“The poor fool is dead,” he answered. “And he left for you, my dear lady, this dying message: that, from the bottom of his soul, he was sorry for the wrong he had done you. He asked you to forgive him—and forget him.”
“The year appears to be opening unfortunately for me,” said the woman. “First my lover, then my husband.”
He had nerved himself to fight the living. This was a blow from the dead. The man had been his friend.
“Dead?”
“He was killed, it appears, in that last expedition in July,” answered the woman. “I received the news from the Foreign Office only a fortnight ago.”
An ugly look came into his eyes—the look of a cornered creature fighting for its life. “Why have you followed me here? Why do I find you here alone with her? What have you told her?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders. “Only the truth.”
“All the truth?” he demanded—“all? Ah! be just. Tell her it was not all my fault. Tell her all the truth.”
“What would you have me tell her? That I played Potiphar’s wife to your Joseph?”
“Ah, no! The truth—only the truth. That you and I were a pair of idle fools with the devil dancing round us. That we played a fool’s game, and that it is over.”