"It is flesh and blood,"--shaking her off. "I'm not dead. You thought I was dead, did you? I got that letter written from Cuba,"--toying with his whiskers, with a complacent smirk. "That was the sharpest dodge of my life, Grey. Fact is, I was damnably in debt, and tied up with your people, and I cut loose. So, eh? What d' ye think of it, Puss?" putting his hand on her arm. "_Wife_, eh?"
She drew back against the sandstone with a hoarse whisper of a cry such as can leave a woman's lips but once or twice in a lifetime: an animal tortured near its death utters something like it, trying to speak.
"Well, well, I don't want to incommode you,"--shifting his feet uncertainly. "I--it's not my will I came across you. Single life suits me. And you too, heh? I've been rollicking round these four years,--Tom Crane and I: you don't know Tom, though. Plains,--Valparaiso,--New Orleans. Well, I'm going to see this shindy out in the States now. Tom's in it, head-devil of a guerrilla-band. _I_ keep safe. Let Jack Gurney alone for keeping a whole skin! But, eh, Grey?"--mounting a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses over his thick nose. "You've grown. Different woman, by George! Nothing but a puling, gawky girl, when I went away. Your eyes and skin have got color,--luscious-looking: why, your eyes flash like a young bison's we trapped out in Nevada. Come, kiss me, Grey. Eh?"--looking in the brown eyes that met his, and stopping short in his approach.
Of the man and woman standing there face to face the woman's soul was the more guilty, it may be, in God's eyes, that minute. She loathed him with such intensity of hatred. The leer in his eyes was that of a fiend, to her. In which she was wrong. There are no thorough-bred villains, out of novels: even Judas had a redeeming trait (out of which he hanged himself). This man Gurney had a weak, incomplete brain, strong sensual instincts, and thick blood thirsty for excitement,--all, probably, you could justly say of Nero. He did not care especially to torment the woman,--would rather she were happy than not,--unless, indeed, he needed her pain. So he stopped, regarding her. Enough of a true voluptuary, too, to shun turmoil.
"There! hush! For God's sake don't begin to cry out. I'm weak yet; can't bear noise."