drift
with the tide while looking for a means of escape from his intolerable
position.

"Do you mean that?" she asked with whitening lips.

"I think it is the only thing to do," he replied.

"If you say that for my sake, then I might just as well be frank. You
know I love you, Ray Meredith, and I believe you love me, only you have
never quite let yourself go, for some hidden reason--possibly your
career? It can't be consideration for that bloodless and callous
creature, your wife? I refuse to believe that you have any feeling for a
woman who has placed her child before her husband and is content to live
apart from him when she knows that men are but human after all! Your
career is safe. A man's private life is his own affair. If we throw in
our lot together, we can after the divorce marry and live happily ever
after, as the good little story books tell us in the nursery." She
laughed tenderly. "My husband will gladly have done with me, for I can
tell who it is he wants. I paid a stolen visit to his bungalow at
Muktiarbad and snapshots of her live all about him in his den. Can I
tolerate the position I shall occupy in his house, knowing all the while
it has been flung at me like a bone to a dog? If he could marry her
tomorrow he would; only she isn't the sort, I am told, who would take
him unless I am dead! Now, this is frankness indeed!"

Meredith was silent.

"Can't you speak?"

"I have spoken."

"And is that all?" she cried passionately, creeping nearer, her dark
eyes compelling his surrender. "Don't you know that all Darjeeling is
talking of us? That, for your sake, people are treating me abominably
while they smile kindly on you? I am only a woman, therefore may be
crushed. My God!--and you would turn me down, like a 'page' for 'good'!"

"Perhaps I should not put it like that," he said nervously as he trifled
with Captain Dalton's letter to his wife, and allowed it to fall to the
floor. His cigarette case suggested comfort and was drawn forth as a
diversion.

"Put it as you like, it is rather a knock-out blow for me!"

"Say, rather, that it is a mercy things have not gone too far, and that
you can accept your husband's 'sporting' offer with a clear--a
clear"--_conscience_ was scarcely a suitable word. He was certain she
had smothered it long ago.

"Oh, damn my husband! I want nothing to do with him since knowing you!
Ray, old dear, have you ceased to love me?--I don't believe it!" She
flung her arms a