"You are really going, then?" she asked after a minute's silence--a minute during which she was horribly conscious that her changing countenance might readily have betrayed to any looker-on how deeply she felt this unexpected blow. "I wrote to General ---- on the night I saw you last, accepting his offer," Clare answered. "Of course I am in duty bound, therefore, to report in Cairo as soon as possible." "And you will sell Claremont?" "I have no alternative." She said nothing more, but he saw her hand--the same white jeweled hand that had gleamed on his arm in the starlight--go to her throat with a quick, convulsive movement. Instead of the thrill of repulsion which he had felt before, a sudden sense of pity and regret came over him now. He was not enough of a puppy to feel a certain keen enjoyment and gratified vanity in the realization of this woman's folly. He appreciated, on the contrary, how entirely she had been a spoiled child of fortune all her life--a queen-regnant, to whom all things must submit themselves--and he felt how bitter must be this first sharp proof of her own impotence to secure the toy on which she had set her heart. It was these thoughts which made his voice almost gentle when he spoke again: "You must not think that I am ungrateful for your kind interest in my behalf. You can imagine, perhaps, how much I hate to part with Claremont, which has been the seat of my family for generations; but when a thing must be done there is no use in making a moan over it. I cannot sacrifice my life to a tradition of the past; and that would be what I should do if I clung to the old place, instead of cutting loose with one sharp stroke and swimming boldly out to sea." "But you might stay if you would," said she with that tremulous accent which the French call "tears in the voice." "No, I could _not_ stay," said Clare resolutely. "I have no money, nor any means of making any in America."