He lay in his darkened room.
He would have given anything to get away then so that he need not set eyes on her again, but there was no means of that, the ship that was to take him back to Brindisi did not touch at Rhodes till the end of the week.
He was a prisoner.
And the next day they were to go to the islands.
There was no escape from her there; in the caique they would be in one another's pockets all day long.
He couldn't face that.
He was so ashamed.
But she wasn't ashamed.
At that moment when it had been plain to her that nothing was hidden from him any longer she had smiled.
She was capable of telling him all about it.
He could not bear that.
That was too much.
After all she couldn't be certain that he knew, at best she could only suspect; if he behaved as if nothing had happened, if at luncheon and during the days that remained he was as gay and jolly as usual she would think she had been mistaken.
It was enough to know what he knew, he would not suffer the crowning humiliation of hearing from her own lips the disgraceful story.
But at luncheon the first thing she said was:
'Isn't it a bore. Albert says something's gone wrong with the motor, we shan't be able to go on our trip after all.
I daren't trust to sail at this time of the year.
We might be becalmed for a week.'
She spoke lightly and he answered in the same casual fashion.
'Oh, I'm sorry, but still I don't really care.
It's so lovely here, I really didn't much want to go.'
He told her that the aspirin had done him good and he felt much better; to the Greek butler and the two footmen in fustanellas it must have seemed that they talked as vivaciously as usual.
That night the British consul came to dinner and the night after some Italian officers.
Carruthers counted the days, he counted the hours.
Oh, if the moment would only come when he could step on the ship and be free from the horror that every moment of the day obsessed him!
He was growing so tired.
But Betty's manner was so self-possessed that sometimes he asked himself if she really knew that he was aware of her secret.
Was it the truth that she had told about the caique and not, as had at once struck him, an excuse; and was it an accident that a succession of visitors prevented them from ever being alone together?
The worst of having so much tact was that you never quite knew whether other people were acting naturally or being tactful too.
When he looked at her, so easy and calm, so obviously happy, he could not believe the odious truth.
And yet he had seen with his own eyes.
And the future.
What would her future be?
It was horrible to think of.
Sooner or later the truth must become notorious.
And to think of Betty a mock and an outcast, in the power of a coarse and common man, growing older, losing her beauty; and the man was five years younger than she.
One day he would take a mistress, one of her own maids, perhaps, with whom he would feel at home as he had never felt with the great lady, and what could she do then?
What humiliation then must she be prepared to put up with!
He might be cruel to her.
He might beat her.
Betty. Betty.
Carruthers wrung his hands.
And on a sudden an idea came to him that filled him with a painful exaltation; he put it away from him, but it returned; it would not let him be.
He must save her, he had loved her too much and too long to let her sink, sink as she was sinking; a passion of self-sacrifice welled up in him.
Notwithstanding everything, though his love now was dead and he felt for her an almost physical repulsion, he would marry her.
He laughed mirthlessly.
What would his life be?
He couldn't help that.
He didn't matter.
It was the only thing to do.