Cecil did not sleep much that night. She had made definitely the momentous decision which had been confronting her for so long, and had signed away her liberty for three years more, but it was not the thought of this that kept her awake. She had heard Charlie Egerton’s love declared, though not by himself, and the recollection made her heart beat fast. Even if (and she was not quite so sure about this as she had been a little while ago)--even if she did not love him, she could not but feel touched both by his affection and his constancy. But why had he not come back? Why, after declaring so openly his intention of returning, had he lingered until after she had bound herself to remain in Baghdad? What had detained him? Had anything happened to involve him in one of the border disputes which were continually occurring between the Arab tribes, or had the spell of the old wandering life regained its power over him? If it were really the latter, Cecil felt that he might as well spare himself the trouble of coming back at all, so far as she was concerned. Ever since she had first met him she had deliberately thrown her influence into the scale against his nomadic tastes, trying to induce him to settle down steadily, and do his best, by persistent attention to duty, to counteract the effects of his earlier erratic proceedings. It was a pity, she had felt sometimes, that a man whose nature revelled in the unusual and the unconventional should be guided so strenuously into the beaten track, where another, with natural gifts of a far less remarkable order, would have filled his place with much more satisfaction to himself and to his superiors. But it was all for Charlie’s own good. It must be to his advantage to be held back from sacrificing all his prospects to the impulse of a moment, and Lady Haigh had been unremitting in impressing upon Cecil that whereas an eccentric, harum-scarum genius might do a great deal in the way of contributions to inexact science, the Indian Government, and indeed all governments, preferred the steady man who could be trusted to keep in the line marked out for him. Almost unconsciously Cecil had been setting this as a kind of test for Charlie in her own mind, watching, with an interest which she believed was wholly ethical and impersonal, his two years’ struggle to stick to his work and avoid quarrelling with Sir Dugald. Hence she had come to the rather one-sided conclusion that she would certainly have no more to do with him if his efforts failed, while discreetly leaving a blank as to what was to happen if they were crowned with success. But in any case, if he could forget all that he had said, and the importance of haste, at such a time as this, and linger among the Bakhtiaris or the Hajar, it would be evident that his love was as little to be depended upon as his persistence in any walk of life had formerly been.