Chapter Sixteen.

Chapter Sixteen.What a May Day Saw.“And are not afraid with any amazement.”“He is rich,” said Judy for the twentieth time.“And a clever business man. And he adores me. I do not see how you can think yourself justified in being so hard and unsympathetic about it, Deirdre. I am one of those extremely feminine women who must have some one to look after me. You can have no idea how wretched and lonely I am. It is all very well for you—so self-poised and full of character. Women like you don’t really know what it is to love and suffer. I don’t believe tall women feel things like little women either; and I am so tiny—Dick always said I was like a tiny sweet rosebud.”“Oh, leave Dick out of it for God’s sake, Judy,” I groaned. “Content yourself with the words of Mr Courtfield now. Let poor Dick rest in his grave.”“How brutal you are, Deirdre!” A moment afterwards she added vindictively, “It is really the best thing that could have happened for both of us. You and I could not have got on together much longer. And I can see you are beginning to set my boy against me too.”“Oh, Judy!” I burst out passionately, but the moment after my anger and indignation evaporated, and I felt nothing but the dull aching pain that would never leave me now. What did it matter what unjust, cruel words she spoke? What did anything matter? I did not care. I did not care about anything, nor want anything. Ah, yes! There was one thing I wanted burningly, consumingly, terribly: to leave the pitiless brute of a country that had beaten and broken and robbed me, that had ground me to powder in its cruel maw.But I did not know how to go, nor where. And I knew not how I should bear to leave Dick’s boy behind. I had no money, either. I must earn it first. And how to do that? In a country where there was nothing for a woman to do who had never been trained to work with her hands!“What is there I can do?” I said to Maurice Stair. “For God’s sake tell me how I can earn money to leave this country and never see it again.”“There is no way that a girl like you can earn money here,” he said. “There is only one thing to do, one thing which I am always urging—to marry: to marry me. Be my wife and I will take you away.”“Oh! don’t,don’t. How can you ask me that? You know I have nothing to give. You know I can never love you.”“I will make you love me, Deirdre,” he cried, and even in my dull misery a ghostly smile twisted my lips to hear once more that vain-glorious boast so often on men’s lips!“I don’t care—I will ask nothing of you—until you love me—Until then I want nothing of you, only to be near you, to have the right to take care of you, to give you all you wish for, to do all you desire. Oh! Deirdre, do not turn away from me—I want you—I want you.—I am a failure and a good-for-nothing now, but with you at my side to help and guide me I feel that I could carve out a great career—make a great name for you to bear. I know that I have it in me to do great things, and for your sake and with you beside me I will do them. Why spoil two lives?—mine as well as your own. You say your life is a wasted one! Don’t let it be. Do something with it: make a man of me! Help me to become something, instead of pitching away my youth, a waster and loafer who will never do or be anything. If you refuse me, my life will be over as sure as I am standing here. God knows what will become of me.”He stood there pleading in his low, gentle voice, pale and handsome and chivalrous-looking in the moonlight—the liquid, silver, African moonlight that had tricked and mocked me! And the great, empty woman-land echoed back to me his pathetic pleading words. The scarlet stars hung overhead, and the golden moon that had seen Anthony Kinsella lying dead smiled down her mocking smile. Everything mocked me in this cruel land. How I hated it! How I hated the sun and moon and stars of it!“If you will take me away from Africa!” I cried at last, hardly knowing what I said in my bitter pain.“Yes—yes: I will do anything, everything you wish. We will marry and go away immediately afterwards. My uncle has great influence in diplomatic circles and can easily get me into the Consular service. We will go abroad and begin a splendid new life in some other land.”“You offer me too much,” I said, “for I have nothing to give in return. Do you understand that, Maurice? I can only give you my services as a sister, a companion, some one who will make your interests hers, entertain your friends, help you in your career—”“I swear to God I will ask nothing more of you, Deirdre—until you love me.”“And you will take me away from Africa?”“The minute I can break loose from my billet in the Chartered Company.”That is how I bartered myself away in marriage to Maurice Stair.He was of my religion though he had never been what is called “a good Catholic.” Allthatwas going to be altered now he told me, but I did not think very deeply about it. My faith required that I should marry a Catholic, but I had never cared for religious men, being content if those I closely knew were just clean-hearted and generous-minded gentlemen—“steel—true and blade-straight!”We were married by one of the Jesuit fathers on a May morning a year and ten months after my first coming to Mashonaland. The thought of being married in May did not irk my superstitious soul as once it might have done. It was unlucky every one said: but I knew that luck and I had parted company. She had done her worst, and thrown me over. I laughed with a wry lip when even Judy did not fail to repeat to me the old rhyme:“Marry in MayYou’ll rue the day,”- just in case I might never have heard it before! I told her that rue had been my portion for such a good time now that I was used to the flavour, but it seemed to me the saying came with singular gracelessness from her lips, seeing how much she had to do with my choice of that—or any month in which to marry Maurice Stair.It was to avoid seeing her marry John Courtfield, or in the alternative to prevent the scandal my absence from her wedding would cause, that I had let Maurice persuade me to be married at once instead of waiting for the end of June when his service as one of the Company’s officials would be at an end. So after all, I should be obliged to stay another month in Rhodesia—and that as Maurice Stair’s wife.The arrangement was that after a few days on the farm of a friend of his we were to go for the rest of his service to a small new township in Matabeleland, where he would take over the workpro temof another man on leave. When I first heard of this I trembled and turned sick.Not only was I to stay longer in this fateful land, but must turn my feet towards the bleak portion of it that had robbed me directly and indirectly of all I held dear in life. In that moment I strove to draw back from the barren promise I had given Maurice Stair, telling him in burning words that he was not keeping faith with me; that I had promised to marry him but that his part of the contract was to take me from the country without delay. I resented and resisted with all the strength left in me; but that was no great amount. Strength of will, and many other things seemed to have died in me on the night I took from his palm that little blue turquoise. So his humble pleadings and arguments prevailed.I said to myself—why, being so wretched, make another equally so? and sought with prayers and weeping for courage to take up my life afresh and face my empty fate. And in some measure at last I found it, and strength to cry with Stevenson:“Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,The rainbow or the thunder,I fling my soul and body downFor God to plough them under.”I planned with myself a fine new plan of life. If mine must be empty of the sweet personal passionate love that every girl thinks her rightful due then I would fill it with a big altruistic love for all the world. Like Heine, out of my great sorrows I would make little songs. I would live a life of gentle sacrifice to the exigencies of others, of unselfish devotion to all that was best and most beautiful in the characters of the people with whom I came in touch. Surely that would bring some solace and sweetness in the many years! I thought of faces I had seen with stories of sorrow carved upon them that were yet most noble and beautiful; and I said, mine shall be a face like that when I am old. Of the first few years I expected little but lost battles and “broken hopes for a pillow at night,” but surely in time, in time, after much stumbling and rising again to the fight, victory would come, and peace from the passionate ache of youth. Perhaps in the end that peace of God which passeth all understanding would descend like dew upon my parched soul—and give me rest from the pain of love unfulfilled. I could not die, I would live for others. Gold for silver!These were the thoughts and plans that I took to the altar, and Maurice Stair, standing by me, so gentle and chivalrous-eyed, so debonair in his khaki and leather, seemed no ill-chosen companion for the path I was setting my feet to.We were married in travelling-kit. I shrank from putting on all the panoply of a bride, and Maurice, when I asked him, diffidently enough, to let me off white satin and orange blossoms, was perfectly content. I was pleased at the time to find him so careless about outward forms and conventions. Still, I felt it to be only fair to him, and the proper fulfilling of my part of the bargain, to make myself look as charming as possible, so I had a special little white crêpe walking-frock made and a wide wavy hat of white lace and roses.Judy gave me away: Sore as my heart was with her, I had to remember that she was Dick’s wife. Also there was a concession to be paid for unstintingly; she had promised, that because she must live in Buluwayo for the first year of her married life she would let little Dickie come to me wherever Maurice and I found the lines of our new life laid. I was so thankful to her for this chance of keeping Dick’s boy away from the influence of his step-father that I could almost forget her treason to that big loving heart lying out beyond Salisbury hill.Almost—not quite; but at least for the sake of the dead man’s son I tried to stifle down my resentment of an act I could not prevent.So I let her take my hand as we drove to church, and babble to me about how sure she was that I was going to be happy—what a nice fellow Maurice was—every one said so—and so handsome—and five hundred a year apart from his salary—very few men had that out here—they all came out to try and make it by hook or by crook—of course he was nothing like some of the matches I might have made at home—but still—etc.That aspect of the situation had indeed never occurred to me before, and while she talked I considered it musingly, remembering suddenly that there were indeed others I might have married. I wondered, vaguely then for the first time, how I came to be marrying a man I knew so little of as Maurice Stair when there were men at home who, to use their own words, were “always to hand if I should change my mind at any time.”But Maurice was to hand too! He had in fact been right at hand, with a plan for a useless, broken life at a moment when there seemed to be nothing left to do but die. And there was something almost like a tie between us in the knowledge that we shared of Anthony’s fate; and in the fact that he was the first to go forth to seek news for me. True I could not thank him for such news as he brought; but somehow he seemed almost sanctified to me in being the bearer of that little fateful blue stone I wore against my heart; the last thing Anthony had worn: the last tangible trace of him on earth!Oh, yes, there were reasons, bitter cruel reasons why I should repay the love and service of Maurice Stair, inasmuch as a loveless wife and the empty shell of a heart could repay him. It seemed a poor bargain for a man of thirty with ambitions for a great career, and all the world before him, to make and be content with; but he never ceased to assure me of his content, so the least I could do was to refrain from the gracelessness of reminding him of it. And indeed I meant to do my part for his career, at least. When his uncle had once launched him in the Consular service well I knew that he would find no wife more able for that kind of life than I who had been practically trained to society: with my upbringing and knowledge of the world and its ways, with a heart empty of any thing but ambition for my husband I could go far and I meant to—in return for being wrenched from the claw of Africa!

