Desmond leaned forward, and flicked the ash from his cigar.

"Nonsense, man," he said emphatically. "You're talking heresy and schism! Soldier or no soldier, I believe in marriage. Always have done. With all its difficulties, it's an incomparable bond; as you'll find out, once you two are on the right footing. But you're hardly fit enough yet to see things in their true perspective. All this Gilgit business is still a good way ahead; and I can only say that if it does come to spending a good part of your service up in the wilds, you could not have chosen a woman more fitted for it than Quita. The better one knows her, the more one admires her . ."

The other's face softened.

"She's as straight and as plucky as a man," he said simply. "And whenever comes of it, I'm a lucky devil to be her husband.—Think I'll turn in now, and try for a little sleep. I never meant to inflict my affairs on you like this. But you bring it on yourself, Desmond, by being so confoundedly sympathetic!"

Before the two men parted, the box of opium pills had changed hands: and Lenox, by way of trying for a little sleep, lit a fresh cigar,—he was beginning to tolerate them now,—and went out into the garden.

Its open spaces were saturated with moonlight; while trees and bushes, solitary or huddled together, stood in black pools of shadow, and fragments of curded cloud trailed across the sky. Absorbed in thought, Lenox crossed a stretch of lawn set with rose-beds; and turning at the far end strolled back towards the house, that loomed, an unwieldy mass of shadow, against the palpitating radiance beyond.

The light in his own room showed through the split bamboo of the 'chick' in hair-line streaks of brightness; but from the door next his own it issued in a wide stream that lost itself in the moon-splashed verandah. Quita had rolled up her 'chick,' and stood leaning against the doorpost in an attitude that suggested weariness, or despondency, or both; the tall slender form of her thrown into strong relief by the light within. He knew that she must have seen him; and his hope was that she would come out and say good-night to him. Since he must speak, it would be a relief to speak at once, and get it over. It might even be possible to sleep, if matters could be definitely settled between them without further discord; otherwise, bereft of the opium, his chances were small indeed.

But though he drew steadily nearer, she remained motionless; to all appearance unaware of his presence. But the mere craving to touch her, to hear her voice, grew stronger every minute; and he was not to be thwarted thus. At the verandah's edge he paused.

"Quita," he said, scarcely above his breath.

"Yes."

"Have you forgiven me?"

"No. Not quite."

"But I want you."

"Come to me, then." A slight movement suggested a defiant tilt of her chin.

The verandah itself stood more than two feet above the ground; but instead of going round by the steps, he sprang up on it, flung away his cigar, and stood before her with proffered hands.

She surrendered her own.

"Now?" he asked, smiling.

"No, no."

He stooped and kissed her hair.

"Now, perhaps?"

"Yes, . . almost. Though I'm not sure that you deserve it."

"I don't," he answered humbly, taking the wind out of her sails.

Then objects in the room behind her caught his attention:—her dressing-table, with its silver-backed brushes and hand-glass, its dainty feminine litter; her blue dressing-gown flung over a chair; and, tucked away in a corner, her small comfortless bed.

"Come out into the garden, away from all this," he said hurriedly, almost angrily. "Why on earth did you drag me up here?"

"Because it's the man's place to come to the woman," she answered, with a demure dignity more provocative than tenderness. "It has been too much the other way round between us lately. As one has to suffer from the drawbacks of being a woman, one may as well enjoy the advantages also."

"And having enjoyed them, will you graciously condescend to come out there with me?"

"But yes; of course I will."

He turned on his heel; and they went out together. In the strong Indian moonlight her soft blue dinner-dress, sweeping the grass behind her, was blanched to a silvery pallor; her bare neck and arms gleamed like marble touched into life; and unconsciously she swayed a little towards him as she walked, like a tall flower in a breeze. The radiant mystery of earth and sky, the scarcely less radiant mystery of womanhood beside him, conspired with her veiled mood of gentle aloofness to strike his defences from him. But he kept his hands in his pockets by way of safeguard; and because he had small skill in broaching a difficult subject, he held his tongue.

Half-way across the lawn, she came deliberately closer.

"You know, you hurt me cruelly this afternoon, Eldred."

"Did I, lass? That was abominable of me. But you must make allowances, even if you don't understand. I'm a man, and you're a woman. That seems to be the root of the difficulty. And now I'm half afraid I may hurt you again."

"Why?"

"Because I'm a clumsy brute; and I do it without meaning to. But I suppose it's plain to you that we can't go on much longer as we are doing now?"

"Of course we can't." She let out a breath of relief. "I've been wondering when you were going to see that."

"I have seen it all along. Only, for the life of me, I didn't know how to make the next move. But I have just had a talk with Desmond, . . about his wife. He wants to send her to Sheik Budeen, the minute she's fit to spend a night in a doolie."

"Where . . and what . . is Sheik Budeen?"

The perceptible change in her tone disconcerted him. But the thing had to be got through; and he went ahead without swerving.

"It is an apology for a Hill Station, about fifty miles north of this. Just a handful of bungalows, on an ugly desolate rock, rising straight out of the plain. No trees; no water, except what they collect in a tank for use. But being nearly four thousand feet up, it's a few degrees cooler than this: and probably after a week or two there Mrs Desmond would be fit to stand the journey to Dalhousie."

It was characteristic of him that he made no attempt to soften facts: and Quita, edging a little away from him, lifted her head.

"Is it settled when one is to start for this inviting spot?" she asked, critically examining a distant star.

"In a few days, if Mackay agrees. Poor Desmond, he hates letting his wife go. But for her sake he wants to get her away from here as soon as possible."

"I see. And you want to get me away from here as soon as possible. It's a very convenient arrangement for you both."

Her implication stabbed him. He stood still, and faced her; his eyes full of pain. But he made no attempt to touch her: which was a mistake.

She stood still also,—head uplifted, hands clasped behind her,—without discontinuing her scrutiny of the heavens.

"By the Lord, you are hitting back harder than I deserve," he reproached her desperately. "At least you might believe of me all that I said of Desmond, . . that it is for your sake, and that I shall hate letting you go. The suggestion was entirely his own. He asked me to tell you, from him, that you would be doing them both a very real kindness by going with Mrs Desmond; and I thought . . you would be glad of a chance to help either of them; especially since you must know, after all I said at Kajiar, that it is impossible . . yet for us to start fair and square."

It was a long speech for Eldred, and it brought her down from the stars.

"Naturally I am delighted to do anything on earth for the Desmonds," she said sweetly, ignoring his final remark. "You speak as if I might refuse to go. But I haven't fallen quite so low as that."

"Quita, have you no mercy on a man?" he flashed out between anger and pain. "There has never been any question of 'falling' on your side, and you know it. But surely you understand that, in spite of all that has happened between, what I dared not to do a month ago, I dare not do now."

"Do you mean . . is . . the trouble not any less?"

"No."

"But I thought you were going . . to fight it?"

"So I am; so I shall, till I break it, or it breaks me. But look back over the past few weeks, and ask yourself if I have had much of a chance so far."

She unclasped her hands and looked up at him, speech hovering in her eyes. But she dropped them again, and stood so, with bowed head, shifting her rings nervously up and down her slim third finger.

"Dear lass, what's troubling you?" he asked. "We've got to understand one another to-night; so don't be afraid to speak out. Better make a clean wound and have done with it, than think hard things of me that may be unjust. Tell me the thought I saw in your eyes."

"I was thinking of something Michael said." She spoke in an even voice without looking up.

"Michael? Well . . what was it?" Anxiety sharpened his tone.

"He said that if . . if you really . . wanted me back again, your conscientious scruples would be swept away like straws before a flood. I wouldn't believe him then. But now . . I'm afraid it's true."

"Confound the man! What does he know about my scruples?" Lenox broke out with irrepressible vehemence; and she looked up quickly.

"Please don't be violent, Eldred. You told me to speak out. Besides, Michael is my brother."

"I'm sorry. But if he were ten times your brother, I'd say the same. He had no business to try and set you against me like that." He caught her unresisting hands now, and held them fast.

"You take Michael's word against mine . . is that so?" he asked, a dull flush rising in his face; and he tried to look into her eyes. But she would not have it.

"Oh, my dear, can't you see it's not," she said, so low that he scarcely heard her. "It's . . your own actions, contradicting your own words, that make me feel he must be right."

Lenox stood aghast at this new and unanswerable aspect of the case; at the knowledge that, in respect of practical proof to the contrary, his hands were tied.

"Good God! what can a man do to convince you?" he demanded on a note of smothered passion. "Quita . . my very wife, look me in the eyes, and answer me straight. Do you honestly believe that I have been insulting you with mere lip-service all this while?"

He stood before her in mingled dignity and humility, trying to master himself, to find some admissible outlet for the tumult of feeling that was undermining the foundations of his will. But she did not answer at once; nor did she look up.

"Think how I welcomed you a week ago," he urged.

"I do think of it. But . . since then . . ." She hesitated; and a slow wave of colour crimsoned her neck and face, even to her forehead. "I . . I don't know what to believe," she added very low.

The words struck away his last defences, and he caught her in his arms; straining her to him, and kissing her almost roughly on lips and eyes and throat. She submitted at first, in sheer amazement and half-frightened joy at having roused him thus. Then she tried to free herself; but he held her close, and hard.

"Do you believe now," he asked, his lips at her ear, "that I want you . . that I love you . . with every part of me, heart, and mind, and body?"

For all answer she leaned her head against him with a broken sob.

"Oh, Eldred," she rebuked him through her tears. "I never knew you could behave . . like that!"

"No more did I," he answered bluntly. "Forgive me, darling, if you can. I was a brute to lose control of myself. But you pushed me too far. There are things no man of human passions can put up with; and if you are going to begin by doubting my sincerity, all hope of real union between us is at an end."

"Dear love, I promise I'll never doubt it again," she whispered fervently. "I'll go away, and stay away . . without any fuss, if only I can see things straight and clear; if only you won't quite shut me out from the best part of yourself."

