“Dorrien had a little sense left. He began at once. ‘I’ve got a case of conscience to put to you, Hoyting.’ Even then I hoped I could stave it off.
“‘Conscience is a local matter,’ I answered; ‘territoriality of law. Don’t appeal to me. I’m an outsider.’
“‘Aren’t we all in Soerabaya together?’ Her voice rasped its way in.
“‘Yes; but I hope you don’t mean to decide anything according to Soerabaya.’
“‘Do you really think at the moment we’re capable of doing otherwise?’ She had me there: it was the mean truth. We weren’t. That reeking heat would decide for us. I don’t think she had meant him to appeal to me, but I fancy she didn’t mind. If he hadn’t done it, she would have. It was inevitable.
“Dorrien went on: ‘I had a letter when the mails came in two days ago, offering me a big post. Agatha and I don’t agree about it.’
“‘You don’t think it big enough?’ I was so relieved that I thought I could speak lightly—Heaven forgive my folly! If it was just some little feud of their ambitions, they’d be all right as soon as they were off the land. But her face didn’t relax.
“‘He has been offered the chance of exiling himself on Molokai with eight hundred lepers.’ She had brought the jangling tones into a kind of ironic gamut. ‘That is the kingdom he is offered. And he thinks—my God! he wants to go!’ She broke down utterly and wept, great sobs, like a man’s, coming up from her chest and shaking her frail body. Women don’t usually cry that way; there’s trouble in it when they do.
“‘But he isn’t going.’ It was only decent to comfort her. ‘You say you are sailing for Europe.’
“Dorrien did not speak. Her sobs slowed gradually. She was making a terrible effort for the power to speak coherently, to get in her arguments, her pleas, her threats. I suppose I was her last dim substitute for public opinion. She was trying to bring the world to bear on him in Soerabaya, and there was only I to be the world.