Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his wrongs, Boulte added—

‘’Seems rather a pity that you haven’t the decency to keep to the woman, now you’ve got her. You’ve been a true friend to her too, haven’t you?’

Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond him.

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner: ‘My wife came over to Mrs. Vansuythen’s just now; and it seems you’d been telling Mrs. Vansuythen that you’d never cared for Emma. I suppose you lied, as usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with you, or you with her? Try to speak the truth for once in a way.’

Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and replied by another question: ‘Go on. What happened?’

‘Emma fainted,’ said Boulte simply. ‘But, look here, what had you been saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?’

Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made havoc of his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the man in whose eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonourable.

‘Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I said pretty much what you’ve said, unless I’m a good deal mistaken.’

‘I spoke the truth,’ said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell. ‘Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.’

‘No! I suppose not. You’re only her husband, y’know. And what did Mrs. Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged heart at her feet?’

Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.

‘I don’t think that matters,’ Boulte replied; ‘and it doesn’t concern you.’

‘But it does! I tell you it does’—began Kurrell shamelessly.

The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte’s lips. Kurrell was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed—laughed long and loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound—the mirthless mirth of these men on the long white line of the Narkarra Road. There were no strangers in Kashima, or they might have thought that captivity within the Dosehri hills had driven half the European population mad. The laughter ended abruptly, and Kurrell was the first to speak.

‘Well, what are you going to do?’

Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. ‘Nothing,’ said he quietly; ‘what’s the use? It’s too ghastly for anything. We must let the old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can’t go on calling you names for ever. Besides which, I don’t feel that I’m much better. We can’t get out of this place. What is there to do?’

Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply. The injured husband took up the wondrous tale.

‘Ride on, and speak to Emma if you want to. God knows I don’t care what you do.’

He walked forward, and left Kurrell gazing blankly after him. Kurrell did not ride on either to see Mrs. Boulte or Mrs. Vansuythen. He sat in his saddle and thought, while his pony grazed by the roadside.