“He told you—about me?” she said.
“Yes—everything that matters.”
She put the glass down on the desk and stood up and confronted him.
“What am I to do?” she wailed. “Oh! what am I to do?”
“That,” he answered with surprising quietness, “is a question which no one can resolve but yourself. It is for you to decide.”
“But I don’t know what to do,” she returned distressfully. “I—Oh, dear heaven! what a terrible position to be placed in!”
She wrung her hands and turned away from him and stood leaning against the frame of the window, where the warm fresh air poured in on her, and the distant sounds of the din in the streets came to her ears like something far off, something altogether outside her own concerns. The horror of her encounter with the Kaffir was submerged, almost forgotten, in the bewilderment of Paul’s return. Paul knew of her second marriage—which was no marriage. He must know, since he had spoken with Jim, of her child. The child’s future welfare was her chief concern. She resented the injury done to it as a deliberate wrong wrought through the agency of this man by his long absence, his inexplicable silence. She felt bitter when she thought of it.
“Why did you leave me in ignorance of your whereabouts?” she asked. “Was it fair to treat me like that? You had all my love, all my confidence. Surely you might have trusted me! Whatever you were doing, wherever you were, I should have understood. I would have waited patiently. I was prepared to wait after reading your letter. I judged from it that you would not return to me until you were sure of yourself, even though it meant separation for all our lives. But you could have let me know you were alive. It was cruel to keep silent all these years.”
“Yes,” he allowed; “had it been intentional it would have been.”
He joined her at the window, and stood opposite to her, observing her with a steady gaze which drew her eyes to his, held them: she remained looking back at him, listening to him, while he strove to make her understand the struggle and the despair of those silent years.