She turned and lifted grave, blue eyes to his face in mute condemnation.
"You do not understand—I have been ill—I don't seem to have been myself for a long time, I—I—it seemed to me that you did not care a farthing what became of me. You left it to me to cable if I wanted you when you should have known that I was yearning for nothing so much as a sight of your face. It was pointed out to me that any woman with a spark of true love for her own man, would have let nothing stand in the way of her joining him the moment she heard of his illness. Did you?" He laughed harshly. "No! It was the old story, 'Baby,' and always, 'Baby!' God!—you never cared."
"I cared so much, that I never wanted to amuse myself with another man though I had plenty of opportunities." Yet, his passionate denunciation had gone home.
"Joyce, am I to have no chance?"
With a gesture of disgust, she dismissed the subject peremptorily, and passed out of the sitting-room, trembling with emotion from head to foot.
In the adjoining apartment, which was his bedroom, she struggled with the straps of her fibre trunk till they were taken out of her hands and the leathers unbuckled, by her husband who had followed her in. Joyce watched him with a pain at her heart as he bent over his task. A lump came into her throat too big to swallow. She felt choked with a rising hysteria which only a great effort of will controlled. He looked so handsome, so like the lover-husband she had known, that it was all she could do not to fling herself into his arms and say "Let us forget everything and remember only our love!" Her natural place was in his arms now that she had come out all that distance to be with him; instead, they had not even exchanged the most formal of greetings! He had been false to her—a crime no woman feels disposed to forgive.
"I had to come in here as this is the only way to my dressing-room," Meredith explained as he rose to his feet.
Joyce thanked him coldly and watched him pass through the heavy curtains which separated the two rooms and was the only apology for a door. When he was gone, she writhed in anguish. Oh, if she could have crushed her pride and called out to him to come back!
It was not so easy, however, and she hardened her heart for the task that lay before her.
While dressing, her trembling fingers almost refusing their work, she wondered how Mrs. Dalton would behave when they met again? If she would have the audacity to speak to Ray? A woman of her sort would be equal to any impertinence. Why had she not returned to her husband, who, Honor had said, was willing to take her back? At all events, Joyce was infinitely glad she was on the spot to curtail the woman's opportunities for further mischief. It was worth the risk of the journey.