"Do you really think that one small human life can make so much difference?" she asked, rather bitterly. "I used to think so, in my self-important days, but I am beginning to believe that our little individual efforts are hopelessly lost in a sea of rubbish."

"Our youthful conceit is more justifiable than such self-disparagement," he answered. "I often think that humility—at any rate a certain kind—is a questionable virtue. In lessening our own value, we lessen our own responsibility, and our responsibility is tremendous. One life can make the difference of a cathedral spire in a town of low-built huts or of a snow mountain in an ugly plain. I am sure of it—and so are you. So is everybody who thinks about it. But people do not think. It is sometimes much more convenient to believe that one is too insignificant to have any responsibility. But to my mind there is not a vagabond in the street who is not directly helping on our national decay, and who might not be building up the Empire." He leaned toward her, lowering his voice. "You know I am not just talking, Lois. It is my life's principle which I lay before you—mine and yours. How long is it since we have spoken of these things? Ten years. Since then we have been building steadily at our cathedral. We must go on."

"How can we?" she answered wearily. "It is not our cathedral any more. I thought you had forgotten, and—"

"My first day in Marut I sent a message to you—a little in fun, but with an earnest purpose. I wanted to see if you had forgotten, and I wanted you to know that I had remembered. I told you that the cathedral still lacked its chief spire."

"I never got the message. It was that day Archibald asked me to be his wife. When did you send the letter?"

"It was not a letter but a verbal message, by Travers."

"That afternoon?"

"Yes, that afternoon."

She covered her face with her hand.

"He—he must have forgotten," she said at last.

"Yes, he must have forgotten," he agreed quietly.

There was a long silence. She remained motionless, but he heard her breath being drawn in quick, painful gasps. The battle for them both was at its height. He bent forward and took the hand that lay clenched in her lap gently in his own.



"Dear little Lois, dear little comrade! We are like two architects, you and I. We were very young when we set out on our great task, and no doubt we have made many blunders. In the beginning we each hoped secretly that the time would come when we should be able to crown our work hand in hand. It was that I was thinking of when I sent my message. Well, things have turned out differently—perhaps through our own fault. But the cathedral must go on. Instead of one spire, as we had hoped, there will be two spires. You will build yours, I mine. They will be far apart, and so we of necessity must be apart, too. But the cathedral will go on; and in the end—who knows?—it may be more perfect than as we saw it in our first great plan."

"But we might have built together, Adam!"

"Yes. We might even build together now—but then it would no longer be a cathedral. It would be a mud hovel like the rest. And that would be wrong—wrong to the world and wrong to ourselves. Have you understood what I mean?"

He waited patiently, his hand still clasping hers. One single piteous tear rolled down her cheek, but that was all, and when she looked up at him her eyes were calm and steadfast.

"I understand quite well what you mean," she said, "and I know that you are right. God bless and help you."

"And you, Lois."

They exchanged a firm pressure. Then Nicholson rose.

"I must be going," he said. "Will you tell Travers that I shall be around at the office to-morrow morning? If by any chance he has any shares going, I should be obliged if he would allot them to me."

Lois rose also. Her face was turned toward the door.

"If you wait one moment, you will see him yourself," she said. "I think I hear him coming upstairs."

She was right. The next minute the door opened quickly and Travers entered. Evidently something unusual had happened. In one hand he held an open telegram. His face was crimson with excitement and his lips parted as if with a hasty announcement. But as he saw the two standing at the table watching him, he stopped short, looking from one to the other with a flash of amused curiosity in his eyes.

"Hullo, you both here?" he said cheerfully. "How cozy you look. See here, Lois, I've just had a telegram from the Rajah. He wants me to come at once. Can you be ready to start in three days?"

"For Marut?" A rush of color filled her pale cheeks.

"Yes, of course. By the bye, Nicholson, that's your destination, isn't it? We might travel together."

"I think not," was the quiet answer. "I have orders to start next week."

"Well, there's no great hurry for us, I expect. Our friend, Nehal, is of an excitable disposition. I hope you haven't had to wait long for me, Nicholson. You said you had some business you wanted to talk over with me."

"Yes, it was about those shares. But if you are busy—"

"Oh, that's all right. It won't take more than a few minutes to settle. How much do you want to invest? I tell you, my dear fellow, it's a splendid thing, and—"

He was unexpectedly interrupted. He had taken out a heavy pocket-book and was busily looking through some papers, when Lois laid her hand on his.

"I think Captain Nicholson is under a misapprehension, Archibald," she said, in a low voice. "He said you had some shares to sell him, but I remembered what you said about the mine, and I told him that there must be some mistake. I was quite right, wasn't I?"

Every word she had spoken sounded emphasized as though she were striving to convey a double meaning, and the second in which husband and wife looked at each other was to the puzzled witness a painful eternity. With a strong perceptible effort, Travers turned away.

"So my wife has broken the news to you?" he said, smiling. "Yes, I'm awfully sorry. Everything good gets snapped up so confoundedly quickly. Better luck next time. I was quite dreading disappointing you, but Lois, as usual, has taken my disagreeable task from me." He patted the hand which still rested on his own. "Stay and have a little dinner with us," he added cordially, as Nicholson prepared to take his leave. "I'd like to make up to you with a little of my best Cliquot."

Nicholson shook his head. The impression that he stood before a veiled and unpleasant comedy increased his desire to get away.

"Thanks, I'm afraid I can't," he said. "I have work to do. Good night."

"Good night. To our next meeting in Marut!" The two men shook hands.

"Good night, Mrs. Travers. You will be able to be your own messenger now," Nicholson said.

She met his glance with quiet courage.

"They will be able to see with their own eyes that things are going well with me," she answered simply.

When the door closed upon Nicholson's tall form she went back to her husband's side. He was busy consulting time-tables, and hardly seemed aware of her approach. Only when she touched him on the arm did he look up.

"Well, what is it?"

"I want to know if you are angry?"

"What about?"

"The shares—and Captain Nicholson. I felt it was wrong to deceive him. He is not rich, and you told me that the mine was a failure."

"Of course, you have every reason, no doubt, to consider your friend before your husband," he said with a sudden outburst which he instantly regretted. He had encouraged—nay, forced—her intimacy with Nicholson. With what purpose? He himself hardly knew. Perhaps somewhere at the bottom of him he was beginning to dread the honesty of her character as an unspoken reproach. If she were less perfect in her conduct, his own life would have seemed less blamable. Or perhaps his motives had been more generous. He knew he had nothing to give her—and Nicholson was a good fellow. At any rate, it was a mistake to have betrayed even a moment's irritation. She had shrunk back from him, but he put his hand on her shoulder and kissed her. "There! Of course I am not angry. You've lost me a few hundreds, but you're worth it, and I dare say it was all for the best. Run and write a note to the Colonel and say we are coming, there's a good little woman!"

Lois turned wearily away. He had not understood her. She considered him more than she had considered Nicholson. She had wanted to save him from what she felt was a mean and treacherous step. But he had not been able to understand. Nor could she have explained. Between certain characters all real communication is an impossibility, and words no more than sounds.



CHAPTER II

CATASTROPHE

The tea-room, usually the most animated portion of the Marut club-house, had lost its cheerful appearance. The comfortable chairs had been cleared on one side and replaced by a long green baize table littered with papers; the doors leading on to the verandah were closed, and a stifling atmosphere bore down upon the five occupants who were ranged about the table in various attitudes of listless exhaustion.

"I can't think what we have been called here for," Mrs. Cary protested loudly; "and from the way we have been locked in, we might be in a state of siege. I know I shall faint in a minute. Beatrice, pass me my salts, child."

Her daughter obeyed mechanically, without moving her eyes, which were fixed in front of her. Colonel Carmichael, who was seated at the far end of the table, opposite the Rajah, smiled good-naturedly.

"If you feel yourself justified in grumbling, what about me, Mrs. Cary?" he said. "You at least are a share-holder, and I suppose there are some formalities to be gone through, but what I have to do with the business I can not imagine."

"Business!" groaned Mrs. Berry from his right. "That's the silliest part of it all! What's the good of getting me to talk business? I don't understand business; I never did, and never shall. Why doesn't Mr. Travers come? I'm sure I have been waiting quite ten minutes."

"Perhaps the Rajah can give us a clue to the mystery," the Colonel suggested. "Rajah, don't you think the ladies could be allowed their liberty? I can not think that their presence is so essential."

Nehal Singh looked up. From the moment he had exchanged nothing more than a brief salutation with the four Europeans, he had sat with his head bent over some papers, reading, or pretending to read. The months had brought a new expression to his face. Pain had cut her lines into the broad forehead; anxiety met the Colonel's questioning gaze from eyes which had once flashed happy confidence and enthusiasm.

