"I saw them off," he continued, "on their slow ulendo to the coast, within a week of that momentous conversation, myself taking in hand the sale of the cattle, the disposal of the farm, the disinterment of the ivory.
But now that they are back in England, do you fancy they have forgotten? Forgetting is not as easy as you happy-ending merchants make out. And the Sinclairs have plenty to forget....
Don't you think that sometimes, in some chance combination of words, Norah hears Dick Ward speak...? Suppose she comes across his friends, his relations.... Sometimes, on nights when she cannot sleep, will not the burden of the guilt she shouldered seem too heavy...?
Archie too. Don't you think he ever sees a face, a face that is partly eaten away by a hyæna, a face on which he is raking the wet earth? When Norah whistles—it is a habit of hers—doesn't he see her saunter into that sunlit clearing and watch the light die in her eyes as she recognises him?"
Ross began ponderously to pace the deck, his bulk visible against the eastern sky. I fell into step beside him.
"The Come-back of the Erring Wife isn't as simple as it looks at the end of Reel Five," he said. "Those silver-haired husbands with wistful faces, whose lines are caressed by the glow of the dying fire, as they lay a hand of forgiveness on the girl wife's golden head, they aren't found in every home.
Still Norah stood a fair chance with Archie. He always thought for himself and never accepted as gold the counters that pass for ideas. He would grant, I fancy, that courage may be as valuable a feature in a wife as chastity."
"Who was it said that purity is the bull point of the plain woman?" Ross asked me.
I did not reply. It sounded to me much like Ross.
"Well, there's something in it," he resumed. "Why do men love the memories of the fair and frail and forget good wives and mothers? Why will Queen Cleopatra's fame increase when Queen Victoria is forgotten?" He paused and seemed to expect an answer. I said something about Shakespeare.