He broke off for a moment to drink some wine. Then: "I should like to ask you one question. Does my sister know of that episode in India? I mean, of course, of your share in the affair?"
"No. And," said Anstice, "it has been puzzling me for the last couple of hours to understand how it is that she has not connected my name with you. Didn't she know it at the time?"
"I daresay. But you must remember that my sister has gone through a great deal since that day, three years ago. Very soon after that she became involved in that terrible chain of events which led to her public humiliation; and I haven't a shadow of doubt that the names of the actors in the tragedy which broke up my life vanished completely from her memory. As you may have noticed, Chloe is a self-centred woman. Her sympathies are not deep, nor her interests wide. Her own life is a good deal more interesting to her than the lives of other people--it is generally so with strong characters, I believe--and after all, her own tragedy has been so appalling that she may be excused if she has not a very keen curiosity for those of others."
"I quite agree with you. But"--it was Anstice's turn to look Cheniston fully in the face--"do I understand you wish me to tell your sister of our former--acquaintance?"
After his question there fell a silence, during which Anstice had time to study the other man more fully than he had hitherto done.
Like himself, Cheniston had altered since that day in India. Although still sunburned and florid, a typical young Englishman in his square-shouldered build and general air of clean fitness, there was something in his face which had not been there before, which warred oddly with the youth which still lurked in the blue eyes and round the clean-shaven mouth. The boyishness had vanished from his features, taking with it all hint of softness; and in its place was a hard, assertive look, the look of one who, having been once worsted in a bout with Fate, through no fault of his own, was determined for the future to keep a sharp lookout for his own interests and well-being.
That it was a stronger face there was no denying, but it was also a far less attractive one than that which Bruce Cheniston, the boy, had presented to the world.
At another moment Anstice would have found occasion for interested speculation in the question as to whether or no this new man were the real Bruce Cheniston--the Cheniston who would eventually have come to the surface no matter how his life had been ordained; and as a psychologist he would have found pleasure in debating the subject in all its aspects. But as things were he was too miserably conscious that to him, indirectly, this change from boy to man was due to take any interest in the subtler question as to whether, after all, the alteration was only the logical outcome of the man's true character, uninfluenced by external happenings.