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To that relationship then he and she were bound for the rest of his stay in the Resident's camp. Mrs. Repton had been wrong when she had attributed Thresk's request for a formal introduction to Ballantyne to a plan already matured in his mind. He had no plan, although he formed one before that dinner was at an end.
You came because of that one weak soft spot of sentimentalism there is in all of you, the strongest, the hardest. You are strong for years. You live alone for years. Then comes the sentimental moment and it's we who suffer, not you." And deep in Thresk's mind was the terror of the mistakes people make in ignorance of each other, and of the mortal hurt the mistakes inflict. He had misread Stella.
But Stella sat mutely at his side. Some struggle was taking place in her and was reflected in her countenance. Thresk's eager joy was damped. "No, my friend," she said at length, slowly and very deliberately. "It was not an accident." "But you fired in fear." Thresk caught now at that alternative. "You shot in self-defence. Stella, I blundered at Bombay." He moved away from her in his agitation.
Yes, he was shot on the same night you dined there after you had gone." "Shot!" Thresk's voice dropped to a whisper. "Yes," and the dull quiet voice went on, speaking apparently of some trivial affair in which none of them could have any interest. "He was shot by a bullet from a little rook-rifle which belonged to Stella, and which she was in the habit of using." Thresk's heart stood still.
No answer was returned to him for a few moments and then it was Repton himself who spoke. "Yes, yes," he said, and he got up from the sofa. "I think we had better have some light," he added in a strange indifferent voice. He turned the light on in the central chandelier, leaving the corners of the room in shadow, like the parallel forced its way into Thresk's mind like the tent in Chitipur.
I have clients waiting for me in London." "You missed it on purpose," she declared and Thresk's face relaxed into a smile. He turned away from the window to her. He seemed suddenly to wear the look of a boy. "I have the best of excuses," he replied, "the perfect excuse." But even he could not foresee how completely that excuse was to serve him. "Sit down," said Jane Repton, "and tell me.
But just behind Ballantyne, on a sideboard against the wall of the tent opposite to that wall where the writing-table stood, he noticed a syphon of soda, a decanter of whisky and a long glass which was not quite empty. He looked at Ballantyne curiously and as he looked he saw him start and stare with wide-opened eyes into the dim corners of the tent. Ballantyne had forgotten Thresk's presence.
That I told it again this afternoon to give you a chance of slipping out from an impossible position." She looked at Thresk for a moment in terror. Then her expression changed. A wave of relief swept over her; she laughed in Thresk's face. "You are trying to frighten me," she said. "Only I know you.
Merely to have known that you really wanted me!" She would never have taken that rifle from the corner and searched for the cartridges, that she might kill herself! Whether she had consented or not to go away and ruin Thresk's future she would have had a little faith wherewith to go on and face the world. If she had only known!
Yet she had spoken, after all, no more indifferently than Repton was speaking now; and he was in a great stress of grief. Then Thresk's mind leaped to the weak point in all this chain of presumption. "But Ballantyne was found outside the tent," he cried with a little note of triumph. But it had no echo in Repton's reply. "I know. That makes everything so much worse." "What do you mean?"
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