Kurrell had been making
love to Mrs. Vansuythen would do Vansuythen as great a wrong as
he had done Boulte, who caught himself considering whether Mrs.
Vansuythen would faint if she discovered that the man she loved
had forsworn her.
In the middle of these meditations, Kurrell came cantering along
the road and pulled up with a cheery 'Good - mornin'. 'Been
mashing Mrs. Vansuythen as usual, eh? Bad thing for a sober,
married man, that. What will Mrs. Boulte say?'
Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you liar!' Kurrell's face
changed. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.
'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told you that you two
are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough
to explain the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me,
Kurrell old man haven't you?'
Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence
about being willing to give 'satisfaction.' But his interest in the
woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was
abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so
easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now
he was saddled with Boulte's voice recalled him.
'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I'm
pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.'
Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his
wrongs, Boulte added
''Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the
woman, now you've got her.
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