She would have said more.  Her self-control was tottering; but Dr. Jim restrained her.  “My dear, it is not for Nick’s sake,” he said.  “Come, you are going to be sensible.  Sit down and get your breath.  There’s no time for hysterics.  I must go across and speak to my wife before I go.”

He looked at Nick who instantly responded.  “Yes, you be off!  I’ll look after her.  Be quick, man, be quick!”

But when Dr. Jim was gone, his impatience fell away from him.  He moved round the table and stood before her.  He was steady enough now, steadier far than she.

“Don’t take it too hard,” he said.  “At least he died like a man.”

She did not draw away from him.  There was no room for fear in her heart just then.  It held only hatred—­a fierce, consuming flame—­that enabled her to face him as she had never faced him before.

“Why did you let him go?” she demanded of him, her voice deep and passionate, her eyes unwaveringly upon him.  “There must have been others.  You were there.  Why didn’t you stop him?”

“I stop him!” said Nick, and a flash of something that was almost humour crossed his face.  “You seem to think I am omnipotent.”

Her eyes continued to challenge him.  “You always manage to get your own way somehow,” she said very bitterly, “by fair means or foul.  Are you going to deny that it was you who made him write that letter?”

He did not ask her what she meant.  “No,” he said with a promptitude that took her by surprise.  “I plead guilty to that.  As you are aware, I never approved of your engagement.”

His effrontery stung her into what was almost a state of frenzy.  Her eyes blazed their utmost scorn.  She had never been less afraid of him than at that moment.  She had never hated him more intensely.

“You could make him do a thing like that,” she said.  “And yet you couldn’t hold him back from certain death!”

He answered her without heat, in a tone she deemed most hideously callous.  “It was not my business to hold him back.  He was wanted.  There would have been no rescue but for him.  They needed a man to lead them, or they wouldn’t have gone at all.”

His composure goaded her beyond all endurance.  She scarcely waited for him to finish, nor was she wholly responsible for what she said.

“Was there only one man among you, then?” she asked, with headlong contempt.

He made her a curious, jerky bow.  “One man—­yes,” he said.  “The rest were mere sheep, with the exception of one—­who was a cripple.”

Her heart contracted suddenly with a pain that was physical.  She felt as if he had struck her, and it goaded her to a fiercer cruelty.

“You knew he would never come back!” she declared her voice quivering uncontrollably with the passion that shook her.  “You—­you never meant him to come back!”

He opened his eyes wide for a single instant, and she fancied that she had touched him.  It was the first time in her memory that she had ever seen them fully.  Instinctively she avoided them, as she would have avoided a flash of lightning.