The Pointing Man
work, his wife. She was the right sort of wife for a man who put worldly success first, and through the years of their marriage had helped him a great deal m
s. She had married him when marriage seemed a big thing and a wonderful thing, and her country home in Devonshire a small, breathless place where n
an can combine, and she supplied all he lacked. It filled her mind, and she never awoke the jealousy that lay like a sleeping python in the heart of Draycott Wilder. It was when they were in India that Clarice, for the first time, lost her grip and allowed her senses to get the better of her common sense, and she became for a brief time a woman with a very troublesome heart. Hector Copplestone, a young man
rriage; and if some whisper, for whispers carry far in the East, came after them, no one regarded it, and the Copplestone incident was considered permanently closed. Draycott Wilder was the same silent man who was the despair of his dinner partner
he was just weak enough to be easily influenced, and he fell platonically in love with every new woman he met without being in the least faithless to the others. Mrs. Wilder had a corner in her heart for him, and he, in return, looked upon Mrs. Wilder as a brilliant and lovely woman very much too good for Draycott. He did not kn
about labelled "dangerous," only she had the wit to take off the label
en lake where water-lilies blossomed and pink lotus flowers floated. Dark green trees plumed with shaded purple flowers accentuated the massed yellow of the golden laburnums. The topmost flight of steps led up to
e did not do so without some aid from "boxes," but he liked her none the less for that, and possibly admired her more. He sat down and asked her how she was, and, as he looked at her, he wondered to think that she had ever fainted. Clearly, she was the last woman on earth who could be accu
tley reflectively. "By the way, wasn't Absalom, old Mhtoon Pah's
nt sick, and took to th
te honest,
y. I hope that question doesn't mean that you are professionally interested in his past?" she l
down his cup
said, talking with interest, f
how? I saw hi
China-blue eyes
ll me when
d him going towards the wharf, not towards the wharf exactly,
wish you could
ght of my own
as July the
oked at him, a
ninth?" Hartley rep
told you just now that I had Burma
p again and stirred th
with questions, but did you
out of me, Mr. Hartley? Did Mr. H
tared at
nything. It might help his memory if you were able
ered into a smile that was no
often do see him going about the native quarter when I ride through, but I
you saw
persistent man you are, and you
gold lacquer bowl that yo
Barabbas has never sent it to me yet, either. I ordered it a month ago. I lo
ning, if it was to be got, and he went away as usual the night of the twenty-ninth, and never appea
lder's voice had a
ay to trace a man is to find out e
d where they were, and you piece the bits in. It's l
ey la
re they were. It is something to know that you saw the
t up and walke
found. Did he take my
id Hartley, in his stea
room. "Why should you be? If Absalom has chosen to leave, I
did choose to leave; t
er question about Heath, and ye
s, Mr. Hartley, you will make yourself the most popular man in Mangadone. Take my advice and let Absalom come back in his own way. Perhaps he
unconscious of him that he felt uncomfortable and began to wonder if he had offended her in any way. He looked at her fr
something about Absalom, and his visit to Mrs. Wilder added the puzzling fact to his mental arithmetic that Mrs. Wilder knew
wn there where the Chinese eating-houses were beginning to fill, and where the night life was only just awaking from its slumber of th
fe with life, when lives were divided by such yawning gulfs of space and class and race? To connect Mrs. Wilder with Heath was almost as mad a piece of folly as to connect Absalom with the clergyman, and yet, Hartley argued, he had not se
the sparsely-filled church as he read the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour. Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though he was a
t tells of strain and hysteria, but what was there in Mang