"Yes—she went out to see the festival."
"She would like that kind of thing—she is that sort of woman." A spark of passion flashed in her quiet voice. "I always distrusted her. Don't you remember, Owen?"
He nodded. He remembered everything that had ever passed between them. He knew that he could not forget. He did not want to. He hugged his sorrowful happiness close to him. He loved her intensely and purely. He knew that no other human love could ever come into his life, and there was no evil in the knowledge.
It had grown so dark that their faces were white ghostly blanks. A native servant brought in a lighted lamp and set it noiselessly at the far end of the room. Meredith got up slowly.
"I must be clearing," he said. "It's done me good to be with you. You've always understood so wonderfully, Anne."
"I wish I could help you," she answered.
"You have helped me."
Their hands met in a long clasp.
Tristram rode up through the shaggy, unkempt avenue. It was still light enough outside for his amazingness to be apparent to the two standing together on the verandah. He wore his helmet at the back of his tawny, unkempt hair. Three days' stubble was on his chin. He was collarless, and his soiled shirt gaped at the neck. His long legs were out of the stirrups, and dangled absurdly along Arabella's sides. Arabella had grown, if anything, a little leaner and she exhibited her favourite mannerism of trailing her nose when tired of things in general, and camping-out in particular. They were a wonderful pair.
Tristram sang as he rode. His soft, rather hoarse baritone struggled with a translation of the melody that was running through his brain. It failed, and he knew it, but he continued to sing. He had been three days in the open—three days skirting the grey, sombre-flowing river, ploughing through harsh jungle grass and following rough tracts through forests where life lurked and rustled and fled with a hundred distinct, familiar footfalls. For three nights he had camped under the stars. He had seen the moon rise like a silver lamp held aloft by a giant peering down on a sleeping, pigmy land. He had sat under the council-tree and smoked his pipe and listened to the grumbles of the headman, the latest scandal, and many an old legend. He had scolded and bullied and laughed and triumphed. He had touched life again, and regained his grip and his clear vision.