He recognized instantly that the expression was hardly adequate, but he
could not readjust his mind so suddenly to the new idea, and he
remained looking at her with many confused memories rushing through his
brain. A dozen questions were on his tongue. He remembered afterwards
how he had noticed a servant trimming the candle in one of the
orange-colored lanterns, and that he had watched him as he disappeared
among the palms.

The silence lasted for so long a time that it had taken on a
significance in itself which Carlton recognized. He pulled himself up
with a short laugh. "Well," he remonstrated, mirthlessly, "I don't
think you've treated ME very well."

"How, not treated you very well?" Miss Morris asked, settling herself
more easily. She had been sitting during the pause which followed
Carlton's discovery with a certain rigidity, as if she was on a strain
of attention. But her tone was now as friendly as always, and held its
customary suggestion of amusement. Carlton took his tone from it,
although his mind was still busily occupied with incidents and words of
hers that she had spoken in their past intercourse.

"Not fair in letting me think you were engaged," he said. "I've wasted
so much time: I'm not half civil enough to engaged girls," he
explained.

"You've been quite civil enough to us," said Miss Morris, "as a
courier, philosopher, and friend. I'm very sorry we have to part
company."

"Part company!" exclaimed Carlton, in sudden alarm. "But, I say, we
mustn't do that."

"But we must, you see," said Miss Morris. "We must go back for the
wedding, and you will have to follow the Princess Aline."

"Yes, of course," Carlton heard his own voice say. "I had forgotten
the Princess Aline." But he was not thinking of what he was saying,
nor of the Princess Aline. He was thinking of the many hours Miss
Morris and he had been together, of the way she had looked at certain
times, and of how he had caught himself watching her at others; how he
had pictured the absent Mr. Abbey travelling with her later over the
same route, and without a chaperon, sitting close at her side or
holding her hand, and telling her just how pretty she was whenever he
wished to do so, and without any fear of the consequences. He
remembered how ready she had been to understand what he was going to
say before he had finished saying it, and how she had always made him
show the best of himself, and had caused him to leave un