“The last words, Henry, I wanted to hear in the world.  I thought that I would wait for them and the moment they had died away—­then.  But I hadn’t found the cartridges and so the search began again.”

Thresk, watching her as she lived through again those desperate minutes, was carried back to Chitipur and seemed to be looking into that tent.  He had a dreadful picture before his eyes of a hunted woman rushing wildly from table to table, with a white, quivering face and lips which babbled incoherently and feverish hands which darted out nervously, over-setting books and ornaments—­in a vain search for a box of cartridges wherewith to kill herself.  She found them at last behind the whisky bottle, and clutched at them with a great sigh of relief.  She carried them over to the table on which she had laid her rifle, and as she pushed one into the breech, Stephen Ballantyne stood in the doorway of the tent.

“He swore at me,” Stella continued.  “I had taken the necklace off.  I had shown you the bruises on my throat.  He cursed me for it, and he asked me roughly why I didn’t shoot myself and rid him of a fool.  I stood without answering him.  That always maddened him.  I didn’t do it on purpose.  I had become dull and slow.  I just stood and looked at him stupidly, and in a fury he ran at me with his fist raised.  I recoiled, he frightened me, and then before he reached me—­yes.”  Her voice died away in a whisper.  Thresk did not interrupt.  There was more for her to tell and one dreadful incident to explain.  Stella went on in a moment, looking straight in front of her and with all the passion of fear gone from her voice.

“I remember that he stood and stared at me foolishly for a little while.  I had time to believe that nothing had happened, and to be glad that nothing had happened and to be terrified of what he would do to me.  And then he fell and lay quite still.”

It seemed that she had no more to say, that she meant to leave unexplained the inexplicable thing; and even Thresk put it out of his thoughts.

“It was an accident then,” he cried.  “After all, Stella, it was an accident.”

But Stella sat mutely at his side.  Some struggle was taking place in her and was reflected in her countenance.  Thresk’s eager joy was damped.

“No, my friend,” she said at length, slowly and very deliberately.  “It was not an accident.”

“But you fired in fear.”  Thresk caught now at that alternative.  “You shot in self-defence.  Stella, I blundered at Bombay.”  He moved away from her in his agitation.  “I am sorry.  Oh, I am very sorry.  I should never have come forward at all.  I should have lain quiet and let your counsel develop his case, as he was doing, on the line of self-defence.  You would have been acquitted—­and rightly acquitted.  You would have had the sympathy of every one.  But I didn’t know your story.  I was afraid that the discovery of Ballantyne outside the tent would ruin you.  I knew that my story could not fail to save you.  So I told it.  But I was wrong, Stella.  I blundered.  I did you a great harm.”