Men were given the power to kill----

He looked up. The eyes burning in that white mask were on his hands.

Their expression had changed--had become more horrible. It was the very

spirit of fear and triumphant evil.

Tristram put the bottle back in its place. He came and stood by the

bed.

"I don't want you to hope too much, Boucicault," he said, coolly and

professionally. "In the best of cases, it will be a long job. I shall

come tomorrow and go over you again and see what's to be done. If Sir

Gilbert is still in the land, we'll have him over. And you must do all

you can to help us. As to me--I quite realize I have landed myself in

an impasse from which there is no possible escape. I don't know what

Anne will feel or think. But she'll be so thankful to get you back, the

cost won't matter. At any rate, I shall not speak of all this again to

you. My business with you is to give you back to life. The afterwards

is my concern. Good night, Boucicault."

As he had spoken, his eyes on the mask of bitterness and hatred,

something rushed over him. It was like the melting of a frozen stream

under the first warm sunshine. It seemed to him that he had looked

straight down through those eyes into the very heart of human misery,

and had understood. He remembered his own words: "There is only one

distinction between men--the unhappy and the happy, the cursed and the

blessed." They blazed now with a real significance. Men were

pitchforked into this world with distorted bodies or distorted

souls--what did it matter which? They deserved neither hatred nor

condemnation--they were the awful mystery of humanity, the visible

symbol of the curse under which humanity totters. "Here, but for a wild

incalculable chance, go I, Tristram."

He bent down and laid his hand on Boucicault's arm. He did not stop to

think whether or not his touch might be repugnant to the other man. He

acted out of an imperative instinct.

"You mustn't worry," he said gently, and almost gaily. "You'll live to

do for me yet, Boucicault! Good night again."

The eyes closed as though they had burnt themselves out. Tristram moved

quietly to the verandah. He had a sudden sense of freedom, of physical

relief, which was like an awakening from a suffocating nightmare. He

went down the steps into the garden. It was then, as he stood there

listening to the music and the distant voices, that he saw Sigrid Fersen

come towards him. His eyes could not have recognized her face, for it

was dark and she was moving quickly, like a pale mysterious light,

through the shadow of the trees. But he knew her. Was it her step--the

lithe, familiar motion of her body--or something deep-hidden within

himself which irresistibly went out to her? He could not have told. He

waited for her. She came on unseeingly to the edge of the faint

reflection from Boucicault's room, and then stood still, staring at him.

Her small, white face had an aghast look. He tried to speak to her and

could not. His throat hurt him.

He knew now that he had never known her, never, even in his dreams of

her, realized her potentialities. He knew that she had deliberately

thrown down her weapons to meet him in the stern simplicity of his life.

She had been too proud, too self-assured perhaps to fear to show herself

to him physically at her least. Now he saw her at her highest--the

priceless, polished stone in a rare and exquisite setting.

A languorous breath of night-wind ruffled the smooth gold of her hair

and lifted the flimsy scarf from her shoulders. It fluttered out behind

her like a pale mist. He saw the single string of pearls at her neck.

He fancied he could see the passionate life beating beneath them. And

through all her brilliancy, her burning vitality, there was a strain of

quaint Victorianism, a demure elfishness--like the inter-weaving of a

minuet with the riot of a bacchanal.

He could not have spoken to her, and at last a smile dawned at the

corners of her mouth. He knew that she had been afraid, and it flashed

upon him that in the bitterest moment she would retain her humour, her

zest of life.

"You quite frightened me, Major Tristram," she said. "I have never seen

you in uniform before."

"Does it become me?" he heard himself ask back.

"No. You look as though you were rather stifled by so much

magnificence. And you've never seen me in full gala either, have you?"

"No."

"It suits me, doesn't it? That's the difference between us. I'm in my

natural element. Will you take me back, Major Tristram? I came out for

a breath of fresh air and to escape Mrs. Boucicault. Mrs. Boucicault

asked me to dance. I think she fancied it would be a good method of

rehabilitating me in the eyes of outraged Gaya. But I didn't want to.

What's the use of marrying if you have to go on working for your

living?"

