When Meredith saw her safely to Bombay, preparatory to her embarkation, he allowed himself to show something of the grief he felt at having to give up for an indefinite time what he most valued on earth. In the seclusion of their room at the hotel, he held her close in his arms and devoured her flower-like face with eyes of hungry passion.
"So, not content with holding yourself aloof from me, you are leaving me to shift for myself, the best way I can!" he said grimly.
Joyce's lips quivered piteously and she hid her face in his shirt-front.
"Has it never occurred to you," he said, "that a man parted too long from his wife, might get used to doing without her altogether?"
Two arms clung closer in protest. "But never you!" she replied with confidence.
"Even I," he said cruelly. He wanted to hurt her since she had walked over him, metaphorically, with hobnailed boots. "India is a land of many temptations."
"But you love me!"
"God knows I do. But I am only a very ordinary human man whose wife prefers to live away from him in a distant land."
"Ray, you are saying that only to be cruel!"
"Because I am beginning to think you have no very real love for me."