Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/127

 “It’s always dangerous, it’s madness now. You’ll kill yourself.”

“I thought that was the idea,” said Kitty.

She began to eat it coolly. She was seized with she knew not what spirit of bravado. She watched Walter with mocking eyes. She thought that he grew a trifle pale, but when the salad was handed to him he helped himself. The cook, finding they did not refuse it, sent them some in every day and every day, courting death, they ate it. It was grotesque to take such a risk. Kitty, in terror of the disease, took it with the feeling not only that she was thus maliciously avenging herself on Walter, but that she was flouting her own desperate fears.

T was the day after this that Waddington, coming to the bungalow in the afternoon, when he had sat a little asked Kitty if she would not go for a stroll with him. She had not been out of the compound since her arrival. She was glad enough.

“There are not many walks, I’m afraid,” he said. “But we’ll go to the top of the hill.”

“Oh, yes, where archway is. I’ve seen it often from the terrace.”

One of the boys opened the heavy doorway for them and they stepped out into the dusty lane. They walked a few yards and then Kitty, seizing Waddington’s arm in fright, gave a startled cry.