She insisted that they should come moderately clean to the dining tent and that the conversation at dinner should not be upon wounding and crippling, death agonies and blinded eyes and mangling shots, and as Everest backed her up in this they had to submit.
Immediately after dinner she withdrew to her own tent, leaving them to their smoking and brandy-drinking and their talk of blood and death. And sitting there alone, she could hear the soft tinkle of the guitar and the pretty girlish voice singing love songs under the palms where Sybil had gone, and where Everest, wearied also by the drinking, smoking and conversation in which he did not care to take a part, had followed her. How she suffered! Like a bodily illness, the sickness of jealousy seems to diffuse paralysing pain throughout the whole system.
Yet after that hour, or sometimes half-an-hour, of misery, when Everest himself came to the tent, and raising the door flap stepped inside, she rose to meet him with a smile and waves of intense happiness vibrated through her as her eyes took in his image. The sight of him, his presence near her had still that same tremendous power over her that it had had from the first. The sharp contrast that he presented to the other men they were now with seemed to heighten still further the effect upon her senses. When he came in, pale and calm as usual, his clear skin fresh and cool from the outside air, his dark eyes full of fire, and approached her, willing to kiss and caress her, she knew she must forgive him everything, she wanted and desired him too much to do anything else. How different he seemed from the thick-skinned, burnt-faced, heavy-eyed men she had left in the dining tent, flushed with over-eating and drinking, soaked through with the scent of tobacco and brandy and of old blood on their clothes and of grease and mud on their shooting boots. Had they been models of fidelity and all the domestic virtues she would not have let one kiss her, hardly to save her life, so violently did they in themselves outrage her æsthetic sense, but by Everest, if she were mentally hurt and wounded, yet the physical compensations in himself were so overwhelming that she could not do otherwise than go on loving him, through all her suffering. Everest never came to her in the condition—dirty, untidy, smoky, semi-fuddled—that these men seemed to live in, if, indeed, he was ever in that condition at all, which seemed impossible in connection with him. The order and beauty of his rooms that had so intensified her love for him when she surprised him in London seemed always to be part of his person, his clothes, his atmosphere. Without ever in the least seeming to care about his dress or be conscious of his looks, he always seemed to be clean, well-attired, fresh, alert-eyed, as an officer going on parade.
And often in those night vigils, when the bitter gall of jealousy had risen to the brim of her nature and anger burnt in all her veins and a torrent of lava-like words waited on her tongue, and her brain seethed with madness, when he really came to her, all possible reproaches slipped from her mind; she felt only inclined to fall upon her knees before him, as a slave girl before an emperor, and tell him how much she worshipped him.
As she sat now looking into the golden haze of the distance, which reddened softly as the sunset hour approached, she saw the light veils of dust rising which meant the nearing of the home-coming party, and she rose and retreated into her own tent. She guessed that Sybil and Everest would be riding together and she did not wish to see it. She found that when she did not actually see them together she suffered less. She knew with her reason that much of what so hurt her senses, looks, smiles, tones, even caresses, from a man of his nature, really meant very little, and therefore when her eyes and ears were not pained by them she was less disturbed. Behind these two would come the three sportsmen, and then all the horrid procession of limp, blood-covered bodies, masses of beautiful dead birds carried along by the troop of servants. That she did not wish to see either. So she retreated into the shadow and shelter of her tent and pulled down the door flap, knowing that Everest would come in when Sybil had dismounted and gone to her tent, and the three men with their spoils and their attendants had disappeared to the gun-room tent at the back.
She set her rifle in the corner after unloading it and slipped off her belt of cartridges, as it is hardly a comfortable adjunct to one's clothing in a close embrace, and while she did so she heard all the noise without of the return, the snuffing of the camels, the barking of dogs, the chatter of the natives, the dragging of the heavy antelope on the sand, and the scent of blood and dust came to her nostrils through all the chinks of the tent.
She waited some time, but Everest did not come, and the sounds subsided outside. As all grew quiet again, she lifted a little window flap that was at one side of the tent and looked out into the green shade of the palm. Her heart gave a great bound and then seemed to stand still and tremble as a stricken deer. They were standing there, not twenty yards away, Sybil and Everest, their hands in each other's, apparently about to part. The girl's fair, pale face lifted to his showed distinctly against the deep shadow behind her.
Regina looked at Everest, and a sudden fury like the hot smoke of a fire rose over all her brain. A panting thirst after something not defined stirred in all her blood, and then came the query, like a voice in a dream: "Why not end this? Why not kill her?" She could do it so easily now as she stood there, a perfect mark for Regina, who could pierce a cactus leaf through the exact centre at twenty yards. She was very near to Everest, it was true, but Regina knew her aim so well—that calm white oval against the green. She could send a shot from her pistol out of the tent that would find it and shatter it for ever.
Without knowing it, in that instant of frightful jealous rage, her feet had carried her across the tent, her fingers had clasped her pistol and drawn it from her belt. Swift and silent as a shadow she was back at the little window; they were still there, nearer each other, that was all. She cocked the revolver and aimed it so that she covered the delicate and perfect carving of that pale disk beneath the trees. Then her true self woke suddenly and rushed upon her, and her hand dropped to her side.
How mad, how foolish her impulse had been! Better turn the pistol on herself than that. Death was far better than to live dishonoured, burdened with the blood of another. Sybil had injured her enough already. She should not turn her into a murderess; besides, death or injury to Sybil meant suffering for Everest, and in her wildest moments she had no wish to cause him pain or distress. To her, an object once loved was sacred. No faintest thought of revenge on him ever came near her mind.