Then when his meditations had reached this point, a strange exultant thrill seemed to disturb the balance of his clearer judgment. Why should the rôle be kept up? After being parted for five years, they had met again—nay, more—had been thrown together again in this strange, wild country, that in former times had been to either of them no more than a mere geographical name. Both were unchanged. There was a softening in Vivien’s voice, when off her guard, as on the last occasion of their meeting, which seemed to point to the fact that she was. For himself—well, he had grown older, wiser—and, he imagined, harder. Still, the wound did seem to be reopening. Why, the whole was almost as though Fate had gone out of her way to bring they two together again.
Yes, he had grown harder. Love, the ever endurable! Ridiculous! She had sacrificed him before, and would do so again if occasion arose. If she did not do so it would be because occasion had not arisen, and this consideration constituted a state of potential unreliability, which was not reassuring. The idea even served to re-awaken much of the old bitterness and rankling resentment, and he decided that it would be an interesting, if coldblooded, study in character to observe how Vivien herself would come out under such an ordeal as the close, intimate intercourse which life beneath the same roof could not but involve.
Once there, he had no cause to regret his decision. The colonel was a fine old soldier of the very best type. Most of his life had been spent in India, and he was full of anecdote and reminiscence. He had served through the Mutiny, and in several frontier disturbances, and his knowledge of the country and its natives was intelligent and exhaustive. He had been a sportsman, too, in his time—and, in short, was a man whom it was a pleasure to talk with. He and Campian took to each other immensely, and the two would sit together under the verandah of an evening, smoking their cheroots and exchanging ideas, while Vivien discoursed music through the open doors, upon a cottage piano which had been lugged up, at some risk to its tuning and general anatomy, on board the hideous necessary camel.
Decidedly it was very close quarters, indeed, this party of three, isolated there in that remote forest bungalow, away among the chaotic, piled up mountain deserts of wild Baluchistan; but there was no element of monotony about it; indeed, how could there be when to two out of the three life thus represented an ordeal that meant so much, that might mean indeed so much more. Yet it spoke volumes for the self control of both that no suspicion should have entered the mind of the third that they had ever beheld each other elsewhere, and under very near circumstances. Their intercourse was free and unrestrained, but it was the easy intercourse of two people who had ideas in common and liked each other’s society, and totally devoid of any symptom of covering a warmer feeling. They would frequently take rides or walks together through the juniper forest, or to some point overlooking a new or wider view of the great chaotic mountain waste, and it spoke volumes for their self control that no allusion was ever made to the past. They would not have been human if occasionally some undercurrent of feeling had not now and then come unguardedly near the surface, but only to be instantly repressed. It was as though both were engaged in a diplomatic game requiring a high degree of skill, and in which each was watching the next move of the other with a jealous eye.
Once, in course of their rides together, the two were threading a tangi, and the sense of being shut within those high rock walls moved Vivien to broach the subject of the adventure which had so nearly ended in tragedy for her companion and his.
“It must have been a dreadful experience,” she said, looking up at the cliffs overhead.
“Yes. It was awkward. I’ve no use for a repetition of it.”
His tone was discouraging, as though he would fain have changed the subject. But she seemed to cling to it.
“I think that was a splendid feat,” she went on, looking straight at him. “I wish I knew what it was like never to be afraid.”
“So do I—most heartily. But I simply don’t believe in the existence of that enviable state; if you can talk of the existence of a negative, that is.”