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Whatever Viola might say, Suzee's letter had seemed to bring her mad resolve to a climax. I took some lunch at the club, and a man I knew came up and spoke to me. "Up in town again, I see," he began, to which I assented. "How's Mrs. Lonsdale?" "Quite well, thank you," I replied. "Is she up with you?" "No." "Coming up soon, I suppose?" "I don't know."
The sound came to me like the hiss of steam close to my ear, but I knew the voice of Hop Lee Hop Lee buried in Sitka, thousands of miles away. The arms in my clutch struggled furiously; in their spasm of muscular effort they tore me upwards from the bed, as the lock of my fingers would not give way. Suzee's voice clamoured in passionate entreaty, unintelligible to me.
Pink, scarlet, rose, and all the shades of blood or flame-colour are familiar in every sunset, but this curious tint seemed to belong to Alaska alone. I watched it glow and deepen, then fade, and softly disappear as the sun dipped below the horizon. The next evening, after dinner, I left the ship and made my way to Suzee's place to take her for the promised walk.
Scarlet was already running in bright ribands over the whiteness of the bed, Suzee's blood and my own. I threw up my left arm and caught his wrist and turned the hand and knife upwards till it pointed to the ceiling, my own arm stretched to the fullest length upright. Suzee gave one horrible cry of terror, animal terror, and then there was silence beside me.
Suzee's letter has only decided me to speak now. I have been meaning to ask you to let me go for some time, only I put it off because I thought you would dislike it so and would feel dull without me. But now, if you let me leave you, you can go to Suzee for a time, and she will amuse and occupy you, and if you want me at the end of the year I will come back."
A hot breath came on my eyes, some face must have been close to mine in the blackness; under my arms, on Suzee's wildly heaving body, I felt something moving, warm and slow and soft, and knew that it was blood. "Suzee," I called to her across her clamour of terrified entreaty, "get a light if you can." The hot breath came nearer. "Devil! Devil! This is your promise, your English word."
Suzee and almond eyes and injured husbands floated away from me on the dark wings of sleep. It must have been an hour or so later that I woke suddenly with a sense of suffocation. Some soft, heavy thing lay across my breast. I started up and two arms clasped my neck and I heard Suzee's voice; saying in my ear: "Treevor, dear Treevor, I have found you!
He was about to impart vigorously his opinion of me when a hasty glance at Suzee's face and my bland look of enquiry stopped him. Instead of addressing us, he wheeled round discomfited and disappeared into his bureau. "Why does that man always look so crossly at you?" enquired Suzee, as we were walking down the passage to our rooms.
The waters were brown and discoloured, but the sun glinting on its ripples turned them into gold, and the tamarisk on the bank drooped over it, letting its long strands float on the gliding water. A little way down the bank, moored to the side, rocked a boat, of which the outline delighted me, and, to Suzee's annoyance, I stood still and drew out my note-book to make a sketch of it.
I waited an hour, gazing out into the amethystine distance, wondering if Suzee's glad, careless, irresponsible little spirit was dancing there in the sunbeams; and then a knock came at the door. I walked to it and said: "Who is there?" I recognised the voice of the administrador in his answer, and unlocked the door and bid him come in. He did so, with an alarmed aspect. "Have you seen the nurse?"
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