Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/103

 “Oh, good.”

“When do you want me to be ready?”

“To-morrow night.”

She did not know what spirit of bravado entered into her. His indifference was like the prick of a spear. She said a thing that surprised herself.

“I suppose I needn’t take more than a few summer things and a shroud, need I?”

She was watching his face and knew that her flippancy angered him.

“I’ve already told your amah what you”ll want.”

She nodded and went up to her room. She was very pale.

HEY were reaching their destination at last. They were borne in chairs, day after day, along a narrow causeway between interminable ricefields. They set out at dawn and travelled till the heat of the day forced them to take shelter in a wayside inn and then went on again till they reached the town where they had arranged to spend the night. Kitty’s chair headed the procession and Walter followed her; then in a straggling line came the coolies that bore their bedding, stores and equipment. Kitty passed through the country with unseeing eyes. All through the long hours, the silence broken only by an occasional remark from one of the bearers or a snatch of uncouth song, she turned over in her tortured mind the details of that heart-rending scene in Charlie’s office. Recalling