She had grown very pale, and she put up her hand and smoothed her hair with a helpless, mechanical gesture.
“No, no,” she said—“stop. Let us make an end of it quickly. I was very well content to go on with the lie. I think I should always have been content. But now there is no lie: there is nothing to stand upon any longer. You must get leave, or something, and go away—or I will. I am not—really—very well.”
She looked at him miserably, with twitching lips, and he laid a soothing hand—there was still no one to see—upon her arm.
“Judith, don’t talk of impossibilities. How could we two live in one world—and apart! Those are the heroics of a dear little schoolgirl. You and I are older, and braver.”
She put his hand away with a touch that was a caress, but only said irrelevantly, “And Rhoda Daye might have loved you honestly!”
“Ah, that threadbare old story!” He felt as if she had struck him, and the feeling impelled him to ask her why she thought he deserved punishment. “Not that it hurts,” Mr. Ancram added, almost resentfully.
She gave him a look of vague surprise, and then lapsed, refusing to make the effort to understand, into the troubled depths of her own thought.
“Be a little kind, Judith. I only want a word.”
The south wind brought them a sound out of the darkness—the high, faint, long-drawn sound of a cheer from the Maidan. She lifted her head and listened intently, with apprehensive eyes. Then she rose unsteadily from her seat, and, as he gave her his arm in silence, she stood for a moment gathering up her strength, and waiting, it seemed, for the sound to come again. Nothing reached them but the wilder, nearer wail of the jackals in the streets.
“I must go home,” she said, in a voice that was quite steady; “I must find my husband and go home.”