Mr. Benoliel did not spare himself. It was rather a grim scene which he had to describe--the last one of many quarrels which had sprung from their estrangement. "You leave me for those squalors. You return to me fresh from them;" that was the burden of her accusation. She was not of his race or of his people. She had no sympathy with, or comprehension of, the intense craving which from time to time assailed him to go back to his own place, or of the utter weariness which overtook him of the life of London, in which he played an actor's part. The squalor and humiliation of his days in Mequinez got upon her nerves, filled her with disgust, and made his companionship repugnant.
"You can understand that, Cynthia?" he asked, and Cynthia, since frankness was demanded of her, agreed.
"Yes, I can understand that," she answered gently. His story was to her fantastic and fabulous. It belonged to the East--as he did. Only by keeping in mind that he, underneath the veneer of his manners, was of the East could she accept it as truth. She did so accept it. But she looked at Mr. Benoliel with curious eyes, and was conscious of a feeling very like aversion. Within the half-hour he had grown a stranger to her even as he had done to his wife. That he should leave the order and the cleanliness of his home, depart from the company of cultured people--he the dilettante--don the gaberdine, go joyfully back to the dirt and squalor of his Mellah, humbly take off his slippers and walk bare-foot at the bidding of any Moor who passed him by--that Cynthia could not understand. But that his wife should find life with him intolerable when he came back from his degradation, refreshed as by a bath, to resume existence at her side--that she did thoroughly understand.
"So we separated," said Mr. Benoliel.
"Yes," said Cynthia. "But there's no parallel between your case and ours. What happened to you cannot happen to us."
She was not sure. There was appeal in her voice. She pleaded to him to agree with her. She clung desperately to her one small piece of knowledge. Mr. Benoliel was of the East. Harry Rames was not.
"There is a parallel, and a close one," Mr. Benoliel insisted. "What happened to us may happen to you. Out of the experiences of eighteen years in Captain Rames's life, experiences in which you have no share, some unsuspected craving may even now be fermenting which may turn the course of his thoughts, and snatch him back from you."
"He would fight against it," said Cynthia.
"Even so, it would stand between you, and it would grow."
Cynthia was silent for a moment. Then she said timidly: