Nina saw it almost at once and spoke of it. For, the devil being good to him, he had found her at home and alone.
"I knew your nose was out of joint," she said, "but what under the sun has happened to your hip?"
"Oh, yes," he replied, taking the excuse from his hip-pocket and placing it on a table close at hand. "I brought it over for the colonel. He's rather keen about the new safety device and wanted to see it." And he looked a trifle sheepish as he asked: "Does he happen by any chance to be at home?"
"You may thank Heaven he isn't," she answered with a light laugh. "I'm never at my best when he is within hailing distance. And you didn't come to see him. I know that."
Then he looked more sheepish still.
"I dare say you've learned his habits in the last week, and you could have found him at the club, you know," she added.
His laugh was rather mirthless as he said:
"Of course. What's the use of pretending? I saw him go in before I started."
"Then you've forgiven me, I suppose. That is sweet of you."
"It's harder to forgive myself. I feel like a cur."
"I've known some very nice curs."
"But I don't feel like that sort," he insisted. "No, it's the sneaking, thieving mongrel that I – " He broke off suddenly.
She had sat down and he dropped into a chair facing her.
"I'll tell you," he went on. "I've been persuading myself that I owed you an explanation of my continued presence in Umballa and the narrowly averted embarrassment of two days ago. I've been trying to make myself believe that in that and that only lay my reason for wishing to see you again."
"And there was another reason?"
"There was another reason," he admitted. "I wasn't honest with myself. Gad! When a chap isn't honest with himself – "
"All men are like that," she told him. "The higher their ideals the less frankly honest they are with themselves. They just won't admit the old Adam in them."
"I haven't any will," he declared. "I haven't any pride."
She lay back in her chair, pleasantly amused.
"Of course you haven't," she said confidently. "I've taken them from you. It was very wicked of me, wasn't it?"
"Do you do that to – to all of us?" he asked seriously.
"I'm afraid I do," she admitted. "But quite unconsciously. I don't mean to. Oh, I never mean to."
"I've been trying to put you out of my mind, out of my heart. I've been trying to kill my infatuation for you; but I haven't even stunned it. When I thought I had my foot on its neck it went on binding me with stronger chains."
And at that she laughed aloud.
"You're too funny," she said. "When did you think you had the horrid thing down?"
"When I met your husband – and – and liked him."
"You did like him, then?"
"Very much indeed."
"What an odd taste! Those pale eyes of his have an uncanny effect on me. It's something that goes through walls and floors; and it makes me quite vicious. It brings out all the cat in me. I have an irresistible desire to claw and rend."
"It must have followed you all the way to Simla, that last night," said Andrews, dropping into a chair that faced her.
But Nina shook her golden head and her violet eyes slowly narrowed. He observed that in the dusk, for the room was in the semi-gloom of a single, red-shaded lamp in a far corner.
"No" – her voice was very low and purring – "I wasn't in the least catty then. I was sorry for you. I was, really; but it couldn't go on. You can see now that it couldn't go on."
"It might have gone on," he qualified, "if I hadn't met Colonel Darling."
"You seem to forget that I had met him already – am married to him."
"Yes," he said; "but with you it's different. You joy in hurting him; whereas I – why, I'd never have a moment's peace if I did anything that would give him pain. I know I shouldn't."
She pretended to be surprised; though, for some reason, she was not in the least.
"You're an odd boy," she drawled. "You mean that if I were to tell you now that I had changed my mind, and was quite ready to go away with you, you'd beg to be excused?"
He didn't answer at once. Candor bulked large in his character. Now that she put it that way he wished to be very sure. It was not a matter to be decided offhand, with Darling absent and Nina there before him, temptingly precious in the magic witchery of the tinted half-light.
"No, I – I couldn't. I couldn't do him that injury," he declared at length.
"And you swore you loved me?"
"I did. I do. I swear it still," he cried with sudden vehemence.
Nina laughed at his protestation.
"'Not that I loved Cæsar less, but that I loved Rome more,'" she quoted. "Is that it?"
"No, that isn't it," he denied earnestly. "I – "
"You love me a great deal, but you are so fond of Darling that you would not pain him to make us both happy," she interrupted. And the sneer with which she did it cut him to the quick.
"I don't think you've any right to put it that way," he returned.
"I am putting it your way, really," she came back. "It is as plain as the nose on your face. You made the choice between us, and you took a minute or so to make it. You didn't answer on impulse; you answered after calm deliberation. I really don't see, Gerald, how you can argue it otherwise."
"But it wouldn't make you happy," he caught her up. "You've said it wouldn't."
"Did I?" she asked indifferently. "I don't remember."
"You said it would make you miserable; that you'd never care a straw in your life except for one man. You said that you'd married a man you did not love, and that – "
She lifted a slim white hand as if to ward off a blow.
"Don't! Don't!" she cried. "No matter what I said. That was then, and this is now. Besides, I don't always tell the truth. I am not as deliberate as you are, you see. Sometimes I say things on impulse; sometimes I lie with a direct purpose. And then, that night, I was not quite myself, you know. I had had a silly dream and I allowed it to affect me."
He drew his chair nearer and bent forward. He was by no means so sure of himself as he had been a moment before. It was wonderful – those tones in Nina's voice. They swayed his feelings against his better impulses. Her voice had always been her most effective weapon. Even her beauty was secondary to it.
He was conscious that his heart was pounding. It seemed to rise up chokingly with every bound. And so he stammered:
"You – you mean – you – would reconsider?"
"Ah!" she murmured. "I don't know what I mean. Only – "
"Yes, yes," he hurried her. "Only – only – "
She turned her head aside and covered her face with the hand that had checked his arraignment.
"I am so wretched!" It was little more than a whisper.
"No, no," he pleaded. "Nina, I beg of you."
His emotion swept him away, overriding all law, vaulting honor, trampling scruples. The possibility of possession revived, and the pathetic figure of Darling was forgotten.
He reached out for her, clasped her in his long, hungry arms; and, yielding, she let him draw her close to him, her head nestling against his shoulder.
"There, there," he murmured,