“And are not afraid with any amazement.”

“And are not afraid with any amazement.”

“He is rich,” said Judy for the twentieth time.

“And a clever business man. And he adores me. I do not see how you can think yourself justified in being so hard and unsympathetic about it, Deirdre. I am one of those extremely feminine women who must have some one to look after me. You can have no idea how wretched and lonely I am. It is all very well for you—so self-poised and full of character. Women like you don’t really know what it is to love and suffer. I don’t believe tall women feel things like little women either; and I am so tiny—Dick always said I was like a tiny sweet rosebud.”

“Oh, leave Dick out of it for God’s sake, Judy,” I groaned. “Content yourself with the words of Mr Courtfield now. Let poor Dick rest in his grave.”

“How brutal you are, Deirdre!” A moment afterwards she added vindictively, “It is really the best thing that could have happened for both of us. You and I could not have got on together much longer. And I can see you are beginning to set my boy against me too.”

“Oh, Judy!” I burst out passionately, but the moment after my anger and indignation evaporated, and I felt nothing but the dull aching pain that would never leave me now. What did it matter what unjust, cruel words she spoke? What did anything matter? I did not care. I did not care about anything, nor want anything. Ah, yes! There was one thing I wanted burningly, consumingly, terribly: to leave the pitiless brute of a country that had beaten and broken and robbed me, that had ground me to powder in its cruel maw.

But I did not know how to go, nor where. And I knew not how I should bear to leave Dick’s boy behind. I had no money, either. I must earn it first. And how to do that? In a country where there was nothing for a woman to do who had never been trained to work with her hands!

“What is there I can do?” I said to Maurice Stair. “For God’s sake tell me how I can earn money to leave this country and never see it again.”

“There is no way that a girl like you can earn money here,” he said. “There is only one thing to do, one thing which I am always urging—to marry: to marry me. Be my wife and I will take you away.”

“Oh! don’t,don’t. How can you ask me that? You know I have nothing to give. You know I can never love you.”

“I will make you love me, Deirdre,” he cried, and even in my dull misery a ghostly smile twisted my lips to hear once more that vain-glorious boast so often on men’s lips!

“I don’t care—I will ask nothing of you—until you love me—Until then I want nothing of you, only to be near you, to have the right to take care of you, to give you all you wish for, to do all you desire. Oh! Deirdre, do not turn away from me—I want you—I want you.—I am a failure and a good-for-nothing now, but with you at my side to help and guide me I feel that I could carve out a great career—make a great name for you to bear. I know that I have it in me to do great things, and for your sake and with you beside me I will do them. Why spoil two lives?—mine as well as your own. You say your life is a wasted one! Don’t let it be. Do something with it: make a man of me! Help me to become something, instead of pitching away my youth, a waster and loafer who will never do or be anything. If you refuse me, my life will be over as sure as I am standing here. God knows what will become of me.”

He stood there pleading in his low, gentle voice, pale and handsome and chivalrous-looking in the moonlight—the liquid, silver, African moonlight that had tricked and mocked me! And the great, empty woman-land echoed back to me his pathetic pleading words. The scarlet stars hung overhead, and the golden moon that had seen Anthony Kinsella lying dead smiled down her mocking smile. Everything mocked me in this cruel land. How I hated it! How I hated the sun and moon and stars of it!

“If you will take me away from Africa!” I cried at last, hardly knowing what I said in my bitter pain.

“Yes—yes: I will do anything, everything you wish. We will marry and go away immediately afterwards. My uncle has great influence in diplomatic circles and can easily get me into the Consular service. We will go abroad and begin a splendid new life in some other land.”

“You offer me too much,” I said, “for I have nothing to give in return. Do you understand that, Maurice? I can only give you my services as a sister, a companion, some one who will make your interests hers, entertain your friends, help you in your career—”

“I swear to God I will ask nothing more of you, Deirdre—until you love me.”

“And you will take me away from Africa?”

“The minute I can break loose from my billet in the Chartered Company.”

That is how I bartered myself away in marriage to Maurice Stair.

He was of my religion though he had never been what is called “a good Catholic.” Allthatwas going to be altered now he told me, but I did not think very deeply about it. My faith required that I should marry a Catholic, but I had never cared for religious men, being content if those I closely knew were just clean-hearted and generous-minded gentlemen—“steel—true and blade-straight!”

We were married by one of the Jesuit fathers on a May morning a year and ten months after my first coming to Mashonaland. The thought of being married in May did not irk my superstitious soul as once it might have done. It was unlucky every one said: but I knew that luck and I had parted company. She had done her worst, and thrown me over. I laughed with a wry lip when even Judy did not fail to repeat to me the old rhyme:

“Marry in MayYou’ll rue the day,”

“Marry in MayYou’ll rue the day,”

- just in case I might never have heard it before! I told her that rue had been my portion for such a good time now that I was used to the flavour, but it seemed to me the saying came with singular gracelessness from her lips, seeing how much she had to do with my choice of that—or any month in which to marry Maurice Stair.

It was to avoid seeing her marry John Courtfield, or in the alternative to prevent the scandal my absence from her wedding would cause, that I had let Maurice persuade me to be married at once instead of waiting for the end of June when his service as one of the Company’s officials would be at an end. So after all, I should be obliged to stay another month in Rhodesia—and that as Maurice Stair’s wife.

The arrangement was that after a few days on the farm of a friend of his we were to go for the rest of his service to a small new township in Matabeleland, where he would take over the workpro temof another man on leave. When I first heard of this I trembled and turned sick.

Not only was I to stay longer in this fateful land, but must turn my feet towards the bleak portion of it that had robbed me directly and indirectly of all I held dear in life. In that moment I strove to draw back from the barren promise I had given Maurice Stair, telling him in burning words that he was not keeping faith with me; that I had promised to marry him but that his part of the contract was to take me from the country without delay. I resented and resisted with all the strength left in me; but that was no great amount. Strength of will, and many other things seemed to have died in me on the night I took from his palm that little blue turquoise. So his humble pleadings and arguments prevailed.

I said to myself—why, being so wretched, make another equally so? and sought with prayers and weeping for courage to take up my life afresh and face my empty fate. And in some measure at last I found it, and strength to cry with Stevenson:

“Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,The rainbow or the thunder,I fling my soul and body downFor God to plough them under.”

“Come ill or well, the cross, the crown,The rainbow or the thunder,I fling my soul and body downFor God to plough them under.”

I planned with myself a fine new plan of life. If mine must be empty of the sweet personal passionate love that every girl thinks her rightful due then I would fill it with a big altruistic love for all the world. Like Heine, out of my great sorrows I would make little songs. I would live a life of gentle sacrifice to the exigencies of others, of unselfish devotion to all that was best and most beautiful in the characters of the people with whom I came in touch. Surely that would bring some solace and sweetness in the many years! I thought of faces I had seen with stories of sorrow carved upon them that were yet most noble and beautiful; and I said, mine shall be a face like that when I am old. Of the first few years I expected little but lost battles and “broken hopes for a pillow at night,” but surely in time, in time, after much stumbling and rising again to the fight, victory would come, and peace from the passionate ache of youth. Perhaps in the end that peace of God which passeth all understanding would descend like dew upon my parched soul—and give me rest from the pain of love unfulfilled. I could not die, I would live for others. Gold for silver!

These were the thoughts and plans that I took to the altar, and Maurice Stair, standing by me, so gentle and chivalrous-eyed, so debonair in his khaki and leather, seemed no ill-chosen companion for the path I was setting my feet to.

We were married in travelling-kit. I shrank from putting on all the panoply of a bride, and Maurice, when I asked him, diffidently enough, to let me off white satin and orange blossoms, was perfectly content. I was pleased at the time to find him so careless about outward forms and conventions. Still, I felt it to be only fair to him, and the proper fulfilling of my part of the bargain, to make myself look as charming as possible, so I had a special little white crêpe walking-frock made and a wide wavy hat of white lace and roses.

Judy gave me away: Sore as my heart was with her, I had to remember that she was Dick’s wife. Also there was a concession to be paid for unstintingly; she had promised, that because she must live in Buluwayo for the first year of her married life she would let little Dickie come to me wherever Maurice and I found the lines of our new life laid. I was so thankful to her for this chance of keeping Dick’s boy away from the influence of his step-father that I could almost forget her treason to that big loving heart lying out beyond Salisbury hill.Almost—not quite; but at least for the sake of the dead man’s son I tried to stifle down my resentment of an act I could not prevent.

So I let her take my hand as we drove to church, and babble to me about how sure she was that I was going to be happy—what a nice fellow Maurice was—every one said so—and so handsome—and five hundred a year apart from his salary—very few men had that out here—they all came out to try and make it by hook or by crook—of course he was nothing like some of the matches I might have made at home—but still—etc.

That aspect of the situation had indeed never occurred to me before, and while she talked I considered it musingly, remembering suddenly that there were indeed others I might have married. I wondered, vaguely then for the first time, how I came to be marrying a man I knew so little of as Maurice Stair when there were men at home who, to use their own words, were “always to hand if I should change my mind at any time.”

