CHAPTER XXIII

THE BETTER MAN

Down in the court of Rameses, Lady Claire and Hill were straying. A
most opportune old bachelor, passing with a party of acquaintances,
had diverted even Emma Falconer from her dragoning, and the young
English girl and her American escort were left for the time to their
own devices.

Not much was said. Claire, who had been fitfully gay all afternoon,
grew still as a church mouse now as they paced back and forth in the
shadows, stealing a slant glance from time to time at Billy's set
and silent face. She wondered a little at his absorption. But
chiefly she was thinking that she had never seen him look so
handsome ... with his brows knitted and his clear-cut lips pressed
sharply together ... but the boy of him somehow kept by that wilful
lock of black hair over his forehead.

To Billy it seemed that the bitterest drop of the cup was at his
lips. Those two--upon the pylon--were they never coming down? He was
waiting for them in every nerve, and yet he shrank from the look he
might read upon their faces. He thought, very grimly, that this
could mean but one thing, and that thing was the end forever and
ever, for him.... His heart was sick in him and he longed most
desperately to break away from these other women and the sham of
talk and dash off to dark solitude where the primitive man could
have his way, could tramp and fight and curse and sob and break his
heart in decent privacy. He faced with loathing the refinements of
torture which civilization imposes.

But the game had to be played. He was no quitter, he told himself
fiercely; he could stand up and take his punishment like a man. She
was not for him. He had loved her from the first, he had loved her
so that he had been clairvoyant to her peril, he had risked his neck
for her a dozen times and snatched her from a life that was a
death-in-life--and yet she was not for him. She was for a man who
had not believed in her danger, had not bestirred himself.... Black,
seething bitterness was boiling in Billy B. Hill. Darkly, through a
fog, he heard the outer man replying to some speech from the girl
beside him.

He understood, he told himself in a burst of despairing anguish, how
Kerissen could have plotted for her. Almost he longed to be a
scrupleless Oriental and carry her off across his saddle bow.... And
then he brought himself up short.

Was that all she meant to him, he asked himself with the sweat of
pain on his fo