"But it was she who was guilty——"
"I know—but if I could have gone to prison in her stead, God knows I'd have gone—willingly. Things are so different for men. When I think of her, the little, soft, fragile thing I married, shut up alone in a cell, wearing prison garments, eating rough prison food, being ordered about by harsh, domineering women, why, I almost curse myself that I am free to walk about under God's blue sky!"
"Shall you go back to London—when she is free?"
"I don't know—I don't know," he said rather drearily. "I let the house at once—gave it up at the next quarter, and our things are stored. I wanted to get away from it all, so I came down here and took the bungalow, but of course it won't suit Eva."
"Couldn't you—change your name?"
"That's done already," he said. "Just after the trial an uncle obligingly died and left me nine thousand pounds on the understanding I should take his name; so I did, of course, and turned myself from James Vyse into James Herrick."
"Then no one will know?"
"No. But this life, this vagabond river life that both you and I love, wouldn't suit Eva very long. No, I'm afraid we shall have to seek some 'city of bricks and mortar'—but even my wife won't be keen on London, and it's the only city one can live in properly."
While he talked, the rain had ceased; and he rose as he spoke the last words.
"Well, Mrs. Rose, I've showed you the skeleton in my cupboard—and he's a pretty grisly object, isn't he? But I don't want to depress you with a recital of my woes. After all, life's sweet, sister—and you and I, thanks be to God, have the soul of the gipsy within us, which is made quite happy, poor feckless thing, by the sight of the sun or the music of the breeze!"