"I am afraid I can give you no answer, Colonel Carmichael," he said quietly. "Since Mr. Travers has returned to Marut all control over affairs has passed out of my hands into his. For some reason, I have been kept in ignorance as to the progress of events, and I wait here to-day with you as completely in the dark as any one. No doubt he will be here in a few minutes."

"With good news, I hope," Mrs. Cary sighed. "I also am no sort of a business woman, but I understand enough to know that if one invests money in an honest concern one gets interest sooner or later. And so far the Marut Company hasn't paid me a penny piece."

Nehal Singh started slightly, and his glance wandered to the red face of the speaker with an expression that was akin to fear.

"An honest concern!" he repeated. "Do you mean that—that it is not honest?"

Mrs. Cary beamed with recovered equanimity.

"Good gracious! How could you suppose I should mean such a horrid thing, dear Prince! Of course everything to which you put your hand is hall-marked. Otherwise I should never have dreamed of investing my money in the Marut Company."

There was a silence. The Colonel drummed with his fingers on the table, watching the native sentry who passed stolidly backward and forward in front of the closed windows. Mrs. Cary fanned herself and exchanged whispered comments with Mrs. Berry on the opposite side. Beatrice remained motionless. From the beginning of the meeting she had once raised her eyes—on Nehal Singh's entry—and then it had been for no more than a second. That second had been enough. She had seen his face. She had seen—and it was not her imagination, but a real and bitter irony—that of all the people in the room she alone had been the object of his quiet greeting. She knew then—for her eyes had not lost their keenness—that the eighteen months in which they had scarcely met had made no difference to him. He still reverenced and loved her. For him she was still "Lakshmi," the goddess of beauty and perfection; for him she was still the ideal, the woman of goodness and truth and purity. Her victory over him had been complete, eternal. She had betrayed him and retained him. Of all her triumphs over men and circumstances this was the most perfect. Yet she sat there, white and still, not lifting her eyes from the table, and seemingly unconscious of all that went on about her.

Presently a carriage drove up the avenue. They heard Travers' voice giving some orders, and a moment later he himself entered, followed by a Mr. Medway, his chief mining engineer. He closed the door and with a grave bow took his place at the table. He seemed indifferent to or unaware of the curious and somewhat anxious glances which were turned toward him. There was something in his appearance which cast an unpleasant chill over every one of the little assembly. Even the Colonel, though an outsider, felt himself disagreeably impressed by Travers' new bearing, and the good-natured banter which he had held in readiness for the new arrival died away on his lips as he responded to the cold, formal bow. For some minutes no one spoke. Travers was busy arranging some papers which he had brought with him, and only when he had laid these out to his satisfaction did he rise to address the meeting. He held himself stiffly erect, his fingers resting lightly on the table, his pale face turned toward the window as though he wished to avoid addressing any one directly. The usual geniality was lacking in his composed features.

"Colonel Carmichael and honorable share-holders in the Marut Diamond Company," he began, "you are no doubt wondering why I have called this private meeting. I do so because you are the chief partakers in the concern, and because, as my friends, I wish to offer you an explanation which I do not feel bound to offer to the other share-holders within and without Marut. This excuse does not hold good for you, Colonel Carmichael, and you must feel I am encroaching heavily on your valuable time. Nevertheless, I assure you that your presence will assist me considerably in my difficult task."

"I am sure I shall be delighted to do anything in my power," Colonel Carmichael responded, "but I fear my knowledge of intricate business details is not such as to make it of the slightest use to you."

"The business is not intricate," Travers went on. "Nor do I propose drawing out this meeting to any tiring length. The heat must be very trying for the ladies present, but my wish to keep what passes between us, at any rate for the time being, entirely secret, makes it essential to sit in closed rooms. I will be as brief as possible. Two years ago the Marut Diamond Company first came into existence under the protection of our friend, Rajah Nehal Singh. For some time previous to this event it had been my great ambition to open out a diamond field in which, thanks to favorable reports, I sincerely believed. My position, however, and above all my lack of personal means, made the scheme an impossibility so far as I was concerned. Chance brought me the pleasure and misfortune of making your acquaintance, Rajah. I say 'misfortune,' because, as events have turned, I can not but feel that my casual observations led you to enter into an enterprise before which another man, if I may say so, with more experience and less impulse, would have hesitated.

"Your generosity and enthusiasm brought my half-conceived plans into a reality almost before I had any clear idea as to whither we were all drifting. You will remember, Mrs. Cary, I did my best to dissuade you from any rash investment; and even there, as director of the company, I felt that I was not acting with entire loyalty to the man who had put me into that position. The responsibility of the whole matter rested heavily on my shoulders, and grew still heavier as the circle of share-holders without Marut increased. I felt that, should my first hopes prove unfounded, my friends and many others would suffer losses which they could ill afford to bear. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my painful duty to tell you that the dreaded collapse has come. Mr. Medway, here, the company's chief engineer and mining expert, informed me yesterday that any continuation of the works was useless and a mere waste of the share-holders' money. I therefore beg to announce to you that the Marut Diamond Company Mine is definitely closed."

The Colonel clenched his teeth half-way through the first oath he had ever allowed himself in the presence of ladies. He was not an unusually egoistical man, but his first thought was one of unutterable gratitude that in the moment of strong temptation his wife had held an obstinate hand on the purse-strings.

The first person to speak was Mrs. Cary. She leaned half-way across the table.

"And my money?" she said thickly and unsteadily. "Where's my money? Where's my money? Tell me that!"

Travers shrugged his shoulders.

"I fear it has gone the way of mine and of the other share-holders'," he said. "Nor can I hold out any hopes of its coming back. The expenses of the mine have been terribly heavy, the workmen have been extremely well paid—extremely well paid." There was a distinct note of reproach in his voice, though he looked at no one.

Mrs. Cary sat down in her seat. It was a pitiful and almost terrible sight to see her, all the florid, vulgar ostentation and sleek content dashed out of her, leaving her with pasty cheeks and horror-stricken, staring eyes to face the ruined future. Mrs. Berry burst into ever-ready tears.

"Oh!" she sobbed. "What will my husband say! I told him it was such a good thing—it isn't my fault. What will he say!"

The sharp, wailing tones broke through Mrs. Cary's momentary paralysis. She sat up and brought her fat clenched fist down with a bang upon the table.

"You!" she half screamed at the Rajah. "You—you black swindler—you thief—it's you who have done it—you who have ruined us all with your wicked schemes. You baited us with this clubhouse—you pretended you wanted to do us such a lot of good, didn't you? And all the time you meant to feather your own nest with diamonds and the Lord knows what. Give us back our money, you heathen swindler! For you aren't a Christian! You pretended that, too, just as a blind—"

Her flow of frightful coarse invectives came to an abrupt end. Colonel Carmichael, who knew now why his presence had been required, leaned forward and pushed her firmly down in her seat.

"For Heaven's sake, Mrs. Cary, hold your tongue!" he expostulated, in a rapid, emphatic undertone. "You don't know what you are saying. You are not in England. A little more of that sort of thing, and our lives aren't worth an hour's purchase."

"I don't care," she retorted, with all the headlong brutality of her origin. "It's true what I say! It's true!"

"It is true." The interruption came from the Rajah himself. He had risen and stood before them, very pale, but calm and composed, his eyes fixed with haggard resolution on the furious face of his accuser. "It is true. I am a swindler. I have ruined you all. Why should you believe it was done unwittingly? Yet that is true also. I, like my poor friend here whom I used as my tool, believed that I was doing the best for you all. But I have ruined you. I have done worse than that—I have ruined my country, my people. You have friends who will help you in your distress, but who will help my people? I pulled them out of their miserable homes only to cast them into deeper misery. I have taken their pitiful savings, meaning, without the use of charity, to increase them tenfold. I have taken everything from them. I gave a hope, and have left them with a deeper despair. Not all my wealth—and not a stone, not a farthing piece shall be held back from your and their just claims upon me—will fill up the ruin of those I wished so well. It is true—I stand before you all a dishonored man."

There was a moment's petrified silence. Even Mrs. Cary's coarse nature stood baffled before this pitiless, dignified self-accusal. Nor could the Colonel find a word to say. He had been ready—knowing the native character—to defend Mrs. Cary from the stroke of a revenging dagger. His half-outstretched arm sank powerless before the stroke of these few words, spoken with a calm which thinly covered a chaos of remorse and broken-hearted grief.

"I have a question I should like to ask you, Mr. Travers."

There was a general uneasy start. Each shook off his brooding considerations and turned with surprise to this unexpected speaker. It was Beatrice, hitherto silent and apparently unmoved, who leaned across to Travers. He himself felt the blood rise to his face. In his absorbed state he had not noticed her presence, and now that he met her cold eyes a curious discomfort crept over him—a discomfort that was nearly fear.

"I will answer your question to the best of my ability," he said quietly.

"The Rajah has spoken of you as his tool, and I think from your tone that you think yourself aggrieved. In what way have you suffered? What is your share of the losses?"