"I've no notion of shutting you out from any part of myself, you precious woman. But the habit of half a lifetime is not easy to break through; and I suppose that when two people marry they have to learn one another bit by bit, like a new language; except in such a rare case as the Desmonds, where love and understanding are not two things, but one, like the man and woman themselves. There . . did you ever guess I had thought all that about marriage!"

She laughed contentedly.

"No. How could I? And it's your thoughts I want, Eldred;—the hidden you, that belongs to no one but me."

"Do you, though? It sounds rather wholesale! But I'll do my best."

"Come over and sit on the steps; and I'll try to tell you just how matters stand, and how I feel about it all."

He led her back to the verandah, and establishing her on the topmost step, seated himself lower down, one arm passed behind her, his left hand covering hers that lay folded in her lap. Quita, looking down upon it in a flutter of happiness, noted and approved it as an epitome of the man; large, without clumsiness, nervous and full of character.

Then he told her, simply and straightly, a part of what he had told Desmond; and more, that was for herself alone. Through all he said, and left unsaid, Quita felt the force of his ascetic personality, of a strong man, stern with himself and his own passion; and, womanlike, thrilled at thought of her dominion over him; her power to set him vibrating by a word, a look, a touch. Yet she listened without movement or interruption; for the which he blessed her in his heart.

"I suppose there are numbers of men who would take . . what I refuse without a twinge of conscience," he said finally. "But the fact that I should be acting dead against the right, as I see it, would make capitulation wrong for me, . . if not for them. Besides, one dare not trifle with an inherited evil. One's only chance lies in taking strong measures on the spot. You understand?"

"Yes, I understand . . now; though I didn't at first. And I wouldn't have you different by one hair's-breadth, though your strength and single-mindedness does make things harder for both of us."

He pressed her hands.

"It's worth all I've been through, and more, to hear you say that. Only remember, lass, it's not simply a question of principles that may seem to you high-flown, but of bedrock facts. I don't want to enlarge on the ugly or painful side of a very ugly subject; but I do want you to understand that not only my career, but our whole future happiness depends upon my crushing out this habit before it degenerates to a craving; before my conscience gets blunted, my will-power undermined. Opium is worse than drink in both respects: and if things ever reached such a pass—which God forbid—it would mean losing my commission; just going under, like dozens of ill-fated chaps, and sinking in the scale: or at best scraping along in the army by means of constant subterfuges, at the hourly risk of discovery and disgrace. A nice sort of life for you, my proud little woman. And for——" he broke off short.

She tried to speak, but tears were clutching at her throat; and after a moment's pause, he went on: "There is a great black something deep down in me, Quita, that rises up now and then, like a spiritual fog, and blots all the light and colour out of life. This, and the dread of those hideous possibilities I spoke of, made me feel, a month ago, as if it might be better for you to be left in comparative freedom, than chained to a man with a devil inside him. But your coming down here has put all that out of the question."

"Thank God I came, then."

"Yes. Thank God you came," he echoed fervently. "Though I was afraid you didn't quite realise . . ."

"Dear, I did. More than you imagine. But I wanted . . to help you in spite of yourself; and I hoped we could fight it out together."

He shook his head.

"Don't think me brutal, Quita, but a man's got to fight out this sort of thing alone with his own soul . . and God. You can only help just by . . loving me, and believing that I shall pull through. Dear old Desmond has done about as much for me as one human being seems permitted to do for another in big contingencies; and, by the way, he said rather a charming thing to-night."

"He has a gift for that. What was it?"

"He said I won the great talisman that put failure out the question."

She laughed again, softly.

"Oh, how I love that man, and his incurable idealism!"

"You do? You lawless young woman! How many more?"

"Only one more . . I think!"

And freeing her left hand she slipped it round his head, that was on a level with her shoulder, drew it close against her, and ran her fingers lightly through his thick hair.

"I'm going to weave a magic over your head to make you sleep, and reward you for giving up the opium, you poor, poor darling."

And with a sigh Lenox yielded himself to the ecstasy of her touch.

Their talk grew fitful, and fragmentary; intimate lover's talk, interspersed with luminous pauses, that were but hidden channels of speech; till Quita felt the walls within walls giving way under her 'magic,' and knew that she had reached the shy, inmost heart of the man at last. That enchanted hour lifted them beyond the ardours of passion, to the mastery of spirit; to a passing revelation of the eternal beauty underlying earth's tragedies and complexities: and both were conscious of an exalted strength.

The harsh clanging of the police gong, twelve times repeated, brought them back to the iron facts of life. With a murmur of reluctance they rose; and Lenox escorted his wife to the door of her room.

"Shall I let down your 'chick' for you?" he asked.

"Please."

He untied the strings that held it up. Then, as the curtain fell between them and the lamplit room, Quita turned, and with a gesture all tenderness, laid both arms round his neck.

"I shall never forget to-night, Eldred," she whispered, "even if we live to be cross prosaic old people together. You may go to the other end of the world, now, and stay there as long as you like! I am sure of you; and I feel in every fibre of me that we are going to win through in the end."



CHAPTER XXV.

"In a hundred ages of the gods I could not tell thee of the glory of Himachal. As the dew is dried up by the sun, so are the sins of mankind, by the glory of Himachal."—From the Hindu.

That night Eldred Lenox slept long, and dreamlessly; and awoke with new life throbbing in his veins. The three uneventful days that followed were among the happiest in his life; and on the fourth, before sunset, the two women set out, in hospital doolies, on their primitive journey to Sheik Budeen.

Honor had protested, almost to tears, at being compelled to spend a fortnight with her heart in two places, and her body in a third! But Desmond, reinforced by John Meredith, had held his own; promising to escort her to the barren Rock of Refuge, whose only virtue was its elevation; and, by arranging a relay of ponies along the route, gallop back in time for 'orderly room' next morning. "Which is more than nine husbands out of ten would do for a headstrong wife!" Meredith had concluded, stroking her flushed cheek: and thus the matter had been settled.

Lenox and Quita spent the last afternoon together in their own bungalow, at her suggestion. The officious chowkidar unearthed two punkah coolies for the occasion: and the planning of their future home, a picnic tea served on Eldred's writing-table, and practical considerations in respect of furniture and house linen—though Quita had small inherent regard for either!—helped, more or less, to obscure the thought of separation. Before leaving the bungalow, she won through the dreaded last injunctions and kisses without ignominious collapse, since Lenox was to ride out for a few miles beside the doolie; and they parted finally with brave words, and a prolonged hand-clasp that left her fingers tingling for a good five minutes afterwards.

Quita never forgot that journey. Its weird fascination, clashing with the ache of parting, stamped every detail indelibly upon her memory;—the vast, featureless plain, empty as a widow's heart; the lavish moonlight poured out upon it like water, flowing unhindered to the naked spurs of the frontier hills, whose huge shoulders, peaks, and escarpments blotted out the stars along the western horizon; the occasional appearance of wild-looking Waziri militia-men, from the chain of outposts along the foothills, who had been warned to keep up a sharp look-out along the road: no villages; no trees; no sound or movement anywhere, save the distorted shadows and rythmical grunting of her doolie-bearers, the soft shuffling of their feet, and the click of hoofs, as Desmond rode at a foot's pace beside his wife, or dismounting, walked and talked with her, his bridle slung over his arm.

The suggestion of tenderness and companionship in their low tones seemed to accentuate the lifeless desolation through which they moved, the blankness and uncertainty of the anxious months ahead. Possibly something of this occurred to Desmond; for after the first few miles he deserted his wife now and again, and walked by Quita; exorcising the spirit of self-torment that haunts the imaginative, as he of all men best knew how to do.

Finally, lulled by the movement of the doolie, she fell asleep; and awoke to find herself in a changed world; a world of rough-cut volcanic rock and boulder, piled up on either hand in fantastic disarray; a world of white light and sharp black shadows; of mystery, and terror, and uncanny beauty. It was as if she had been transported back to the morning of Time, when the earth giants wrenched up the mountains, and pelted one another in pure sport: and as she flung back the loose flap of her doolie to get a wider view of it all, Desmond trotted up to her.

"It's less alarming than it looks," he reassured her. "We have only turned off into the Paizu Pass. It's a nasty dangerous bit of road; but our own men are on ahead, so we're safe enough. We shall be climbing the hill directly; and I'll be uncommonly glad of my chota hazri."

"You deserve it, you poor fellow! But it sounds an anachronism! I can't believe that anything so commonplace as a bungalow, with servants and tea and toast, exists within a hundred miles of this primeval nakedness."

But in the fulness of time, bungalow, tea, and servants were all forthcoming: and between three and four of the morning their fantastic journey culminated in a prosaic meal of eggs and buttered toast. When it was over Quita vanished, leaving Desmond alone with his wife; and before moonset he was speeding back along the road they had come; covering the fifty miles at a hand-gallop, in something less than five hours.

A fortnight later two very unwilling grass-widows were rescued by Lenox, who had secured his sick leave; and who escorted them from Dera Ishmael as far as Lahore, where he left them to go on into the mountain region beyond Kashmir.

Hillmen have a saying, 'Who goes to the hills goes to his mother'; and Eldred Lenox, a hillman both by love and lineage, confirmed it for the hundredth time, as he pushed his way upward, by leisurely enchanting stages, from the steaming Punjab, through the great natural gateway of the Baramullah Pass, a towering defile, thunderous with full-fed torrents and waterfalls, into the familiar Valley, . . a very sanctuary of peace; its terraced slopes splashed with the vivid green of rice-fields, the russet and gold of ripe orchards and cornlands; up through Srinagar, 'the City of the Sun,' of carved and gilded temples, thronged waterways, and flat house-tops blazoned with flowers; and yet again upward, by ways well known to him, into the hidden mysteries of the mountains massed about the valleys; a mighty conclave of immortals brooding in majestic meditation; shrouded at this season by dazzling continents of cloud; and plunging green arms to the rivers and lakes, that gleamed like molten silver under a pale sky.

To know a character rightly it should be seen in its natural element; and the Lenox of the Himalayas was by no means the same man as the Lenox of the Plains. All his latent energy and vigour blossomed out like flowers at the first whisper of spring. 'The glory of Himachal' drew and penetrated and inspired him like nothing else on earth.

