"You must be to come here, I should think. Why have you done it?"
"You always were a dense fool, Dick. What do you think I've come for? To see the body, of course."
"To see the woman you murdered, you mean."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You don't? Then I'll tell you. My sister died last night by her own hand, why, you know, I only guess; but this I do know, that her death lies at your door. Of your villainy in making love to her when you had a wife at home I won't speak. She knew it, it seems, and I'm not going to blame the dead. But of the other, of the cowardly abandonment to her fate of a woman you professed to love, of that I will, Colonel Graeme."
"Say what you like, if it pleases you, Dick. I shan't defend myself."
"I intend to. It seems—I got that much out of my wife—Stara wrote you a letter five days ago, and that letter asked for a wire in answer. Even the most callous, I should have thought, would have sent something, but you did not. With that letter in your pocket, probably unread, you spent those five days loafing about barracks, too damned lazy even to walk to the telegraph-office and send the answer which would have saved a life."
"Right as usual, Dick; go on."
"For three days I had boys waiting at the Duikerpoort office, and last night she went there herself, and stayed till the place was shut. Then she came back and an hour afterwards was found on the veldt—dead."
"That was fine of you, Stara." The words were only breathed, but Richard heard them, heard too the unmistakable ring of gladness in Hector's voice. At the sound, decency and respect for the dead above him vanished, and in their place the primitive overmastering desire to kill prevailed. He stretched out his hand to a drawer, clutched something, and in one more second Graeme would have been lying dead, his spirit free to wander by Stara's side, but in that second a woman stood between them, and her eyes, dulled with tears, were lifted reproachfully to her husband's face.