He walked silently beside her. He did not know this woman with the hard

voice--he felt that she did not want him to know her. Her hand rested

lightly on his arm. He looked at it. It was like alabaster on the red

sleeve. "We're going to be married shortly," she went on. "Mr. Meredith

is trying to refuse his services. He doesn't approve. He wants us to

leave Gaya. It's so absurdly Christian, isn't it? My husband's

business will be in Gaya and I like the place----" They had turned the

curve of the path and came within sight of the softly-lit garden. They

could see shadows of the dancers gliding through Mrs. Boucicault's rooms

to the rhythm of the latest American distortion. Little groups had

gathered round the tables on the verandah and there was much laughter

and the subdued clinking of glasses. The Chinese lanterns shone like

bright warm eyes amid the trees.

Sigrid stood still an instant. He heard her draw a deep, unsteady

breath. "How gay it all is--fairy-like! One can scarcely believe that

there is such a thing as reality. Perhaps there isn't. Mrs. Boucicault

is a daring hostess. It requires nerve to dance with a dead husband in

the house."

It occurred to him then to tell her what he had just discovered. He

held back. He was afraid of troubling the surface of their

relationship. They did not know one another. The man and woman who had

faced each other that night in Heerut belonged to a different life.

They were shadows--or had become shadows.

"By the way, Major Tristram, what has happened to the Wickie Memorial?

Is he still among the living?"

"He lives and rejoices in the name of Richard," he answered lightly.

"Do you sometimes let him out of the compound?" she asked.

He did not answer her at once. Her voice had sounded casual enough, and

yet he knew that there had been something deliberate in her words--a

deliberate desire to hurt, to thrust down through his seeming

tranquillity to a raw and open wound.

"How did you know?" he asked curtly.

"I don't know--I guessed."

"My wife doesn't like animals about the place," he said steadily. "I do

what I can for the little chap. You see, in Heerut it was

different--and I don't live at Heerut now."

"Of course not. You have become so civilized." They had reached the

verandah steps and she turned to him with a laugh. "So civilized. The

old landmarks have gone--the beard, the disreputable clothes, the

wild-man-o'-the-wood's hair--and heaven knows what else! Is there

anything left of the Dakktar Sahib, or is he smothered under the

respectability of Major Tristram?" Her eyes ran over him--mockingly.

He raised his right hand--he could not have told why. It was at once a

movement of pain and self-defence. Then he saw that her eyes were on

his wrist. "I'm sorry----" she said, gently. "I am intolerable. There

are things one must believe in or perish--Forgive me. And, for a

wedding-present, will you give Richard back to me? I think he would be

happier."

He nodded. He had the feeling that therewith something for which he had

fought had been finally surrendered. He followed her silently up the

steps. At the top they were met by Anne. She went up to her husband

and put her hand on his arm. She did not look at Sigrid, and the

deliberateness of her disregard betrayed how keenly she felt the other's

presence. Her obstinate mouth was compressed and unsmiling.

"I have been wanting you, Tris," she said sharply. "Where have you

been?"

"With your father," he answered. "I'm sorry. I did not know you were

looking for me."

"You might have told me----" Her voice sounded pettish and breathless.

"I should have come with you. And you haven't danced with me once."

He laughed. He felt rather than saw that Sigrid had turned away and

joined one of the parties of the verandah. He heard Radcliffe offer her

his place and the sulky deference in the boy's voice. It gave him a

sudden knowledge of the fight she was waging.

"I can't dance--not even as well as a polar-bear," he said. "You've

married a loutish barbarian, Anne."

"Your barbarism seems to appeal to some people," she flashed back. He

knew then that she had listened. But he could feel no resentment. She

looked ill and almost old. Her home-made evening dress did not become

her, and the Indian sun had begun to drain the colour from her cheeks.

As though remorse-stricken, she pressed his arm, looking up at him

pathetically. "Tris, I didn't mean to be cross and horrid. I wanted to

go home with you----"

"Weren't you enjoying yourself?" he asked.

"I couldn't--Tris, don't you see----?"

He looked past her into the brightly-lit rooms where a few couples were

still dancing. He saw then what it was that had driven her out to seek

him. Mrs. Boucicault danced the tango with Barclay. They were both

conspicuous. Barclay was the only man in civilian dress, and, thanks to

Rasaldu's angry absence, his deeper isolation was made more manifest.

But he danced well--perhaps too well. Mrs. Boucicault gave a fierce

little laugh of pleasure as he guided her swiftly across the room. She

herself was an outrageous figure in her youthful, almost childish dress,

high at the neck and loaded with jewellery. Her fluffy grey hair looked

tossed and disordered, her cheeks were painted. But as she suddenly

broke off and came towards them leaning on Barclay's arm, Tristram saw

that there was nothing artificial in her shining eyes.