"I have lost all I have."

"All you have, no doubt. But your wife is very rich, and I believe has grown richer within the last year. I am anxious to know if you intend to follow the Rajah's generous example and meet your liabilities with her fortune."

The Colonel, who had been staring vacantly at her, gave a start of recollection.

"Yes!" he exclaimed energetically. "The settlement and Lois' own money—what's become of it all? Has that gone, too?"

"Of course not." Travers' hand tightened instinctively upon the arm of his chair. "I should never have dreamed of touching what was my wife's personal property. Nor do I intend to do so now. I am no more than the manager of the company—I am not responsible for its liabilities. Miss Cary's suggestion is beside the mark, and I warn her, for her own advantage"—there was a somewhat unpleasant note of warning in his rough voice—"not to pursue her questions further."

Beatrice rose to her feet. She was calm and, save for the vivid color in her cheeks, betrayed at first little of the seething storm of indignation which rose gradually above the barriers of her self-control. She did not look at the Rajah. She stared straight into Travers' face, and once she pointed at him.

"You have been good enough to threaten me," she said. "It would be best for you to know at once that your threats are quite useless. There is nothing you can say about me which I am not ready to say myself—and there is nothing you can do which will prevent me from revealing the true facts of this case. You have feathered your nest, Mr. Travers. That is what you told me to do, and now I understand what you meant. You saw this ruin coming at the very time that you were encouraging every one to partake further of the company's future success. You honored me, as a sort of accomplice, with a private piece of advice. Thank God, I did not take it, for then I should have been your debtor.

"As it is, I owe you absolutely nothing—not even the wealthy husband you promised me. There is a bottom to my depths. And even if I did owe you something, I should not hesitate to speak. You can call me a traitor if you like—I don't care. I am that—and I have been far worse than that to a man who did not deserve it—and I have, anyhow, not much reputation to lose. Besides, you have stood by without a word and let an innocent man bear your burden, and for that alone you have no right to claim loyalty from another."

She turned for the first time to Nehal Singh, and met his gaze boldly and recklessly. "Do not stand there and call yourself a dishonored man!" she exclaimed with increasing force. "You are not dishonored. Do not call Mr. Travers your 'tool.' He is not your tool, and never has been. You are his tool,—his and mine!" She paused, catching her breath as she saw him wince. Then she went on: "Don't burden yourself with the consciences of us all, for we have not got any; and what has been done we have done knowingly and wilfully. Do you remember that evening when you found me in the temple? You thought it was—chance—or—or the hand of God. Why, Mr. Travers hired one of your old servants to slip me through by the secret path, and I had on my prettiest frock and my prettiest smile and my prettiest ways—as I told them all afterward at a dinner-party—pious goodness, with a relieving touch of the devil—just to tempt you out of your cloister and make you do what we wanted.



"You followed like a lamb. It took five minutes to wheedle the club-house out of you—five minutes, I think you told me, Mr. Travers?—and the other things went just as smoothly. Do you remember that ride we had together after Mr. Travers' dance? He had broached the subject of the mine, but the next day something or other seemed to have shaken your implicit belief in our integrity and general holiness. At any rate, you asked me for my advice—my honest advice. I gave it you. I told you to go ahead—that Mr. Travers was an angel of goodness and perfection. That was what he suggested I should say, in a note he had sent me an hour before. So you went ahead. You did the dirty work for him, and took his responsibility upon your shoulders. You have ruined a few of us incidentally, but above all things you have ruined yourself and your people. Mr. Travers is unharmed. He has his wife's money."

She paused to gather her strength for a final effort. "So much for Mr. Travers' and my partnership. I did my share of the work to shield myself and my mother from a trouble which must now go its way. But after that, I played my own game. I did not want to lose you—even though I knew quite well that you cared for me, and that I should never marry you. Months before I had made up my mind to marry a man with a high position and money. It was just a game I was playing with you. Even when you forced things to a head, I kept it up. I pretended innocency and high motives—because I wanted to feel you at my apron-strings always. We all treated you more or less badly, but I was the worst. I fooled you—for—for—"

"For what?"

His voice burst from him, harsh and terrible as though it had been torn from the bottom of a tortured soul.

"For the fun of the thing."

Among the seven present there was no movement, no sound. Scarcely one seemed to breathe or be alive except the woman who stood there, her breast heaving, a twisted smile of wild self-mockery on her ashy lips.

Nehal Singh turned and went to the door. There he stopped and looked back at her and the little group of which she formed the central figure. Then he made a gesture—one single gesture. He raised his hand high above his head and brought it down, palm downward. In that movement there was a contempt, a scorn, a bitterness so profound that it seemed to mingle with a terrible pity; but above all there was a final severing, a breaking of the last link which bound them. The next minute the door closed behind him.

How long the silence that followed lasted no one knew. It was broken by Mrs. Cary, who flung herself face downward on the table, and burst into wild, uncontrollable sobs.

"Oh, Beaty!" she moaned. "Our reputations—our good name! How could you have told such wicked stories about yourself and poor Mr. Travers! How could you!"

Colonel Carmichael shook his head. He was overwhelmed by a cross-current of conflicting emotions to which he could give no name.

"True or not true, your—eh—statement has got us into a pretty mess, Miss Cary," he said. "You have played with fire. Pray Heaven that it has not set light to Marut!"

She turned and looked at him. In that pale face upon which had sunk the light of a sudden peace the Colonel read something which sent his blunt instinct searching wildly for a solution.

"I did what I had to do, Colonel Carmichael," she said. "Come, mother, we must go home."



CHAPTER III

A FAREWELL

John Stafford sat at his table by the open door which looked on to the garden. The room behind him was bare of all graceful or even tasteful ornament—a few native weapons, captured probably during small frontier wars, hung on the wall, but nothing else relieved its blank, whitewashed monotony. The one photograph of his father which had once been fastened above the mantelpiece had been taken down months before and the hole made by the nail carefully and methodically filled and painted over. The room typified the man in its painful order, its painful whitewashed cleanliness, its rigid plainness. But the garden was the symbol of the hidden possibility in him, the corner of warm, impulsive feeling which the world had never seen. The roses grew up to the very steps of the verandah; they had been trained to clamber over the trellis-work as though seeking to gain entrance to his room; they spread themselves in rich, glowing variety over the little patch of ground, and one of their number, the most lovely and fullest blown, hung her heavy head in splendid isolation from the vase upon his table.

He looked at the rose and he looked at the garden, on which lay the first clear rays of the rising sun. In him stirred a rare wistfulness, a rare melancholy. For to him all the gentler, softer forms of sorrow were rare. In the last year he had suffered, but in his own way—rigidly, coldly, unbendingly. His lips, even in the loneliness of his own room, had always been tight closed over the smothered exclamation of pain. He had gone on steadily and conscientiously with his work. He had never for one moment "given way to himself," as he expressed it. But this morning he was in the power of that strange "atmosphere"—call it what you will—which we feel when still only half awake, and which, independent of all outward circumstances, destines our day's mood of cheerfulness or depression. Strangely enough, he had made no struggle against it—he had yielded to it with a sense of inevitableness.

The inevitable compassed him about and numbed his stern, merciless system of self-repression. Fate, irresistible and unchangeable, obscured the clear path of duty which he had marked out for himself, and held him for the moment her passive victim. It was no idle fancy. He was not a man in whose thought-world fancy played any part. Nor was it the gloomy impression which a lonely twilight might have stamped upon a mind already burdened with a heavy weight of trouble. The young day spread her halo of pure sunshine over a world of color; the red rose upon his table bowed her head toward him in the perfection of a mature beauty which as yet hid no warning of decay. But in the sunshine he saw the shadow; the daylight foretold the night; his eyes saw the withered petals of the rose strewn before him. In vain he had striven to see beyond the night to the as inevitable to-morrow; in vain he had pictured the rose which his careful hand would bring to replace her dead sister. The future was a blank dead wall whose heights his foresight could not scale.

Before him on the table lay a closed and sealed envelope. It contained his will, which half an hour before he had signed in the presence of two comrades. He wondered what the world would say when it was opened—and when it would be opened.

Presently the curtains behind him were pushed quietly on one side. He did not turn around. He supposed it was his native servant with the cup of coffee which formed his early morning refreshment; but the soft step across the uncarpeted floor, the rustle of a woman's dress startled him from his illusion. He turned and sprang to his feet.

"Beatrice!" he exclaimed.

She came toward him with outstretched hand.

"May I speak with you for a few minutes, John?" she asked.

His first impulse to protest against her reckless disregard of propriety died away on his lips. Something on her white earnest face touched him—all the more perhaps because it linked itself with his own mood. He brought a chair—his own, for the room boasted of but one.

"Are you angry?" she asked again, looking up at him.

