“You are leaving Cape Town again?” she asked... “When?”
“To-morrow morning.”
“And where do you go?”
“Up the line,” he answered... “Not very far.”
She flushed quickly. Some instinct told her that he was going to rejoin the companion in whose society he had left Cape Town before. A chilled look came into her eyes. It seemed that whenever she held out a hand across the distances that separated them a great wall of his making rose between them to divide them more certainly than before. And he invariably made her aware of this wall at the very outset, so that her every effort during the difficult interviews between them was but an ineffectual hurling of herself against this impassable barrier. She moved from behind the chair and seated herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said simply. “Won’t you sit down?” He accepted the invitation, and leaning back surveyed her with a thoughtful interest that was critical rather than admiring, and intensely curious. She had some purpose in sending for him, he supposed. He wondered, with a slight impatience, why she distressed herself so unnecessarily. They had come long ago to the parting of the ways,—it was a mistake to go out of one’s road in order that the paths should recross merely to separate again.
“I had no idea you would be leaving—so soon,” she said. “I wasn’t aware you were in Cape Town until I passed you that morning in the car.”
“I had only just got back,” he explained.
“Afterwards I was sorry—that I didn’t stop,” she went on slowly, labouring somewhat over the sentences. “But—I was surprised. And I felt a little diffident about asking you to come out... I knew you would come, of course... That’s why, perhaps.”
“My only wonder is that you take the trouble,” he returned. “Plainly, you don’t get any joy of it... And hasn’t it ever occurred to you that it’s painful for me as well? My life hasn’t been wholly without regrets. You remind me of the old Inquisitorial system—continually stretching a man on the rack for some imaginary good purpose. And you rack yourself in the process... Where’s the sense in it, anyway?”