"We had an agreement before T consented to this course," she reminded him. "I suppose you will not forget it."
"I denied any intention of employing tactics which had already failed to make you see my side." There was a sneer in his voice. "I have, nevertheless, abided by the word of a—no, I'll spare you. You started this conversation, not I."
She relapsed into hopeless silence.
"Do you think I have not suffered too?" he asked, more humanely. "Once, you would have noticed that I am hardly looking as if my own nights were undisturbed."
Then, as she answered nothing, "You had better ask Sterne where he intends to bring up his son that no stigma shall attach to his name in future as he seems persuaded it does to mine."
"You could save yours if you wished," she said, in tired tones. "It is what we are that matters, not what other people think we are."
"You may not be the hypocrite you seem. But as for your reputed brother ..."
"I think, if I were you, I'd leave it at that," Ferlie told him, so significantly that he paused and passed the rest of the sentence off with an unpleasant laugh.
"I don't understand exactly what you remind me of," was his next opening. "Have you, in England, any legends referring to the spirits of trees? We, in Burma, people our mountains and rivers and trees with 'nats,' which are powerfully angelic or demoniac spirits, but the tree-nats are the most popular, I think. I might have painted you as my conception of a Gul Mohur Nat, but, then, you would have had to stand nude among the shadows—hardly visible, but still nude, with the dull golden reflections of the flowers upon your pale skin."
Ferlie looked back steadily into the hard brightness of his eyes.