'You haven't unpacked.'
'No.'
'Why on earth not?'
'I'm not going to unpack.
I'm not going to stay here.
I'm leaving you.'
'What are you talking about?'
'I've stuck it out till now.
I made up my mind I would till we got home.
I set my teeth, I've borne more than I thought it possible to bear, but now it's finished.
I've done all that could be expected of me.
We're back in London now and I can go.'
He looked at her in utter bewilderment.
'Are you mad, Anne?'
'Oh, my God, what I've endured!
The journey to Singapore, with all the officers knowing, and even the Chinese stewards.
And at Singapore, the way people looked at us at the hotel, and the sympathy I had to put up with, the bricks they dropped and their embarrassment when they realized what they'd done.
My God, I could have killed them.
That interminable journey home.
There wasn't a single passenger on the ship who didn't know.
The contempt they had for you and the kindness they went out of their way to show me.
And you so self-complacent and so pleased with yourself, seeing nothing, feeling nothing.
You must have the hide of a rhinoceros.
The misery of seeing you so chatty and agreeable.
Pariahs, that's what we were.
You seemed to ask them to snub you.
How can anyone be so shameless?'
She was flaming with passion.
Now that at last she need not wear the mask of indifference and pride that she had forced herself to assume she cast aside all reserve and all self-control.
The words poured from her trembling lips in a virulent stream.
'My dear, how can you be so absurd?' he said good-naturedly, smiling.
'You must be very nervous and high-strung to have got such ideas in your head.
Why didn't you tell me?
You're like a country bumpkin who comes to London and thinks everyone is staring at him.
Nobody bothered about us and if they did what on earth did it matter?
You ought to have more sense than to bother about what a lot of fools say.
And what do you imagine they were saying?'
'They were saying you'd been fired.'
'Well, that was true,' he laughed.
'They said you were a coward.'
'What of it?'
'Well, you see, that was true too.'
He looked at her for a moment reflectively.
His lips tightened a little.
'And what makes you think so?' he asked acidly.
'I saw it in your eyes, that day the news came, when you refused to go to the estate and I followed you into the hall when you went to fetch your topi.
I begged you to go, I felt that whatever the danger you must take it, and suddenly I saw the fear in your eyes.
I nearly fainted with the horror.'
'I should have been a fool to risk my life to no purpose.
Why should I?