She was very pale.
XXVIII
THEY were reaching their destination at last.
They were borne in chairs, day after day, along a narrow causeway between interminable rice-fields.
They set out at dawn and travelled till the heat of the day forced them to take shelter in a wayside inn and then went on again till they reached the town where they had arranged to spend the night.
Kitty's chair headed the procession and Walter followed her; then in a straggling line came the coolies that bore their bedding, stores, and equipment.
Kitty passed through the country with unseeing eyes.
All through the long hours, the silence broken only by an occasional remark from one of the bearers or a snatch of uncouth song, she turned over in her tortured mind the details of that heart-rending scene in Charlie's office.
Recalling what he had said to her and what she had said to him, she was dismayed to see what an arid and businesslike turn their conversation had taken.
She had not said what she wanted to say and she had not spoken in the tone she intended.
Had she been able to make him see her boundless love, the passion in her heart, and her helplessness, he could never have been so inhuman as to leave her to her fate.
She had been taken unawares.
She could hardly believe her ears when he told her, more clearly than with words, that he cared nothing for her.
That was why she had not even cried very much, she had been so dazed.
She had wept since, wept miserably.
At night in the inns, sharing the principal guest chamber with her husband and conscious that Walter, lying on his camp bed, a few feet away from her, lay awake, she dug her teeth in the pillow so that no sound might escape her.
But in the daytime, protected by the curtains of her chair, she allowed herself to give way.
Her pain was so great that she could have screamed at the top of her voice; she had never known that one could suffer so much; and she asked herself desperately what she had done to deserve it.
She could not make out why Charlie did not love her: it was her fault, she supposed, but she had done everything she knew to make him fond of her.
They had always got on so well, they laughed all the time they were together, they were not only lovers but good friends.
She could not understand; she was broken.
She told herself that she hated and despised him; but she had no idea how she was going to live if she was never to see him again.
If Walter was taking her to Mei-Tan-Fun as a punishment he was making a fool of himself, for what did she care now what became of her?
She had nothing to live for any more.
It was rather hard to be finished with life at twenty-seven.
XXIX
ON the steamer that took them up the Western River Walter read incessantly, but at meal-times he endeavoured to make some kind of conversation.
He talked to her as though she were a stranger with whom he happened to be making the journey, of indifferent things, from politeness, Kitty imagined, or because so he could render more marked the gulf that separated them.
In a flash of insight she had told Charlie that Walter had sent her to him with the threat of divorce as the alternative to her accompanying him to the stricken city in order that she might see for herself how indifferent, cowardly, and selfish he was.
It was true. It was a trick which accorded very well with his sardonic humour.
He knew exactly what would happen and he had given her amah necessary instructions before her return.
She had caught in his eyes a disdain which seemed to include her lover as well as herself.
He said to himself, perhaps, that if he had been in Townsend's place nothing in the world would have hindered him from making any sacrifice to gratify her smallest whim.
She knew that was true also.
But then, when her eyes were opened, how could he make her do something which was so dangerous, and which he must know frightened her so terribly?
At first she thought he was only playing with her and till they actually started, no, later, till they left the river and took to the chairs for the journey across country, she thought he would give that little laugh of his and tell her that she need not come.
She had no inkling of what was in his mind.
He could not really desire her death. He had loved her so desperately.
She knew what love was now and she remembered a thousand signs of his adoration.
For him really, in the French phrase, she did make fine weather and foul.
It was impossible that he did not love her still.
Did you cease to love a person because you had been treated cruelly?
She had not made him suffer as Charlie had made her suffer and yet, if Charlie made a sign, notwithstanding everything, even though she knew him now, she would abandon all the world had to offer and fly to his arms.
Even though he had sacrificed her and cared nothing for her, even though he was callous and unkind, she loved him.
At first she thought that she had only to bide her time, and sooner or later Walter would forgive her.
She had been too confident of her power over him to believe that it was gone for ever.
Many waters could not quench love. He was weak if he loved her, and she felt that love her he must.
But now she was not quite sure.
When in the evening he sat reading in the straight-backed blackguard chair of the inn with the light of a hurricane lamp on his face she was able to watch him at her ease.
She lay on the pallet on which her bed presently would be set and she was in shadow.