"At your coming? No. At another time I might have warned you that it was not wise, but I feel sure you would not have run so much risk without a serious and adequate reason."

She nodded.

"Yes, I have a very serious reason," she said. "Have you time to spare?"

"All the morning."

"Were you on duty last night?"

"For the best part."

"Is that why you look so tired and ill?"

He smiled faintly.

"I might reply with a tu quoque. But that doesn't matter. You have some trouble to tell me. What has happened?"

"You have heard nothing?"

"Nothing whatever." He drew a stool toward him and seated himself at her side. "You know, I am not a person to whom gossip drifts quickly."

"It's not gossip—it's truth. The Marut Diamond Company is closed—for good and all."

"You mean—it has gone smash?"

"Completely—and we with it."

He sat silent for a moment, his head resting thoughtfully on his hand.

"I suppose it had to come," he said at last. "Somehow, it always seemed to me that the concern was doomed. The foundations weren't honest. The Rajah was more or less beguiled into it—" He broke off, turning crimson with vexation. "I beg your pardon, Beatrice. I forgot that that was one of your—escapades."

She looked at him steadily, and he was struck and again strangely moved by her pale beauty. He had never seen her so gentle, so free from her cold and mocking gaiety.

"You must not apologize. And do not smooth over a mean, low trick with the name of an escapade. It was not an escapade, for an escapade is the overflow of high and reckless spirits, and what I did was done in cold blood and with a purpose. I have come to tell you about that purpose."

He could not repress a movement of surprise.

"Surely you have something more serious on your mind than that? If, as you say, your—your financial position has been rendered precarious by this failure of the Marut Company, would it not be advisable to hurry on our marriage at once? Of course, in the meanwhile, if I can do anything to help your mother—"

She touched him gently on the arm.

"I told you I had come on a serious matter," she said. "Won't you let me tell you what it is?"

"Of course, Beatrice, of course. Only I thought that was the serious matter."

"It is perhaps for my mother, but not for me. Things have changed their value in my life. Just now I feel there is only one thing that has any value at all, and that is freedom."

"From what? I do not understand. Do you mean from debt?"

She smiled sadly.

"Yes, from debt. John, I want to ask you an honest question honestly. Why did you ask me to become your wife?"

He moved uneasily.

"Why do you ask? Surely we understand each other."

"We did, perhaps, but I have told you that things have changed. Won't you answer me?"

"I asked you—because I wished you to be my wife," he returned stubbornly.

"John, isn't that rather a lame equivocation?"

He stared at her with heavy, troubled eyes.

"Yes, it was. But the truth might hurt you, Beatrice."

"No, it wouldn't. Nothing can hurt so much in the end as lies and humbug."

"Well, then, I asked you to become my wife because I believed that my conduct had put you into a wrong and painful situation in the eyes of the world."

"Nothing else?"

"I wished to prove to Lois that I could never be her husband."

"You were afraid that she would see through your pretense to your unchanged affection for her?"

He started.

"Beatrice, how do you know?"

"Look in your own glass, John. Yours isn't the face of a man who has shaken off an old attachment."

He rose and stood with his back half turned to her, playing idly with the papers on the table.

"You are partly right," he said, after a moment's silence, "but not quite. I have more on my shoulders than that; I have a heavy responsibility—a debt to pay."

"You, too?" she asked, with a return of the half-melancholy, half-bitter smile. "Have you also a debt?"

"Not of my making," was the answer. The voice rang suddenly stern and harsh, and Beatrice saw him look up suddenly, as though instinctively seeking something on the wall. "Beatrice, you must know that my actions are dictated by motives which I can not for many reasons give to the world. For one thing, I have given my promise; for another, my own judgment tells me that it is better for every one that I should be silent. But I am free to say this much to you—I am not a dishonorable man who has played lightly with the affections of an innocent girl. I have acted toward Lois as I believe will be for her ultimate happiness—I have shielded her from a misfortune, a punishment I might say, which would have fallen unjustly on her shoulders. I have taken a burden upon my shoulders because I love her—and I have the right to love her—but chiefly because it is my duty to do so. Where there is sin, Beatrice, there must also be atonement, otherwise its consequences can never be wiped out. I have chosen to atone."

Beatrice made no attempt to question him. Her eyes fell thoughtfully on the gaunt face, and for the first time she appreciated to the full what was great and generous in the nature she had condemned all too often as narrow and unbending. Whatever else he was, this man was no Pharisee. If he was narrow, he allowed himself no license; if unbending, he was at least least of all relenting toward his own conduct. She pitied him and she respected him, even though she could not understand his motives nor guess the weight of the responsibility which he had taken upon himself.

"I can not reproach you with deception," she said at last. "You never pretended that you loved me, and on my side I think the matter was pretty clear. I intended to marry you for your position. Afterward money added a further incentive. I saw the loss of our own fortune coming. Travers warned me on the same day that we became engaged."

A dark flood of indignant blood rushed to Stafford's forehead.

"The man is an unscrupulous adventurer—no doubt he has safeguarded his own interest carefully enough," he exclaimed bitterly.

"You are quite right. His wife has all the money, and he has taken care that it should be well tied up and out of reach. That is what my father did."

He turned to her again.

"Your father?"

"Yes, my father," she repeated, meeting his eyes gravely and unflinchingly. "He tried to do what Travers did. But he wasn't quite so clever. He ran too close to the wind, as he said himself, and they put him in prison. He died there."

He stood looking at her with a new interest. He too, was beginning to understand. The bitter line about the mouth was not the expression of a hard, unfeeling heart after all, then, and the sharp, mocking laugh which had jarred so often on his ears was not the echo of a shallow, worthless character? They were no more than the deep wounds left after a rough battle with a world that knows no pity for those branded with inherited shame and dishonor. He had misjudged her. There were unlimited possibilities of nobility and goodness in the beautiful face lifted to his. But he said nothing of the thoughts that flashed through his mind. In moments of crisis we always speak of what is least important.

"And you managed to keep it a secret in Marut?" he asked.

"Yes, it was a marvel, wasn't it?"—her eyes brightening with a spark of the old fun. "We lived in a constant state of alarms and excursions. But Mr. Travers did what he could. He knew all about it, and he helped us."

"On conditions, no doubt?"

"Of course, on conditions. But he said, quite truthfully, that he had no idea of blackmailing me. It was just a fair bargain between us." She paused a little before she went on: "Now, you understand what brought us to Marut, and what made you such a desirable catch. We wanted to get clear away from the past and build up a new life. But we couldn't. One can't build up anything on a lie."

"That is true," he returned sternly, "and yet this is hardly a time for you to talk of your failure. From the moment that you are my wife—"

"But, John, that's what I never shall be." She laughed wearily. "Do you think a clever woman would own up to an unpleasant past to the man she wanted to marry? And if you want to hear more detestable things about me, ask the Colonel, ask Mrs. Berry, ask the Rajah. They know all about me, for I told them yesterday. You don't need to look so white and haggard. I am not going to marry you. That is what I came to say. And I wanted to explain everything, and to ask you, if you can, to forgive me all the trouble I have brought upon you." She rose, and held out her hand to him. "Will you shake hands, John?"

He stood motionless by the table, watching her with a last stirring of the old distrust.

"I do not understand you," he said bluntly, and in truth he did not. This pale-faced woman with the earnest eyes deep underlined with the marks of sleepless nights was a riddle which his stiff, conventional imagination could not solve.

"Is it necessary that you should understand?" she answered. "I have not asked you to explain why, still loving her, you threw Lois over. I believe that you had some grave reason. It could not be graver than mine for doing what I am doing."

"Then you mean that—it is entirely over between us?"

"Yes, it is over between us. Your sense of justice will not have to undergo the ordeal of forcing your sense of honor to link itself with dishonor. To your credit, I believe you would have married me, John, and I am grateful. But there's an end of it. I have come to say good-by. I suppose it is absurd, but I wish we could remain friends."

This time he took her hand in his. Now that the artificial union between them was done away with, their real friendship for each other came back and took its rightful place in their lives.

"Why shouldn't we, Beatrice?" he said. "Heaven knows, we both have need of friends."

"It is a strange thing," she continued thoughtfully, "that, though you are so completely my opposite, I have always liked you. Even when you most jarred upon me with your prunes-and-prisms morality, I was never able quite to close my heart. I wonder why?"

He could not repress a faint amusement at the flash of her old self.

"It has been the same with me," he said. "Even when you trod on all my principles at once, I haven't been able to smother a sort of shamefaced respect for you. You always seemed more worthy of respect than—well, some of the others."

"I suppose it is our sincerity," she said. "You are sincere in your goodness, and I, paradoxical as it sounds, in my badness."

"I think not," he answered, looking her gravely in the face. "I think it is because the hidden best in both of us recognized each other and held out the hand of friendship almost without our knowing."

She smiled, but he saw a light sparkle in her eyes.