"Now, what do you think of me, Tristram?" she exclaimed. "Isn't there

life in me yet? Don't you admire me?"

He felt Anne shrink closer to him. He bowed gravely.

"With all my heart," he answered.

"Oh, it's been splendid! I've been chasing the years and catching them

up. Mr. Barclay dances so wonderfully, Anne: you should try your step

with his----"

Barclay made a little movement forward. He only glanced at Anne. His

eyes fixed themselves on Tristram's face.

"I haven't the pleasure," he said, in his soft mincing way. "Perhaps

you'd introduce me to your wife, Tristram----"

"I don't care whom I dance with as long as our steps match," Mrs.

Boucicault continued, with reckless ecstasy.

There was a moment's silence. Barclay had heard. His eyes narrowed a

little and his nostrils dilated with his quick breathing. Tristram

turned to Anne. She stared straight up at him. Her face was sallow and

pinched-looking.

"Will you please take me home, Tris?"

She slipped her arm through his and turned to go. Barclay held his

ground. His lips were trembling. The little vein of success that he

had had with Mrs. Boucicault had intoxicated him, but many things had

happened that evening. It was as Mrs. Bosanquet had said--Gaya was

fighting to the last ditch.

"I don't think Mrs. Tristram understands," he said huskily. "We're sort

of relations, aren't we? Won't you do the brotherly, Tristram?"

He had not meant to say it. It was the look on Anne's face which had

goaded him--the hundred petty pin-pricks which he had endured patiently,

the sudden realization of the impossible gulf between him and the tall

standing uniformed figure before him.

Anne gave a little laugh. It was tremulous and disgusted.

"I really think we'd better go, Tris."

"I'm not drunk," Barclay said. "It's true. You'd better ask him.

Captain Tristram was my father right enough----" He swung round. "Why

don't you own up to it, damn you----?" he burst out.

The little group nearest him turned to look at him. He was only

conscious of Tristram and Sigrid. The latter had half-risen from her

place. He saw her face as a white blank. Some one came and touched him

on the arm. That was what he wanted--to come to grips with them, to

choke them with some of the humiliation that was like dry dust in his

throat.

"Look here, Barclay----"

"It's perfectly true," Tristram said suddenly. "Mr. Barclay is my

half-brother. I understood that he did not wish it known--or I should

have acknowledged the relationship before. I do so now."

There was a silence. He had spoken simply and very naturally. It was

as though a bomb had been thrown into the room and he had picked it up

and proved it an empty shell. Still more, it was as though a child had

burst out with some weighty, wonderful secret and had been met by cool,

indifferent laughter. The whole situation seemed to have lost

point--become tiresome and ridiculous. The man who had interfered drew

back, muttering an apology. Mrs. Boucicault laughed.

"How silly it all is!" she said, half to herself. "What does it

matter?"

But Barclay turned and crossed the crowded verandah and stumbled down

the steps. Afterwards he ran like a madman. He had not seen Tristram's

detaining hand. He thought he heard some one laugh, and the sound was

like the cut of a whip on an open sore. He ran till his breath jarred

from him in aching sobs. He ran till the last light had vanished among

the trees, till there was no sound but his own tortured breathing. Then

he stood still swaying on his feet, his hands pressed to his wet face.

He remained thus many minutes. Then he walked on. He was hatless and

coatless. As he turned into the gates of his own compound, a light fell

on his face and it showed piteously wild and stupid-looking, like that

of a hunted animal.

Something moved in the shadow of a tree and came out and stood in his

path. Barclay jerked to a standstill. He passed his hand over his eyes.

"Who the devil are you?" he muttered.

"Ayeshi. I've been here waiting for you."

Barclay gave a little unsteady laugh.

"I don't know you. You're not Ayeshi. Ayeshi's gone to the devil.

You'd better clear out----" Then he was silent, staring at the face

which turned itself deliberately to the light. "Good God!" he muttered.

"Vahana sent me to you. I've not tasted food for a week. I didn't dare

go to the villages. They're still hunting for me. Are you going to

give me up?"

"Where have you been?"

"Calcutta."

"What did you do there?"

"I learnt things."

"What things?"

"I learnt that I had been a fool. Hatred, too----"

"You mixed with the students?"

"Yes."

"What else----?"

"I know who I am."

Both had spoken in English, and each accent had its own quality.

Barclay peered into Ayeshi's face. He was breathing, quickly, with a

smothered excitement.

"You're ill, aren't you?"

