'I love her,' he muttered, as he replaced his gun on the nails above the chimney-piece, 'but yet I hate her. My very heart is like Grimshoe with love and hate warring together, and neither gets the mastery. I could clasp her to my breast, but I could tear out her heart with my nails, because it will not love me.' He rocked himself in his seat savagely, and his breath came fast: 'We must work the riddle out between us. We can get no help, no light from any others; she and I, and I and she, are each other's best friends and worst foes.'
A firm hand was on the door, it was thrown open, and in the grey light stood Mehalah.
'Where have you been?' asked Elijah, hardly able to speak, so agitated with fury and disappointed love was he.
'I have been,' she said composedly, 'on the Ray, sitting there and dreaming of the past.'
'Of the past!' shouted Rebow. 'You have been dreaming of George?'
'Yes, I have.'
'I thought it, I knew you were,' he yelled. 'Come here, my wife.'
'I am not your wife. I never will be your wife, except in name. I told you so. I can not, and I will not love you. I can not, and I will not, be aught to you but a housekeeper, a servant. I have taken your name to save mine, that is all.'
'That is all because you love George De Witt.'
'George De Witt is dead.'