"Oh, practical John, you are making fast progress in the soul's world! Who has taught you?"

He turned away from her back to the table and stood there gazing out over the garden.

"No one. It is a mood I have on today which makes me see clearer than I have done before. Go now—if any one saw you here, you know what Marut would say."

"Yes, I know Marut very well by now. Not that it much matters. Good-by. Please—I found my way alone; I can find the way out."

She had reached the door before he stopped her.

"Beatrice!"

She turned.

"What is it?"

"I have a favor to ask of you—or rather, I have a trust to put in your hands. It is in a sort of way the seal upon our good understanding. There is no one else whom I could trust so much."

She came back to his side. A new color was in her cheeks. Her eyes looked less tired, less hopeless.

"A trust? That would make life worth living."

He took up the packet on the table and gave it to her.

"That is my will. I made it afresh last night. It was witnessed this morning. In it I have made you my executrix, with half my estate. The other half I have left to Lois."

"Now you must leave it all to her," she said.

"No, I wish it to remain as it is. Besides—" He broke off hurriedly, as though seeking to avoid an unpleasant train of thought. "Beatrice, the world won't understand that will. Lois won't, and I pray, for the sake of her happiness, that she may never have to—but if the time comes when this must be put into action, I want you to give her a message from me. Will you?"

"Of course I will. But"—she faced him with a sudden inspired appeal—"must you wait until you are dead to speak to her? Would it not be better to go to her now with your message? I do not know what has come between you both, but I know this much—all forms of pretense are fatal—"

He stopped her with a gesture of decision.

"No," he said. "The secret must remain secret. It has overshadowed my life. It has laden me with a burden of responsibility and shame which I have determined to share with no one. I have taken it upon my shoulders, and I shall carry it to the end. Tell Lois that I have never once swerved in my love for her. Ask her to trust me and think kindly of me. It is not I who have sinned against her—"

"Sinned against her! Who has sinned against her? Do you mean me?"

"No, not you. You also have been sinned against. I also." He sighed wearily. "When I look about me, it seems as though not one of us has not in turn sinned and been sinned against. It is an endless chain of the wrong we do one another."

She laughed, and for the first time there rang in her voice a note of the old harshness.

"Look at me, John. There is no turn and turn about with me. From the beginning I have tricked and lied and fought my way through life. I didn't care whom I hurt so long as I got through. I sinned. Who has sinned against me?"

"One person at least," he answered significantly.

She caught her breath, and the hand that passed hastily across her forehead trembled.

"Even if it were true what you say," she said, half inaudibly, "it does not alter the fact that we must atone for what has been done."

"It is the justice of the world," he assented. "We must make good the harm we do and the harm that has been done us." He threw back his shoulders with a movement of energetic protest. "Do not let us waste time talking. We can not help each other. All I ask is—do not forget my message."

She looked at him, strangely moved.

"You talk as though you were going to die to-night," she said.

"I talk as a man does whom death has already tapped on the shoulder more than once of late," he answered, with grim humor. "Good-by, Beatrice."

"Good-by."

He pushed his writing-table to one side so that she could pass out on to the verandah.

"Do not come with me farther," she said. "The carriage is waiting outside. I would rather go alone."

He stood and watched her as she passed lightly and quickly among the rose-bushes. It was as though he were trying to engrave upon his mind the memory of a lovely picture that he was never to see again,—as though he were bidding her a final farewell. Twice she turned and glanced back at him. Was it with the same intent, guided by the same strange foreboding? She disappeared, and the voice of a native orderly who had entered the room unheard recalled him to the reality.

"A letter for you, Captain Sahib," the man said, saluting.

Stafford took the sealed envelope and, tearing it open, ran hastily over the contents. It was from the Colonel. The subscription, as usual since the rupture in their relations, was cold and formal.

"I should be glad to see you at once," Colonel Carmichael had written. "Events occurred yesterday which I have not as yet been able to discuss with you, but which I fear are likely to have the most serious consequences. In the present weakened condition of our garrison, we can afford to run no risks. Nicholson is with me here. Your presence would simplify matters as regards forming our plans for the future."

Stafford turned to the waiting soldier.

"Present my compliments to the Colonel Sahib," he said. "I shall be with him immediately."



CHAPTER IV

STAFFORD INTERVENES

The threatening cloud which had loomed up on the horizon had acted wonders on Colonel Carmichael's constitution. At the last meeting of the Marut Diamond Company he had looked like a man whose days on the active service list were numbered. Ill-health, disappointment, and a natural pessimism had apparently left an indelible trace upon him, and Mrs. Carmichael's prophetic eye saw them both established in Cheltenham or Bath, relegated to the Empire's lumber-room—unless something happened. The something had happened. The one sound which had the power to rouse him had broken like a clap of unheralded thunder upon his ears. It was the call of danger, the war-note which had brought back to him the springtime of his youth and strength.

Stafford found him restlessly pacing backward and forward in his narrow workroom, deep in conversation with Nicholson, who stood at the table, his head bent over a map of Marut. Both men were in uniform, and it seemed to Stafford that Colonel Carmichael listened to the click of his own spurs with the pleasure of a young lieutenant. It was no longer the sound of weary routine. It was the herald of clashing sabres and the champing of impatient horses awaiting the charge; it was an echo of past warlike days which were to come again. He stood still as Stafford entered, and a flash of satisfaction passed over his face.

"I'm glad you have come," he said. "Whatever is to be done must be done at once. I suppose you know nothing?"

"Nothing," Stafford answered. "Your note was the first intimation I have received that there was anything amiss."

Colonel Carmichael grunted angrily.

"Of course you know nothing," he said, resuming his restless march about the room. "Nor did I—nor did any one. Heaven and earth, I'm beginning to think there's something wrong in our theory that whatever is going on under our noses must be too insignificant to be noticed! There, Nicholson, hurry up and tell him what you know."

Nicholson stood upright, and folding the map put it in his pocket.

"I was in the New Bazaar last night," he began curtly. "I go there regularly, as you know, disguised as one thing or another, just for the sake of having a look at the people when they don't know they are being watched. Last night there was no one there—not so much as a child or a woman. The place was dead. I admit that I was not particularly startled. I knew that there was a great festival at hand. Pilgrims have been streaming in for days past, and it was quite conceivable that some ceremony was taking place in the temple. Curiosity fortunately led me to investigate further. Myself disguised as a traveling fakir, I made my way to the Rajah's palace gates. Already on the road I was joined by a hurrying stream of men and women, principally men. My suspicions were aroused. I knew from experience that it was not a usual crowd of pilgrims. Every man was armed, not only with knives, but guns and revolvers. Some of them were undoubtedly deserted sepoys who had stolen their weapons. Moreover, they exchanged a signal which I recognized and, in order to escape detection, imitated. It was the signal which in past generations revealed one member of the Thug fraternity to another."

"Thugs!" exclaimed Stafford, with a faintly skeptical smile.

"Do not misunderstand me," Nicholson said. "I am not going to recall to your minds the nursery horrors with which our ayahs regaled our childish imaginations. I will only emphasize one fact. The Thugs were not and are not merely a band of murderous and treacherous robbers. They belong to the priesthood, they are the deputed servants of the goddess Kali, and their task is the extermination of the enemy—of the foreigner, that is to say—in this case, of ourselves."

Stafford glanced at the Colonel. The latter's face was set and grave.

"I do not for a moment suggest that the crowd with which I traveled were Thugs," Nicholson continued. "I know that they were not. But they had adopted the Thug sign because they had adopted the Thug mission. Not, however, till we had passed the gates and reached the palace did I realize the gravity of the situation. The Rajah stood on the great steps, surrounded by a body-guard of torch-bearers. He was dressed in full native costume, a blaze of gems, and wearing the royal insignia. The expression on his face was something I shall not easily forget, and at the time it was inexplicable to me. I can not describe it. I can only say that I was instantly reminded of Milton's fallen Satan as he stands above his followers, superb, dauntless, but tortured by hatred, contempt and God knows what strange minglings of remorse and anger. He greeted the crowd with the sign of death. His first words revealed to me that his allegiance to us was at an end, and that he meant to follow in his father's bloody footsteps."

Stafford stretched out his hand, catching hold of the back of a chair as if seeking support.

"Go on!" he said sharply.

"I have very little more to say. I did not wait, for I had heard enough to know that Marut was in instant danger. I made my escape as best I could, but in order to avoid notice I had to resort to circuitous paths, and only reached here this morning."

Colonel Carmichael brought his hand down angrily upon the table.

"To think that the scoundrel should have been pretending friendship all the time that he was preparing to murder us!" he exclaimed. "This comes of trusting a native!"

"Excuse me, Colonel," Nicholson answered, with emphasis. "I have every reason to believe that until yesterday Nehal Singh was our sincere ally."

"You mean to say that he stamped an armed crowd out of the earth in half an hour?"

