She rose and wandered finally to the embankment of the garden. The water
shimmered under the full flood of afternoon; she was gazing at the
distance in an aimless manner that had lately fastened on her when she
heard a stirring of the grass behind her and Edward Dunsack approached.
He was livid in the pitiless light, and seemed terribly fragile, a thing
that a mere clap of thunder might crumble to nothing; she felt that she
could sweep him away with a broom; yet at the same time there were
startling gleams of inner violence, a bitter energy, an effect of
deepness, that appalled her.

"If you should ask me," he declared, "if my opinion is of any value, I'd
say that Ammidon owed you considerable. He led you to expect something
better than his running away without a word; I'd have an explanation out
of him. Of course, if he had come back married--this affair with a
Chinese woman isn't that--it would be all over. But, somehow, with things
as they are, I can't believe that it is."

"Do you expect me to go to their house, like you did?" she replied
resentfully.

He turned such a malicious face on her that instinctively she moved back.
For a moment he was silent, his meager leaden lips drawn tight over dark
teeth in a dry grin, his fingers like curved wires; then, relaxing, he
cursed the entire house of Ammidon. "The truth is," he ended, "that you
were a little fool; you had everything, everything, in your hand and
threw it away." His gaze strayed from her to the surface of the water, a
short distance from the land. "Threw it away," he repeated; "it can't be
got in this country either."

He was, she thought, crazy. However, all that he said about Gerrit