In the whole world there is no lash more effective, no vitriol more corrosive than this silence in which men cloak their various infamies.
Everest had been far more outspoken than most men would have been, but he also, as the days went by, seemed to grow more reserved, more silent. A sort of abstraction seemed to enclose him, and often after a day's expedition, in the evening, when they had gone to their own tent—those evenings which formerly had been so dear to her—he would lie down on the camp sofa and fall apparently into a reverie which left him hardly conscious of her presence. Looking at him she could see his face had a pained, abstracted pallor on it. She could not tell of what he was thinking, but she knew that he was desiring another and that she stood between.
And the strain of all this was so great that it seemed to her she must escape from it or go mad. But there was no escape for any of them from each other. Like a lot of hostile animals in a cage, they were shut up together in the camp to quarrel as they chose, and on all sides the sandy waste hemmed them in.
One day she went out a little way from her tent with her easel and colours. She was alone. St John, James and Graham had gone out quite early, and Everest and Sybil, after luncheon, had strolled away together among the palms. She did not know where they had gone, nor did it matter. She never sought to spy upon them or follow them or to see where they went or what they did. The fact that Everest wished to be with the girl was all that mattered. The intense bitterness of this knowledge was so overwhelming that all detail of pain and distress was lost in it.
To-day, left alone in the suffocating heat of midday in the tent, with nothing but her hatred of Sybil, her passion for Everest and her sick misery in the present situation for companion, she felt as if her brain would give way.
She must get out, under the open sky, in the shade of the grove, and perhaps she could lose herself temporarily in some inspiration. She must, in some way, break up the maddening circle of her thoughts. Suppose she lost her reason and killed or injured Everest! The mere thought filled her with cold horror and fear. Never, never, never, whatever he did, however he made her suffer, would she in her sane moments retaliate, never could she hurt or harm this man who had given her so much happiness. But after all the brain is an unstable thing—she would not know what she did if the veil of madness were suddenly drawn over it.
Oppressed by this new thought, she gathered her painting materials together and wandered slowly through her tent door towards the shadiest part of the grove.
There were two palms leaning a little together which caught her eye, and between them a tiny brown tent by a clump of banana-trees, the whole forming a little picture in glowing light and wavering shade, and she dropped down here, weary and heart-sick, putting up her easel and trying to set her mind upon her work.
Her talent was so great that even in that state of pain and suffering her hand obeyed her will almost mechanically, and she soon had the whole sketched in on the paper.
She was just commencing the colouring when she heard voices close to her and quivered and grew deadly pale as she recognised Everest's and its gentle tones.