“I swear to you, Anne, that it was mainly on his account that I was so bitter against that woman. It had gone deeper with him than with me. I had been madly in love with her for the moment⁠—I even think that I frightened her sometimes⁠—but with him it was a quieter and deeper feeling. She had been the very centre of his universe⁠—and her betrayal of him tore up the very roots of life. The blow stunned him and left him paralyzed.”

Harry paused. After a minute or two he went on:

“As you know, I was reported ‘missing, presumed killed.’ I never troubled to correct the mistake. I took the name of Parker and came to this island, which I knew of old. At the beginning of the war, I had had ambitious hopes of proving my innocence, but now all that spirit seemed dead. All I felt was, ‘What’s the good?’ My pal was dead, neither he nor I had any living relations who would care. I was supposed to be dead too, let it remain at that. I led a peaceful existence here, neither happy nor unhappy⁠—numbed of all feeling. I see now, though I did not realize it at the time, that that was partly the effect of the war.

“And then one day something occurred to wake me right up again. I was taking a party of people in my boat on a trip up the river, and I was standing at the landing stage, helping them in, when one of the men uttered a startled exclamation. It focused my attention on him. He was a small, thin man with a beard, and he was staring at me for all he was worth as though I was a ghost. So powerful was his emotion that it awakened my curiosity. I made inquiries about him at the hotel and learned that his name was Carton, that he came from Kimberley, and that he was a diamond sorter employed by De Beers’. In a minute all the old sense of wrong surged over me again. I left the island and went to Kimberley.