The party received it in stony silence, and Dr Macphail quickly effaced from his lips the smile which had come upon them. He knew his wife would be vexed with him if he found Miss Thompson's effrontery amusing.
They finished the meal in silence. When it was over the two ladies got up and took their work, Mrs Macphail was making another of the innumerable comforters which she had turned out since the beginning of the war, and the doctor lit his pipe. But Davidson remained in his chair and with abstracted eyes stared at the table. At last he got up and without a word went out of the room. They heard him go down and they heard Miss Thompson's defiant "Come in" when he knocked at the door. He remained with her for an hour. And Dr Macphail watched the rain. It was beginning to get on his nerves. It was not like our soft English rain that drops gently on the earth; it was unmerciful and somehow terrible; you felt in it the malignancy of the primitive powers of nature. It did not pour, it flowed. It was like a deluge from heaven, and it rattled on the roof of corrugated iron with a steady persistence that was maddening. It seemed to have a fury of its own. And sometimes you felt that you must scream if it did not stop, and then suddenly you felt powerless, as though your bones had suddenly become soft; and you were miserable and hopeless.
Macphail turned his head when the missionary came back. The two women looked up.
"I've given her every chance. I have exhorted her to repent. She is an evil woman."
He paused, and Dr Macphail saw his eyes darken and his pale face grow hard and stern.
"Now I shall take the whips with which the Lord Jesus drove the usurers and the money changers out of the Temple of the Most High."
He walked up and down the room. His mouth was close set, and his black brows were frowning.
"If she fled to the uttermost parts of the earth I should pursue her."
With a sudden movement he turned round and strode out of the room. They heard him go downstairs again.
"What is he going to do?" asked Mrs Macphail.