But Maurice was to hand too! He had in fact been right at hand, with a plan for a useless, broken life at a moment when there seemed to be nothing left to do but die. And there was something almost like a tie between us in the knowledge that we shared of Anthony’s fate; and in the fact that he was the first to go forth to seek news for me. True I could not thank him for such news as he brought; but somehow he seemed almost sanctified to me in being the bearer of that little fateful blue stone I wore against my heart; the last thing Anthony had worn: the last tangible trace of him on earth!

Oh, yes, there were reasons, bitter cruel reasons why I should repay the love and service of Maurice Stair, inasmuch as a loveless wife and the empty shell of a heart could repay him. It seemed a poor bargain for a man of thirty with ambitions for a great career, and all the world before him, to make and be content with; but he never ceased to assure me of his content, so the least I could do was to refrain from the gracelessness of reminding him of it. And indeed I meant to do my part for his career, at least. When his uncle had once launched him in the Consular service well I knew that he would find no wife more able for that kind of life than I who had been practically trained to society: with my upbringing and knowledge of the world and its ways, with a heart empty of any thing but ambition for my husband I could go far and I meant to—in return for being wrenched from the claw of Africa!

Chapter Seventeen.What a Jeweller Made.“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”So Maurice Alexander Stair and I were married.After the ceremony we drove back to Kentucky Hills, and shared with a few friends the pretty breakfast Judy had arranged for us.Later they all rode away, and Maurice with them, leaving me to pack for our exeunt that afternoon to a little place called Water-lily Farm. It was the home of a fellow N.C. of Maurice’s; he had just prepared it for his wife who was coming out from home, but with the ready good-fellowship so common in Africa had offered it to Maurice for our honeymoon; and we, both anxious that the world should guess nothing of our strange bargain, had accepted it to stay in and spend the first few days of our married life.Maurice was delayed in Salisbury, and it was late afternoon before he fetched me at last from my brother’s house.The pale May sunshine was almost as cheerless as that of an early spring day in England, for the winter was coming on rapidly, and winter in Africa can be very bleak indeed. I was glad to wrap myself in a warm coat and lean back in the shelter of the little tented cart we were to make the journey in. It was only large enough for two, and Maurice, obliged to manage the restive horses, had little time to talk, for which I was curiously thankful. Passing through Salisbury he discovered that he had left his watch at his rooms and asked if I would mind his calling there for it. I made no demur of course, only, knowing that he lived in a row of bachelor chambers almost next door to the Club, I stipulated that he should pull up a few hundred yards away. I had driven and ridden past the Club before, and knew something of theinsouciantcuriosity of its members, and their happy habit of filling the verandah of sound of a horse or wheels.“They’re rather fresh,” hesitated Maurice as I took the reins.“Oh, Maurice! Do you think I can’t manage two old Mashonaland nags?” I smiled.—So he left me, and as I watched him go, tall, nonchalant, and graceful, taking long strides over the knolly ground, I asked myself if it could really be true that I was married, and that—my husband!Frogs were beginning to croak in the swampy marsh between the Kopje and the Causeway. I could hear far-off voices, and see the smoke of others’ homes against the evening sky. But a terrible soul-sickness crept over me: the sickness of a soul that has lost its mate. At that moment I seemed quite alone in the world. Some words of Gordon’s that a dying man in Fort George had been fond of muttering flitted through my mind:“Oh whisper, buried Love, is there rest and peace about!There is little help or comfort here below!On your sweet face lies the mould, and your bedis straight and cold—”Voices and the sound of horses coming along the road broke my dreary reverie. A man’s rather sardonic laugh reached me, and a voice I seemed to know, yet could not recall the owner of. The riders were still a long distance off but sounds travel far on the clear high air of Rhodesia, and I presently heard some words as distinctly and plainly as if they were spoken beside me in the cart.“He is not a fellow I have ever cared about—I found out long ago that he is not straight. Another thing, he’s too fond of his little quiet tot by himself.—I like a man that drinks with his fellows—not one of your soakers in his bedroom.”“Well! I’ll tell you whatIdon’t like about him, Bell, he hasn’t the pluck of a louse—there was a little incident here in Salisbury just after he came up—then again, at Fort George, he played sick with a sprained arm rather than go into Matabeleland with the others. Sprained arm! Sprained grandmother—and I told him so! He slunk out of my office like a dog!”“It makes me sick to think of him marrying that fine girl.”How careless people are about what they say of others: I mused. Small wonder one’s secrets are not one’s own in a land where a reputation can be damned on the highroad for all the world to hear!I had heard a man’s honour—all that was worth keeping in this sad old world—dispensed with, in a few cynical but strangely convincing words. How cruel life was! How tragic! I shivered and wished Maurice would come.I could see the backs of the two men now as they rode blithely upon their way, having saddened me with the sordid tale of a man’s secret sins that were no secret! the story of some poor fellow’s stumbling journey down hill instead of up! Men were very pitiless in their judgments I thought. Perhaps the other man was not so despicable after all. Butsecret drinking, cowardice! Those were terrible sins—none more revolting to a woman’s mind—andnot straight; the hardest thing one man can say of another! Surely there had been no such man in Port George!—I had never heard of one, and I had heard most things in that tragic little town.—I could think of no one whom such condemnation, fitted. Monty Skeffington-Smythe perhaps?—but no;hisfaults were open and above-board for all the world to see—nothing hidden there, not even his preference forlaagerin time of war! Anyway it was no business of mine—I ought to have been ashamed to be speculating about it even, and Iwas. But why did Maurice stay so long? What could be keeping him?Some one whoplayed sick rather than go into Matabeleland—But they were all so keen.—all except baggy old Dr Abingdon. Ah! now I knew whose voice that was—Dr Abingdon’s of course—theblaséold doctor with his goat-like leer, and his pretentions that fear kept him from Matabeleland, when as we had found out afterwards he had absolutely begged to go, and been refused on account of his gout—the dear old doctor! His value had been only too well proved in the hospital work he had done later—in the big fights he had put up for men’s lives, and won out, when every one else despaired... I had heard of his recent arrival in Salisbury, and was hoping to see him before I left.With the knowledge that it was he who had been speaking, my curiosity was once more aroused by the words I had heard. Against my will my mind persistently went back again to the subject. Who of all his patients in Port George had a sprained arm. Ah!—suddenly I remembered!Afterwards, all the words I had heard floating so idly on the clear air came back one by one, like little birds of ill-omen, to roost in my memory and sing in my ears. It seemed that my brain had taken down everything in shorthand—there was nothing in that brief conversation that I had forgotten!When Maurice climbed in beside me and took the reins from my hands he exclaimed at their coldness.“Good Lord! you’re frozen,” he said. “Why, it isn’t cold!”As he turned towards me I caught from his lips that faint sickly odour of spirits I had long ago learnt to associate with African scenery.“I am not cold,” I said in a voice that in spite of my striving must have given some sign of the inquietude of my soul, for he gave me a curious glance as the horses lunged forward.“Oh! cheer up, my dear girl, for God’s sake! This is not a funeral.”I was so utterly taken aback at this remark, unlike in tone and words anything I had heard from him before, that for an instant I almost forgot the terror that in the last few moments had crept like a little cold slimy snake about my heart. Suddenly I burst into a convulsive laugh, so strange in sound that it should surely have betrayed me. But no, he did not perceive thegenreof my laughter. He was satisfied that I laughed.“That’s right!” he approved, whipping up the horses. “And as soon as we get round the Kopje I’ll give you a little whiskey to warm you up. I never drink anything myself, but its a good thing to keep the cold out, and I’ve brought a bottle with me in case of accidents.”I laughed again then, a merry ringing laugh, extraordinarily like Mrs Rockwood’s in the old Fort George days. He lashed at the horses and we tore through the town in clouds of dust. When he made to pull up, almost opposite the cemetery, I clutched spasmodically at his arm.“Don’t stop, Maurice. I don’t want whiskey,” I stammered. “I—I cannot even bear the thought of spirits. Please,pleasedrive on.”“Oh, very well!” he said in an impatient voice. “All right, if you don’t care about it. As I said before, I never drink myself but it is a good thing to keep out the cold.”He turned and observed me with something like suspicion in his manner, and again the faint sickly odour crept past me.We were travelling now at a slackened speed. There was time and opportunity for conversation, and driven by the cold little snake that wound itself tighter and tighter round my heart, I hastened to make it.“What detained you, Maurice? You were away a long time!”“Some brute had been ransacking my room. I found the place in absolute confusion. As far as I could see at a glance not a thing had been stolen, but everything was all over the place—papers, letters, clothes! I picked up the important things and stuffed them in my pockets, no time to put anything away; besides, all the padlocks had been burst off everything. I think I can guess who it was—a nigger I discharged last week, and to punish him took away from him a charm that some witch doctor had given him. That’s what he was after, no doubt, but he didn’t get it, the brute, for I have it on me, that’s some satisfaction. Good God! what a mess the place was in!”“Why did you take his charm, Maurice?” I asked, not from curiosity but from a wild desire to keep talking.“Oh, never mind aboutthat! There is one thing I must ask you, Deirdre—never interfere with me and my boys.”For the second time that night I flushed hotly at the tone he used, resenting its unpardonable rudeness. It was on my tongue to answer him proudly that he would not need to make the request twice; but remembering all the plans and resolutions I had taken to the altar a few hours before, I bit the words back before they could escape, and found courage to say instead, with as much gentleness as I could conjure:“Of course not. You know that my wish is to help, not hinder you, or interfere in any way.”“That’sall right then,” said he in a tone so extremely domineering and self-satisfied, that my spirits drooped even a little lower than before. But I picked them up again, I forced myself to be gay and sociable, I laughed (like Saba Rookwood), and talked of anything and everything that could have any possible interest for him, even while the knowledge began to push itself into my mind that there were strangely few subjects of common interest between us; and the wonder began to make itself felt that I had never before noticed how little he had to say on any subject. He had always been so quiet, so chivalrously, gently silent, that I had perhaps given him credit for depth and feeling that were not there. No, no, I struggled against that thought, and jested on, occupying my tongue with incessant remarks.At last the lights of our temporary home beaconed across the veldt and the interminable drive came to an end.Water-lily Farm consisted of three thatched rooms, and a few straggling huts dumped on the wide and rolling plain with horizon all round. As we drove up in the chilly gloom we saw that the beaconing lights came from lamps with green glass shades that gleamed like anaemic stars from the windows of the bungalow. A dog barked fretfully in the verandah, and a boy came running out with some information in the native language.“He says there’s a letter from Bingham on the table,” remarked Maurice. “Wait a moment, I’ll go and see.” He sprang from the cart, catching his coat on some projection and sending a shower of papers and things flying from his over-crammed pockets. I collected them as best I could in the darkness, while he went within, and found the letter. He presently came out again calling to me:“That’sall right. It’s only to say he is sorry he had to go off on duty and couldn’t wait to welcome us; but our boxes of provisions have arrived and everything is O.K. Go inside, dear, while I see about the horses with the boy. If anything happens to them I shall have to pay.”He helped me down, and I went into the homely little living-room lighted by the pale-green lamps. The supper-table was carefully laid out with an attempt at grace that was more touching than successful. As I looked at the clumsy little bunches of wild flowers arranged in tumblers, I felt that Bingham was a pleasant fellow. There was an honest, serene air about the simple room with its canvas deck-chairs, cane lounge, white-wood book shelves and framed photographs of English people on the walls. The woman who was coming from England to her man here should be very happy, I thought.A light from the door of an adjoining room drew me thither, but before I reached it I passed some boxes piled against the wall—open packing cases full of provisions: canned beef, biscuits, bottles of preserved fruits, loose potatoes, a case of champagne. There was another case also, nailed up and branded with the name of John Dewar and Sons. I had lived long enough in Rhodesia to know that these were not the names of gentlemen-philanthropists who lived in the Imperial Institute and provided packing-case seats in the open air for the public. I now recognised a case of whiskey when I saw one. I fled from the room and from my thoughts.The next room had nothing in it but a wholesome smell of pipe-tobacco, a rough desk with many papers piled on it, some racks of shelves, and a chair: obviously Mr Bingham’s office.More simplicity in the bedroom: white mats, a white dressing-table of unpainted wood, a sheet of mirror in a white frame, a large white double bed. I gazed at that large white bed, fascinated, while the knowledge crept slowly over me that there was no other bed in the house. At last I turned away, and then I saw that in the mirror there was a woman who matched all the other white things in the room—a deathly white woman with a gay-tragic face, standing very still, her clutching hands full of papers. I stared at the papers for a moment wondering what they were, then remembered picking them up in the cart. I was holding a little green leather case too, that I had gathered up with them—something Maurice had dropped. I recalled having heard the little dull thud of it as it fell. It was a jewel-case, a small, new-looking, green leather box, and when I saw that it was half open I wondered if anything had been lost out of it. My mind turned to that question as though it was of importance far greater than the one that was blanching my cheeks and chilling my blood. It was imperative that I should fasten my mind on something outside itself, and I fastened it with avidity on the little green jewel-case half open in my hand.“Perhaps something is lost out of it,” I repeated mechanically; something of Maurice’s—something of my husband’s!I opened it entirely, looked in, and found that it contained one blue turquoise ear-ring.It was a very new little box, with the name of the same Durban jeweller to whom I had sold my rings, printed in bright gold letters on the white satin lid. (Of course! I remembered it was Maurice who had given me the man’s address.)The one ear-ring was stuck into a dent in the white velvet cushion; by its side was another little dent—empty.“The other ear-ring must have been lost,” I said to the woman in the glass. She made no reply.“The other—must have been lost!” I repeated, but I did not hear my voice, and though I saw that the lips of the woman in the glass were moving, no sound came from them.Then I noticed an odd thing. The woman in the glass was tearing open the front of her gown: tearing it open with shaking frantic hands to get at something that she wore against her heart in a little silken bag.I did not see her again for a long while. When I looked up at last she was still standing there: only the white lips in the gay-tragic face were smiling, a brooding subtle smile, that had in it a strange mingling of triumph, despair, hatred—and some other desperate element that might have been hope or madness; and the little leather jewel-box in her hands contained two ear-rings.The lost one had been found.Steps in the verandah dragged me away from the glass and the fascinating things I saw there. I crossed the room swiftly, and closing the door locked it; there was also a wooden button to turn, and a large bolt which slid into its socket soundlessly.I returned to the dressing-table and my contemplation of the contents of the pretty new box from Durban. I examined them as carefully as if I were a jeweller; as if I had never seen a turquoise ear-ring before and might never see one again. The gold setting of one was tarnished with mud; tiny particles of dirt were still clinging to it; but the stone was undimmed blue, and resembled in every particular its radiant mate which had plainly never left a white velvet bed to make acquaintance with mud. They were screw earrings, meant to pass through a hole in the ear and screw behind the lobe with a little gold washer like a miniature bicycle-nut. Both nuts were in place and the hold wire thread on which they were screwed was quite unworn. When I had removed all traces of mud and stain from the one and polished it with a handkerchief, they were both as flawless and new as when they left the jeweller’s; you could not tell one from the other.The only interruptions I suffered in my engrossing occupation were the sounds of tins and bottles being opened and occasional shouts to me to hurry up and come to supper. To these I paid no attention until they were accompanied by thumpings on the door.“What have you locked yourself in for? Do hurry up, for God’s sake! I’m as hungry as the devil. Deirdre! what on earth are you doing?”I was considering with her the fate of the woman in the glass.“Are we or are we not going to eat anything to-night?”“You may eat without me,” I called out in a clear voice. “I do not need any food.”“The devil you don’t!” There was a pause.“But—What on earth is the matter with you, my dear girl. Of course you must eat—what’s the matter? Are you angry about anything?—Damn it! what kind of behaviour is this? Open the door.”“I do not intend to open the door, Maurice, until—I have come to a decision. You had better go away and not waste your breath speaking to me.”He wasted a good deal more breath, however, before he went away. The next sound was the pop of a champagne cork hitting the ceiling, and the little water-fall rush of wine into a glass. Afterwards the boy was roughly and loudly told to “Hambeelaand get out.” Later a knife and fork clattered on plates, and there were more pops and water-fall rushes. At length a silence. The scent of a cigarette crept into the room.“What now?” I wondered dully. Having finished considering the problem of the future with my reflection, I went and sat on the large white bed which no longer had any terrors for me. I heard the front door being locked, then steps across the room to my door once more.“Is this a game, Deirdre?”I did not answer.“If you do not unlock the door I will break it in!” he said in the same loud bullying voice he had used to the boy, but which did not alarm me at all. I knew now that it was a coward’s voice—a coward’s and a liar’s: my husband’s!I looked at the stout, unpainted deal door and then at some kaffir curios fastened to the wall on either side of it in rather picturesque groups. There was quite a collection of strangely shaped knives and assegais.“Do you hear? I shall break in the door.”“You may do what you wish. But if you come in here I will kill you.”My voice was very low and quiet, but the hatred in it carried through the door like a dagger aimed at his heart, and he drew away as if it had reached him. A moment later he laughed—a coward’s laugh—uncertain at the beginning, then, taking courage from its own loud sound, blustering at the end. Afterwards he sought in more champagne courage to fulfil his threat: but he found what was better for him at that time—oblivion.As for me, I lay on the great white bed with crushed face and clenched hands, and asked God for death. At first I was a woman in agony, a tortured and tricked woman whose sorrows were too many for her, whose right was death as the only solution of the sordid problem. But afterwards I was only a weeping child, sobbing over the wreckage of my life, and crying out in the words of my childhood’s prayers:“Oh, gentle Jesus!... Oh, Mary!... have pity on me!”