"No. That armed crowd was the silent work of years. It was the tool which has been held ready for a long time—but not by Nehal Singh—"

"By whom, then, in the name of all—"

Nicholson drew out an old and faded photograph and handed it to the Colonel.

"Do you recognize that face?" he asked.

"Certainly I do. It is the Rajah's father—Behar Singh. How did you come by this?"

"It belonged to my father. He gave it me, and I kept it as a curiosity. Colonel, I saw that man last night at the Rajah's side."

The photograph fluttered from the Colonel's powerless fingers. He looked at Nicholson, and there flashed into his old eyes a terrible primitive passion of revenge and hatred.

"My God! He is alive—and I never knew!"

"He is alive, Colonel. And I believe that, hidden from us all, he has been working steadily and stealthily at the task which saw its completion last night. So long as Nehal Singh stood on our side he could do nothing. The people believe Nehal to be an incarnation of Vishnu, and they will only follow where he leads. Behar knew that—probably he himself had fostered the idea. He guessed, probably, that one day Nehal Singh would turn from us. He waited. Last night I saw a face of devilish triumph which told its own tale. He had not waited in vain."

Colonel Carmichael turned to Stafford and held out his hand. For the first time old friendship shone out of his eyes mingled with a fire of thirsty revenge.

"You and I have a debt to pay before we die, Stafford," he said.

Stafford's hand touched his coldly and powerlessly.

"I have nothing against the Rajah," he said hoarsely. "I can not carry out a revenge against the son—"

Colonel Carmichael interrupted him with a hard laugh.

"They are all of a piece," he said. "Say what you will, Nicholson, Nehal Singh is a traitor. We were fools to trust him. We are always fools when we do not treat a native as a dangerous animal. They murder us for our silly, sentimental confidence."

Nicholson bent down and, picking up the photograph, replaced it in his pocket.

"Do you think so, Colonel?" he said significantly. "From, my experience I have learned that you can always trust a native. You can treat him as your friend and equal so long as the inequality is there and obvious to him. I mean, so long as in everything—in generosity, in courage, and in honor—he realizes that you are his superior."

Colonel Carmichael's face darkened with anger.

"Do you mean, perhaps, that—that we are not all that?" he demanded.

"Surely not all of us. How many men think that any sort of conduct is good enough to show a native? What did Behar Singh see of our honor? He was our friend until an Englishman who had eaten and drunk his hospitality repaid him by a dishonorable theft. What has Nehal Singh seen of our superiority? In spite of his father's influence, he came to us prejudiced in our favor. He saw heroes in us all, and he trusted himself blindly in our hands. What has been the consequence? Look at yesterday's scene, as you have described it to me, Colonel. His best friend had proved himself a mean and treacherous swindler. The woman whom as I judge he regarded as a saint—forgive me, Stafford, I must be honest—no more than a heartless flirt, who had led him on from one folly to another for the sake of a little excitement—"

"Rubbish!" Colonel Carmichael burst out. "What are exceptions in a whole race?"

"In a strange country no one is an exception, Colonel. One coward, one thief, one drunkard is quite enough to cast the blackest slur upon the whole nation in the eyes of another race. As sincerely as he believed yesterday that we were all heroes, as sincerely Nehal Singh believes to-day that there isn't an honest man among us."

This time Colonel Carmichael made no answer. He went over to the window and stood there frowning obstinately out over the neglected garden. His eyes fell on the ruined bungalow, and he called Nicholson to his side.

"Look at that!" he said. "In that place Behar Singh murdered my best and only friend, Steven Caruthers. I have not forgotten and I can not forget. It has branded every native for me as a murderer. No doubt this proves your argument. From the first I shrank from all contact with the present Rajah. I distrusted him, and it is obvious now that my distrust was well founded. What do you say, Stafford? You, too, were against having anything to do with him."

To his surprise and annoyance, Stafford did not respond. He stood there with his hands clasping the back of the chair, his brows knitted in painful thought.

"Come, Stafford, what have you to say?" the Colonel repeated impatiently.

"I think there is a good deal in what Nicholson says," Stafford answered, speaking as though he had only just heard that he was being addressed. "The Rajah has not been well treated. He has a right to feel bitter. And he seemed a fine sort of man. Without prejudice, Colonel, one can not withhold a certain admiration for him. He has behaved better than some of us."

Colonel Carmichael frowned, but his sense of justice forced him to a reluctant admission.

"Yes, he has a few showy virtues. Yesterday, for instance. Under the circumstances, he behaved like a gentleman and a man of honor. Before nightfall the English share-holders in the mine got their money back in gems and rupees—he must have pulled the palace to pieces. In fact, everything might have gone off smoothly if it hadn't been for that—that—" He coughed and glanced at Stafford, not without a touch of malicious satisfaction.

"You are alluding to Miss Cary, Colonel," Stafford said, returning his glance with dignity, "and you are at liberty to say what you like, for I have no longer the right to champion her. At her request, our engagement is at an end. But as her friend I can not refrain from saying this much—she has not spared herself, and, God knows, she also has not been treated well."

What memories passed before the Colonel's mind as he stood there gazing absently in front of him! Recollections of mean and envious criticisms, ugly underhand slanders, petty intrigue, his own shame-faced patronage! And then the vision of a lovely, white-faced woman making her desperate self-accusal, and of a terrible, vulgar mother trying to hold her back with threats and pleadings! He turned at last to the two men, his own face red and troubled.

"I apologize," he said. "I apologize all around. I seem to have been insulting everybody in turn. I dare say you are all right. The Rajah may be ill-used and Miss Cary well-meaning. I don't know. And what on earth does it matter? The fat is in the fire, and here we stand chattering like old women about how it got there. Something must be done. The regiment is a day's march from here, and with a company of your Gurkhas, Nicholson, we shan't do much—scarcely hold out if they dare attack us."

"They will dare," Nicholson answered. "So much I know for certain, and it will probably be to-night. I can vouch for my men, and we must do our best until help comes. But—" He paused rather significantly.

"But what, man? Don't you think it will come in time? I have already telegraphed. They will be here in twenty-four hours. Surely we can manage so long."

"Colonel, if you had seen what I saw last night, you would not count much on help. It isn't the rising of a few unarmed men. It is the revolt of a fanatic, warlike nation led by a man. They call him God. His godhead does not matter to us. As a god we have no need to fear him; but as a man and a born leader of men, with hatred and revenge as an incentive, armed with unlimited power, he is an enemy not to be held at bay by a handful of Gurkhas and not to be conquered by a regiment."

His words had their quiet, fatal significance. Colonel Carmichael and Stafford looked at each other. Hitherto they had faced the situation coolly enough, with their eternal national optimism and self-confidence. This man had wrenched down the veil, and they stood before a chasm to which there seemed no shore, no bottom. It was the end, and they knew it.

"You mean, then, that it is all over?" the Colonel said casually. "You know more than either of us. You ought to be able to tell."

"Yes, Colonel, I should judge that it was all over, unless a miracle happens."

"We might fight our way through."

"On my way early this morning the roads were already guarded. They did not recognize me, otherwise I should not be here."

"And the women?"

All three men had grown cool and indifferent. Death had stepped in, and from that moment it was not seemly to show either trouble or excitement.

"According to my idea, the women had better be lodged here in your bungalow," Nicholson said. "The surrounding walls make it a good place of defense. The barracks are too open."

The Colonel nodded. Quite unconsciously he was letting the reins of command slip into the younger and stronger hands.

"They must be brought over at once," he assented. "Thank Heaven most of them have gone to the hills. Mrs. Berry and that—that other woman had better not be told what's up. They will only make a fuss. My wife will understand—and Lois will be all right. We must get hold of Travers, if it is only for her sake. It would serve him right if we left him to his fate."

Stafford took a step forward.

"I have a suggestion to make, Colonel," he said.

Colonel Carmichael looked at him. Throughout the interview Stafford had acted and spoken like a man who is weighed down by a burden of terrible doubt and perplexity. He alone of the three men had shown the first sign of emotion, and emotion in the face of death was for the Colonel no better than fear. His face hardened.

"Well," he said, "what is it?"

"Rajah Nehal Singh is not a barbarian," Stafford began. "I believe he would listen to reason if one of us could get hold of him. He seems to have his country's welfare at heart, and if it was explained to what horrible bloodshed he was leading it—"

"There must be no cringing!" Colonel Carmichael interrupted sharply.

"It will not be a case of cringing. We could simply put the matter before him."

"There is something in what Stafford says," Nicholson agreed. "From what I know of the Rajah, he seems both reasonable and humane. He may have yielded to his father's importunities in a fit of anger, and is perhaps already wishing himself well out of the mess. For the women's sake, Colonel, we ought to have a shot—and not all for the women's sake, either. Heaven knows what this business will cost England if it comes to a head!"