Here he tracked and brought down oonyal, markhor, and the great mountain sheep; explored on a small scale, because the fever of going was upon him; and slept as a man only sleeps when he is living close to the heart of Nature. Here, also,—fortified by solitude, by the uplifting sense of things awful and divine which is the gift of great mountains to those who love them,—he fought doggedly and systematically against a craving that persisted in spite of improved health. For the tyranny of opium is as tenacious as it is deadly; and the habit of five years is not to be broken in as many weeks. But the man who wills to conquer evil has God and Nature fighting on his side: and in the teeth of several flagrant lapses, Lenox made steady progress.

In Srinagar he bought a bottle of chlorodyne; and two days later flung it down the khud. When his store of drugged tobacco ran out, he replaced it by a brand in which an innocuous admixture of opium just sufficed to produce the faint fragrance that he loved. The black fits of melancholy, which were native to his temperament, and which, in the past five years, had threatened to dominate him permanently, evaporated like morning fogs before the sun as the certainty grew in him that he must prevail: and Quita, who had done most of the harm, made unconscious reparation by letters whose consummate faith in the final issue was stimulating as the mountain air itself.

By October he was back at Dera Ishmael Khan;—a renewed man, bronzed and vigorous, the shadow gone from his eyes; testing his achievement and finding that it held good; bending all his energies to the task of fitting up a home for his wife; a task whereof Honor usurped as large a share as he would permit. Then, towards the end of the month, he wrote to Quita: "Come. We are ready, and waiting for you,—the house, Zyarulla, Brutus, and your impatient husband, who will pick you up at Lahore."

And on the last day of October, more than six years after their hasty wedding, Eldred and Quita Lenox entered upon their married life.

"Have you forgotten, darling, the nonsense I talked that day about the House, and the Enchanted Palace?" she asked, as they stood together on their first evening in the drawing-room, whose every detail he had planned with elaborate care.

"Is it likely? Why?"

His arm was round her shoulders; and putting up one hand she touched his face.

"Why . . because I said we would have to begin with the House. But we seem to have reached the Enchanted Palace before starting after all?"

"By a very roundabout route," he answered, a suspicion of the old sadness in his eyes.

"Yes; but we have reached it. That's the main point, dear Pessimist; and the commonplace House I offered you has tumbled into a dust-heap of ruins. Don't let's build it up again, whatever else we may do in the way of foolishness. Retrogression is the one unforgiveable sin!"

It is the instinctive cry of love in the first flush of fulfilment. The grand impulsion of man to woman brushes aside lesser considerations like so many flies. But Life and Temperament, standing discreetly in the background, will have their say in the 'fateful second act' of the human comedy before the curtain drops.



CHAPTER XXVI.

"Climb high, love high, what matter! Still . . . Feet, feelings, must descend the hill." —Browning.

On a certain afternoon of early March, Quita Lenox stood at her easel, in the small room she had fitted up as a studio, palette in one hand, long-handled brush in the other, two broken lines of irritation between her brows.

The verandah door stood wide; and through it the breath of spring came in to her, velvet soft, compact of a hundred nameless scents, mingled with the paramount scent of roses. For March is India's rose month: and in the midst of so much that is unlovely, the roses of Dera Ishmael Khan are things to marvel at, and thank Heaven for. Quita's rambling compound was packed with them, from the plebeian Cabbage, to the lordly Marechal Neil. Three golden buds of the latter drooped over the white ribbon bow at her waist: and a bowl of dark red ones stood on the untidy table behind her.

But even the subtle-sweet influence of the day failed to sooth the creases out of her forehead. For the panel picture on her easel would not 'behave'; her scattered ideas refused to range themselves: and the fount of inspiration seemed dried up within her: trifles insignificant enough to the 'lay' mind: but for the artist, whether of pencil, or brush, or chisel, they spell despair. All the morning she had wrestled with the picture half defiantly, as it were against the stream. Such work is seldom satisfactory; and since lunch she had been engaged in blotting it all out ruthlessly, bit by bit.

The refractory creation of her spirit was a small panel in oils: a subject picture, more or less symbolical, such as she did not often attempt:—a broken hillside, of Himalayan character: bare blocks of granite, dripping with recent rain, their dark corners and interstices alight with shy wild flowers and ferns: a stone-set path zigzagging among them, and half-way up the path, the figures of a man and woman: the man ahead, upon a jutting ledge of rock, half turning with down-stretched hand to draw the woman up after him, his vigorous form backed by a sky of driving cloud. Of the woman's face, as she lifted it to his, nothing could be seen save the outline of cheek and brow. Her bowed shoulders and the lines of her figure expressed effort, tinged with weariness. Below her, the topmost half of a deodar sprang upward, a suggestion of wind in its drooping bows: and through torn grey cloud, a sun-ray, striking across the two figures, waked coppery gleams in the woman's dark hair, and points of brightness on drenched rock and fern.

All these things were as yet conveyed rather than expressed: the figures, in particular, being still little more than studies suggesting both the strain and exhilaration of ascent. On a strip of cardboard propped above the canvas, four lines were scribbled in pencil.

"Does the road wind up-hill all the way? Yes, to the very end. Will the day's journey take the whole long day? From morn till night, my friend."

Quita read and pondered the words for the hundredth time: but the hint of melancholy in them only increased her vague feeling of annoyance, and the lines deepened between her brows.

It was her first serious attempt at a picture after four months of idleness, and 'amateur scribblings'—so she designated them in her letters to Michael; and for the time being brain and hand seemed to have lost their cunning. She needed the stimulant of criticism, of discussion, to oil the wheels and set the machine going afresh. If only Michael were here, how they would have argued and squabbled, to their souls' content, over values, and proportions and effects of light and shade; and what a fine day's work would have sprung from it all!

"I really think I must get him down here for a week or two," she thought. "Just to give me a fillip in the right direction."

Fired by the notion, she made one or two ineffectual dabs at the woman's draperies: then, flinging down brush and palette, sank into a deep, cushioned chair sacred to her husband, as a small table bearing ash-tray, pipes, and a pile of corrected proofs, bore witness. She glanced through them lazily, with softened eyes: then, as if drawn by a magnet, her gaze returned to the picture.

"Horrid depressing thing!" the reflected. "And yet . . how attractive! The general character of it is rather like Eldred himself. I suppose I could produce nothing that wasn't at this stage! They are both up-hill subjects, certainly; worth tackling; and not to be mastered in a day."

But for all that she was little used to wrestling with her art. The touch of genius in her was of the spontaneous, rather than of the painstaking order; and a remembered word of Michael's rose up to disconcert her. "Succumb to your womanhood and there is an end of your Art." Irritating man! What business had he to make random shots so near to the truth. Yet it was not the whole truth; and hers was the chance to prove it.

Certainly for the past six months and more, she had succumbed unreservedly to her womanhood; had endured without a pang the temporary eclipse of her art. What need to strive after the presentation, the expression of life, when she had penetrated to the core of it: was living it buoyantly, fervently, with every faculty of heart and spirit? By nature a being of extremes, she was apt to fling all her energies in one direction at a time: and in these last months of so-called idleness she had been mastering the rudiments of the finest and most complex of all arts,—the art of living in closest human relationship with 'a creature of equal, if of unlike frailties'; an art that must be mastered afresh, year by year: because life, as we know it, is rooted in change; and if a husband and wife are not imperceptibly growing towards one another, they are almost infallibly growing in the other direction. But for the artist woman self-surrender is no natural instinct: it is a talent to be consciously acquired, if she ever acquire it at all: and although Quita had, in some sort, been through the fire, she was still a novice in those 'profound and painless lessons of love,' that can only be taught in the incomparable school of marriage.

Meanwhile, she was learning her husband,—in his own phrase,—like a new language; and enjoying the process, despite its undeniable difficulty. For the man was by temperament inarticulate, and a solitary: propensities aggravated by six years of bitterness, and stifled passion. Let his love be never so deep and true, the spell of isolation, the spirit that drives men into the wilderness, was as strong in him as the need to share thought and feeling with the heart nearest her own was in his wife. At no time could he have been classed among the frankly unthinking men who slip into marriage as composedly as they slip into a new suit of clothes: and at five-and-thirty, the complete readjustment of life and habit demanded by this exquisite yet exacting bond could not be arrived at without some degree of conscious strain and compromise.

The past few weeks had revealed to both, more or less clearly, the 'sea of contrarieties' through which they were called upon to steer without capsizing; had brought them to that critical turning-point when the first rapture of passion in possession subsides imperceptibly, into an emotion deeper and more stable; when the insignificant outer world resumes its normal proportions; and individuality reasserts itself, often with disconcerting results!

Hence Quita's revived zeal to finish a picture begun and flung aside months ago; and Eldred's unusually prompt response to a request from an Editor friend in England for a set of articles on Tibet, whose holy of holies had not then been unveiled and described for the benefit of man's insatiable curiosity.

He was in his study now, finishing the first of them in time for the homeward mail: unconsciously enjoying a return to the familiar occupation. The writing of it had engrossed more of his mind and leisure during the last week than Quita chose to consider quite admissible in those early days. Her own absorption in her picture was quite another matter, be it understood! And, in truth, she would gladly have had him in the studio, ensconced in his own chair, and available for argument or love-making according to her mood. Hitherto she had resisted temptations to invade his study when she knew him to be at work. But this afternoon a vague spirit of unrest had gotten hold of her, making the thought of his diligence, and complacent detachment from her, peculiarly exasperating; and before long exasperation drove her to the door of his sanctum.

It stood ajar: and pushing it open, she went softly in. His back was towards her, and his concentration so complete that he was not aware of her till she stood at his elbow. Then he started and looked up with a smothered exclamation of doubtful character.

"Hullo, my lady, I thought this was against regulations! What's up?"

She perched lightly on the arm of his chair.

"Nothing's up. I'm rather 'down,' that's all; or I wouldn't have infringed your territorial rights! Do leave off being a model of industry, and come into the studio."

"But, my dear girl, . . why?"

