Dominey's quick impulse of sympathy was smothered by the stern, almost harsh repression of the other's manner. The words seemed to have been torn from his throat. There was no spark of tenderness or regret in his set face.
“Since the day of my banishment,” he went on, “no word of this matter has passed my lips. To-night it is not weakness which assails me, but a desire to yield to the strange arm of coincidence. You and I, schoolmates and college friends, though sons of a different country, meet here in the wilderness, each with the iron in our souls. I shall tell you the thing which happened to me, and you shall speak to me of your own curse.”
“But you will,” was the stern reply. “Listen.”
An hour passed, and the voices of the two men had ceased. The howling of the animals had lessened with the paling of the fires, and a slow, melancholy ripple of breeze was passing through the bush and lapping the surface of the river. It was Von Ragastein who broke through what might almost have seemed a trance. He rose to his feet, vanished inside the banda, and reappeared a moment or two later with two tumblers. One he set down in the space provided for it in the arm of his guest's chair.
“To-night I break what has become a rule with me,” he announced. “I shall drink a whisky and soda. I shall drink to the new things that may yet come to both of us.”
“You are giving up your work here?” Dominey asked curiously.
“I am part of a great machine,” was the somewhat evasive reply. “I have nothing to do but obey.”
A flicker of passion distorted Dominey's face, flamed for a moment in his tone.
“Are you content to live and die like this?” he demanded. “Don't you want to get back to where a different sort of sun will warm your heart and fill your pulses? This primitive world is in its way colossal, but it isn't human, it isn't a life for humans. We want streets, Von Ragastein, you and I. We want the tide of people flowing around us, the roar of wheels and the hum of human voices. Curse these animals! If I live in this country much longer, I shall go on all fours.”
“You yield too much to environment,” his companion observed. “In the life of the cities you would be a sentimentalist.”
“No city nor any civilised country will ever claim me again,” Dominey sighed. “I should never have the courage to face what might come.”