She answered strangely, speaking vaguely like a woman in a nightmare, but her words struck home like little, sharp knives, and the blood mounted high in his dark cheeks.
"So you were the slinker in the bush!--the skulker!--the deserter of comrades and men!--I might have known!"
Rage flashed out of his bloodshot eyes, and for a moment he looked as if he could strike her. Then he laughed again the jeering sardonic laugh of the cynic, whose bones hard words have no power to break, the coward who fears nothing but death.
"Be damned to you!" he said pleasantly. "I had as much right to save my skin as any one else."
"No one else saved his skin."
"That was their lookout," he remarked with grim facetiousness, but her silent, terrible stare, so full of indictment, disconcerted him horribly. He essayed to change the unpleasant subject.
"So you are in New York! No one could make out where the deuce you had got to."
That detached her from the sinister question of his conduct on the South African veldt. But still she stared deep into him as if seeking in his soul the key to some problem she could not solve; and he was embarrassed, for he wished no one to search in his dark soul--there were things hidden there that even he was afraid to look upon. As for the situation, surely it was clear enough. He that should have been dead was alive, and that was all there was to it. He had been looking for her to let her know, and that he had found her by accident was so much to the good. It had a better appearance than if he had hunted her down (as he would have done if he had possessed any clue to work on). After all, he argued to himself, he had a right to her sympathy. Also he needed help in the shape of money pretty badly. He was sick of hiding in America, and longed to get away to the cheap comfort of Europe. Unfortunately, she did not look as if she could help his financial situation very much. He had, in fact, never seen her look so shabby since she ceased to occupy the proud position of wife and slave to Horace Valdana, Esq. The thought that he might not be able to levy a loan from her after all moved him to venom.
"I fear you have come down in the world, my poor Val! If I did not know what a brilliant woman of letters you are, I might almost think you had turned into a housemaid. What were you doing at Number 700?"
Then she realised he had seen her come out of the house. That was the key she had sought. Now she knew just where she stood, and what she must do.