“You mean: ‘Why didn’t you come before?’ You expected me?”
“Yes, I expected you. But I didn’t want you to come.”
He laughed. “Very well,” he said. “We won’t pretend that you did; but for all that I think you used me roughly the other night. Your departure was . . . shall we say . . . lacking in ceremony. Unreasonably so, I think. For what had I done? What confidence had I abused?”
She shook her head. “You must not ask me to explain,” she said. “You won’t press me to do so. I wish you hadn’t come now. It will be a good deal better if you will leave us alone. I think we should go our own ways. It will be better like that. I wish you would go now . . .”
“But that is ridiculous,” he said. “In as desolate place like this you can’t quarrel about nothing with your only neighbour. In the middle of a black population it is necessary that the whites should keep together. Your brother would understand. I don’t think you realise what it means. I’ll tell you what it means. . . . And yet I don’t think there is anything to be gained by that. It is you who must tell me what is the matter with you. Tell me why you were frightened where there was nothing to fear. What were you frightened of?”
She would not answer him. He became agitated and spoke faster.
“I suppose you were frightened of me. Oh, you were very clever. . . . But why should you have been frightened? Because of the name of Sakharani, the ridiculous name that I told you. Because you thought I was drunk? I told you, long ago, that there was more than one way of drunkenness. Ah well, to-night it is a drunken man that you face. Listen to me, how I stammer. How the words will not come. You see, I am drunk . . . burning drunk. You who stand there like a statue, a beautiful statue of snow, can’t the tropics melt you? . . . How long have I waited for this day!”
There came to her a sudden glow of thankfulness that this had not happened on that terrible night and in that strange house. Here, in the homeliness of her own garden, the situation seemed to have lost some of its terror.
And all the time, in the back of her mind, she was wanting to keep him away from the banda in which M‘Crae was lying. She said: “My brother is in the house. If you want him, I will show you the way.”
He would not let her pass.