"I 'm sorry there was a fuss," said Ford uncomfortably. "Old Samson 's such a beggar to make rows."
"He was right," said Kamis; "perfectly right. Only—I didn't need to be told. I 've been cursing myself ever since I heard that the thing had come out. It 's my fault altogether—and I knew it long before the row happened, and I let it go on."
Ford nodded with his eyes on the ground.
"You could hardly—order her off," he said.
"That wasn't it," answered Kamis. "Man, I was as lonely as a man on a raft, and I jumped at the chance of her company now and again. I sacrificed her, I tell you. Don't try to make excuses for me. I won't have them. Go up and see how she is. What are we talking here for?"
"God knows," said Ford drearily. "What else 'is there to do? We 've both wronged her, haven't we?"
There was no change in Margaret; she was as he had left her, pallid and motionless, a temptation to death.
Fat Mary was asleep in the armchair, gross and disgustful, and he woke her with the heel of his slipper on her big splay foot. She squeaked and came to life angrily and reported no movement from Margaret. He had an impulse to hit her, she was so obviously prepared to say anything he seemed to require and she was so little like a woman. It was impossible in reason and sentiment to connect her with the still, fragile form on the bed, and he had to exercise an actual and conscious restraint to refrain from an openhanded smack on her bulging and fatuous countenance. He could only call her wounding names, and he did so. She drooped her lower lip at him piteously and again he yearned to punch her.
There was no change to report to Kamis, who nodded at his account and spoke a perfunctory, "All right. Thanks." The trooper sat in a daze, scowling at his boots; Mrs. Jakes was lost in thought; the doctor had not moved. Ford fidgeted to and fro between the desk and the door for a while and finally went out to the stoep and walked to and fro along its length, trying to realize and to feel what was happening.
He knew that he was not appreciating the matter as a whole. He was like a man dully afflicted, to whom momentary details are present and apparent, while the sum of his trouble is uncomprehended. He could dislike the apprehensive and timidly presumptuous face of the trooper, pity Mrs. Jakes, distaste Mr. Samson's forceful loudness, smell the foulness of the study and wonder at the Kafir; but the looming essential fact that Margaret lay in a swoon on her bed, lacking the aid due to her and in danger of death in a dozen forms—that had been vague and diffused in his understanding. He had not known it passionately, poignantly, in its full dreadfulness.