"No."
"It suits me, doesn't it? That's the difference between us. I'm in my natural element. Will you take me back, Major Tristram? I came out for a breath of fresh air and to escape Mrs. Boucicault. Mrs. Boucicault asked me to dance. I think she fancied it would be a good method of rehabilitating me in the eyes of outraged Gaya. But I didn't want to. What's the use of marrying if you have to go on working for your living?"
He walked silently beside her. He did not know this woman with the hard voice—he felt that she did not want him to know her. Her hand rested lightly on his arm. He looked at it. It was like alabaster on the red sleeve. "We're going to be married shortly," she went on. "Mr. Meredith is trying to refuse his services. He doesn't approve. He wants us to leave Gaya. It's so absurdly Christian, isn't it? My husband's business will be in Gaya and I like the place——" They had turned the curve of the path and came within sight of the softly-lit garden. They could see shadows of the dancers gliding through Mrs. Boucicault's rooms to the rhythm of the latest American distortion. Little groups had gathered round the tables on the verandah and there was much laughter and the subdued clinking of glasses. The Chinese lanterns shone like bright warm eyes amid the trees.
Sigrid stood still an instant. He heard her draw a deep, unsteady breath. "How gay it all is—fairy-like! One can scarcely believe that there is such a thing as reality. Perhaps there isn't. Mrs. Boucicault is a daring hostess. It requires nerve to dance with a dead husband in the house."
It occurred to him then to tell her what he had just discovered. He held back. He was afraid of troubling the surface of their relationship. They did not know one another. The man and woman who had faced each other that night in Heerut belonged to a different life. They were shadows—or had become shadows.
"By the way, Major Tristram, what has happened to the Wickie Memorial? Is he still among the living?"
"He lives and rejoices in the name of Richard," he answered lightly.
"Do you sometimes let him out of the compound?" she asked.
He did not answer her at once. Her voice had sounded casual enough, and yet he knew that there had been something deliberate in her words—a deliberate desire to hurt, to thrust down through his seeming tranquillity to a raw and open wound.
"How did you know?" he asked curtly.