Colonel Carmichael bit his lip impatiently. He did not recognize his own motives of desiring a last hand-to-hand struggle. They were those of an old man who sees Cheltenham and stagnation looming in the distance and prays for death. But his common sense conquered the selfish promptings.

"Who would be likely to undertake the mission with any hope of success?" he asked.

"Nehal Singh and I were, toward the end, rather more than friendly," Nicholson began. "I believe he entertained a real liking for me—"

"If any one goes, I must!" The interruption came from Stafford. His head was raised. He faced the two men with a stern determination. "No, Nicholson; I know all you want to say. I have no sort of sympathy with the natives—I haven't your power over them. But this is different. I have a power. I may have. Let me go. If I fail, then you can try."

"By the time you have failed it will be too late," Nicholson returned. He was watching Stafford with almost pitying curiosity. His keen instinct penetrated the man's strained and nervous bearing to some conflict which seemed to have had its birth with the first mention of Nehal Singh's name.

"It will not be too late," Stafford answered persistently. "I ask for an hour, Colonel. In an hour I shall know—whether—whether I have the power."

"Captain Stafford, are you mad!" the Colonel said sternly. "This is not a time for experiments."

"I ask for an hour," Stafford repeated, and there was an emphasis and earnestness in his voice which cut short Colonel Carmichael's angry sarcasm. "At the end of that time Nicholson can do what he likes. I am not mad. I beg of you to ask no questions. I can not answer them. I can only tell you that I have a great responsibility—toward you all and toward another."

Colonel Carmichael was silent for a moment. Stafford's manner awed and troubled him in spite of himself.

"Very well," he said at last. "I give you an hour. During that time we will make preparations for the worst." He took out his watch. "It is now eleven. At twelve the matter passes into Nicholson's hands."

Stafford saluted.

"I understand, Colonel."

Nicholson accompanied him toward the door.

"God-speed!" he said simply. Stafford hesitated, his heavy eyes resting on the fine face of his brother-officer with an almost passionate gratitude.

"Thank you, Nicholson, thank you. God help me to do what is right!"

He turned and hurried from the room.



CHAPTER V

MURDER

Archibald Travers stood in his favorite attitude by the window, his shoulder propped against the casement, his arms folded, a smile of good-natured amusement on his healthy face.

"My dear child," he protested, "what earthly interest can it have for you to know the pros and cons of the business? You wouldn't understand, and that small head would ache for a week afterward. Be content with the outline of the thing. Of course it has all been frightfully unfortunate. But the Rajah wasn't to be held back. He believed the mine was going to be the making of Marut—and for a matter of fact so did I at first, otherwise I shouldn't have put all my money in it. The fellow had an enthusiasm and confidence which fairly carried us off our feet. Well, it's done, and it's no use crying about it. The best thing we can do is to clear out of Marut as fast as we can. People are bound to be disagreeable about it."

"The Carys are ruined too?" she asked.

"Oh, I don't know—they have lost a bit, I suppose." His voice sounded unpleasant. "At any rate, I'll say that for them—they behaved as people of their extraction would behave. First the mother poured out a torrent of abuse over the poor Rajah which would have been the envy of a fish-wife, and then the daughter turned on me." He laughed. "It was a most powerful scene of feminine hysterics. I was glad that you were not there."

Lois sat silent, her head resting on her hand, her eyes fixed thoughtfully on the table.

"And what are we going to do?" she asked at last. "You take the matter so easily, but if we are really ruined—"

He laid his hand affectionately on her shoulder.

"I am ruined, Lois. I did not say that you were. Even with your rather low opinion of me, you could hardly have supposed that I would touch your money. You are well enough off to do what you like. As for me—" he squared his shoulders—"I feel quite capable of starting things all over again."

His tone touched her. She looked up, and her face softened. There was nothing that could have made her happier than to have discovered in her husband some elements of courage and sincerity.

"Of course, Archibald, whatever is mine is yours," she said. "You must have known that."

"My dear generous little woman!" He bent over her and kissed her, apparently unconscious that she instinctively drew back from his caress. "If you really will help me, no doubt I shall build things up again in no time, and this one blunder won't count for much. You are a worthy comrade for a man."

Perhaps he had accepted her offer too quickly, perhaps his tone jarred on her as too elated, too satisfied. She got up, pushing her letters quickly to one side.

"You really wish us to start for Madras to-night?"

"Yes, if you can manage it. It is important that I should get back as soon as possible, and the business here is finished."

"Very well. I will pack up as much as I can. The rest must be sent on afterward."

He let her reach the door before he stopped her again.

"By the way, Lois, there is one thing I must ask you. I do not wish you to have any further intercourse with that Beatrice Cary. She is not a person with whom I should wish my wife to associate. You were right about her—she is a bad, unscrupulous woman."

With her hand on the curtain she turned and looked back at him. A cloud of curious distrust passed over her pale face.

"I never said that she was bad or unscrupulous. I do not believe that she is. You say that now, but it was not your old opinion."

"I suppose it is possible to see people in different and less agreeable lights?" he retorted sharply.

"Only too possible. But as she was never a friend of mine, and we are leaving within the next few hours, the injunction to avoid her is unnecessary." She paused as though listening. "I hear some one talking to the syce," she went on hurriedly. "It sounds like Captain Stafford's voice. Archibald"—she turned and came quickly to his side—"please let me out of the verandah. I don't want to meet him."

He caught her by the wrist and pushed her back. The movement was brutal, unlike his usual gentleness, and she saw by the expression of his face that for the moment he had lost all consciousness of what he was doing.

"I don't want to see him either. Go and tell him that I am not at home—that I have started for Madras—quick! Don't stand there staring."

His extraordinary excitement, apparently unreasonable and entirely opposed to his calm, easy-going habits, had the effect of setting fire to her dormant suspicion. She wrenched herself free.

"I am not going to tell him a lie," she said firmly.

"Lois, you are a little fool! Do as I tell you. It isn't a lie—only a piece of conventional humbug which everybody understands. There, please!" His tone of entreaty was more disagreeable to her than his roughness. All the pride and rigidity of her Puritan temperament was up in arms against the indefinable something which it had long ago recognized and despised.

"It is not conventional humbug," she retorted—"not in this case. You are lying because you are afraid, because you have a reason for not seeing Captain Stafford which you won't tell me."

He had not time to answer. The curtains were pushed on one side, and Stafford entered hurriedly. He was covered with dust and looked haggard and exhausted. He did not seem to see Lois, though she stood immediately in front of him. His eyes passed over her head to Travers.

"I am sorry to come in unannounced," he said, without giving either an opportunity to speak, "but your servant was making difficulties, and I have not a minute to lose. I have galloped every inch of the way here from the Colonel's bungalow. I must speak to you at once, Travers, alone."

Lois went toward the door. As she passed him she saw him look at her for the first time. And she went her way blinded with tears that had no cause save in the stern, unhappy face which had flashed its message to her. For she knew that his glance had been a message; that he had tried to explain, and that she had not understood. The curtain fell behind her, and Stafford crossed the room to Travers' side.

"You have heard what has happened?" he demanded.

Travers had resumed his old attitude of indifference. Only his eyes betrayed the uneasiness which he was really feeling.

"Do you mean the Rajah? No, I haven't heard anything, but if he is making himself a nuisance, I am not surprised. I expected it."

"Don't talk like that!" Stafford exclaimed, bringing his clenched hand down on the table. "How dare you! Have you no sense of responsibility? For you it was no more than a doubtful speculation, and you took care that there were no risks; but for Marut it means—Heaven knows what it means!"

"Nothing!" returned Travers coolly. "Nothing to get heated about. The Rajah feels sore, no doubt, but that will pass. And that is not my fault. It would have been all right if Miss Cary had not—well, made such a fool of herself, and incidentally of us all."

Stafford gazed steadily at the man who smiled at him. He could not understand a character so absolutely without all moral foundations.

"You are no doubt preparing to start for Madras?" he asked, controlling his voice with a strong effort.

"Certainly. There is nothing more to be done here."

"Let me tell you that you are not likely to leave Marut alive."

Travers laughed.

"Nonsense, my dear Captain! I am not to be frightened with nursery tales."

"It is not a nursery tale. I give you my word of honor that before nightfall we shall be overwhelmed by a force a hundred times larger than anything we can bring on the field for weeks to come."

Travers shifted his position carelessly. Stafford had not succeeded in frightening him. He did not believe in native rebellions. What he had seen of the Hindu character convinced him of its fundamental cowardice and incapability for independent action.

"A few blank cartridges will bring the Rajah very quickly to his senses," he assured Stafford, with perfect good-humor. "We have nothing to be afraid of in that quarter."

"You really think that?" Stafford demanded significantly. "Knowing what you know, you think we have no cause to fear him?"

Travers changed color. The uneasy flicker in his eyes returned.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"You know very well. You know whom we shall be fighting against."