“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”

“The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”

So Maurice Alexander Stair and I were married.

After the ceremony we drove back to Kentucky Hills, and shared with a few friends the pretty breakfast Judy had arranged for us.

Later they all rode away, and Maurice with them, leaving me to pack for our exeunt that afternoon to a little place called Water-lily Farm. It was the home of a fellow N.C. of Maurice’s; he had just prepared it for his wife who was coming out from home, but with the ready good-fellowship so common in Africa had offered it to Maurice for our honeymoon; and we, both anxious that the world should guess nothing of our strange bargain, had accepted it to stay in and spend the first few days of our married life.

Maurice was delayed in Salisbury, and it was late afternoon before he fetched me at last from my brother’s house.

The pale May sunshine was almost as cheerless as that of an early spring day in England, for the winter was coming on rapidly, and winter in Africa can be very bleak indeed. I was glad to wrap myself in a warm coat and lean back in the shelter of the little tented cart we were to make the journey in. It was only large enough for two, and Maurice, obliged to manage the restive horses, had little time to talk, for which I was curiously thankful. Passing through Salisbury he discovered that he had left his watch at his rooms and asked if I would mind his calling there for it. I made no demur of course, only, knowing that he lived in a row of bachelor chambers almost next door to the Club, I stipulated that he should pull up a few hundred yards away. I had driven and ridden past the Club before, and knew something of theinsouciantcuriosity of its members, and their happy habit of filling the verandah of sound of a horse or wheels.

