No More Learning

"Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I said
pretty much what you've said, unless I'm a good deal mistaken. "

"I spoke the truth," said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell.
"Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me. "

"No! I suppose not. You're only her husband, y'know. And what did Mrs.
Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged heart at her feet? "

Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.

"I don't think that matters," Boulte replied; "and it doesn't concern
you. "

"But it does! I tell you it does" began Kurrell, shamelessly.
The sentence was cut by a roar of laughter from Boulte's lips. Kurrell
was silent for an instant, and then he, too, laughed--laughed long and
loudly, rocking in his saddle. It was an unpleasant sound--the mirthless
mirth of these men on the long, white line of the Narkarra Road. There
were no strangers in Kashima, or they might have thought that captivity
within the Dosehri hills had driven half the European population mad.
The laughter ended abruptly, and Kurrell was the first to speak.

"Well, what are you going to do? "

Boulte looked up the road, and at the hills. "Nothing," said he,
quietly; "what's the use? It's too ghastly for anything. We must let the
old life go on. I can only call you a hound and a liar, and I can't go
on calling you names forever. Besides which, I don't feel that I'm much
better. We can't get out of this place. What is there to do? "

Kurrell looked round the rat-pit of Kashima and made no reply. The
injured husband took up the wondrous tale.