"I am not at all like most women and girls in Africa," was the cool response. "However, I will say nothing further about it, Dr. Newnham. Only please, if you care to talk to me, behave yourself—and don't ever mention lace again."
Newnham had never been spoken to in this fashion by a woman since he came to Africa, and he did not take to it at all. But he was afraid to show his resentment for fear she would carry out her threat and never speak to him again. And if she turned her back on him now, he believed he should go mad. It had come to that with him. He was half-crazed with passion for this girl who could look at him so composedly and speak to him so contemptuously. But together with his passion was bitter rage with himself and with her. He was torn between primitive emotions. At one moment he longed with all the malignity of a mean weak nature to fling coarse words at her that would make her crouch before him; in the next he longed only to crouch himself, offering his neck, his body, his soul to her feet.
While he wrestled with his longings and inclinations, breathing hard at her side, she composedly arose and left him with a cool good-night.
He returned to the smoke-room and kept the steward busy for the next two hours; and when at last, by reason of the emphatic dimming of the electric lights, he roused himself to thoughts of bed, he had come to a conclusion and a resolution. Quite an epoch for him!
All the next day he haunted Poppy strangely. He was never far from her, and the look in his eyes stirred her to discomfort and foreboding, although it was not comprehensible to her. Something in his eyes she understood only too well—she began to expect that in men's eyes now! But what did that half-pitying, half-scornful expression mean? She resented it extremely; but her curiosity was aroused. In the evening, therefore, she let him pull his chair next to hers in the usual corner. Only, the electric light was gone; the burner had died out, and someone had forgotten to replace it or thought it not worth while to do so, for this was the last night at sea and the ship was to dock on the morrow. They were creeping near the grey-green English coasts now, and the English weather was sweet and grateful after the heat of the tropics and the dusty land left far behind; but there was a freshness in the late-April air that made Poppy turn up the collar of her coat and take shelter under the lee of her chair cushion.
Newnham, restless and miserable, quoted with some trace of emotion:
"O to be in England
Now that Spring is there."
But his emotion was neither for Spring nor England. He led the talk to London with the hope of getting her to speak of her destination; but she went off at a tangent and began to tell him about the wonderful shades of blue to be found in the interior of a glacier. He ignored that, and made occasion to give her his card with a Kensington address written on it, saying in rather strained fashion:
"If ever you want a friend—doctors are sometimes useful people, you know."
She thanked him and took his card, holding it carefully in her hand. But she offered no information on the subject which so engrossed his thoughts. An uncomfortable pause followed. Suddenly in the darkness she felt a hand hot on hers.