"Unless you changed your mind—refused."
"Mr Dorrien's sister is my only friend in Bombay. If I refuse—leave her house—I shall be alone. I shall be helpless when Mrs Willis and you are gone."
A light hand, hot and feverish, shot its flame through his thin coat sleeve. He shivered.
"That is what I am coming to. Stand away from me—do not look at me—I want to say something which sticks very hard."
He shrank back into deeper shadow. There was horrible stillness. She stood transfixed, chilling, as Lot's wife must have stood when crystal after crystal replaced the warm and buoyant rivulets of being.
"Elsie—I may call you that just once—you must not refuse. If you do, you will be without any friendship but mine—and my friendship would be worse than deadliest enmity. The reason you must have guessed. It has kept me tongue-tied till now—a coward, a blackguard, some might say. The reason is because"—his voice blurred hoarsely through a strangled sob—"because I am married already."
A convulsive gasp from her—scarcely audible—no word.
He clutched at a rail and resumed almost grimly, cauterising his gaping wound with reality's searing iron,
"My wife is in a sanatorium, mentally deranged. A virtuous woman, but she was wedded to mysticism and morphia, and loved me never a bit."
The fall of pitiful tears, tears from the sweet blue of her guileless eyes, came hissing against the red-hot cicatrice. His strength almost failed. Such innocence, such loneliness needed protection. But his! This man who had brought down wild beasts in the open, found deadlier tussle in the confines of his brain. He quavered—his firm jaws clenched. Reason is muscular, but nature is subtle and crafty. With a jerk, a twist, reason is overthrown, but it takes time and heart's blood to stretch nature prone and panting.