We're in a damned awkward position and really it's no time to be melodramatic."
"You've made up your mind not to understand."
Oh, the pain in her heart, and the fear!
She could have screamed.
"You can't send me to certain death.
If you have no love or pity for me you must have just ordinary human feeling."
"I think it's rather hard on me to put it like that.
As far as I can make out your husband is behaving very generously.
He's willing to forgive you if you'll let him.
He wants to get you away and this opportunity has presented itself to take you to some place where for a few months you'll be out of harm's way.
I don't pretend that Mei-Tan-Fun is a health resort, I never knew a Chinese city that was, but, there's no reason to get the wind up about it.
In fact that's the worst thing you can do.
I believe as many people die from sheer fright in an epidemic as because they get infected."
"But I'm frightened now.
When Walter spoke of it I almost fainted."
"At the first moment I can quite believe it was a shock, but when you come to look at it calmly you'll be all right.
It'll be the sort of experience that not every one has had."
"I thought, I thought…"
She rocked to and fro in an agony.
He did not speak, and once more his face wore that sullen look which till lately she had never known.
Kitty was not crying now.
She was dry-eyed, calm, and though her voice was low it was steady.
"Do you want me to go?"
"It's Hobson's choice,* isn't it?"
"Is it?"
"It's only fair to you to tell you that if your husband brought an action for divorce and won it I should not be in a position to marry you."
It must have seemed an age to him before she answered.
She rose slowly to her feet.
"I don't think that my husband ever thought of bringing an action."
"Then why in God's name have you been frightening me out of my wits?" he asked.
She looked at him coolly.
"He knew that you'd let me down."
She was silent.
Vaguely, as when you are studying a foreign language and read a page which at first you can make nothing of, till a word or a sentence gives you a clue; and on a sudden a suspicion, as it were, of the sense flashes across your troubled wits, vaguely she gained an inkling into the workings of Walter's mind.
It was like a dark and ominous landscape seen by a flash of lightning and in a moment hidden again by the night.
She shuddered at what she saw.
"He made that threat only because he knew that you'd crumple up at it, Charlie.
It's strange that he should have judged you so accurately.
It was just like him to expose me to such a cruel disillusion."
Charlie looked down at the sheet of blotting paper in front of him.
He was frowning a little and his mouth was sulky. But he did not reply.
"He knew that you were vain, cowardly, and self-seeking.
He wanted me to see it with my own eyes.
He knew that you'd run like a hare at the approach of danger.
He knew how grossly deceived I was in thinking that you were in love with me, because he knew that you were incapable of loving any one but yourself.
He knew you'd sacrifice me without a pang to save your own skin."
"If it really gives you any satisfaction to say beastly things to me I suppose I've got no right to complain.
Women always are unfair and they generally manage to put a man in the wrong.
But there is something to be said on the other side."
She took no notice of his interruption.