"I've told her how I feel where she's concerned, and that I care for her as I never cared yet, and never shall care, for anyone else."
The faint grin dawns again on Captain Wrynche's large, kindly, worried face.
"How many times have you met?"
"Only four or five times in all," says Beauvayse. "I'd set eyes on her twice before I was introduced. I couldn't rest for thinking about her. She drew me and drew me.... And when we did meet, there was no strangeness between us, even from the first minute. She just seemed waiting for what I had to own up. And when I spoke, I—I seemed to be only saying what I was meant to say.... From the beginning of the world! And you'd understand better if you'd seen her near——"
"I have seen her in the distance, walking with the Mother-Superior of the Convent. A tall, slight girl. Looks like a lady," says Bingo, "and has jolly hair."
"It's the colour of dead leaves in autumn sunshine or a squirrel's back," raves the boy, "and she's beautiful, Wrynche. My God! so beautiful that your heart stops beating when you look into her face, and nearly jumps out of your body when a fold of her gown brushes against you. And I swear there's no other woman for me in life or death!"
"I shouldn't be in such a cast-iron hurry to swear if I were you," Captain Bingo replies judicially. "And—I've heard you say the same about the others——"
"It was never true before. And she's a lady," pleads Beauvayse hotly. "A lady in manners, and education, and everything. The sort of girl one respects; the sort of girl one can talk to about one's mother and sisters——"
"You'd talk about your mother to a Kaffir washerwoman," Captain Bingo blurts out. "Better you should, than go hanging about a Convent-bred schoolgirl and telling her you'll never care for anybody else, when you've got a legal wife, and, for all you know, a family of twins at home in England."
The footstool, impelled by a scientific lift of Beauvayse's toe, flies to the other end of Nixey's verandah. "Is one mistake to ruin a man's life? I'll get a divorce from my wife. I will, by Heaven!"