"Because I want you. Isn't that reason enough? There'll be plenty of time to finish grinding out dry-as-dust facts about Tibet after tea."

"I'm afraid not. I told Desmond I'd get down to the tent-pegging early. Is it really anything important, lass?" he added, controlling his impatience with an effort.

"Oh dear, no, not the least in the world!" She was on her feet now: head erect: dignity incarnate. "Unless it is important to do what your wife asks you with good grace. But I believe little illusions of that kind are warranted not to outlast four months of marriage."

He brought his hand sharply down on the table.

"Quita, you are talking childish nonsense. Why the dickens can't you leave me in peace till I'm through? I shan't be much longer now: and you can lecture me on the whole duty of husbands all the evening, if you've a mind to."

"Indeed I've not. Duty never gets a word in edgeways, while Love is master of the house. If it ever comes to 'duty' between you and me, I shall pack my kit and go, I promise you. It's the reality or nothing for me.—But don't hurry your work on my account, mon ami," she added, on her way to the door. "I shall probably drive over to Honor's, and leave you in peace till dinner-time. In fact, you have my permission to dine at mess for a change, if it would amuse you."

And as he turned quickly with remonstrance on his lips, the door closed behind her. With a sigh that ended in a smile, he took up his pen again: wishing her back the moment she was out of reach. For beneath his surface equanimity, the man in him was still thrilling under the emotion and astonishment of absolute possession; under the hallowing sense of permanence that at once calmed and exalted the fever heat of passion.

But Quita returned to her studio feeling more out of tune than ever. It was her own foolish fault, of course, for interrupting him: a form of knowledge that has never yet made for consolation. And while she stood alone before her picture, wondering whether she really would order the trap and go over to the Desmonds, footsteps in the verandah heralded Honor's appearance in the doorway:—a glowing Honor, looking remarkably young and fresh in a long, loose alpaca coat, and a shady Leghorn in which roses nodded: the peach-bloom of health back in her cheeks, the old buoyant stateliness in her step and carriage.

Quita flew to her with a little cry.

"Honor, you dear woman! How engaging of you to turn up, just when I was wanting you, and feeling too lazy to go and find you."

The kiss that passed between them was a real one; not the perfunctory peck of greeting that usurps its name. For, as flowers most exquisite spring from strangely unpromising soil, so had those two weeks of isolation and heart-hunger on the unloveliest hill-top of Northern India generated an enduring friendship between these two women, so unlike in outward seeming: a deeper thing than the facile feminine interchange of Christian names and kisses.

"Come your ways in, you patent radiator of happiness!" And Quita would have thrust her friend into Eldred's chair: but Honor, catching sight of the picture, went eagerly up to it.

"My dear, how remarkable! When did you begin it?"

"Ages ago, in Dalhousie; and now I want to finish it. But the lamp of inspiration won't burn. I'm afraid the wick's gone mouldy from disuse."

But Honor was reading the lines above the canvas.

"Ah, I see! Christina Rossetti," she said. "Quita, you must finish this. It's going to be very good. I love that little poem."

"Yes, you would. I've always rebelled against it. But last year when everything seemed such a struggle, the lines haunted me so, that I tried to get rid of them by turning them into a picture; and that's the result. Rather like Eldred and me! He's always dragging me up on to higher ground: yet he's so divinely unconscious of it all the time."

"Dear fellow!" Honor said softly. "But he hasn't done all the lifting. You've made a new man of him, Quita."

"Have I?" Sudden seriousness shadowed her eyes. "It was the least I could do, . . considering all things. Only . . I wish he wasn't quite so inward; so in love with his own company."

"You'll change that, in time."

"Do you think so? I wonder."

She bent in speaking to look through three or four small canvases that stood with their faces to the wall.

"I want to show you the pair to my Up-Hill picture. It's another Rossetti, Amor Mundi; and the contrast pleases me. I've taken the opening lines:

"'Oh where are you going, with your love-locks flowing, On the west wind blowing, along this valley track?' 'The down-hill path is easy; come with me, an' it please ye; We shall escape the up-hill, by never turning back.' So they two went together, in glowing August weather, The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right . .'

There now, can't you see them going down and down . . . ?"

With a quick turn of the wrist she brought the picture into view, and set it on the table in a good light.

"Can't you feel the soft wind against their faces, . . the ease, the swiftness, and the thrill of it all; the thrill of yielding to earth and the beauty of earth, of giving up for a while one's futile strugglings to reach the moon?"

Honor stood silent, gazing at the picture with rapt interest. To this deep-hearted passionate woman, whose sympathies stretched upward and downward along the whole gamut of human feeling, its appeal was far stronger than Quita—in whom passion was mainly an imaginative quality—was likely to realise. For the small picture was heavy with heat and colour, and the glamour of high mid-summer; the sky's blue intensity glowing between masses of white thunderous cloud; the hillsides clothed in their August splendour of purple, and pink, and green: and down the white track that sloped to the valley a man and a woman, hand in hand, the woman leading, appeared to be coming straight out of the picture. Her flying hair, and the sweep of her draperies, showed the speed of their going; and the ecstasy of it shone in the faces of both.

"It's a powerful little poem," Quita exclaimed. "As they go on they meet with grisly portents, the track gets steeper, and they are afraid. But by that time it is 'too steep for hill-mounting, and too late for cost-counting; the down-hill path is easy, but there's no turning back.'"

Honor gave a little shiver.

"It's a wonderful bit of work," she said. "But is it always the man who leads up, and the woman who leads down, Quita?"

"No. By no manner of means! I happened to see it so in those two instances. Probably the sainted Christina saw it the other way round.—But come and sit in Eldred's chair now, and let's get back to realities."

"Realities? Why, my dear, your pictures touch the height and depth of the biggest realities. I never knew you did that sort of thing."

"I don't as a rule. But those poems possessed me."

"Well, I can only say, go on and do more."

"I will . . if I can." And gently pushing Honor into the chair, she settled herself on the carpet, and flung an arm over her friend's knee. "It's high time I started work again. I've been idling far too long."

Honor smiled. "Don't be in a hurry to put an end to it, dear. It's one of the divinest and most profitable kinds of idling you will ever know. You are building up your future in these first months together."

Quita's sigh was a little anxious, though not sad.

"Are we? Well, I hope we've got the foundations right," she said, looking thoughtfully up into the other's face. Something in its veiled brilliance caught her attention, and bent her flexible mind in another direction. "Do you know, Honor," she went on, "you've blossomed out amazingly just lately. Your eyes are shining like two stars, as if you had some heavenly secret hidden behind them."

"It's an open secret, and a very human one!" Honor answered, smiling. "You are well on the way to discovering it for yourself."

With a low sound, Quita captured the hand lying near her own.

"Oh, you utter woman!" she murmured. "Is it still so beautiful . . . after three years?"

Honor's colour deepened. "It's more beautiful. Much more beautiful. Because now . . there are two of them."

There was a moment of silence, while Quita fidgeted with the great square sapphire on her friend's wedding-finger.

"You'll think me dreadful," she said at last. "But I'm not quite sure that I see the logic of that. For the present, at all events, I only want Eldred, and these . . my spirit children," she indicated her pictures with a little nervous laugh. "You must make allowances for the artist woman, Honor. She so seldom feels and does the things she ought to feel and do!"

"That's just why she is apt to be so refreshing!—But believe me, Quita, the most perfect marriage is not quite perfect till it becomes 'the trio perfect,' three persons and one love. That's not fantastic idealism but simple fact. Besides," she hesitated and caressed a stray tendril of Quita's hair, "doesn't it seem to you a bigger thing, on the whole, to make men and women to the best of one's power, than to make books or pictures, even fine ones?"

"Yes, in some ways . . it does. And for that very reason I doubt whether I am fitted to make them. It's a gift, an art, like everything else. Not the creating of them, of course. That's a privilege, or a fatality, as the case may be! But the moulding of them, after they are created. You can't deny that they complicate things: and even at this stage, I find marriage a far more complicated affair than I imagined it to be. Didn't you?"

Honor's smile was sufficient evidence to the contrary. But she was old-fashioned enough to have a difficulty in talking about the hidden poem of her life.

"Perhaps we were exceptions, Theo and I," she said at last. "We knew one another . . intimately, before starting; and to live with him, and . . in him, seemed to come as natural as breathing. But then, my dear, I'm simply a wife and a mother: not a woman of genius, like you."

"Aren't you, indeed? Don't pulverise me with sarcasms, please! In my opinion this exquisite passion of yours for being 'simply a wife and a mother' is in itself a kind of genius: perhaps the highest there is. You see and feel the essential beauty of both relations so vividly that you make one see and feel it also; just as certain other kinds of women make one half-ashamed of being a woman at all! Yours is the temperament that gives, Honor, . . gives royally; and is always sure of return because it looks for none. While as for me, my present complications are the natural outcome,—multiplied by six years,—of my long-ago blindness and folly, that sprang from my capacity for taking, without a thought of giving in return. You see, Eldred and I have both an ample time to crystallise in different directions: and the years we let slip may be trusted to exact their debt to the uttermost farthing.—Ah, there he is!"

The words were a mere throb of the heart. She was on her feet when the man entered: and Honor, watching her face, thought she had never seen it so nearly beautiful. She herself rose also, with a prompt excuse for departure.

"I haven't even seen Theo since breakfast," she said as they shook hands. "Tent-pegging days are hopeless: and I promised to go down early. Don't trouble to come out with me, please."

But Lenox insisted: and on his return found Quita back at her canvas, to all appearance working diligently at a difficult bit of detail in one corner. She greeted him with lifted brows.

"Finished your article already?"

"No."

"Then what on earth are you doing, loafing about in here? I'm busy. I want to get this bit done before I go out."

"Do you though?" but instead of retreating, he came closer, deliberately confiscated palette and brushes, and drew her into his arms.

"Shall I send Desmond a 'chit,' to say 'I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come'?"

"Yes,—do. He'll forgive you."

"And shall we go for a long ride across country, when I'm through with my work: and look in at the tent-pegging later?"

For answer she leaned against him with a sigh of content.



CHAPTER XXVII.