“They’re rather fresh,” hesitated Maurice as I took the reins.

“Oh, Maurice! Do you think I can’t manage two old Mashonaland nags?” I smiled.—So he left me, and as I watched him go, tall, nonchalant, and graceful, taking long strides over the knolly ground, I asked myself if it could really be true that I was married, and that—my husband!

Frogs were beginning to croak in the swampy marsh between the Kopje and the Causeway. I could hear far-off voices, and see the smoke of others’ homes against the evening sky. But a terrible soul-sickness crept over me: the sickness of a soul that has lost its mate. At that moment I seemed quite alone in the world. Some words of Gordon’s that a dying man in Fort George had been fond of muttering flitted through my mind:

“Oh whisper, buried Love, is there rest and peace about!There is little help or comfort here below!On your sweet face lies the mould, and your bedis straight and cold—”

“Oh whisper, buried Love, is there rest and peace about!There is little help or comfort here below!On your sweet face lies the mould, and your bedis straight and cold—”

Voices and the sound of horses coming along the road broke my dreary reverie. A man’s rather sardonic laugh reached me, and a voice I seemed to know, yet could not recall the owner of. The riders were still a long distance off but sounds travel far on the clear high air of Rhodesia, and I presently heard some words as distinctly and plainly as if they were spoken beside me in the cart.

“He is not a fellow I have ever cared about—I found out long ago that he is not straight. Another thing, he’s too fond of his little quiet tot by himself.—I like a man that drinks with his fellows—not one of your soakers in his bedroom.”

“Well! I’ll tell you whatIdon’t like about him, Bell, he hasn’t the pluck of a louse—there was a little incident here in Salisbury just after he came up—then again, at Fort George, he played sick with a sprained arm rather than go into Matabeleland with the others. Sprained arm! Sprained grandmother—and I told him so! He slunk out of my office like a dog!”

“It makes me sick to think of him marrying that fine girl.”

How careless people are about what they say of others: I mused. Small wonder one’s secrets are not one’s own in a land where a reputation can be damned on the highroad for all the world to hear!

I had heard a man’s honour—all that was worth keeping in this sad old world—dispensed with, in a few cynical but strangely convincing words. How cruel life was! How tragic! I shivered and wished Maurice would come.

I could see the backs of the two men now as they rode blithely upon their way, having saddened me with the sordid tale of a man’s secret sins that were no secret! the story of some poor fellow’s stumbling journey down hill instead of up! Men were very pitiless in their judgments I thought. Perhaps the other man was not so despicable after all. Butsecret drinking, cowardice! Those were terrible sins—none more revolting to a woman’s mind—andnot straight; the hardest thing one man can say of another! Surely there had been no such man in Port George!—I had never heard of one, and I had heard most things in that tragic little town.—I could think of no one whom such condemnation, fitted. Monty Skeffington-Smythe perhaps?—but no;hisfaults were open and above-board for all the world to see—nothing hidden there, not even his preference forlaagerin time of war! Anyway it was no business of mine—I ought to have been ashamed to be speculating about it even, and Iwas. But why did Maurice stay so long? What could be keeping him?

Some one whoplayed sick rather than go into Matabeleland—But they were all so keen.—all except baggy old Dr Abingdon. Ah! now I knew whose voice that was—Dr Abingdon’s of course—theblaséold doctor with his goat-like leer, and his pretentions that fear kept him from Matabeleland, when as we had found out afterwards he had absolutely begged to go, and been refused on account of his gout—the dear old doctor! His value had been only too well proved in the hospital work he had done later—in the big fights he had put up for men’s lives, and won out, when every one else despaired... I had heard of his recent arrival in Salisbury, and was hoping to see him before I left.

With the knowledge that it was he who had been speaking, my curiosity was once more aroused by the words I had heard. Against my will my mind persistently went back again to the subject. Who of all his patients in Port George had a sprained arm. Ah!—suddenly I remembered!

Afterwards, all the words I had heard floating so idly on the clear air came back one by one, like little birds of ill-omen, to roost in my memory and sing in my ears. It seemed that my brain had taken down everything in shorthand—there was nothing in that brief conversation that I had forgotten!

When Maurice climbed in beside me and took the reins from my hands he exclaimed at their coldness.

“Good Lord! you’re frozen,” he said. “Why, it isn’t cold!”

As he turned towards me I caught from his lips that faint sickly odour of spirits I had long ago learnt to associate with African scenery.

“I am not cold,” I said in a voice that in spite of my striving must have given some sign of the inquietude of my soul, for he gave me a curious glance as the horses lunged forward.

“Oh! cheer up, my dear girl, for God’s sake! This is not a funeral.”

I was so utterly taken aback at this remark, unlike in tone and words anything I had heard from him before, that for an instant I almost forgot the terror that in the last few moments had crept like a little cold slimy snake about my heart. Suddenly I burst into a convulsive laugh, so strange in sound that it should surely have betrayed me. But no, he did not perceive thegenreof my laughter. He was satisfied that I laughed.

“That’s right!” he approved, whipping up the horses. “And as soon as we get round the Kopje I’ll give you a little whiskey to warm you up. I never drink anything myself, but its a good thing to keep the cold out, and I’ve brought a bottle with me in case of accidents.”

I laughed again then, a merry ringing laugh, extraordinarily like Mrs Rockwood’s in the old Fort George days. He lashed at the horses and we tore through the town in clouds of dust. When he made to pull up, almost opposite the cemetery, I clutched spasmodically at his arm.

“Don’t stop, Maurice. I don’t want whiskey,” I stammered. “I—I cannot even bear the thought of spirits. Please,pleasedrive on.”

“Oh, very well!” he said in an impatient voice. “All right, if you don’t care about it. As I said before, I never drink myself but it is a good thing to keep out the cold.”

He turned and observed me with something like suspicion in his manner, and again the faint sickly odour crept past me.

We were travelling now at a slackened speed. There was time and opportunity for conversation, and driven by the cold little snake that wound itself tighter and tighter round my heart, I hastened to make it.

“What detained you, Maurice? You were away a long time!”

“Some brute had been ransacking my room. I found the place in absolute confusion. As far as I could see at a glance not a thing had been stolen, but everything was all over the place—papers, letters, clothes! I picked up the important things and stuffed them in my pockets, no time to put anything away; besides, all the padlocks had been burst off everything. I think I can guess who it was—a nigger I discharged last week, and to punish him took away from him a charm that some witch doctor had given him. That’s what he was after, no doubt, but he didn’t get it, the brute, for I have it on me, that’s some satisfaction. Good God! what a mess the place was in!”

“Why did you take his charm, Maurice?” I asked, not from curiosity but from a wild desire to keep talking.

“Oh, never mind aboutthat! There is one thing I must ask you, Deirdre—never interfere with me and my boys.”

For the second time that night I flushed hotly at the tone he used, resenting its unpardonable rudeness. It was on my tongue to answer him proudly that he would not need to make the request twice; but remembering all the plans and resolutions I had taken to the altar a few hours before, I bit the words back before they could escape, and found courage to say instead, with as much gentleness as I could conjure:

“Of course not. You know that my wish is to help, not hinder you, or interfere in any way.”

“That’sall right then,” said he in a tone so extremely domineering and self-satisfied, that my spirits drooped even a little lower than before. But I picked them up again, I forced myself to be gay and sociable, I laughed (like Saba Rookwood), and talked of anything and everything that could have any possible interest for him, even while the knowledge began to push itself into my mind that there were strangely few subjects of common interest between us; and the wonder began to make itself felt that I had never before noticed how little he had to say on any subject. He had always been so quiet, so chivalrously, gently silent, that I had perhaps given him credit for depth and feeling that were not there. No, no, I struggled against that thought, and jested on, occupying my tongue with incessant remarks.

At last the lights of our temporary home beaconed across the veldt and the interminable drive came to an end.

Water-lily Farm consisted of three thatched rooms, and a few straggling huts dumped on the wide and rolling plain with horizon all round. As we drove up in the chilly gloom we saw that the beaconing lights came from lamps with green glass shades that gleamed like anaemic stars from the windows of the bungalow. A dog barked fretfully in the verandah, and a boy came running out with some information in the native language.

“He says there’s a letter from Bingham on the table,” remarked Maurice. “Wait a moment, I’ll go and see.” He sprang from the cart, catching his coat on some projection and sending a shower of papers and things flying from his over-crammed pockets. I collected them as best I could in the darkness, while he went within, and found the letter. He presently came out again calling to me:

“That’sall right. It’s only to say he is sorry he had to go off on duty and couldn’t wait to welcome us; but our boxes of provisions have arrived and everything is O.K. Go inside, dear, while I see about the horses with the boy. If anything happens to them I shall have to pay.”

He helped me down, and I went into the homely little living-room lighted by the pale-green lamps. The supper-table was carefully laid out with an attempt at grace that was more touching than successful. As I looked at the clumsy little bunches of wild flowers arranged in tumblers, I felt that Bingham was a pleasant fellow. There was an honest, serene air about the simple room with its canvas deck-chairs, cane lounge, white-wood book shelves and framed photographs of English people on the walls. The woman who was coming from England to her man here should be very happy, I thought.

A light from the door of an adjoining room drew me thither, but before I reached it I passed some boxes piled against the wall—open packing cases full of provisions: canned beef, biscuits, bottles of preserved fruits, loose potatoes, a case of champagne. There was another case also, nailed up and branded with the name of John Dewar and Sons. I had lived long enough in Rhodesia to know that these were not the names of gentlemen-philanthropists who lived in the Imperial Institute and provided packing-case seats in the open air for the public. I now recognised a case of whiskey when I saw one. I fled from the room and from my thoughts.

