“Curse it all! Why not?” he asked. “Are you ill, or are you going into a nunnery?”
She turned round upon him.
“No; for a better reason than either. Because a woman can’t have two husbands. Rupert is alive.”
Dick’s rage vanished, his jaw fell and his face went white. “How do you know that?” he asked.
“Because I have seen him here. He came not much more than an hour after you had left that Sunday, on the 31st of December.”
“You mean your dream,” he said.
“No, I mean Rupert in flesh and blood, with his foot cut off and his eye burnt out.”
“Then where is he now?” asked Dick, looking round as though he expected to see him emerge from behind the curtain.
“I don’t know, I haven’t an idea. He may be in England, or he may be in Egypt, or he may be at the bottom of the sea. We—don’t correspond.”
“I think you had better tell me all the truth if you can,” said Dick grimly. “It will be best for both of us.”