"Elfin and human, airy and true; * * * * * * Your flowers and thorns you bring with you." —R.L.S.

But the stumbling-block reasserted itself, and prevailed.

The articles on Tibet were solid affairs, for a solid journal; twelve of them, to be paid for on acceptance; and since Lenox needed the money to clear off debts incurred when furnishing and pay for their trip to Kashmir, he decided to get them written as soon as might be, before the stealthy increase of heat made mental effort a burden. Thus, while the Battery absorbed his mornings, Tibet made unlawful inroads upon his afternoons and evenings; and the narrow margin of leisure thus left to him did not by any means satisfy Quita's healthy appetite for companionship. More than once she attempted remonstrance, pitched in the wrong key, only to be routed by the unanswerable argument that the work must be done, and that there was no other time in which to do it. Finally, in a mood between pride and resignation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned elsewhere for companionship; for interests to fill the long hours which Eldred's devotion to work left empty on her hands.

And here, in a virtue pushed to the confines of vice, in the man's blind unintentional neglect of the woman for whom he would wring the last blood-drop out of his heart, you have the nucleus of more than half the pitiful domestic tragedies of India. It is the crucial moment, the genesis of a hundred unsuspected possibilities, this first divergence of the man and woman, along separate paths of interest. Love may be strong enough to stand the strain, but it will be love debarred from that intimate fusion of heart and brain which alone constitutes true marriage. The other kind is at best a permanent 'friendship recognised by the police':—a tacit confession of failure which this high-hearted, if contrarious couple were by no means minded to arrive at, now or ever. But there is no warning sign-post at the turn of the road; and already their feet were nearing it, without knowledge that its easy gradient slips into the Valley of Dry Bones.

Quita, however, was in a better case than many wives so circumstanced; in that her art was no mere distraction for spare hours, but a living reality; though, unhappily, a capricious one. And now when she would have returned to it in earnest after months of philandering with brush and pencil, it stood aloof, unmanageable as Eldred himself! She was too genuinely an artist to attempt the completion of an imaginative picture against the stream; and for fresh work, fresh mental stimulus was needed. This was not readily to be found in the everyday happenings—the riding, tennis, and gatherings at the Club Gardens—that made up the cold-weather life at Dera Ishmael; and she had little taste for small social or domestic amenities, in themselves. The call of the wild was in her blood. One might as well hope to domesticate a sea-gull as a woman of this type. She managed her household on broad lines, ignoring minor details, and Zyarulla, to his secret relief, found himself still the lynx-eyed custodian of the Sahib's Izzat[1] in houses and compound, still the controller of his petty cash. Quita received his monthly account—plus a minute percentage on each item—in perfect good faith. His visions of possible dismissal evaporated. He heartily commended his master's choice of a wife; and, in moments of expansion over the evening hookah, confided to the Khansamah—a friend and ally in the matter of accounts—his conviction that Mem Sahibs who made pictures were of a different jat to those who played tennis, harried their ayahs, and rode rough-shod over the sensibilities of honest bearers like himself! [Transcriber's note: The "a" in "jat" is an a-macron, Unicode U+0101.]

And, in truth, the Bohemian and cosmopolitan elements in Quita made her airily contemptuous of trifles, of the petty point of view, the 'local' attitude of mind often found in isolated Indian stations, more especially among the women. And setting aside Honor and Frank, the half-dozen officers' wives belonging to the Infantry Regiments were for the most part colourless average types of femininity such as Quita was something too ready to despise.

But the woman element had never played a large part in her life; and it was to the men she turned instinctively for mental companionship; for the larger outlook, the saner grasp of things big and small. She drew them by a natural magnetism; and held them by a talent for comradeship which never degenerated into familiarity or freedom. The four Battery subalterns, headed by Richardson, surrendered at discretion. And there were others also; notably George Rivers, Desmond's subaltern, a promising Lothario with a profile, a tenor voice, and an unimpeachable taste in ties and waistcoats. But Quita gave the preference to Eldred's brother officers; and to their open delight made them free of the house. One or more of them dined with her at least three nights a-week; and her instantaneous gravitation to Max Richardson had already resulted in an informal friendship equally delightful for both.

Lenox accepted these developments without comment, yet not without inward regret. For he craved the restfulness of quiet evenings alone with his wife, after a hard day's work: and indeed saw more than enough of his subalterns—always excepting Dick—on the parade-ground and in the orderly room every morning. Very soon he took to excusing himself early, on these convivial evenings, with the result that before long the old habit of working at night had him in its clutches once again, the charm of it heightened by months of abstinence. For a while he held out against it; but the quiet within and without, the certainty of freedom from interruption, the lucidity of thought that brains of a certain order seem only able to arrive at in the small hours, were powerful advocates for surrender; and little by little habit conquered. He smoked more and slept less; and the quality of his work improved in great strides.

But Quita objected strongly to this barefaced revival of 'bachelor habits' within six months of marriage; and more than once—waking in the small hours to find herself alone—she had slipped on her dressing-gown and boldly invaded his study; a disarming vision enough, her face flushed with sleep, looking absurdly young in a halo of tumbled hair, her eyes alight with tenderness and enjoyment of her own daring. On each occasion she was reproved without severity; established herself in the deck-lounge of old days; fell asleep promptly, and was carried protesting back to bed; but not until she had seen the lamp put out and the detestable litter of papers tidied up for the night.

In this fashion the first half of March slipped uneventfully by, each day bringing with it that imperceptible advance of heat which strikes an undernote of dread through the rose-scented languor of a Punjab March. For in the vast Northern Plains of India, it is autumn, not spring, that bears the winged word of resurrection. But Quita was still at that enviable stage in love's progress when times and seasons and places shrink to mere pin-points beside the one supreme fact. A Frontier hot weather in Eldred's company held no terrors for her. Possibly two months' leave would be available later on, when they would spend the honeymoon—of which they had been twice defrauded—in Kashmir; and, in the meantime, so long as one roof covered them, all was well; in spite of her secret wish that Tibet and the Pamirs could be expunged from the map of Asia by means of a private deluge!

But if Quita were inclined to quarrel with her husband's industry, Max Richardson was not. He was enjoying, for the first time in his life, the mere pleasantness of a woman's intimate companionship;—in Quita's case a companionship full of incident, of delicate reticences, alternating with unexpected revelations of thought and feeling; and through it all a frank interest in everything that concerned himself, which is perhaps the subtlest form of coquetry. Not that Quita meant it as such. In her entire devotion to her husband, she simply did not consider her effect upon other men; to whom, in consequence, she showed her true self almost with the freedom and spontaneity of a child. Richardson's own simplicity of character, and the ease with which one slips into a pleasant path, helped matters forward; and before long, they had fallen quite naturally into the habit of riding or driving together when Lenox happened to be very much engaged. Quita saw no reason to conceal her pleasure in these outings. Lenox thanked his friend once or twice, bluntly enough, yet with evident sincerity; and Richardson accepted his own good fortune with an unquestioning appreciation very characteristic of the man.

His thoughts were running definitely upon this pleasant state of things, as he drove Quita Lenox homeward through the main street of the native city, on a glowing evening, some two weeks after Honor's visit to the studio. Behind them clattered a small guard of native police, without whom it would not be advisable to explore a frontier city; and on either hand stretched a narrowing vista of open shop fronts noisy with vituperative buyers and sellers; brilliant with piled vessels of brass and copper, with the rainbow tints of dyed silks and muslins, piles of parched corn and spices, oranges, bananas, and pomegranates; their upper storeys breaking out into quaintly carved windows and balconies, strange splashes of colour, or rough childish pictures, innocent of proportion. And, better than these, in Quita's esteem, was the wide street itself, packed with the noisy, leisurely life of an Indian city:—goats and cattle; women and children; open bullock-carts that seemed to have all eternity to travel in; princely-looking Afghan traders in long coats and peaked turbans; Waziris, with keen, Jewish faces framed in greasy locks that fell upon their shoulders; the sais from his tail-board shouting ineffectual commands to make way for the Sahib; long-legged fowls, leaping and fluttering up under the pony's nose; pariahs, lazily insolent, almost allowing the wheel to graze thigh-bone or paw, before they condescended to loaf away to a fresh resting-place; and over all an arch of blue, so deep and passionate as to be almost vocal; and pervading all, the indefinable, unforgettable smell of the East:—a smell compounded of musk, spices, open drains, and humanity.

When at last they emerged into the open, and quickened their pace, Quita drew a breath of satisfaction, and smiled up at her companion, who allowed his eyes to linger in hers a moment longer than the occasion required.

Their outing had been an unusually long one; for whenever she could find her way into the city Quita was insatiable. Again and again Richardson had sat waiting in the sun, while she made thumb-nail sketches of street corners, bargained with curio-sellers for the Alexander coins and relics which abound at Dera Ishmael, or extracted information from shy, smiling women, whose faces happened to take her fancy in passing.

"You have been a miracle of patience!" she assured him, as they neared cantonments. "And I daresay you hated it half the time, and scorned my globe-trotter behaviour! I've noticed how quickly most Anglo-Indians get bored if one asks questions, or shows the smallest interest in the country and the people."

"Probably they don't enjoy airing their own ignorance," he suggested, with lazy amusement in his eyes. "I'm not bored with you, though. Shouldn't be, even if you were to pelt me with questions till midnight."

She laughed lightly.

"Don't dare me to put you to the test! It might make us enemies for life. And it's really capital that we get on so well. Just think how awkward for Eldred if I had taken one of my strong unreasoning dislikes to you!"

"Still more awkward for me! I never thought you carried hidden weapons of that sort about with you."

"Wait till you know me better. I am a hopeless creature of extremes! You can't think how I hated my dear Honor Desmond last year,—though I'd cut off a hand for her now; nor how I still hate . . . some one I have never seen;—some one who wrote to Eldred—about me—years ago."