The next room had nothing in it but a wholesome smell of pipe-tobacco, a rough desk with many papers piled on it, some racks of shelves, and a chair: obviously Mr Bingham’s office.

More simplicity in the bedroom: white mats, a white dressing-table of unpainted wood, a sheet of mirror in a white frame, a large white double bed. I gazed at that large white bed, fascinated, while the knowledge crept slowly over me that there was no other bed in the house. At last I turned away, and then I saw that in the mirror there was a woman who matched all the other white things in the room—a deathly white woman with a gay-tragic face, standing very still, her clutching hands full of papers. I stared at the papers for a moment wondering what they were, then remembered picking them up in the cart. I was holding a little green leather case too, that I had gathered up with them—something Maurice had dropped. I recalled having heard the little dull thud of it as it fell. It was a jewel-case, a small, new-looking, green leather box, and when I saw that it was half open I wondered if anything had been lost out of it. My mind turned to that question as though it was of importance far greater than the one that was blanching my cheeks and chilling my blood. It was imperative that I should fasten my mind on something outside itself, and I fastened it with avidity on the little green jewel-case half open in my hand.

“Perhaps something is lost out of it,” I repeated mechanically; something of Maurice’s—something of my husband’s!

I opened it entirely, looked in, and found that it contained one blue turquoise ear-ring.

It was a very new little box, with the name of the same Durban jeweller to whom I had sold my rings, printed in bright gold letters on the white satin lid. (Of course! I remembered it was Maurice who had given me the man’s address.)

The one ear-ring was stuck into a dent in the white velvet cushion; by its side was another little dent—empty.

“The other ear-ring must have been lost,” I said to the woman in the glass. She made no reply.

“The other—must have been lost!” I repeated, but I did not hear my voice, and though I saw that the lips of the woman in the glass were moving, no sound came from them.

Then I noticed an odd thing. The woman in the glass was tearing open the front of her gown: tearing it open with shaking frantic hands to get at something that she wore against her heart in a little silken bag.

I did not see her again for a long while. When I looked up at last she was still standing there: only the white lips in the gay-tragic face were smiling, a brooding subtle smile, that had in it a strange mingling of triumph, despair, hatred—and some other desperate element that might have been hope or madness; and the little leather jewel-box in her hands contained two ear-rings.The lost one had been found.

Steps in the verandah dragged me away from the glass and the fascinating things I saw there. I crossed the room swiftly, and closing the door locked it; there was also a wooden button to turn, and a large bolt which slid into its socket soundlessly.

I returned to the dressing-table and my contemplation of the contents of the pretty new box from Durban. I examined them as carefully as if I were a jeweller; as if I had never seen a turquoise ear-ring before and might never see one again. The gold setting of one was tarnished with mud; tiny particles of dirt were still clinging to it; but the stone was undimmed blue, and resembled in every particular its radiant mate which had plainly never left a white velvet bed to make acquaintance with mud. They were screw earrings, meant to pass through a hole in the ear and screw behind the lobe with a little gold washer like a miniature bicycle-nut. Both nuts were in place and the hold wire thread on which they were screwed was quite unworn. When I had removed all traces of mud and stain from the one and polished it with a handkerchief, they were both as flawless and new as when they left the jeweller’s; you could not tell one from the other.

The only interruptions I suffered in my engrossing occupation were the sounds of tins and bottles being opened and occasional shouts to me to hurry up and come to supper. To these I paid no attention until they were accompanied by thumpings on the door.

“What have you locked yourself in for? Do hurry up, for God’s sake! I’m as hungry as the devil. Deirdre! what on earth are you doing?”

I was considering with her the fate of the woman in the glass.

“Are we or are we not going to eat anything to-night?”

“You may eat without me,” I called out in a clear voice. “I do not need any food.”

“The devil you don’t!” There was a pause.

“But—What on earth is the matter with you, my dear girl. Of course you must eat—what’s the matter? Are you angry about anything?—Damn it! what kind of behaviour is this? Open the door.”

“I do not intend to open the door, Maurice, until—I have come to a decision. You had better go away and not waste your breath speaking to me.”

He wasted a good deal more breath, however, before he went away. The next sound was the pop of a champagne cork hitting the ceiling, and the little water-fall rush of wine into a glass. Afterwards the boy was roughly and loudly told to “Hambeelaand get out.” Later a knife and fork clattered on plates, and there were more pops and water-fall rushes. At length a silence. The scent of a cigarette crept into the room.

“What now?” I wondered dully. Having finished considering the problem of the future with my reflection, I went and sat on the large white bed which no longer had any terrors for me. I heard the front door being locked, then steps across the room to my door once more.

“Is this a game, Deirdre?”

I did not answer.

“If you do not unlock the door I will break it in!” he said in the same loud bullying voice he had used to the boy, but which did not alarm me at all. I knew now that it was a coward’s voice—a coward’s and a liar’s: my husband’s!

I looked at the stout, unpainted deal door and then at some kaffir curios fastened to the wall on either side of it in rather picturesque groups. There was quite a collection of strangely shaped knives and assegais.

“Do you hear? I shall break in the door.”

“You may do what you wish. But if you come in here I will kill you.”

My voice was very low and quiet, but the hatred in it carried through the door like a dagger aimed at his heart, and he drew away as if it had reached him. A moment later he laughed—a coward’s laugh—uncertain at the beginning, then, taking courage from its own loud sound, blustering at the end. Afterwards he sought in more champagne courage to fulfil his threat: but he found what was better for him at that time—oblivion.

As for me, I lay on the great white bed with crushed face and clenched hands, and asked God for death. At first I was a woman in agony, a tortured and tricked woman whose sorrows were too many for her, whose right was death as the only solution of the sordid problem. But afterwards I was only a weeping child, sobbing over the wreckage of my life, and crying out in the words of my childhood’s prayers:

“Oh, gentle Jesus!... Oh, Mary!... have pity on me!”

