It was a page of which he was heartily ashamed. The shame was inevitable, the affair having been, from the first, a comedy of degrees in which his heart had never been involved; begun while he was a helpless invalid dependent upon this woman for nursing and companionship. That she had started the flirtation, and had taken advantage of his loneliness and temporary weakness to bring him almost to the verge of a deep dishonour, were memories he would have given much to forget. Mrs. Dalton was a type of woman he had always held in contempt; but he had failed to identify her as such, till his normal health had reasserted itself. Latterly he had allowed himself to drift with the tide while looking for a means of escape from his intolerable position.
"Do you mean that?" she asked with whitening lips.
"I think it is the only thing to do," he replied.
"If you say that for my sake, then I might just as well be frank. You know I love you, Ray Meredith, and I believe you love me, only you have never quite let yourself go, for some hidden reason—possibly your career? It can't be consideration for that bloodless and callous creature, your wife? I refuse to believe that you have any feeling for a woman who has placed her child before her husband and is content to live apart from him when she knows that men are but human after all! Your career is safe. A man's private life is his own affair. If we throw in our lot together, we can after the divorce marry and live happily ever after, as the good little story books tell us in the nursery." She laughed tenderly. "My husband will gladly have done with me, for I can tell who it is he wants. I paid a stolen visit to his bungalow at Muktiarbad and snapshots of her live all about him in his den. Can I tolerate the position I shall occupy in his house, knowing all the while it has been flung at me like a bone to a dog? If he could marry her tomorrow he would; only she isn't the sort, I am told, who would take him unless I am dead! Now, this is frankness indeed!"
Meredith was silent.
"Can't you speak?"
"I have spoken."
"And is that all?" she cried passionately, creeping nearer, her dark eyes compelling his surrender. "Don't you know that all Darjeeling is talking of us? That, for your sake, people are treating me abominably while they smile kindly on you? I am only a woman, therefore may be crushed. My God!—and you would turn me down, like a 'page' for 'good'!"
"Perhaps I should not put it like that," he said nervously as he trifled with Captain Dalton's letter to his wife, and allowed it to fall to the floor. His cigarette case suggested comfort and was drawn forth as a diversion.
"Put it as you like, it is rather a knock-out blow for me!"