“Dear lady, don’t you know,” he asked, “how closely love and hate are allied so that it is difficult to separate the one from the other? It is possible for a man to hate the woman who is dear to him. I’ve known such cases.”
“I can understand,” she said, and looked thoughtfully out upon the passing country, “moments of impulsive hate. But systematic hate... That’s different.”
She pulled at the strap of the window absently, and continued to gaze out at the scenery, while the shadows darkened the sun-flecked eyes, and memories stirred in their troubled depths that, far away now but still unsoftened, covered over a space of hopeless years. She had loved her husband with such an intensity of passion, and yet she had failed somehow to satisfy him. She had failed him most at the moment he particularly needed help and sympathy—at the time of his disgrace. Her love for him had had its root to a great extent in her pride in him. The fall of her pride was tremendous. His dismissal from the Service cut her more deeply than at that time of hysterical patriotism his death could have. The blow hardened her. Instead of loving encouragement, unsympathetic silence was all she offered. And he turned from her and sought comfort elsewhere. Another woman came into his life. Zoë Lawless did not know how brief had been that interval of madness. She had refused to hear explanations, had withheld forgiveness. He had written to her, offering facilities for her release. To that she had replied that if he wished it, if he desired to give the woman the protection of his name, she would submit to the humiliation of having their affairs dragged through the courts. He had answered that he was merely considering her, that he had no wishes in the matter, and should certainly not re-marry if she divorced him.
After that there had been unbroken silence between them, and she lost sight of him for many years. During those years, in the lonely watches of the night, she had often lain awake thinking of him, wondering about him; and her conscience had reproached her for throwing that undisciplined nature back upon itself. When, unexpectedly, under the will of an eccentric relative she inherited a comfortable fortune she determined to follow after him. She had heard from her cousin in Cape Town that Lawless was in Africa; and so she came to Africa to find him, with some vague idea in her mind that they might possibly pick up the dropped strands of their lives and interwind them anew. She had earnestly desired this until she met him. When they met she realised how vain had been her hope. And now it was all over... There remained only the bitterness of the empty years.
When they reached Kraaifontein, and the Colonel got out of the train and turned to offer her assistance, she hung back, white and nervous, and caught at the luggage bracket as though to save herself from falling. He took her by the arm and assisted her on to the platform.
“In a little while,” he said, with a view to encouraging her, “you will be smiling at your fears. Come now! be brave.”
He left her for a moment on the platform while he went to speak to an official. When he returned he endeavoured without success to mask his gravity behind a reassuring smile.
“We’ll walk,” he said, “it’s close here. I’ve arranged about the luggage.”
She looked at him swiftly.
“You’ve heard something,” she said.