"I am dying."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know yet. Are you going to give me up?"

Barclay looked back over his shoulder into the darkness. He was

shivering.

"No," he said. "I'll not give you up--not to them."

He made a sign, and they went up towards the bungalow, keeping to the

shadow of the trees.

*CHAPTER IV*

*ANNE MAKES A DISCOVERY*

Anne had given a little tea-party. A tea-party was a favourite function

of hers. Mrs. Bosanquet, fond of developing her ideas, set it down to a

tendency inherited from the suburban days when Anne had played hymns on

a pianola. Anne liked tea-parties because they were inexpensive, and

sober. She liked to be quiet and to talk gently and seriously. Gaya

had other ideas of amusement, but came nevertheless and sat on the cool

verandah and talked gently and seriously, till there was no character in

the station that was not in ribbons. And this was not because they were

venomous, but because they were bored and their Anglo-Saxon bodies

yearned for violent exercise.

A week before, Tristram had set out for a brief round of the nearest

villages, and the tea-party was a method of filling in a few hours of

his absence. Anne detested his absences, and gradually he had reduced

the camping-out days to the least possible number. She had never

pleaded with him. Her pressure had been almost imperceptible but

persistent.

Gaya had accepted her invitation to the last available man. They had

had a vague idea that they were thereby "backing up" the poor old

Hermit, whom they vaguely pitied. Only two people in Gaya had been

ignored, and it was on their account that Mrs. Bosanquet and the two

Comptons lingered after the rest of the company had excused itself

homewards. Mrs. Bosanquet sat on one side of the prim, muslin-frocked

figure and Mary Compton on the other. Archibald Compton took up his

place on the verandah step and smoked innumerable cigarettes. Knowing

the probable trend of events, he felt wretchedly uncomfortable.

Anne chatted about her servants. She did not quite approve of Mrs.

Bosanquet, who was too irresponsible for her size and years. On the

other hand, she was the Judge's wife, and what she did not know about

native cooks was not worth knowing. So Anne related her woes, and in

the very midst of them Mrs. Bosanquet blundered in with her attack, for

all the world like a squadron of cavalry through a picnic.

"You know, Anne, you're not playing the game," she said. "That's my

feeling about it. You're setting a bad example. We can't go on like

this. It's our duty to hang together--not to build nasty little

coteries and cliques. We're not living in London, where there's plenty

of room for everybody's morals. We've got to put up with each other and

pretend we like it. I do my share, you must do yours----"

Mrs. Compton nodded decided agreement. Her husband hunted for his

cigarette-case.

"Them's my sentiments," he declared vulgarly.

Anne had started a little. Now she looked from one to the other and

finally at the unhappy Archibald. Her lips curled.

"Of course, I know whom you mean," she said; "but I didn't think you

would take that point of view, Captain Compton. I thought men were so

strict about that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?" Mrs. Compton asked, elbowing her husband from the

field of discussion, where he was not likely to distinguish himself.

Anne's smile persisted. She was not in the least angry, though the

war-signals had been in the other's eyes from the outset. She was

prepared to discuss the question reasonably and gently. She felt a

queer, suppressed little exultation throbbing beneath her

reasonableness.

"Colour," she said.

Both Compton and Mrs. Bosanquet grimaced involuntarily. But Mary Compton

was too accustomed to her advanced position to feel any particular

smart.

"You mean, because Mr. Barclay has native blood?" she asked. "It's

ridiculous. Of course, we none of us like it. We don't even like him.

But he's going to marry one of us----"

"Not one of us," Anne interposed with a quick, upward flash of the grave

eyes.

"One of our blood," Mary Compton persisted. "And--and, speaking for

Archie and myself--one of our friends. We can't have them ostracized by

half the station like this. The scene the other evening was intolerable,

and it would never have taken place if you had behaved reasonably. You

don't involve your heavenly salvation by bowing to a man."

Her fiery temper, which had been severely tested during the last week,

had taken the bit between its teeth during her expostulation, and the

knowledge that she was now at a disadvantage did not help her to recover

it. Anne's mouth hardened. The memory of that scene still rankled.

"One has to draw the line somewhere," she said.

"I daresay. Still, it would have been wiser not to have drawn the line

at one's husband's brother."

"He is not Tristram's brother." Her voice quivered, and Mary Compton

had the satisfaction of seeing the tears rise to the brown eyes.

