“Oh, yes, I got that all right. I’m not playing the jealous husband. Charlotte’s all right; so are you, for that matter. What I’d like to have explained is this compromise talk.”
Charlotte raised her eyes to his. A leaden pain seemed to make them heavy and spiritless.
“You don’t need explanations, Martin,” she said. “Would to Heaven you did; though I’d tear my tongue out by the roots before I would give them, if you really did.”
“I guess I gathered the point,” Martin replied bitterly. “There isn’t much to be said. It makes a thousand things that have mystified me plain as day. You’ve deceived me. You’ve played a nasty part. It does you small credit.”
Kingsnorth started to move away. “You needn’t go,” Martin said, “I don’t see any reason to be sensitive about discussing this thing before you. You seemed to be admitted to things before I was.”
“I learned what my eyes and wits told me. I give you my word of honor that until to-night Mrs. Collingwood and I have never spoken of you or of your and her private affairs. What she said to me was in self-defence and only to parry an insistence that I sincerely regret.” He turned toward Charlotte appealingly, but she made a fierce little movement as if to wave away anything apologetic he might say.
“It must have been a damned interesting comedy,” Martin went on, the words stinging like sleet.
“Stop!” cried Charlotte. She put up a hand. “I have never deceived you, Martin. If you recall the day on which you left the hospital, and on which you came to me and asked me to marry you, you will remember that I spelt out with almost painful distinctness the things which have been alluded to to-night. You simply refused to listen to them. You would not understand. Every word fell on deaf ears.”
“Well, they’re sensitive enough now, I understand the situation. You’ve simply reversed the squawman act. You wanted a home and somebody to love you, and you took what you could get, not what you wanted. And you said to yourself that it did not matter, for you never expected to go home, and you wouldn’t have to show me to your friends. That’s all very fine, from the squawman’s view-point. It’s practical. But by the living God I’m no squaw, to be content with my position! You’re not proud of me, I see. Damnation! do you think I’ll live with you, or any woman that walks the earth, on those terms?”
There was an instant’s silence. Collingwood somewhat relieved by his own violence, glared at the woman, who, up to that hour, had never known less than tenderness from him. Kingsnorth stood bowed with shame and repentance. For an instant Charlotte’s frozen glance met her husband’s. Then with an unconscious gesture she laid one hand on her constricted throat, and, turning, took the path across the grove. Her white figure moved so lightly that they could not realize the difficulty with which she walked. But as the shadows of the tall cocoanut trees closed around her, she grasped a slender bole with both arms and leaned against it, panting. Nausea swept over her. Despair, humiliation, hopelessness weighed her down. Her knees trembled beneath her, and with a little moan, too soft to reach the ears of the two men, who remained motionless, she sank at the foot of the tree.