She broke off, remembering that in his eyes she had only been married nine months; though if she had been looking at him instead of contemplating the hands that lay clasped in her lap, she must have noticed his start, the sudden tension of his face and figure. Lenox had never told her, then. He might have guessed as much. And why should she ever know, after all? His native honesty prompted him to make a clean breast of it, and ask her forgiveness. But something stronger,—a new imperative desire to stand well with her at any price,—held him silent. Presently, she glanced up at him curiously; but his straight-featured profile and steady hands upon the reins revealed nothing beyond a momentary abstraction of thought.

"I forgot, when I spoke just now," she said in a changed voice—a voice of closer intimacy—"that you don't know how long we have really been married,—do you?"

"Yes, I do know," he answered, still intent upon the pony. Every moment made him more exquisitely uncomfortable. But he could not lie to her.

"Did my husband tell you?" she flashed out almost angrily.

"No, indeed. He's not that sort. I—found out by chance."

"How strange! Another man did the same. One can never keep a secret in this world. Well—it was the letter I spoke of that did all the harm; that broke up everything between us for five years. Can you wonder that I've never forgiven the writer, and never shall? Not because he wrote unfairly of me, but because of all that Eldred suffered then, and afterwards."

"Did you never make allowance for the fact that he could not have known how things were between you,—that he meant no harm?"

"I'm afraid I made no allowances; though I'm quite aware that, speaking justly, one can't blame him. Probably Eldred never did. But I told you my dislikes were unreasonable; and it makes me hate him to think that he was quite happy away there in England all those five years, while Eldred was half-killing himself with work and misery."

"Yes, I understand that. But it's all over now; and the harm's repaired."

"I hope so, in a measure; though it's my belief that harm done can never really be repaired; only patched up."

"That's a very terrible doctrine, Mrs Lenox."

"I'm afraid facts go to prove the truth of it."

Although she spoke quietly, a touch of hardness had invaded her voice; and Richardson had no answer to give her. His cheerful, easy-going nature had rarely been so deeply stirred. A new and delightful experience seemed to be taking an unlooked-for turn, and his lame attempts at self-defence in the third person struck him as bordering on the grotesque. He set his teeth and flicked the pony viciously; then hauled at his mouth because he broke into a canter. Yet he was a tender-hearted man.

"Poor little beast! Don't treat him like that," she rebuked him, between jest and earnest, "What's wrong? The city seems to have disagreed with you."

Again he did not answer: and for a time they drove on without speaking, each, if the truth be told, thinking of the other. Then she startled him with one of her direct, inconsequent questions.

"Mr Richardson, how old are you?"

He laughed.

"Just thirty. Why?"

"I was only wondering. You're the sort of man who ought to marry. Have you never thought of it yet?"

"No. Too little money. Besides, I'm a lazy beggar, and I shirk the responsibility."

"That means you've never been in love!"

"I suppose not. Nothing more serious than a passing inclination. Mere growing pains!" He smiled at the remembrance of a certain romantic episode in his early twenties. "What's your notion? Have I been overdosing you with my company that you are so keen to marry me off?"

"Don't talk nonsense. I was simply thinking of you. You've the right stuff in you for a husband. But personally, I prefer you unattached. I should probably quarrel with your wife; and she would break up our friendship; which would be a thousand pities."

"Mrs Lenox—d'you mean that? Do you really value it one little bit?"

His repressed eagerness puzzled her, and she lifted her eyebrows. "But yes, mon ami! Would I go about with you so much if I didn't? I have failings enough, Heaven knows, but insincerity is not one of them. By the way, am I to put you on my other side to-night? Wouldn't you prefer Mrs Norton, or Mrs Lacy Smith for a change? I couldn't get the Desmonds; and Eldred hates my poor little party in consequence."

"So shall I, if you banish me from your end of the table."

"Well, that settles it. Two conspicuously large men in open mutiny would be more than the rest of us could stand!"

They swerved in between the gate-posts, and drew rein as she spoke. The sound of their wheels had brought Lenox into the verandah.

"It's high time you were back again, you two," he said, with a touch of decision, as he lifted his wife from the cart. "I was wondering what had come to you. See you again at eight, Dick."

And Richardson, having quite recovered from his bad quarter of an hour, drove off humming the refrain of a song Quita had sung to him a few evenings back. After all, so long as she liked him, and valued his friendship, she was welcome to hate the supposed unknown, whose identity she must never be allowed to guess.

Meanwhile Lenox and his wife went on into the house, Quita disarming reproof by instant apology. "It was delightful; but I'm sorry we were away too long, dear."

He smiled contentedly down upon her. "Well—there are limits! Where on earth did you go?"

"All through the city again, and I unearthed endless treasures. You'd have loved it."

"Of course I should. Great fool that I was not to chuck the writing and take you myself!"

"Oh, if you only would, a little oftener!"

Something in her tone smote him; and putting both hands on her shoulders, he bent towards her, pain and passion in his eyes.

"Darling, tell me, have I been neglecting you lately?"

Her low laughter reassured him. "Neglecting me? Dear stupid! D'you suppose I'd sit down under it if you did? Now I'm going to change for dinner; and do please make yourself agreeable to Mrs Norton this evening."

For the Deputy Commissioner's wife was honouring her husband with a flying visit, before going north to spend the season in Simla.

"The devil take Mrs Norton. Odious woman!"

"No,—it's you that will have to take her!" she answered, laughing. "And it's not my fault that you won't have your beautiful Honor on the other side to keep the balance true."

Quita enjoyed her little dinner, and saw to it that others did likewise. She was a natural-born hostess. Talk never flagged in her neighbourhood, and her own lack of self-consciousness set the stiffest and shyest at their ease. Besides, she always enjoyed talking to Norton, whose cynicism and critical attitude she disarmed by the simple means of ignoring them. She liked the man's plain, hard-featured face, ploughed with deep lines of thought and effort, and only redeemed from ugliness by his remarkable eyes.

"Stoking up!" he remarked grimly, sipping his soup with a keen appreciation of its quality. "Punkahs and hell-fire again in no time. One hardly has time to cool down before the winter slips away. Mrs Norton's off to Simla in ten days; and I suppose you'll be bolting also by the end of next month?"

She laughed, and shook her head. "If you're counting on getting my husband to chum with you this hot weather, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

He eyed her quizzically for a moment.

"Of course—I forgot. You're a new broom! If I meet you in March three or four years hence, I shall hear another story."

"And enjoy the triumph of your own cynicism! Very well, I accept your challenge. I shall write to you three years from now, just to tell you how the land lies."

"Do. And if you forget, I shall hear of you from some one else. We know all one another's little doings in this corner of the world. I feel curious about you, and prophesy that Simla and amateur theatricals will carry the day; though for Lenox's sake I hope all the triumph will be on your side. But it's no light matter, I can tell you, to win your spurs as a Frontier officer's wife of the right quality."

"Like Mrs Desmond, for instance?"

"Quite so. Like Mrs Desmond."

"I notice all the cynicism goes out of your voice when you speak of her. Yet you can make insulting prophecies about me, at my own table too! Am I so immeasurably inferior?"

"That remains to be seen! You have still to be tested in the furnace, and no imaginary furnace either. Man or woman, staying power's the great requisite for India, Mrs Lenox. To pull through for half a dozen hot weathers is all very well,—mere getting one's hand in. But by the time a man has completed his twentieth he begins to know something about the weakness of the flesh. I seem to you, with your youth and high courage, a cynical, disagreeable fellow enough. But perhaps when you are middle-aged and disillusioned, and all the good blood in your veins has been dried up by fever, you'll forgive my straight speaking to-night; though by then I shall be a forgotten old fogey, eating my heart out in England, or I shall have dropped in harness, which would be the kinder fate of the two."

"Indeed I have forgiven you already," she answered in a softened tone; and involuntarily her eyes sought the handsome heavy-featured woman beside her husband, whose Paris dinner-dress was cut lower than need be, and whose elaborate 'fringe' rather too obviously grew off her head.

"Thank you. It's more than I deserve; and I'm sorry I must repay you by giving you your first taste of the pleasant little surprises that are a main feature of Frontier life. I have to go off across the Border early next week, to fix the position of a post we are going to build for our Mahsud levies, and to collect a fine from some rascals who have been raiding Tank."

"Where's that?"

"An unlucky village near the Gomal Pass,—the great trade route into the hills. It gets burnt to the ground periodically by the Waziris, probably much to its advantage; but one can't overlook the insult to British authority. So I'm obliged to visit them in state and talk to them like a father, after collecting their fine; and I'm afraid I must take your husband and Richardson along with me, besides a handful of cavalry and infantry by way of protection and prestige."

Quita's face fell. "For how long?" she asked, collecting her last crumbs of pastry with a peculiar deliberation.

"We might be ten days coming and going. Not more."

"And—would there be fighting?"

"Probably not. It's a peaceful deputation. But peace armed to the teeth is the only kind the Waziri understands; and he can't always control his rifle when he finds the eternally aggressive white man taking liberties with his sacred hills! We shan't be sorry for a whiff of cool air any of us; and you won't be the only injured wife. Colonel Montague, of the Sikhs, comes with us; and I'm going to rob Mrs Desmond of her preux chevalier also. I only want half a squadron, but I shall make special request for Desmond. He's a capital man to have handy in case of accidents. As for Lenox, he'll be delighted, if that's any consolation to you."

"Well, naturally," she faced him now, eyes and lips under control. "Besides, ten days is nothing. One has to make a beginning; and it might have been ever so much worse."

"That's the plucky way to look at it," he said in evident approval, and Quita rather abruptly changed the subject.

The evening that followed was a remarkably cheerful affair, imbued with that spirit of friendly informality which makes the little dinners of India live long in the memory. O'Flannagan had brought his banjo. Rivers and Richardson both sang creditably; and Quita herself was in one of her 'inspired' moods. Only Mrs Norton, having deposited her grey satin magnificence upon the sofa, protested mutely against what she considered a tendency to 'rowdyism' in her hostess; flirted—intellectually—with any one who had the hardihood to sit near her; and on the stroke of ten rose with a suppressed yawn and a transparently insincere little speech about an enjoyable evening.