"They're no relation--no legal relation. These dreadful things

happen--but one doesn't acknowledge them or talk about them. It was

absurd and unkind of Tris to have behaved as he did. He has such

ridiculous notions. Anyhow, just because it's true, it's all the more

impossible for us to have anything to do with him--or his wife. Surely

you can see that, Mary." She paused, and then added: "Everyone else

does, you know."

It was true. Mary Compton acknowledged it to herself with an angry,

sinking heart. Sigrid had not been strong enough--not strong enough,

certainly, to balance the consternation, the uneasy sense of insulted

tradition which had punished Barclay's outburst. Mary Compton looked

gloomily at Tristram's wife, and wondered if it was only a sense of

outraged propriety which gave her naturally girlish face that expression

of old and set resolution.

Archibald Compton created a merciful diversion.

"It's a rotten business," he said, in his drawling way; "and I can tell

you one thing--it's not going to be settled quite so easily as some of

you people think. Barclay isn't just an ordinary, feckless Eurasian.

He's not going to be snubbed for nothing. He's got Tristram blood in

him. I believe he's got a touch of the devil, too--which Tristram senior

may or may not have had--and a lot of dangerous explosive stuff in his

head which might go off any minute. We've seen that. And I'll tell you

something more--some natives are jolly touchy about that sort of thing.

I've no doubt Tristram senior got the knife for his little escapade, and

a grudge dies hard. Besides, this fellow has an awful hold over the

natives. They've pretty well mortgaged their souls to him. He can make

himself jolly awkward if he chooses." It was the longest, most dogmatic

utterance Compton had ever been guilty of, and he got up and groped for

his helmet on the chair behind him. "I guess we'd better be clearing,

old lady," he said awkwardly.

His wife forgot to reprove him. She felt a glow of passionate affection

mingle with her general indignation.

"I'm sure we deserve whatever happens to us," she said. "We're the

pettiest, meanest lot of God-forsaken, benighted idiots that ever made

the word 'humanity' ridiculous. Anyhow, I shall do what I can. You can

all come to our dinner or you can stay away. I've asked Sigrid and Mr.

Barclay, and they've accepted. It's in their honour. So now you know."

She looked at Mrs. Bosanquet, and the latter lady got up with a fat sigh

of resignation.

"Oh, I suppose I shall come," she said, "and George, of course. It

seems to be his luck, poor dear, always to be on the wrong side."

Anne said good-bye to them with her composed little smile. It was

amazing how self-possessed, how deliberate she had become in those few

months of married life. It was as though her character had been kept

deliberately in flux until her mate had been chosen, and had then

settled into hard, predestined lines. After the routed deputation had

waved its farewell, she went back into the drawing-room and began to

rearrange her wedding presents for about the fourth time. They never

quite satisfied her. Gaya had divided its treasures in the true

Christian spirit. The family that had two silver candlesticks gave one,

and so on, and the result was distressing for any one with a sense of

symmetry. She sang softly to herself as she worked, and when she came

across the Dresden shepherdess she put it in a drawer and turned the key

on it with a quiet satisfaction. After that, she found an old

foul-smelling pipe hidden behind a vase. She smiled at it

affectionately, disapprovingly, as at a child's broken toy, and placed

it in the waste-paper basket. Then she rang the little silver-tongued

bell and a soft-footed servant slid into the room, and, in obedience to

her slight gesture, the waste-paper basket and its doomed contents

disappeared.

It was at that moment that she noticed the shadow of a man on the

verandah. His back was to the light, and at the first glance she did

not recognize him. Nor did he make any movement to recall her memory.

He stood there looking at her.

"Why--Owen!" she said. "Owen!"

She ran to him with a joyful relaxation of her staidness, both hands

outstretched. He waited for her to come up to him. There was something

at once proud and humble in that deliberate waiting. He held his head

well up like a soldier, challenging nothing, fearing nothing.

It was the first time that they had met since the day when he had seen

her off on her way to Trichy. Between then and now there had been the

Feast of Siva and her marriage. She looked up at him, her hands in his

quiet grasp.

One side of his face had no resemblance to the other. It had been

smashed and mended into a grotesque hideousness--into a leering

distortion. The eye was completely closed. The whole face looked like

a divided mask--one half human, the other devilish. It was intensely,

cruelly pitiable.

Anne neither winced nor changed colour. She looked up at him steadily.

"Dear Owen!" she said. "Dear Owen!"

The one half of his poor twisted mouth smiled.

"I've been hesitating outside for about an hour--listening to your

voices. I didn't like to come in--I was afraid of startling you. I

suppose you knew--but one can talk about things one can't face."

