As the train carried her across India her heart was still filled with anger, jealousy and almost hate of the man whom she had favoured above all others and who spurned her, dared to be faithless to her, it seemed. She did not know how much love she had left for him; for his image had grown dim in the flight of time and among the distractions of gayer stations than Rohar. Certainly she had flirted herself, flirted recklessly; but that was a different matter to his faithlessness. She might do it; but he must not. Did she want him? She hardly knew. But she was not going to be put aside for this tiger-killing young person, this jungle girl, who must be taught not to trespass on Violet's property.
Then her mind went back to Rosenthal; and in the solitude of the ladies' compartment she laughed aloud at the thought of the shock that his self-sufficiency must have received when he learned of her sudden and mysterious disappearance from Poona. For she had left him no word. It would do him good; he needed a lesson, for he was too sure of her. She had never troubled to analyse her feelings for him and did not know whether she liked or hated him most. She saw his faults clearly, his blatant conceit, his irritating belief in the supremacy of money, his arrogance, his bad manners. She knew that men deemed him a bounder. But his very boorishness, his savage outbreaks against conventionality, attracted her. Under the thin veneer of civilisation, he was simply an animal; she knew it and it appealed to her baser nature, the sensual strain in her. That he was beast, and wild beast at that, did not affright her; she felt that she could always dominate him when she would. Once or twice the beast had come out into the open; but she had driven it back with a whip--and she believed that she could always do it. The wealth, the life of luxury that he offered, appealed to her strongly; but she kept her head and remembered that he was dependent on his father's bounty, and she had no intention of compromising herself irretrievably under such circumstances. If he had the disposal of the old man's immense riches then the temptation might be over-powering; but until he had she would wait. And ever the memory of Wargrave obtruded itself, rather to her annoyance; but angry as she was with him she could not pretend to herself that she was indifferent to him.