luttrell
bent every nerve to the service of shortening the hour of misery. The
appalling moment was then actually upon her. She had foreseen it--so she
thought. But it caught her nevertheless unprepa