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