IV.
That night, as Kineia lay awake, she heard them talking in the room below and once or twice she heard her husband’s voice raised sharply, as if in anger.
Then he came to bed, but not to sleep, and in the morning he was a different man from the man she had always known, heavy-eyed, depressed, and listless.
Packard, on the contrary, seemed more fresh of color and more bright of eye than when he had landed.
He got off immediately after breakfast to see about unloading and taking in cargo, and Lygon sat in the veranda smoking.
Kineia’s heart was heavy. It seemed to her that some blight had come to the island with this stranger, but she said nothing, and for the three succeeding days she said nothing, watching her lord as she might have watched him wilting under the hand of some fatal disease.
Then on the fourth day, when they were alone in the veranda, Kineia, who was at work on some embroidery, suddenly put it aside, got up, and knelt down beside her husband.
“What has that man done to you that you should be like this?” asked Kineia.
Lygon was silent for a moment. Then he spoke.
“Kineia, I am ruined. All this around us is as a dream that must go. Kineia, I killed a man once, in anger. I escaped, but that man Packard was present, and now I have to give him everything or he will tell.”