"I swear to you, Anne, that it was mainly on his account that I was so bitter against that woman. It had gone deeper with him than with me. I had been madly in love with her for the moment—I even think that I frightened her sometimes—but with him it was a quieter and deeper feeling. She had been the very centre of his universe—and her betrayal of him tore up the very roots of life. The blow stunned him and left him paralyzed."
Harry paused. After a minute or two he went on:
"As you know, I was reported 'Missing, presumed killed.' I never troubled to correct the mistake. I took the name of Parker and came to this island, which I knew of old. At the beginning of the war, I had had ambitious hopes of proving my innocence, but now all that spirit seemed dead. All I felt was, 'What's the good?' My pal was dead, neither he nor I had any living relations who would care. I was supposed to be dead too, let it remain at that. I led a peaceful existence here, neither happy nor unhappy—numbed of all feeling. I see now, though I did not realize it at the time, that that was partly the effect of the war.
"And then one day something occurred to wake me right up again. I was taking a party of people in my boat on a trip up the river, and I was standing at the landing-stage, helping them in, when one of the men uttered a startled exclamation. It focused my attention on him. He was a small, thin man with a beard, and he was staring at me for all he was worth as though I was a ghost. So powerful was his emotion that it awakened my curiosity. I made inquiries about him at the hotel and learned that his name was Carton, that he came from Kimberley, and that he was a diamond-sorter employed by De Beers'. In a minute all the old sense of wrong surged over me again. I left the island and went to Kimberley.
