But Esmé’s mind at the moment was detached from her surroundings. She was thinking very earnestly of the man who held aloof from friendship, who seemed to regard with mistrust, almost with dislike, every one about him. She had never before met any one who was at enmity with mankind. The experience interested her immensely, troubled her. It occurred to her as altogether sad and incomprehensible that a man should shun his fellows and enclose himself in a stronghold of impenetrable reserve. She longed to pierce the hard crust of his egotism, to draw him out of himself. It was unthinkable that a man of intelligence should be misanthropic from choice and without cause. Possibly at some time he had suffered, been badly hurt by some one. Yet it was difficult to believe that a man could vent on the world at large his sense of injury for the fault of an individual.
She leaned down towards the water and looked into its still brown pools and frowned thoughtfully. It vexed her that this man should have laid such a grip on her imagination: his personality obtruded itself persistently on her thoughts. The thing was beginning to worry her.
She turned her head to look for her companion. He was not in sight. Abruptly a feeling of loneliness, a loneliness that was almost terrifying, seized her. That Sinclair was somewhere near at hand she knew, but the sense of being alone in that eerie spot frightened her; the silence of the place frightened her. Yet when the silence snapped suddenly, and her attention was caught by the sound of some one or something breaking through the undergrowth and coming towards her, her fear of these sounds was greater than her fear of the silence. She wanted to move, wanted to cry out; and she could not move, could not utter a word. She sat staring in the direction of the noise, staring, and waiting for she knew not what.
The sounds were not made by Sinclair; they came from the opposite direction to that which he had taken. Thoughts of wild beasts flashed into her mind. She wondered what she would do if out of the green tangle a tiger suddenly appeared. She believed that she would do nothing, that she would remain there staring, rooted to the spot. The crashing sounds grew louder, came nearer. She saw the boughs bend, their massed foliage shake and quiver as if a wind swept through it. A branch snapped loudly. Then out of the swaying greenery a man’s arm protruded, and the next moment Hallam emerged and stood still, looking at her with a surprise greater than her own. Esmé gave a little gulp of relief and laughed weakly.
“Oh?” she said, and sat still clutching at the boulder with her hands.
“Did I frighten you?” he asked.
She nodded without speaking; and he advanced a little nearer to her, and stood still again, leaning on his stick.
“I’m sorry. I had no idea any one was here. You aren’t alone?”
“No. Mr Sinclair is somewhere—over there. I thought—I thought you were a tiger.”
Involuntarily he smiled.