with it. "Oh, Dudley, how could you have humiliated me so before all those people!" she cried. If he would only hold out his arms to her and allow her to cry upon his breast.
"Humiliated you!" he said with a short laugh. "Always thinking of yourself. Have you considered by any chance the humiliating position you have been placing me in during the past two months?"
Carmelita's hope for a reconciliation abruptly vanished. She could admit to herself that she had done wrong but she could not hear it from his lips in that uncompromising, almost insulting voice. She dried her tears. Still leaning against the door, she confronted him with a dangerous flash in her eyes.
Once started, the pent-up emotions within him came to the surface in a devastating rush. He came nearer to her until she became actually afraid he was going to treat her as he had Rao-Singh. "Do you know what people are saying about you and me and your fine Hindu friend, Rao-Singh? Do you?" His voice was choked, lashing. "I have heard it many times—everybody is saying it—that he is your lover and I am a blind fool living upon your money!"
She felt as if every drop of blood had suddenly left her body. Her hand moved over her face absent-mindedly as if to ward off a