He lisped a little, but the lisp could not weaken his simple,

unconscious dignity.

"You should have come before," she answered. "I have thought so much of

you."

"I couldn't come. It took a long time to tinker me up, and then I tried

to go back to my work. It's been rather difficult. The poor beggars

think I've got the evil eye or something."

She made him sit down in Tristram's long wicker chair and sent for fresh

tea. There was a gentle solicitude in all her movements that was very

touching. When she came near him to bring him his cup, he saw there

were tears on her lashes.

"Anne--it's awfully sweet of you to be so sorry."

She smiled at him with unsteady lips.

"I don't think I am sorry. It isn't a matter to be sorry about--one can

only be very proud."

A boyish flush crept into his cheek.

"There's nothing to be proud of either. I thought perhaps you'd be

angry, as the others were."

"Don't you know me better than that? Were the others angry?"

"All of them, pretty well. They talked about the risk. Tristram said

I'd endangered their lives."

She considered a moment.

"It isn't like Tristram to be afraid," she said.

"Not for himself. My word, no. He came into the thick of that scrum

like a lion. You know how big he is. He seemed to grow a lot bigger.

He fairly picked me up by the scruff of the neck and hauled me out over

their heads. How he managed, I don't know. It was a marvellously brave

thing to have done." He laughed. "I've had a kind of hero-worship for

him ever since," he added shyly.

"You don't need to have. What you did was just as brave. It was

throwing yourself single-handed against all the forces of evil. I was

proud, Owen. It made me feel that some of us are still ready to prove

our faith at whatever cost. It was as though one of the old martyrs had

come back to shame our indifference, our wicked toleration. It gave me

new hope----"

The colour glowed vividly in her cheeks. He glanced at her, and then

turned away again, revealing the distorted profile. There was a

moment's crowded silence. She could see his hands working nervously on

the arm of his chair.

"I was awfully afraid," he said at last, and she knew by his voice that

he was living his bad hour of fear over again. "And yet I had to go on.

I had never understood how real the voice of God can be. It's easy

enough to keep up the ordinary jog-trot service until the summons comes

to you--then you must either obey or give up your mission. One can

deceive one's conscience--not God."

"And God saved you," she said eagerly.

She said it with her eyes set on his tortured face. He nodded, and

laughed whimsically.

"And with a strange instrument--a man who cursed me in all the languages

for doing the devil's work."

"Tristram, you mean?" There was no amusement in Anne's eyes, but a

shadow. "Poor Tristram, he just doesn't understand. He hates

sacrifice--I don't think he knows what it means. He wants people to be

healthy, and have plenty to eat, and lots of pleasure. He thinks that's

all that matters. He doesn't understand the significance of the Cross.

Perhaps he has been too happy."

Meredith did not answer. He was thinking perplexedly of the man who had

lain stretched motionless across the portrait of an unknown woman. It

was a glimpse of memory which never wholly faded. It blurred his

conception of Tristram's happiness. Then he looked at the woman

opposite him and forgot. He saw her goodness, her purity, her

steadfastness of soul. He saw that she had developed. She had been a

girl, she was now a woman, strong and self-reliant. A thrill of sheer

adoration ran through his senses. She looked back at him steadily. With

a passionate thankfulness, he regained those moments of communion when

she had knelt before him at the altar and they had been one in worship

and understanding.

"You are very happy, Anne?" he said gently.

"Very happy."

"I am glad. I wanted to see what a true marriage can mean----" He

hesitated. There was something that he had come to tell her. It

sickened him, and yet it pleased him, as he knew it would please her.

"Miss Fersen and Mr. Barclay were married this afternoon," he said.

She looked up. The sun had gone down behind the high trees in the

compound, and the room was full of fast-deepening shadows. They were in

her eyes, and he could not read their expression.

"You married them, Owen?"

He heard the subdued reproach in her voice.

"I couldn't help myself. What power had I to refuse? But I confess I

hated it. It seemed horrible to me--as though I had taken part in an

ugly farce. It was quite private--no one knew about it. The banns have

been up sometime."

Her lips were set in a hard line.

"Perhaps they were ashamed," she said. "I only hope they will leave

Gaya. It is terrible to have them here. I think she wanted to get hold

of Tristram. Wasn't she with him that day at Heerut?"

She spoke carelessly. He wondered if she knew or only guessed.

"Yes--she went out to see the festival."