Chapter Eighteen.What the Dawn Heard.“The means of a man’s ruin are on his tongue.”In the bleak grey dawn I unlocked the door and sought my husband.He was sleeping, sprawled in a canvas chair beside the table frowsy now, and littered with empty tins, spilt wine, and overturned flowers. His mouth hung open, and I saw that it was weak and loose; that his dark skin was yellowed, not tanned; that his eyes were set with a sinister closeness to his handsome thin nose; that under them lay the mean lines of secret sins; that his hands were not the staunch, square hands of a man that could work for a woman and take hold of her heart and keep it for himself against all comers; they were long and cruel and womanish, and looked as though they knew only how to tear and wring and destroy.While he snored I drank to the dregs the bitterness of my cup. I was bound to this drunkard and liar for all my days. And Anthony Kinsella was alive. I knew, that he was alive. If all the angels in Heaven had come down to tell me now that he was not living I would not have listened. I knew that he was living and breathing somewhere in this land that he loved.I had always known it. But I had let this man blunt my instinct and blur my soul’s vision with his base lies; and he had profited by the blindness of suffering to trick me with a lie and an ear-ring dipped in mud to convince me of my lover’s death! It seemed to me a shameful thing that I should have been so easily convinced. Now that my faith had come back in a great sweeping tide I convicted myself of base treason in the haste I had made to believe the false tale. But faith, reproaches, discovery—all came too late, for me. Anthony was living—somewhere; but not for me. Here was the mate I had given myself, snoring before me in drunken slumber! Lest I should strike him on his open lying mouth, I fled from the room.In the verandah the austere, sweet air of dawn greeted my burning temples and lulled the fever of my burning cheeks and hands. The stars were paling to whiteness and falling away into lemon-tinted distance. Shadowy hands tipped with faintest rose reached down from the skies, gathering the mists of night back into the bosom of the clouds; and the land, like some subtly tinted Japanese map on which was traced streams, grasses, and flying birds, swiftly unrolled itself to the eye, yard by yard, mile by mile. A line of mauve-tinted hills appeared suddenly on the horizon, as though sketched in by some rapid, skilful hand.A strange thing about the veldt is that if you stare long at it when you are happy your eyes will fill with tears, and an indefinable sorrow surges in your veins. But go to it when you are wretched, and its beauty will lay shadowy hands on you and bless you and enfold you, and something will wing its way into your heart like a white heron of peace, and nestling there give you comfort and courage.As I re-entered the room the man in the chair opened his eyes and regarded me stupidly. We looked at each other in silence for a while. I was surprised to see that the eyes I had always thought to be a deep and rather beautiful brown were really as yellow as an eagle’s: the effect of darkness was given by a number of brown spots scattered closely on the iris. When the eyes were opened the little mean lines disappeared, and a curious deferential expression took their place. His colouring was dusky, almost mournful, but he had beautiful teeth that lit up his face when he smiled, and the effect was that fleeting suggestion of chivalrousness that had impressed me so deeply and was so false. He was smiling now, but the chivalrous engagement was absent. His gaze had quickly changed from stupidity to one of sneering anger.“So you have deigned to come forth at last! Would it be troubling you too much to ask for an explanation of your charming behaviour?”With an affectation of carelessness which his furtive glance and shaking hand denied, he took out a cigarette and lit it.Without speaking I laid upon the table the little green jewel-case, open—with the blue stones smiling on their satin cushion.For a few seconds there was silence, and as I watched him with disdain and hatred I could not control, I saw that he was not taken unawares. He knew what I had found, and had his tale ready. Incredible as it may seem, he was ready to burden his soul with fresh lies. I had yet to find that this was ever his way. He never confessed a fault, but lied to cover it, and if the lies were not long enough or broad enough he lied again; and if you still did not believe he lied on and on—useless, futile lies.What pretty ear-rings, he said. Where did I get them? They were just like a pair he had bought intending to give me; but he had remembered in time that turquoises meant unhappy memories for me, so he had kept them, and by Jove, yes! when he had found his things all over the place in his rooms he had come upon the box, too, but with only one ear-ring in it, and had thought that brute Makupi had taken it (he forgot he had told me the boy had stolen nothing). Perhaps he had the thing in his pocket now. (He, in fact, affected to make a search, feeling in all his pockets, then looked more closely at the box on the table.) Why! this was the very box—but of course I must have picked it up in the cart—then the ear-ring had not been lost after all! At first he had thought it was a pair of my own I was showing him—a pair just like those he had bought,—for that class of screw ear-ring was all made alike—a jeweller had told him so.They were all made exactly in the same way—you couldn’t tell one pair from another.Fascinated, I stood watching him weave his tangle of lies and uttering them between little puffs of smoke. If it had not been so horrible it would have been an interesting study in soul pathology. I had never met any one with an idiosyncrasy like this; never known a man who thought it worth while to lie at all, certainly not in this idle yet curiously intent way. Could he be mad, I wondered. With each new lie or portion of one his confidence increased. The last part of his statement, made with the utmostaplomb, was an inspiration. I saw the gleam of the creator in his eye as he propounded it. And when I still gazed at him in stony-eyed fascination he repeated it with an assurance almost childish.“All blue ear-rings are alike. Yes: that fellow in Durban told me so when we were talking about earrings once long ago. Perhaps that is why you are upset—old memories, I suppose. You are thinking of that chap Kinsella. Still, I don’t see why you should treat me like a dog on that account.”His tone became injured and indignant once more. There were to be no more propitiatory inventions. He had explained the whole thing satisfactorily as far as he was concerned, and the subject was now closed. He swept it away with his tobacco smoke, and returned to his grievance against me.“On a man’s wedding night! To drive him into getting beastly drunk out of sheer misery and loneliness! I have told you before that I never drink anything, but last night,”—he waved at the empty champagne bottles—“upon my soul I think this lapse should be forgiven me.”Half unconsciously my eyes sought the wall where the packing cases stood; the case of whiskey was gone. It had been spirited away in the night to some other hut. I remembered now the shuffling sounds of some one lifting and carrying away a heavy weight.“But I am willing to kiss and make friends if you are.”He rose to his feet and put out a hand with the frank manly air he could so easily assume while the half-modest, half-chivalrous smile that had always attracted me flitted across his face. It was an elusive expression and never stayed to be examined; but for a moment it bred in me the hope that at the bottom of this dark soul there was some spark of nobility, covered heavily with great weights, perhaps, but smouldering still. I must appeal to it if there was to be any way for either of us out of this tangled wild.“Maurice,” I said almost gently, “there can be no kisses between you and me. I know now that you have lied to me and deceived me, and the knowledge is so terrible that I can hardly bear it. There was a time during the past night when I could have killed you for what you have done. I can never forget it—it is no use saying that. But because you and I are irrevocably bound together by the laws of my religion I will try to forgive you if you will give me time. I will try only to remember the promises I made to you at the altar a few hours ago. By the help of God I will keep compact with you: if you on your part will not lie to me any more, and will strive to be the honourable man I believed you when I married you.”He gazed at me with a sneering mouth.“And what is to come of all these fine compacts, may one ask?”What indeed! God knew best what house, if any, could be built upon the shifting sand of this man’s nature and the ashes of my heart’s desire! I could not prophesy with my hope; I could only try to keep from my voice the despair that obsessed me.“A home perhaps that you and I can live in with peace and honour, Maurice,” I faltered at last. “Who knows; we may yet build some fine thing with the wreckage of our old selves. If we learn to tolerate and help and comfort each other—will not that be something? Perhaps in the end friendship may come.”He interrupted me with a fleering laugh.“Friendship! You think that is what a man marries a beautiful girl like you for? You talk like a fool. If friendship was what I wanted I could have got it—and a jolly sight more, too—without tying myself up for life. It is not every woman who finds me so objectionable as my wife apparently does. Friendship be damned!”“It is all I ever promised you,” I broke out at him then. “I told you when we made our bargain that you must expect nothing from me but my presence in your house, and my help in your career. You swore you would ask nothing more of me.”“A likely story,” he answered. “Who ever means those tom-fool things?”“Imeant them ifyoudid not, and I mean to stand by them,” I said firmly, though my soul shook at this faithlessness; this trampling under foot of solemn vows.“We’ll see about that,” he said darkly.“We will see about it now. It will be finally and definitely settled now, or I will leave this house, and you. If your promises do not bind you neither will I be bound to you.”He was moved at last, though I could not tell on what raw place of pride or personal vanity my words flicked him. His manner changed. Consideration came into it, and some trace of humility.“Deirdre, you would not leave me?”“Not unless you force me to. But so sure as you forget the compact there is between us, Maurice, I will go. Understand now clearly and then let us speak of it no more. I married you believing Anthony Kinsella to be dead, and hoping to dedicate the rest of my loveless life to something which would make it worth the living. You offered me the task of helping you, and I took it with a clear bargain between us, and a hope—Ah! I know not what hope, but I thought that perhaps—life might still bear some little gentle flower. And so it may,”—I found courage to continue, looking at his whitening face: “I pray God for your sake, that it may. But you must not forget, Maurice, that things do not stand just where they were that night we made our bargain; do not forget that I gave my promise with a lie between us that made all the difference to me; that now I know the truth and believe Anthony Kinsella still alive I can no more help loving him than I can help my heart beating. You can drive me from your home if you choose, but I tell you that I love him, and I will never forswear my love for him. I cannot now ever give him my body as he has my soul; but neither will I give it to another.”My voice had sunk to a whisper. My words rustled out like leaves across my dry lips. He, too, was pallid-faced and stammering.“This is a bitter bargain!”“Not less for you than for me,” I contended inexorably, for I was fighting for more than life. I knew that if this last appeal failed it would be the end. The ship of our marriage must founder, and we two, like broken, useless spars float apart on dangerous seas.For me the thought of living in companionship with this man held nothing but terror and disgust. But with the fervour of a Catholic I clung to the marriage vows I had made, not only because my faith and the traditions of all the clean, pure women of my ancestry bade me do it; but, because I terribly feared for what might happen when Anthony Kinsella came riding back into my life, as now with the clear prevision of an Irishwoman I knew he would.If I were alone—married and yet alone—and he should come for me, would I refuse to go? No, no, no! I knew the spell of my love and the strength of his will too well to suppose it! Faith and tradition would go to the winds; they would be burnt up in the fierce flame of our love.I was fighting with Maurice Stair for my soul. I could not love him; he was an unworthy traitor and liar, but I was his wife and I wanted his home and name to shelter me from sin. Only, I would take them on no other conditions than those I had named to him.Long, long we stayed there, fighting that fight. I cannot remember all that was said. I only know that once I sank into a chair almost fainting, that once there was a time when he wept like a child, his head on the table. At another he reviled me until my knees shook, and cursed the hour I had set foot in his life.But at last when the sounds of broad day were all about us and the room full of leaping sunshine, the fight was over, and I knew that my will had conquered. The victory, if so it could be called, was to me! For how long I knew not. I had learned much of my husband in those dawn hours of weeping and reviling and recriminations; and one thing I knew—this battle would be often to fight. Life with Maurice Stair, unless I was prepared to surrender my will to his, would be one long, ceaseless struggle—a struggle in which my adversary would disdain no weapon or device to bring me down.

“The means of a man’s ruin are on his tongue.”

“The means of a man’s ruin are on his tongue.”

In the bleak grey dawn I unlocked the door and sought my husband.

He was sleeping, sprawled in a canvas chair beside the table frowsy now, and littered with empty tins, spilt wine, and overturned flowers. His mouth hung open, and I saw that it was weak and loose; that his dark skin was yellowed, not tanned; that his eyes were set with a sinister closeness to his handsome thin nose; that under them lay the mean lines of secret sins; that his hands were not the staunch, square hands of a man that could work for a woman and take hold of her heart and keep it for himself against all comers; they were long and cruel and womanish, and looked as though they knew only how to tear and wring and destroy.

While he snored I drank to the dregs the bitterness of my cup. I was bound to this drunkard and liar for all my days. And Anthony Kinsella was alive. I knew, that he was alive. If all the angels in Heaven had come down to tell me now that he was not living I would not have listened. I knew that he was living and breathing somewhere in this land that he loved.I had always known it. But I had let this man blunt my instinct and blur my soul’s vision with his base lies; and he had profited by the blindness of suffering to trick me with a lie and an ear-ring dipped in mud to convince me of my lover’s death! It seemed to me a shameful thing that I should have been so easily convinced. Now that my faith had come back in a great sweeping tide I convicted myself of base treason in the haste I had made to believe the false tale. But faith, reproaches, discovery—all came too late, for me. Anthony was living—somewhere; but not for me. Here was the mate I had given myself, snoring before me in drunken slumber! Lest I should strike him on his open lying mouth, I fled from the room.