"Of course—a headlong, inexperienced Hindu prince—"

"You are choosing to have a very short memory. Nehal Singh is more than that."

Travers stood upright. The healthy glow had died out of his cheeks.

"Look here, Stafford," he said roughly, "what is it you want? I can see you want something."

"Yes. Give me back my promise. I can not keep it any longer."

"Do you think I extort promises that I don't want kept? Are you in earnest?"

"Yes, terribly in earnest. Look the thing in the face, Travers. Our lives, and, what is far more, the lives of our women and Heaven knows how many of our countrymen, hang in the balance. If you don't believe me, ask Nicholson."

"I shall believe what I like!" Travers began to pace backward and forward, his mind busy with lightning calculations. Before nightfall they would be out of Marut. Stafford was exaggerating the danger, perhaps for his own purposes. The whole thing was nonsense.

"I keep you to your promise," he said obstinately.

Stafford lifted his head. The man's natural reserve and conventionalism were borne down by the sense of his helplessness. He was fighting against a giant of egoism, as it seemed to him, of gross and criminal stupidity, for the lives of untold hundreds.

"You can not realize what you are doing," he said. "It is our one hope of holding the Rajah's hand, and with every moment the danger is increasing. As I came along the road I passed crowds of natives on the way to the palace. Most of them were men from your mine, Travers, and they had an ugly look. They did not touch me, it is true, but I believe they are only waiting for Nehal Singh's order, and then it will be too late. Travers, we must do everything in our power to prevent him giving that order. I have promised Colonel Carmichael to do what I could. At twelve I must be back, or—"

Travers swung around. His face was livid.

"You told him—?"

"No, but I must. I can not keep my promise. You must set me free. I gave it you because you told me that I was not concerned. Now I am concerned, I dare not keep silence."

"My dear fellow, you must—that is, if you are a man of honor."

"Of what use is the secret to you?"

"That is my affair. There was a time when you were anxious enough to keep it."

"It was for Lois' sake. The two things were bound up together. She can not be spared any longer."

"You think not? I am of another opinion. I put my wife's peace of mind higher than your old-maidish alarms." Travers faced his companion with the assurance of a man who feels that he has the whip-hand. His experience taught him that a man of certain orthodox principles has a very limited sphere of action. He runs in herds with hundreds of other men of the same mould, and under given circumstances has only one course of conduct open to him. Had Travers been in Stafford's place, no one living could have told what he would do. But Stafford had no choice—at least, so Travers judged.

"You are one of honor's Pharisees, my dear fellow," he said frankly. "You can't get out of your promise, and you know it. You cling to the letter of the law. It is your way. You had better go back to the Colonel and tell him to manage the Rajah in his own style."

The clock on the table chimed the half-hour. It was ten minutes' full gallop back to the Colonel's bungalow. Stafford set his teeth in a white heat of despair.

"If you have no consideration for the Station, for your own wife, for your own country, at least consider yourself!" he exclaimed. "Are you blind to the danger? We have scarcely fifty men, and up there are thousands quietly waiting for the Rajah's signal. You must have seen them with your own eyes pouring through—"

"I saw any amount of dirty pilgrims, and got out of the way as fast as I could," was Travers' smiling retort.

Stafford stood baffled and helpless. For the first time he was able to recognize and appreciate a certain type of Englishman to which he himself to some extent belonged—an arrogant ignoramus who, encamped behind his wall of superiority, fears nothing because he sees nothing, and sees nothing because outside the walls there can not possibly be anything worth looking at. Nicholson had torn down Stafford's imagined security, and he stood aghast at his old insolent self-confidence as reflected in Travers' smiling face.

"To be quite honest with you," the latter went on, after a moment's pause, "I have very little faith in our dreadful danger. Admitted that I led the Rajah on a more than doubtful speculation, admitted that Miss Cary went further than she need have done, it is still most unlikely that his injured feelings are going to lead him to such a desperate step as to enter into conflict with the whole Empire. Believe me, Stafford, the idea is ridiculous, and I have not the least intention of throwing up my own hard-won security—"

It was a bad slip, and he knew it. Stafford, who had stood with his face half averted, in an attitude of irresolution, swung round.

"Your security?" he echoed.

Travers shrugged his shoulders. He had made a mistake, but he saw no reason to be afraid of Stafford or of any one in Marut.

"I said 'my security,'" he repeated.

Stafford clenched his fists. The expression on his gaunt, rugged face showed that he had understood the full import of Travers' words.

"You blackguard!" he said under his breath.

Travers turned scarlet.

"Mind yourself, Captain Stafford. You may find yourself outside the door quicker than you care for it!"

"You blackguard!" Stafford repeated furiously. "I haven't a better name for you. You have simply humbugged me with your lies about Lois and your devotion to her—"

Travers strode at him.

"How dare you!"

"Don't bluster, Travers! It can't hide what I see. You married Lois for her money—"

"Hold your infernal tongue!"

"And now you are afraid. Well, you shall have some cause." He picked up his helmet, which lay on the table. "I gave you my promise because you assured me it was for Lois' happiness, and I believed you. According to my ideas, both of them were better left in ignorance. I did not know that you had your own motives—silly fool that I am!" He turned to hurry from the room. Travers barred his way.

"What are you going to do?"

"I shall tell the Colonel the truth!"

"It will break his heart."

"I do not believe it. Out of the way, Travers!"

"And then?"

"Rajah Nehal Singh shall be told."

"Have you considered the consequences?"

"I have."

"Lois will be ruined!"

"You will be ruined. Lois will have my protection, thank God!"

The two men faced each other an instant in silence. Travers' face betrayed a curious complex emotion of desperation and shame. He had been called a blackguard, and the word had stung like the cut of a horse-whip. He had never believed it possible that any man should have the right to use such a term—to him, the embodiment of geniality, good-humor and good-nature. He did not believe even now that any one had the right. He was not an unprincipled man—not in the sense that he had ever consciously done wrong. He did not know what wrong was—his one conception being an act putting him within reach of the law; and of such an indiscretion he had never been guilty. Throughout his scheming he had always pictured himself as a complaisant Napoleon of finance, combining business with pleasure. His conduct toward Lois had been based on this standpoint. He was genuinely fond of her, and is there any law forbidding a man to lay firm hold upon his wife's money? Yet Stafford had called him a blackguard, and Stafford was the world—the world of respectability of which Travers had believed himself a gifted member. For the moment the incomprehensible insult was more to him than the coming danger to which his plans were put.

"You look at me as though I had committed a crime!" he exclaimed, in a tone of injured protest.

"You have," Stafford answered steadily. "You have fooled me, playing on my prejudices, and God knows what other weaknesses. I won't say anything of that. I deserve my share of blame. But you have tricked and deceived a woman. You have deceived an honorable man into a dishonorable venture. You have brought disaster on your own country. You are no more than a common adventurer. You are the parasite to whom we owe all our misfortunes, and—"

"Stafford, take care!"

"Out of the way! I am going to put an end to it all!"

Travers flung the excited man back. Shame is a dangerous poison in the blood of base natures. It is merely the precursor to a state of absolute license where self-control, self-respect are flung to the winds and the devil is set free to work his full, unchecked will. Travers glared at Stafford, hating his upright bearing, his upright indignation with a violence to which murder would have been the only true expression.

"You are not going till I have your promise to hold your tongue!" he said between his teeth.

Stafford flung the other's detaining hand from him. Freed from his laming diseased conscience, and roused to activity, he acted like a man of lightning determination and iron will.

"That you will never have, and you are a scoundrel to ask for it. As you like—there are other exits than the door." He swung round and made for the open window.

Travers did not stop him. He stood rooted to the spot, his hand on the revolver which he carried at his side. The revolver had not been meant for Stafford. Travers' quick eyes had caught sight of something creeping slowly and stealthily up the verandah steps. He had seen the flash of a knife, and a cry of warning had rushed to his lips. The cry was never uttered. Devil and angel fought their last battle over Travers' drifting, rudderless nature. The word "scoundrel" had been the devil's winning cast.

"Go, then, and be damned to you!" Travers shrieked.

He saw Stafford reach the verandah steps. The stalwart khaki-clad figure was photographed on his reeling brain. He heard the clank of a sword against the first stone step. He tried to cry out—afterward he tried to believe that he had cried out—but it was too late. The hidden something which had crouched behind the heavy creepers sprang up—for a short second seemed to tower above the unconscious officer—then a gleam of light flashed down with the black hand. Stafford flung up his arms, swung around, and fell face downward on the verandah. There was a short, stifled groan, and then—and then only—Travers fired.



CHAPTER VI

CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH

All the night following the momentous meeting of the Marut Diamond Company Mrs. Cary had kept to her room, the door locked against her daughter, and had sobbed and wailed in a manner befitting the victim of a hard and undeserved fate.