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ONLY an incident!" He had said that that was all he should be, in her memory, and that she would forget him in three months.
She knew that she should never forget him. That last scene in the forest had made it impossible.
It was not for himself alone, nor even the fact of his emotion for her. That had left with her a tenderness for him—but a faint, a gentle tenderness. It was the least emotional recognition she could give of what nevertheless had touched her heart—that he should really, genuinely, care anything for her, after all her frank egotism toward him, her absorption in herself, her crudeness. … That speech, for example, up at Anthemoz, about using her relation with him as a spur to Basil! In spite of all that, and of the fact that she could give him nothing really, he had liked her. She was grateful. And she was dimly, passionately grateful for his bearing toward her at that last moment. …
There was the reason why she should never forget him. He had understood. There, at the end, he had protected her.
And it was like a flash of light over a new scene—her knowledge that she had needed protection. It was a blinding illumination. She could not take in at once all it meant—it came slowly, as she lay sleepless at night, or lost herself in reverie, in the days after Crayven's going.
One thing appeared clearly at once. She cabled to Basil: "Shall I come home?" And she began packing before the answer came: "Rather!" She laughed as she read it. "What a boy he is, after all!" she said aloud.
A week later she and Ronald were on the water.
She followed Crayven's journey mentally, step by step—the steamer to Port Said, the plunge into the desert. As she lay at night on deck, motionless for hours under her rugs, and watched the rush of the dark water into darkness, she thought of his long ride through the sands. She seemed to see him wrapped in the Arab cloak, his face rather tired but philosophically calm, as when she had seen it first. He was going back to his work—to danger, perhaps. The incident, for him, was over.
It was probable that she would never see him again. She breathed out an intense wish for his safety and well-being, into the vague night.