Only with Durrance's letters before her she could
not evade a new and perplexing question. By what means was that
possibility to be avoided? There were two ways. By choosing which of
them could she fulfil her determination? She was no longer so sure as
she had been the year before that his career was all in all. The
question recurred to her again and again. She took it out with her on
the hillside with the letters, and pondered and puzzled over it and got
never an inch nearer to a solution. Even her violin failed her in this
strait.
CHAPTER XII
DURRANCE SHARPENS HIS WITS
It was a night of May, and outside the mess-room at Wadi Halfa three
officers were smoking on a grass knoll above the Nile. The moon was at
its full, and the strong light had robbed even the planets of their
lustre. The smaller stars were not visible at all, and the sky washed of
its dark colour, curved overhead, pearly-hued and luminous. The three
officers sat in their lounge chairs and smoked silently, while the
bull-frogs croaked from an island in mid-river. At the bottom of the
small steep cliff on which they sat the Nile, so sluggish was its flow,
shone like a burnished mirror, and from the opposite bank the desert
stretched away to infinite distances, a vast plain with scattered
hummocks, a plain white as a hoar frost on the surface of which the
stones sparkled like jewels.
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