"She would like that kind of thing--she is that sort of woman." A spark

of passion flashed in her quiet voice. "I always distrusted her. Don't

you remember, Owen?"

He nodded. He remembered everything that had ever passed between them.

He knew that he could not forget. He did not want to. He hugged his

sorrowful happiness close to him. He loved her intensely and purely.

He knew that no other human love could ever come into his life, and

there was no evil in the knowledge.

It had grown so dark that their faces were white ghostly blanks. A

native servant brought in a lighted lamp and set it noiselessly at the

far end of the room. Meredith got up slowly.

"I must be clearing," he said. "It's done me good to be with you.

You've always understood so wonderfully, Anne."

"I wish I could help you," she answered.

"You have helped me."

Their hands met in a long clasp.

Tristram rode up through the shaggy, unkempt avenue. It was still light

enough outside for his amazingness to be apparent to the two standing

together on the verandah. He wore his helmet at the back of his tawny,

unkempt hair. Three days' stubble was on his chin. He was collarless,

and his soiled shirt gaped at the neck. His long legs were out of the

stirrups, and dangled absurdly along Arabella's sides. Arabella had

grown, if anything, a little leaner and she exhibited her favourite

mannerism of trailing her nose when tired of things in general, and

camping-out in particular. They were a wonderful pair.

Tristram sang as he rode. His soft, rather hoarse baritone struggled

with a translation of the melody that was running through his brain. It

failed, and he knew it, but he continued to sing. He had been three

days in the open--three days skirting the grey, sombre-flowing river,

ploughing through harsh jungle grass and following rough tracts through

forests where life lurked and rustled and fled with a hundred distinct,

familiar footfalls. For three nights he had camped under the stars. He

had seen the moon rise like a silver lamp held aloft by a giant peering

down on a sleeping, pigmy land. He had sat under the council-tree and

smoked his pipe and listened to the grumbles of the headman, the latest

scandal, and many an old legend. He had scolded and bullied and laughed

and triumphed. He had touched life again, and regained his grip and his

clear vision.

He laughed as he swung himself out of his saddle.

"You didn't expect me, did you?" he asked gaily.

Anne ran down to meet him. She kissed at first rapturously and then

with a little shudder of irrepressible disgust.

"Oh, Tris, a beard again! And you smell horrid--of horses and--and

natives and things--you look a perfect sight. What have you been

doing?"

"Not washing, anyhow. You remember that bath I had just before I went?

Well, it was my last. Been too busy for such foibles of an effete

generation. Hullo, Meredith. Glad to see you. Not going, are you?"

"I must; I've been here hours."

"Anne was jolly glad of your company, I expect. I'm coming round some

day to give you the benefit of my medical genius. I believe I know more

about things than a lot of your high-brow Calcutta folk."

"I don't fancy even you can do much," Meredith replied. "I'm a bad job.

But it's good of you all the same. Good night."

"Good night."

Anne would have watched till the white-clad figure had disappeared, but

Tristram put his arm about her and drew her into the room. He was

momentarily serious.

"Poor old Meredith!" he muttered. "They have messed him up. It must be

almost unbearable."

She drew herself gently away from him. The feel of his arm, with its

ripple of steel muscle, had been wont to thrill her. Tonight he jarred

on some raw susceptibility; his strength repelled rather than fascinated

her senses.

"I don't think Owen feels about it like that," she said. "It's not awful

to him. He recognizes it as a cross which he is glad to bear."

He shrugged his big shoulders with good-humoured impatience.

"Why should one be glad to bear crosses? It's that sort of spirit which

makes crosses possible. Our business is to get rid of them--to blot out

the very memory of such a thing----"

"A holy symbol!" she interjected eagerly.

"I don't see anything holy in it. It's a symbol of man's cruelty to

man. If I believed in a devil, I should say he created it and put the

idea into our poor heads that it was a thing to be cherished." He

chuckled. "Well, I shall have a shot at lightening Meredith's cross

whether he likes it or not, though he doesn't deserve it----"

"Why not?" she asked. He was moving about the room, evidently searching

for his lost pipe. She watched him coldly. She had been very happy

only a little time ago--very peaceful, very conscious of her own soul.

It was as though a dishevelled giant had burst into her world, pulling

it about her ears, trampling on her treasures. She loved him, but she

was not blind. She saw, almost for the first time, that he was vitally

of the earth. "Why not?" she repeated.

"Because through him lives were lost and endangered."

"Sigrid Fersen, for instance?"