"Begad, but her works want oiling badly!" O'Flannagan confided to Quita, as the last shimmering morsel of her train slid out of sight. "She's one o' your immaculate Englishwomen who give me the blues. Come on, Mrs Lenox. Thank Heaven for the dash of ould Ireland in you; and let's begin to enjoy ourselves!"

From that moment the evening took a new lease of life. Two battery subalterns came over from mess, and it was close on midnight when Lenox, returning from his final duties in the verandah, found Quita standing by the mantelpiece, her cheeks flushed, her eyes radiating enjoyment.

"Thank the Lord that's over!" he ejaculated fervently, flinging himself into a deep arm-chair; and she turned on him promptly, with a visible ruffling of her feathers.

"Eldred, you're positively inhuman. When you talk like that you make me want to hit you!"

She stood above him, threatening him with one slim hand; but Lenox, reaching up lazily, grasped her arms below the elbow, and gently but irresistibly forced her on to her knees.

"Hit out, lass, if you've a mind to," he said good-humouredly. "I swear I won't retaliate!"

She struggled for freedom; but he held her in a vice.

"You great schoolboy,—let me go!" she commanded, between laughter and vexation. "I don't care if you do hate dinner parties. I must have them sometimes. I love to see people enjoying themselves as they all did tonight, except that odious Mrs Norton, who doesn't count. You're not pliable enough. That's what's the matter with you. But if I live to a hundred and twenty you'd never make a hermit out of me!"

"And if you gave a party every night of your life you'd never make a society man out of me. I should simply apply for a trans-frontier billet, where wives are not admitted. But look here, little woman, did Norton tell you about next week?"

"Of course he did. You'll be gone in three or four days. It's hateful. Do let me have my arms back, darling."

And he surrendered this time.

"Are you sleepy?" she asked, her eyes, full of laughter, resting in his.

"Lord, no. I'm going to sit up and put in two hours work at least before turning in."

"Indeed you'll do no such thing. You're going to sit up and talk to me. I didn't like to bother Mr Norton; but I've a hundred questions to ask you about it all."

"Hazur ke kushi! [2] Ask away. Only let me get at my pipe, and I'm at your service."

He filled and lighted it with leisurely satisfaction; and Quita, settling herself on the carpet beside him, her face looking into his, her bright head laid against his knee, kept him talking of Border politics and Border warfare till all thought of putting in two hours' work was out of the question.



[1] Prestige.

[2] As your Honour's pleases.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

"The work is with us; the event is with Allah." —Kipling.

"Shade, water, grass . . . Not half a bad place for a picnic, eh, Major? And I hope that plausible-looking scoundrel, talking to Norton, has provided a decent breakfast for us. Five hours of marching in this air puts an edge on a fellow's appetite."

Richardson's remark was addressed to Desmond,—now a Major of six months' standing,—whose practised eye was critically surveying the camping-ground assigned by the local magnate, Nussar Ali Khan, to the seven British officers and their handful of native troops.

The site chosen was the topmost of two wide terraces descending to a stream, from whose farther bank a great hill rose abruptly, dark with pine and ilex, and cleft into a formidable nullah. On the right, flat house-tops of a walled native village overlooked the terrace, with its inviting group of trees, beneath which breakfast was in preparation. On the left another elevation, crowned with huts; behind them an open field, sloping to a ten-foot wall; and above the wall the ubiquitous watch-tower of the Border glowered like a frown upon the face of peace. The impedimenta of the little force,—transport, field-hospital, and camp-followers,—still trailed along a narrow lane leading from the kotal[1] over which they had come, to the terrace itself. Already grey films of wood-smoke soared, plume-like, into the blue; and the air at ten of the morning was still keen with the sharpness of a small frost at high altitudes.

"Not half a bad place for a picnic," Desmond admitted mentally; though for several reasons, this man,—who was a Frontier soldier by instinct and heritage,—would scarcely have chosen it himself.

But stringent military precautions were no part of the programme: Norton's escort of half a squadron, two guns, and five hundred Sikhs and Punjabis, being little more than a necessary appendage to a peaceful visitation. Such commonplaces of Frontier government as the enforcing of a fine, and the choosing of a site for an outpost manned by friendly tribesmen, was unlikely to cause friction or stir up strife; and Norton, standing apart from the group of officers in khaki, was listening politely to Nussar Ali Khan and his friends,—some half a dozen Maliks from the fortified villages scattered among the hills. Spare, muscular men, all of them, in peaked caps and turbans, sheep-skin coats, and voluminous trousers, girded by the formidable Pathan belt, with its pouches, dagger, and straight-handled sword; their bearded faces lighted up, as they talked, by flashes of white teeth; most of them towering half a head above the squarely-built Englishman, with the jaw of a bull-dog and the eyes of a hawk, who understood their language, their strange mingling of courage and cruelty, of simplicity and cunning, as a man only understands that to which he has devoted a lifetime of labour and thought.

Lower down, under the lee of the village wall, a local jirgah[2] sat watching the influx of troops with non-committal indifference, waiting to come forward and protest their devotion to the White Queen and the Burra Sahib; their entire readiness to be bound over by the Maliks' proposals, and, in effect, to behave themselves till next time! The utmost guarantee of good conduct that will ever be wrung out of the lawless sons of the North-western hills.

"It is enough, Khan Sahib," Norton said at length, cutting short a string of compliments that he knew by heart. "Let the jirgah come to me and make their statement while breakfast is preparing."

But the Khan, indicating with a sweep of his arm the limitless time at their disposal, declared that a matter so trifling could very well wait till the Presence and the officer Sahibs had refreshed themselves.

"It is well known among our people, Hazur," he concluded, "that your Honour regardeth not food or rest when work remaineth to be done. But the matter hath already been peacefully settled with these men. Moreover, there be the officer Sahibs also, desiring breakfast; and my son hath commanded everything of the best for your Honour's reception: even wood and grass in abundance, that labour might be spared."

Having struck camp before six that morning, Norton needed no further pressing: and ten minutes later the eight Englishmen were breakfasting heartily on provisions that atoned in quantity for lack of quality.

Besides Desmond and the Gunners, the Deputy Commissioner, who knew how to pick his men, had secured Unwin and Montague with the Sikhs, a smart subaltern with the Punjab Infantry, and Courtenay as medical officer. Behind them, sepoys and sowars, keeping their arms by Colonel Montague's orders, smoked or slept at their ease. Sentries had been told off; pickets posted in front and rear; the screw guns unlimbered, and stationed with their infantry escort on rising ground at the far end of the field. Scattered groups of villagers, appearing on walls and house-tops and on the hill to the left, squatted on their heels, watching the mild tamasha with evident interest, and exchanging broad sallies of wit with the sepoys by way of adding flavour to the entertainment.

Pipes, cigars, and a pleasant sense of wellbeing followed the meal.

"I congratulate you, Norton," Montague remarked between pulls at a stumpy briar that was consoling him for muscular fowl and curried leather. "Your Wolves of the Khanigoram are behaving like Sunday-school children at a prize giving! We can fix the site for the post when we've rested a bit longer, and start back this afternoon, eh?"

"Yes, by all means. I have only to settle matters with the jirgah."

"Thank goodness, I'm booked for first leave," the other continued conversationally. He was a plump, well-cared-for little man, hampered by half a dozen boys and girls clamouring for education at home, and was beginning to lose his taste for scratch picnics across the Border. "This sort of thing sets one hankering for the hills. I suppose you won't be doing wonders up Tibet way this year, Lenox? Metal more attractive, and all that sort of thing, eh?"

"Yes, I shall stick to the Battery for the present," Lenox answered, ignoring the playful allusion: and Richardson, detecting annoyance in the tone, put in his own oar deftly enough.

"Unwin's the lucky beggar. When do you sail, old chap?"

"To-day fortnight, praise the powers! No more dancing attendance on Waziris for eighteen good months to come." He stretched his cramped legs contentedly. "Those Johnnies on the wall seem to be getting bored with our show. We ought to have brought a couple of banjos along to amuse their majesties!"

It was true. Gradually, by twos and threes, the villagers were melting away: and Desmond, who was leaning against a tree trunk close to Norton, helmet tilted over his nose, apparently half asleep, touched the civilian's arm.

"I say, Norton," he said under his breath. "Take your oath it's all square?"

Norton looked round sharply.

"My dear man, we've eaten their food. Ever know a Pathan commit a breach of hospitality?"

"No. But it looks queer."

For by now their audience had practically disappeared. The village wall was empty, save for one crouching figure, that sprang suddenly and silently to its full height, and brandished a bared sword: the blade flashing like a helio in the strong light.

"What's the mutlub[3] of that theatrical interlude?" Richardson demanded with a laugh; and was answered by a signal shot from the watch-tower behind.

In a flash all eight of them were on their feet: Montague and Lenox shouting to their men to 'fall in.'

The order was obeyed with incredible promptness. But the Waziris had the advantage of playing a prepared game; and before the officers had time to disperse a murderous fire was poured upon them from all sides at once: from the village, the watch-tower, and the huts on the left. Swift as magic the walls bristled with picked marksmen, armed with matchlocks, Winchesters, and Martini Henry's stolen from Border sentries: and it was clear that the enemy held the nullah in great strength.

"Massacre, by God!" Desmond muttered between his teeth as he dodged a whizzing bullet, while a second glanced off his brass buckle, and buried itself in the tree behind him.

Colonel Montague, advancing to meet his men, who came forward at the double, fell, mortally wounded, with two bullets through his body. He staggered to his feet; only to fall again, face downward, as Desmond and Courtenay hurried up to him, and—covered by the fire of his Sikhs—carried him into comparative safety behind a stack of bhusa,[4] within reach of the ambulance; his bugler following close at their heels.

"I'm done for," he panted, as they laid him down. "Make the best job you can of me; and prop me . . against the stack. I'll direct operations . . while I can . . hold out."

There was clearly nothing else to be done; and while Courtenay obeyed the dying man's injunctions, Desmond made haste to join his own sowars, who were already doing smart work with their rifles, under Ressaldar Rajinder Singh.

