"She never confessed to me that she knew. She tried to avoid intimacy."
"You ought to have told me yourself!" cried Lance.
"Well, until she engaged herself to you, it was certainly no concern of yours," said Hubert bluntly. "Do you suppose that what you are feeling now is anything like as bad as what I felt about you, when I heard you had carried off the only thing that made life worth living to me?"
Lance paced the room restlessly.
"Is that still the same?" he cried. "Do you still care about her?"
"It's chronic," said Bert calmly. "There's only one woman in my world. She might have Boer relations on every bush for aught I should care. Nothing she could do, nothing anybody could say of her, would make any difference to me."
"But—then—when she's my wife?" stammered Lance.
"When she's—your wife I shall never see her any more," said Bert quietly. "It wouldn't be safe."
"Safe? No! But am I safe now?" cried the young man bitterly. "I don't understand. What is the situation at this moment between you and her?"
Bert folded his arms tight, hunching himself together as if to keep control over his temper.