In the verandah the austere, sweet air of dawn greeted my burning temples and lulled the fever of my burning cheeks and hands. The stars were paling to whiteness and falling away into lemon-tinted distance. Shadowy hands tipped with faintest rose reached down from the skies, gathering the mists of night back into the bosom of the clouds; and the land, like some subtly tinted Japanese map on which was traced streams, grasses, and flying birds, swiftly unrolled itself to the eye, yard by yard, mile by mile. A line of mauve-tinted hills appeared suddenly on the horizon, as though sketched in by some rapid, skilful hand.

A strange thing about the veldt is that if you stare long at it when you are happy your eyes will fill with tears, and an indefinable sorrow surges in your veins. But go to it when you are wretched, and its beauty will lay shadowy hands on you and bless you and enfold you, and something will wing its way into your heart like a white heron of peace, and nestling there give you comfort and courage.

As I re-entered the room the man in the chair opened his eyes and regarded me stupidly. We looked at each other in silence for a while. I was surprised to see that the eyes I had always thought to be a deep and rather beautiful brown were really as yellow as an eagle’s: the effect of darkness was given by a number of brown spots scattered closely on the iris. When the eyes were opened the little mean lines disappeared, and a curious deferential expression took their place. His colouring was dusky, almost mournful, but he had beautiful teeth that lit up his face when he smiled, and the effect was that fleeting suggestion of chivalrousness that had impressed me so deeply and was so false. He was smiling now, but the chivalrous engagement was absent. His gaze had quickly changed from stupidity to one of sneering anger.

“So you have deigned to come forth at last! Would it be troubling you too much to ask for an explanation of your charming behaviour?”

With an affectation of carelessness which his furtive glance and shaking hand denied, he took out a cigarette and lit it.

Without speaking I laid upon the table the little green jewel-case, open—with the blue stones smiling on their satin cushion.

For a few seconds there was silence, and as I watched him with disdain and hatred I could not control, I saw that he was not taken unawares. He knew what I had found, and had his tale ready. Incredible as it may seem, he was ready to burden his soul with fresh lies. I had yet to find that this was ever his way. He never confessed a fault, but lied to cover it, and if the lies were not long enough or broad enough he lied again; and if you still did not believe he lied on and on—useless, futile lies.

What pretty ear-rings, he said. Where did I get them? They were just like a pair he had bought intending to give me; but he had remembered in time that turquoises meant unhappy memories for me, so he had kept them, and by Jove, yes! when he had found his things all over the place in his rooms he had come upon the box, too, but with only one ear-ring in it, and had thought that brute Makupi had taken it (he forgot he had told me the boy had stolen nothing). Perhaps he had the thing in his pocket now. (He, in fact, affected to make a search, feeling in all his pockets, then looked more closely at the box on the table.) Why! this was the very box—but of course I must have picked it up in the cart—then the ear-ring had not been lost after all! At first he had thought it was a pair of my own I was showing him—a pair just like those he had bought,—for that class of screw ear-ring was all made alike—a jeweller had told him so.They were all made exactly in the same way—you couldn’t tell one pair from another.

Fascinated, I stood watching him weave his tangle of lies and uttering them between little puffs of smoke. If it had not been so horrible it would have been an interesting study in soul pathology. I had never met any one with an idiosyncrasy like this; never known a man who thought it worth while to lie at all, certainly not in this idle yet curiously intent way. Could he be mad, I wondered. With each new lie or portion of one his confidence increased. The last part of his statement, made with the utmostaplomb, was an inspiration. I saw the gleam of the creator in his eye as he propounded it. And when I still gazed at him in stony-eyed fascination he repeated it with an assurance almost childish.

“All blue ear-rings are alike. Yes: that fellow in Durban told me so when we were talking about earrings once long ago. Perhaps that is why you are upset—old memories, I suppose. You are thinking of that chap Kinsella. Still, I don’t see why you should treat me like a dog on that account.”

His tone became injured and indignant once more. There were to be no more propitiatory inventions. He had explained the whole thing satisfactorily as far as he was concerned, and the subject was now closed. He swept it away with his tobacco smoke, and returned to his grievance against me.

“On a man’s wedding night! To drive him into getting beastly drunk out of sheer misery and loneliness! I have told you before that I never drink anything, but last night,”—he waved at the empty champagne bottles—“upon my soul I think this lapse should be forgiven me.”

Half unconsciously my eyes sought the wall where the packing cases stood; the case of whiskey was gone. It had been spirited away in the night to some other hut. I remembered now the shuffling sounds of some one lifting and carrying away a heavy weight.

“But I am willing to kiss and make friends if you are.”

He rose to his feet and put out a hand with the frank manly air he could so easily assume while the half-modest, half-chivalrous smile that had always attracted me flitted across his face. It was an elusive expression and never stayed to be examined; but for a moment it bred in me the hope that at the bottom of this dark soul there was some spark of nobility, covered heavily with great weights, perhaps, but smouldering still. I must appeal to it if there was to be any way for either of us out of this tangled wild.

“Maurice,” I said almost gently, “there can be no kisses between you and me. I know now that you have lied to me and deceived me, and the knowledge is so terrible that I can hardly bear it. There was a time during the past night when I could have killed you for what you have done. I can never forget it—it is no use saying that. But because you and I are irrevocably bound together by the laws of my religion I will try to forgive you if you will give me time. I will try only to remember the promises I made to you at the altar a few hours ago. By the help of God I will keep compact with you: if you on your part will not lie to me any more, and will strive to be the honourable man I believed you when I married you.”

He gazed at me with a sneering mouth.

“And what is to come of all these fine compacts, may one ask?”

What indeed! God knew best what house, if any, could be built upon the shifting sand of this man’s nature and the ashes of my heart’s desire! I could not prophesy with my hope; I could only try to keep from my voice the despair that obsessed me.

“A home perhaps that you and I can live in with peace and honour, Maurice,” I faltered at last. “Who knows; we may yet build some fine thing with the wreckage of our old selves. If we learn to tolerate and help and comfort each other—will not that be something? Perhaps in the end friendship may come.”

He interrupted me with a fleering laugh.

“Friendship! You think that is what a man marries a beautiful girl like you for? You talk like a fool. If friendship was what I wanted I could have got it—and a jolly sight more, too—without tying myself up for life. It is not every woman who finds me so objectionable as my wife apparently does. Friendship be damned!”

“It is all I ever promised you,” I broke out at him then. “I told you when we made our bargain that you must expect nothing from me but my presence in your house, and my help in your career. You swore you would ask nothing more of me.”

“A likely story,” he answered. “Who ever means those tom-fool things?”

“Imeant them ifyoudid not, and I mean to stand by them,” I said firmly, though my soul shook at this faithlessness; this trampling under foot of solemn vows.

“We’ll see about that,” he said darkly.

“We will see about it now. It will be finally and definitely settled now, or I will leave this house, and you. If your promises do not bind you neither will I be bound to you.”

He was moved at last, though I could not tell on what raw place of pride or personal vanity my words flicked him. His manner changed. Consideration came into it, and some trace of humility.

“Deirdre, you would not leave me?”

“Not unless you force me to. But so sure as you forget the compact there is between us, Maurice, I will go. Understand now clearly and then let us speak of it no more. I married you believing Anthony Kinsella to be dead, and hoping to dedicate the rest of my loveless life to something which would make it worth the living. You offered me the task of helping you, and I took it with a clear bargain between us, and a hope—Ah! I know not what hope, but I thought that perhaps—life might still bear some little gentle flower. And so it may,”—I found courage to continue, looking at his whitening face: “I pray God for your sake, that it may. But you must not forget, Maurice, that things do not stand just where they were that night we made our bargain; do not forget that I gave my promise with a lie between us that made all the difference to me; that now I know the truth and believe Anthony Kinsella still alive I can no more help loving him than I can help my heart beating. You can drive me from your home if you choose, but I tell you that I love him, and I will never forswear my love for him. I cannot now ever give him my body as he has my soul; but neither will I give it to another.”

My voice had sunk to a whisper. My words rustled out like leaves across my dry lips. He, too, was pallid-faced and stammering.

“This is a bitter bargain!”

“Not less for you than for me,” I contended inexorably, for I was fighting for more than life. I knew that if this last appeal failed it would be the end. The ship of our marriage must founder, and we two, like broken, useless spars float apart on dangerous seas.

For me the thought of living in companionship with this man held nothing but terror and disgust. But with the fervour of a Catholic I clung to the marriage vows I had made, not only because my faith and the traditions of all the clean, pure women of my ancestry bade me do it; but, because I terribly feared for what might happen when Anthony Kinsella came riding back into my life, as now with the clear prevision of an Irishwoman I knew he would.

If I were alone—married and yet alone—and he should come for me, would I refuse to go? No, no, no! I knew the spell of my love and the strength of his will too well to suppose it! Faith and tradition would go to the winds; they would be burnt up in the fierce flame of our love.

I was fighting with Maurice Stair for my soul. I could not love him; he was an unworthy traitor and liar, but I was his wife and I wanted his home and name to shelter me from sin. Only, I would take them on no other conditions than those I had named to him.

Long, long we stayed there, fighting that fight. I cannot remember all that was said. I only know that once I sank into a chair almost fainting, that once there was a time when he wept like a child, his head on the table. At another he reviled me until my knees shook, and cursed the hour I had set foot in his life.

But at last when the sounds of broad day were all about us and the room full of leaping sunshine, the fight was over, and I knew that my will had conquered. The victory, if so it could be called, was to me! For how long I knew not. I had learned much of my husband in those dawn hours of weeping and reviling and recriminations; and one thing I knew—this battle would be often to fight. Life with Maurice Stair, unless I was prepared to surrender my will to his, would be one long, ceaseless struggle—a struggle in which my adversary would disdain no weapon or device to bring me down.

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