I was about to venture some remonstrance, but she would not hear me until we had left the square, and were pacing down a side street.
"What joy this is for me!" she said, as we walked along. "Never did I think on that dreadful morning in Batavia that we two would meet again."
"It isn't your fault that we have," I said bitterly, remembering her treachery. "It wasn't your fault that your evidence didn't bring me to the gallows."
"Oh, Jack, you would not be so cruel as to blame me for that?" she cried. "I could not help myself. If I had not given the evidence I did, I should not have left Batavia alive."
"What do you mean?" I asked, astonished.
"Macklin," she hissed, and her eyes glowed with a sudden fury as her lips dwelt upon his name. "I was his slave, body and soul. I dared not do anything but his will. Oh, Jack, forgive me, forgive me, for I have been so unhappy."
But though she pleaded in this fashion, I was not to be hoodwinked. I had tasted her treachery before, how was I to know that she was not fooling me now? I told her as much, whereupon she withdrew her arm from mine, and made as if she would leave me. Her voice, when she spoke, had a certain pride in it, which I could not understand.
"Say no more; it was foolish of me to have stopped you. I thought, when I saw your face, there might be some little pity for my loneliness. I was mistaken. Good-bye Jack, good-bye."
She held out her little hand to me as though she would leave me there and then, and looking into her eyes—we were just beneath a gas-lamp—I saw that she was crying.
Now, never in my life have I been able to stand the sight of a woman's tears. Crocodile tears though they often are, they have an effect on me which is more than peculiar. I began at once to reproach myself for having been so blunt with her, and was more and more inclined to place credence in her assertion that she was only led to act as she had done by the influence of the Albino.