“No, pardon me, I do not know it, for I do not know you.... I never saw you before.” She leaned her hand carelessly on the bulwarks.
He was shocked, but he drew himself together. Their eyes were intent on each other. “You do know me! Need I tell you that I am Boyd Madras?” “Boyd Madras,” she said, musing coldly. “A peculiar name.”
“Mercy Madras was your name until you called yourself Mrs. Falchion,” he urged indignantly, yet anxiously too.
“It suits you to be mysterious, Mr.--ah yes, Mr. Boyd Madras; but, really, you might be less exacting in your demands upon one’s imagination.” Her look was again on him casually.
He spoke breathlessly. “Mercy--Mercy--for God’s sake, don’t treat me like this! Oh, my wife, I have wronged you every way, but I loved you always--love you now. I have only followed you to ask you to forgive me, after all these years. I saw you in Colombo just before you came on board, and I felt that I must come also. You never loved me. Perhaps that is better for you, but you do not know what I suffer. If you could give me a chance, and come with me to America--anywhere, and let me start the world again? I can--travel straight now, and I will work hard, and be honest. I will--” But here sudden pain brought back the doubt concerning his life and its possibilities.
He leaned against the bulwarks, and made a helpless, despairing motion with his hand. “No, no!” he said; and added with a bitter laugh: “Not to begin the world again, but to end it as profitably and silently as I can. ... But you will listen to me, my wife? You will say at least that you forgive me the blight and ill I brought upon you?”
She had listened to him unmoved outwardly. Her reply was instant. “You are more melodramatic than I thought you capable of being--from your appearance,” she said in a hard tone. “Your acting is very good, but not convincing. I cannot respond as would become the unity and sequence of the play.... I have no husband. My husband is dead--I buried him years ago. I have forgotten his name--I buried that too.”
All the suffering and endured scorn of years came to revolt in him. He leaned forward now, and caught her wrist. “Have you no human feeling?” he said “no heart in you at all? Look. I have it in me here suddenly to kill you as you stand. You have turned my love to hate. From your smooth skin there I could strip those rags, and call upon them all to look at you--my wife--a felon’s wife; mine to have and to hold--to hold, you hear!--as it was sworn at the altar. I bare my heart to you, repenting, and you mock it, torture it, with your undying hate and cruelty. You have no heart, no life. This white bosom is all of you--all of your power to make men love you--this, and your beauty. All else, by God, is cruel as the grave!”