"Well?" he queried hoarsely.
"Well, then," said Harry English, "I waited—again." ...
And his comrade felt more than this he was never to know of the hardest moment of all the man's hard life.
"I dare say," resumed English, his old air of serenity coming back to him, "you wonder why I did not extend that botched business as far as the jugular this time, and have done with it. But, you see, there was just a chance, I told myself; and so," he repeated, falling back into his significant formula, "I waited. I got work with an old babu; and by-and-by my opportunity came, and I took it."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Bethune, shifting restlessly in his chair. "It was the maddest business!"
"Perhaps," said English, a shade of pain sweeping across his face. "But I had to know. Any other course was too dangerous. Oh, I am not speaking of myself—think how dangerous!"
"But, man—man," cried the other, "it need not have taken you all that time! When you'd seen with your own eyes, when you had found that the old fellow was killing her, when you were here in this house, and had seen her in her sorrow—then——"
English flung one lightning glance upon the speaker.
"And even then," he said slowly, "I had still to know—more."
A moment Bethune stared at him open-mouthed; then his own unclear conscience pointed the otherwise inconceivable idea to his slow-working wits. He felt the dark blood mount to his forehead.