By now the din was terrific. It was as if a special department of hell had been suddenly opened up. Firing had become general from all the surrounding hills; for an attack of this kind, once started, speedily degenerates into a matter of ghaza.[5] Every moment brought fresh reinforcements to the Waziris; every moment their fire grew hotter; and every moment, through the rattle of musketry and the yells of the tribesmen, came the deep-throated duet of the sturdy little screw-guns under the wall, as they pitched shell after shell into the nullah, from whose depths a hidden foe responded with pitiless accuracy and vigour.

For, simultaneously with Montague's advance, Lenox and Richardson had doubled to their guns through a hailstorm of humming, leaping bullets. One, passing through Lenox's coat-sleeve, grazed his upper arm; while a second struck Richardson's breast-pocket, and was only prevented from wounding him mortally by a pad of first-aid bandages which Courtenay had served out to him, in joke, two days earlier. Reaching the guns unscathed, they found the gunners at their posts, the infantry escort blazing merrily and effectively at the marksmen on the wall: and at once opened fire on the nullah with case-shot and shell.

But their height and exposed position rendered them too conspicuous to be missed for long by an enemy whose skill in picking off British officers makes the little wars of the Frontier such cruelly costly affairs. In less than two minutes, a burning pain near his shoulder-blade told Lenox he was hit. But not being disabled, he paid small heed to so trivial an incident at the time. The incessant firing took up all his attention.

Before ten minutes were out, shells, case-shot, and shrapnel had all been exhausted. The Mahsuds were firing more steadily than ever; and on the terrace itself, the infantry and sowars were in no enviable case. Unwin had fallen, shot through the head. Montague had momentarily succumbed to pain and exhaustion; and Desmond, with little Martin of the Punjab Infantry and a Sikh Subadar, was in command of affairs.

Sudden faintness, and a damp discomfort down his back, warned Lenox that his wound must be bleeding more freely than he knew. He gripped the shoulder of a gunner standing near him; and for an instant all things swam together before his eyes.

"Look, Captain Sahib, look! There be fresh men on the hill."

The voice of the Havildar Major in his ear steadied his senses: and he saw the new danger that threatened. Down the steep hillside at their right rear, a compact body of men leapt cautiously from cover to cover; an occasional glint of sunlight on a sword-blade revealing their probable intent.

"I say, Dick, those devils'll rush the guns if we give 'em half a chance," he said, turning to his subaltern; and without waiting for an answer, ordered his escort to cover the hill, and prepare for a volley.

But almost before the command could be obeyed,—with a final leap and a dull roar, rising to a yell of triumph,—the Waziris were upon them at close quarters; the front ranks brandishing long knives, the rest armed with matchlocks and rifles.

The Sikhs stood their ground sturdily: as Sikhs may be trusted to do in any straits; while the guns, firing over their heads, sent many of the frenzied fanatics rolling over and over, with yells of a very different nature.

Then, suddenly . . Lenox never quite knew how it happened . . he felt the earth heave under him; some one gripped him from behind: Dick's tall figure, revolver in hand, interposed between him and the swarming hillside; and the next instant reeled against him with such violence that both fell heavily to the ground. At once their men closed round them, covering them with their rifles; a Havildar and two gunners eagerly proffering lengths of turban for bandages, since it was plain that Richardson's wound in the thigh was no light matter.

Startled and stunned as he was, Lenox righted himself speedily; and kneeling on one knee, supported his subaltern's shoulders against the other, while a Havildar roughly bandaged the wounded leg, and bullets whinged and whirred on all sides of them.

"Dick, you'd no business to be there. What the devil did you do?" Lenox asked, a queer vibration in his voice: for it seemed that not till this moment had he understood the strength of the link that bound him to the simple-hearted man who was his friend.

"For God's sake don't plague a chap with questions when he's hard hit. The thing's done; and . ." Richardson's voice trailed off inaudible,—"it's better this way . . for her." Then he roused himself with an effort. "We've crushed the brutes, haven't we?"

"Yes. For the present. The men behaved splendidly. Jove! here comes Norton through the thick of it all. Orders to clear out, most likely. If it's that, I wish to hell it had come five minutes sooner." And Richardson murmured inarticulate assent.

Norton carried his message in his face.

"The Colonel has rallied a little," he said, after expressing sympathy and concern for the plight of both officers. "And he agrees with me that it is wanton sacrifice of men to hold out any longer. Only Courtenay and Martin untouched out of the seven of you; for Desmond's just had his wrist smashed, poor fellow. We must get back, as best we can, by the lane and over the kotal. Desmond has despatched a party of his sowars to Brownlow, of your corps, for reinforcements of men and ammunition. His post is only nine miles off, and we can push along in that direction. Now I must get back to the Colonel. I'll let Courtenay know he's wanted: and send a stretcher along."

With his departure, began the desperate business of dismembering guns and loading mules under a sharp fire; gunners, drivers, and native officers vieing with each other in carrying off the wounded, repulsing hand-to-hand attacks, and in many individual acts of gallantry. While limbering up the guns a mule was shot, and two wheels rolled down the slope. The Havildar in charge sped after them, through pattering bullets; returning with seventy-two pounds of solid metal hanging from each arm. But even as he flung them down in triumph, he rolled over, with a bullet through his chest: while Richardson's orderly staggered past, carrying the gun itself, a matter of two hundred pounds. Such amazing feats can flesh and blood achieve under the spur of momentary exaltation.

And at last,—despite the catastrophe of a stampede among the ammunition and ambulance mules, which left them poorer by four thousand rounds and their field hospital,—the preliminaries were accomplished. Covered by the sharp rifle practice of the infantry and sowars, men, animals, and stretchers retired, without precipitation or disorder, along the narrow lane, bounded by stone walls and rugged hills swarming with a jubilant enemy. For at the first signs of evacuation the Mahsuds came out in greater numbers; harrying and pressing in upon the dogged little column on all sides, yet rarely offering a mark for riflemen; their lithe bodies and marvellous activity enabling them to find cover almost anywhere.

It was heart-breaking work: for, in the soldier's vocabulary, there is no more unwelcome word than retreat; notwithstanding the fact that a retreat which covers all ranks with honour and glory is perhaps the finest achievement possible in the great game of war. Certain it is that the progress of Norton's broken escort through that veritable death-trap, to the kotal where a second stand might prove feasible, was carried out by officers and men with the indomitable coolness and spirit that converts failure into 'an honourable form of victory.'

It is such crises which test the mettle of our native troops: adding fresh proof, if more were needed, of the magnificent fighting material that India has given into our hands. For Colonel Montague had again lost consciousness; and Martin having been shot in the calf as he entered the lane, the task of carrying out all the details of the retirement fell upon the senior Native officer, Subadar Hira Singh, under Desmond's orders. He and Norton, bearing the joint burden of responsibility, kept close together. The surface cynicism of the civilian had been burnt up in the fire of healthy savage action; and at odd moments, when ordinary speech was possible, his admiration for the conduct of all concerned vented itself in disjointed ejaculations of approval that warmed the cavalryman's heart.

"Wait till I make out my report of all this," he said on one occasion. "Be sure you Piffers will get all the kudos you deserve."

And five minutes later, he fell—shot through the body—into Desmond's arms.

"Nothing . . nothing serious," he protested, while his face wried with pain. "Don't delay matters . . on my account. I can pull along somehow, if you'll give me an arm."

But they got him on to a stretcher, none the less; and Courtenay did all he could till a definite halt was possible.

"Bad . . is it?" the civilian asked coolly, noting the concern in the other's eyes. "Well, a man might do worse than die . . . like a soldier. But by God, I'll hang on to life somehow,—till I can draft out my report."

And hang on to life he did, in defiance of mortal pain, with a tenacity worthy of his bull-dog jaw.

At the foot of the kotal, Desmond called a halt; and the rearguard under Hira Singh closed up, to hold the enemy in check, that the guns and wounded might get over in safety before the position should be finally abandoned.

And now began the toughest bit of fighting the day had yet seen. For the Waziris closed with the Sikhs and Punjabis in overwhelming numbers; exchanging the clatter of musketry for the clash of steel, the sickening thud of blows given and received. But neither numbers nor cold steel availed to break up that narrow wall of devoted men. With each gap in their ranks, they merely closed in, and fought the more fiercely: Hira Singh, with his brother the Jemadar, and a score of unconsidered heroes, flinging away their lives with less of hesitation than they would have flung away a handful of current coin, to gain time for those whose safety hung upon their power of resistance.

At last,—when all had passed over the small hill behind them,—came the order to fall back: and not till that moment had any man among them yielded a foot of space to the persistent foe, who now pressed after them; and, with renewed jubilations and flutterings of green standards, occupied every available position on the surrounding hills.

For two interminable hours the dreary game went on; till six ridges, that climbed to a commanding plateau, had been held and abandoned through shortage of ammunition. But thanks to the steadiness of the rearguard, and to their leader's genius for the art of war, no further lives were lost; no further advantage gained by the Waziris; and at length, heart-weary and leg-weary, they reached the plateau itself, to find Brownlow,—with shot and shell, and two hundred Sikhs thirsting for battle,—already there before them, having covered the nine miles in one and a half hours.

Perhaps only a soldier who has drunk his cup of blood and fire to the dregs, knows the strange mingling of emotions packed into that little word 'relieved': and assuredly none but a soldier could enter into the joy with which Lenox stood swaying dizzily beside his beloved guns, while he and Brownlow pitched eight-and-twenty shells into the fortified village below the last one, to their shameless satisfaction, lighting on the mosque itself, and lifting the Mullah, with his green flag of victory, twenty feet into the air.

It was a more or less damaged and dejected party of five which assembled in the small mess tent that night.

So much had been lost, so little gained by the day's disaster: an epitome of too many 'regrettable incidents' beyond the Border. The costliest item of Frontier defence is this unavoidable waste of the lives of picked soldiers. The Sikhs had lost heavily in Native officers and men. Colonel Montague had succumbed to his wounds during the retirement. Norton and Richardson, both too severely hurt to appear at mess, were officially in hospital,—that is to say, on stretchers in two field service tents: and three out of the five men at the mess table had brought away superfluous mementoes of Waziri marksmanship.