Friends had planned to spend the early spring on
the Nile and were eager that she should accompany them. To her the
separation seemed to offer an excellent method of discovering whether or
not Ainsley was the man she could not "live without."
Ainsley saw in it only an act of torture, devised with devilish cruelty.
"What will happen to me," he announced firmly, "is that I will plain
_die_! As long as I can see you, as long as I have the chance to try and
make you understand that no one can possibly love you as I do, and as
long as I know I am worrying you to death, and no one else is, I still
hope. I've no right to hope, still I do. And that one little chance
keeps me alive. But Egypt! If you escape to Egypt, what hold will I have
on you? You might as well be in the moon. Can you imagine me writing
love-letters to a woman in the moon? Can I send American Beauty roses to
the ruins of Karnak? Here I can telephone you; not that I ever have
anything to say that you want to hear, but because I want to listen to
your voice, and to have you ask, 'Oh! is that _you_?' as though you were
glad it _was_ me. But Egypt! Can I call up Egypt on the long-distance?
If you leave me now, you'll leave me forever, for I'll drown myself in
Lone Lake.
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