Esme sat down, white and shaken, and leaned back in her chair without speaking. A clerk came to the door and inquired whether he could do anything. Her appearance, hatless and dishevelled and white, had struck him when she entered. She asked for water; and he went away to fetch it. Hallam took the glass from him when he returned with it and carried it to her himself. "Mrs Sinclair isn't hurt, I hope?" the clerk asked. "No," Hallam answered curtly; and the clerk withdrew. At the sound of her name, Esme's eyes sought Hallam's face. She saw it harden, saw the lips compress themselves, as he turned with the glass in his hand and approached her chair. She took the glass from him with a word of thanks, and drank the contents slowly, while he paced the carpet with long, uneasy strides, backwards and forwards, before the open window. "Paul," she asked suddenly, "have you seen Jim?" "I saw him yesterday," he answered, without pausing in his walk. "Yesterday!" she echoed, her thoughts reverting to the dinner party, and to the curious preoccupation of her brother-in-law's manner. Jim had known yesterday that Paul was alive; and he had said nothing. "He told you--about me?" she said. "Yes--everything that matters." She put the glass down on the desk and stood up and confronted him. "What am I to do?" she wailed. "Oh! what am I to do?" "That," he answered with surprising quietness, "is a question which no one can resolve but yourself. It is for you to decide." "But I don't know what to do," she returned distressfully. "I--Oh, dear heaven! what a terrible position to be placed in!" She wrung her hands and turned away from him and stood leaning against the frame of the window, where the warm fresh air poured in on her, and the distant sounds of the din in the streets came to her ears like something far off, something altogether outside her own concerns. The horror of her encounter with the Kaffir was submerged, almost forgotten, in the bewilderment of Paul's return. Paul knew of her second marriage--which was no marriage. He must know, since he had spoken with Jim, of her child. The child's future welfare was her chief concern. She resented the injury done to it as a deliberate wrong wrought through the agency of this man by his long absence, his inexplicable silence. She felt bitter when she thought of it. "Why did you leave me in ignorance of your whereabouts?" she asked. "Was it fair to treat me like that? You had all my love, all my confidence. Surely you might have trusted me! Whatever you were doing, wherever you were, I should have understood. I would have waited patiently. I was prepared to wait after reading your letter. I judged from it that you would not return to me until you were sure of yourself, even though it meant separation for all our lives. But you could have let me know you were alive. It was cruel to keep silent all these years." "Yes," he allowed; "had it been intentional it would have been."