While she clung to him, and he held her in all the fervour of his re-awakened love, she must have believed the message he had read was still in her keeping.
The sordid duplicity, the rank treachery of it seared and scorched.
Forgetful of the sleeping man whom he was there to watch, forgetful of everything save the bitterness of his betrayal, he paced the floor with rapid, raging steps.
He had been fooled, heartlessly, callously fooled. The bitterest thoughts he had ever had of her were all too gentle in the face of this final revelation. She was false to her finger-tips, a syren in cunning, a viper in venom.
At the door of the hut he stopped to stand staring out into the dark in the direction whither she had gone.
The last echo of the click-clock of Gale's trotting horses had died away; the bush lay mysterious and motionless under the silent veil of night; no sound came to him save the heavy breathing of the wounded man asleep in the hut; but through his brain, with the deadening monotony of numbing drumbeats, there throbbed the mocking, taunting words, "Fooled! Fooled! Fooled!"