‘To my particular friends. Let’s walk on; we can’t chat here very well.’
‘What is to prevent me from calling that policeman and giving you in charge?’ she asked, looking into his face with a strange mixture of curiosity and anger.
‘Nothing, except that you have no charge to make against me. The law isn’t so obliging as all that. Come, we’ll take a walk.’
She moved along by his side.
‘You coward!’ she exclaimed, passionately but with none of the shrieking virulence of women who like to make a scene in the street. ‘You mean, contemptible, cold-blooded man! I suppose you hoped I was starved to death by this time, or in the workhouse, or—what did you care where I was! I knew I should find you some day.’
‘I rather supposed you would stay on the other side of the water,’ Rodman remarked, glancing at her. ‘You’re changed a good deal. Now it’s a most extraordinary thing. Not so very long ago I was dreaming about you, and you were serving at a bar—queer thing, wasn’t it?’
They were walking towards Whitehall. When they came at length into an ill-lighted and quiet spot, the woman stopped.
‘Where do you live?’ she asked.
‘Live? Oh, just out here in Pimlico. Like to see my rooms?’
‘What do you mean by talking to me like that? Do you make a joke of deserting your wife and child for seven years, leaving them without a penny, going about enjoying yourself, when, for anything you knew, they were begging their bread? You always were heartless—it was the blackest day of my life that I met you; and you ask me if I’d like to see your rooms! What thanks to you that I’m not as vile a creature as there is in London? How was I to support myself and the child? What was I to do when they turned me into the streets of New York because I couldn’t pay what you owed them nor the rent of a room to sleep in? You took good care you never went hungry. I’d only one thing to hold me up: I was an honest woman, and I made up my mind I’d keep honest, though I had such a man as you for my husband. I’ve hungered and worked, and I’ve made a living for myself and my child as best I could. I’m not like you: I’ve done nothing to disgrace myself. Now I will slave no more. You won’t run away from me this time. Leave me for a single night, and I go to the nearest police-station and tell all I know about you. If I wasn’t a fool I’d do it now. But I’ve hungered and worked for seven years, and now it’s time my husband did something for me.’