“You’ve made up your mind not to understand.” Oh, the pain in her heart, and the fear! She could have screamed. “You can’t send me to certain death. If you have no love or pity for me you must have just ordinary human feeling.”
“I think it’s rather hard on me to put it like that. As far as I can make out your husband is behaving very generously. He’s willing to forgive you if you’ll let him. He wants to get you away and this opportunity has presented itself to take you to some place where for a few months you’ll be out of harm’s way. I don’t pretend that Mei-tan-fu is a health resort, I never knew a Chinese city that was, but there’s no reason to get the wind up about it. In fact that’s the worst thing you can do. I believe as many people die from sheer fright in an epidemic as because they get infected.”
“But I’m frightened now. When Walter spoke of it I almost fainted.”
“At the first moment I can quite believe it was a shock, but when you come to look at it calmly you’ll be all right. It’ll be the sort of experience that not everyone has had.”
“I thought, I thought …”
She rocked to and fro in an agony. He did not speak, and once more his face wore that sullen look which till lately she had never known. Kitty was not crying now. She was dry-eyed, calm, and though her voice was low it was steady.
“Do you want me to go?”
“It’s Hobson’s choice, isn’t it?”
“Is it?”
“It’s only fair to you to tell you that if your husband brought an action for divorce and won it I should not be in a position to marry you.”
It must have seemed an age to him before she answered. She rose slowly to her feet.
“I don’t think that my husband ever thought of bringing an action.”
“Then why in God’s name have you been frightening me out of my wits?” he asked.
She looked at him coolly.
“He knew that you’d let me down.”
She was silent. Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden a suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter’s mind. It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night. She shuddered at what she saw.
“He made that threat only because he knew that you’d crumple up at it, Charlie. It’s strange that he should have judged you so accurately. It was just like him to expose me to such a cruel disillusion.”
Charlie looked down at the sheet of blotting paper in front of him. He was frowning a little and his mouth was sulky. But he did not reply.
“He knew that you were vain, cowardly and self-seeking. He wanted me to see it with my own eyes. He knew that you’d run like a hare at the approach of danger. He knew how grossly deceived I was in thinking that you were in love with me, because he knew that you were incapable of loving anyone but yourself. He knew you’d sacrifice me without a pang to save your own skin.”
“If it really gives you any satisfaction to say beastly things to me I suppose I’ve got no right to complain. Women always are unfair and they generally manage to put a man in the wrong. But there is something to be said on the other side.”
She took no notice of his interruption.
“And now I know all that he knew. I know that you’re callous and heartless. I know that you’re selfish, selfish beyond words, and I know that you haven’t the nerve of a rabbit, I know you’re a liar and a humbug, I know that you’re utterly contemptible. And the tragic part is”—her face was on a sudden distraught with pain—“the tragic part is that notwithstanding I love you with all my heart.”
“Kitty.”
She gave a bitter laugh. He had spoken her name in that melting, rich tone of his which came to him so naturally and meant so little.
“You fool,” she said.
He drew back quickly, flushing and offended; he could not make her out. She gave him a look in which there was a glint of amusement.
“You’re beginning to dislike me, aren’t you? Well, dislike me. It doesn’t make any difference to me now.”
She began to put on her gloves.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Oh, don’t be afraid, you’ll come to no harm. You’ll be quite safe.”
“For God’s sake, don’t talk like that, Kitty,” he answered and his deep voice rang with anxiety. “You must know that everything that concerns you concerns me. I shall be frightfully anxious to know what happens. What are you going to say to your husband?”
“I’m going to tell him that I’m prepared to go to Mei-tan-fu with him.”
“Perhaps when you consent he won’t insist.”
He could not have known why, when he said this, she looked at him so strangely.
“You’re not really frightened?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. “You’ve inspired me with courage. To go into the midst of a cholera epidemic will be a unique experience and if I die of it—well, I die.”
“I was trying to be as kind to you as I could.”
She looked at him again. Tears sprang into her eyes once more and her heart was very full. The impulse was almost irresistible to fling herself on his breast and crush her lips against his. It was no use.
“If you want to know,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “I go with death in my heart and fear. I do not know what Walter has
