"How did it happen, Alixe?" he asked, with a cold curiosity that chilled
her. "How did it come about?--wretched as we seemed to be
together--unhappy, incapable of understanding each other--"

"Phil! There _were_ days--"

He raised his eyes.

"You speak only of the unhappy ones," she said; "but there were
moments--"

"Yes; I know it. And so I ask you, _why_?"

"Phil, I don't know. There was that last bitter quarrel--the night you
left for Leyte after the dance. . . . I--it all grew suddenly
intolerable. _You_ seemed so horribly unreal--everything seemed unreal
in that ghastly city--you, I, our marriage of crazy impulse--the people,
the sunlight, the deathly odours, the torturing, endless creak of the
punkha. . . . It was not a question of--of love, of anger, of hate. I
tell you I was stunned--I had no emotions concerning you or
myself--after that last scene--only a stupefied, blind necessity to get
away; a groping instinct to move toward home--to make my way home and be
rid for ever of the dream that drugged me! . . . And then--and then--"

"_He_ came," said Selwyn very quietly. "Go on."

But she had nothing more to say.

"Alixe!"