"I left him at Pretoria," she said, starting to walk again. "He is in a nursing home." She furnished the address. "They won't let you see him, if you go there," she added abruptly. He made a note of the address on the back of an envelope, and scrutinised her with puzzled uncertainty as he returned the envelope to his pocket. "What's the matter with him?" he asked. "Paralysis." She spoke curtly, with a kind of hard anger in her voice. "He will get better, but he will never be quite well. It will be a case for nursing--always." He observed a rush of tears to her eyes, but there was no softening in her manner as she went on in dull, resentful tones: "Everything that happens to me ends like that. If it hadn't been for this we were to have been married." "Married!" he repeated, amazed. "You! ... But--" "Oh! don't pretend," she interrupted impatiently, "that you don't know they aren't properly married... His wife is dead. I made him show me proofs of that when he asked me to marry him... He thinks I am going to marry him still." "And are you?" he asked. "I don't know... I hate sickness. But--he's rich. Money makes things so much easier." He made a gesture of repulsion. "You couldn't do a thing so vile as that, surely?" he said. The horror and disgust he experienced at her callous reasoning revealed itself in his voice, in his eyes as he stared down at her, scarce able to credit what he heard. She looked back at him fiercely. "How dare you talk to me like that? ... Can't you see all that such a marriage means to a girl like me? Why shouldn't I consider myself?" "I was thinking of the woman who for years believed herself to be his wife," he replied coldly. "Now that he is free to marry her she has a right to demand that he should fulfil his obligation." "He won't," she declared. "I think he will," he answered confidently. "You mean--" she began, and stopped, eyeing him with quick suspicion. "I wish I hadn't told you where he is," she cried passionately. "But they won't let you see him. He's not in a condition to be worried. You can't bully a man in his condition." "I have no intention of bullying him," he answered, placing considerable restraint upon himself. "I am going to offer him the choice between two alternatives. If he is wise he will accept the only decent course open to him. The consequences of refusal will be awkward for him." "You don't take into consideration," she said, with bitter anger in her voice, "that the threat with which you would intimidate him for your purpose is one which I also can use to oblige him to oppose you, if I wish. You are overlooking me." "I simply never dreamed of insulting you by harbouring such a thought," he returned. "Even though you have flung the challenge, I couldn't believe you capable of that." "You will need to reconstruct your theories on human nature," she said cynically.