The little sneer did not reach him. Having failed in his search, he

produced a briar of disgraceful antiquity from the depths of a trouser

pocket. He began to fill it with a lover's tenderness.

"Lots of decent fellows I knew were trampled to death on that particular

afternoon," he said simply. "Some of them had saved my life."

"You saved Meredith," she put in loyally. She wanted to be just to

him--to admire him, to stifle that feeling of intolerant disgust.

He laughed.

"Why, yes, I suppose I did. It was an inspiration. I just shouted at

them that he had the sunstroke and didn't know what he was talking

about----"

"Tris!"

"It was the best way. I had to fight like mad as it was. I didn't want

to have to kill any of my people." He stretched himself out on the long

chair and held out his hand. "You don't mind if I rest a bit before I

wash up? I've been ten hours in the saddle. Don't be cross. Of course,

I didn't mean that about Meredith. He did what he thought was right,

and so it was right. I'd do anything I could for him."

She gave him her hand and sat down on the edge of the chair beside him.

She had herself well under control now. She spoke gently and almost

affectionately.

"You could help him if you wanted to, Tris."

"Well, I do want to. Tell me how."

She bent her head, stroking the brown hand on her knee. She did not know

that she was stroking it. The action was purely instinctive.

"You could use your influence for him with the natives."

His vivid blue eyes rested rather anxiously on her face. He sat up a

little and drew her restlessly caressing hand into a strong grip.

"I couldn't do that, Anne."

"Not even for me?"

"I'd do most things for you--chuck my work even. But as long as it is my

work, I've got to do it as I think right."

"Isn't it right to help people to be better and happier?"

"Of course. Only it doesn't seem to me that smashing their faith is

going to help them."

"We can give them a better faith----"

He shook his head.

"Not till we've lived it ourselves."

She got up abruptly and moved away from him. She felt as though a chasm

had opened at her feet. Or had it always been there? Had she been

blinded by her girlish worship of his strength and almost feminine

gentleness? She did not know. She felt a physical nausea creep over

her.

"You promised to make me happy. You don't when you talk like that."

He thought a moment.

"I do want to make you happy, Anne. It's not an exaggeration to say I'd

give my life for you. But--I was thinking it over whilst I was alone

out there--happiness isn't a thing you see in a shop window and buy for

a price. You have to have it in yourself if you're going to give it to

others. I shouldn't be happy if I pretended to be any one else but

myself. I should stifle and have no power to make you happy. I can't

humbug--I don't want you to, either. We've both got to be free, or it's

the end of everything." He waited a moment, watching her. "Anne, do

you know whom I've seen?" he asked, with a complete change of tone.

"No."

"Sir Gilbert Foster. I heard that he was tiger-hunting this way, and I

tracked him down. I wanted to see him and tell him about some

favourable symptoms I have noticed in your father's condition. Also I

wanted to make a suggestion. Well, he agrees with me. It means an

operation--a pretty dangerous one. I wanted him to perform it, but he

can't. He's got a Conference somewhere or other. He thinks I'm the man

to go ahead with it."

She turned swiftly, suspiciously. She saw the flame under the fine

brows--perhaps glimpsed how deep and passionate was his desire for her

happiness, how eagerly he had planned this moment. She came back to him

and knelt down, her trembling hands on his shoulders.

"Tris--does that mean--he might get well?"

"He might. It's a fighting chance."

"Oh, Tris--if it were only true----!"

He smiled gravely down at her.

"You'd pay any price for it to be true, Anne?"

"Any price!" she answered joyfully.

He put his arm round her.

"We'll do our level best, dear."

They remained silent for many minutes. She half crouched, half lay with

her head against his shoulder. Her antipathy had died down. He was

again the strong and perfect hero of her fancies. She loved him. The

arm curved about her shoulder was again a thrilling force. She looked

down tenderly at the slender, powerful wrist. Then she laughed.

"Tris, why do you wear that silly, common bracelet? It's cheap, and so

unmanly."

She felt his body grow suddenly tense. He answered without effort,

almost lightly.

"It was a great gift--a gift of friendship."

"From whom?"

"A friend."

She drew herself up. At no time was a sense of humour strong in her.

She resented his lightness.

"You might tell me----"

"I can't."

"Is it a secret?"

"I suppose so--yes."

"Husband and wife ought not to have secrets from one another."

He laughed.

"Oughtn't they? Why not?"

"They're one."

His eyes darkened. He saw that the anger was mounting in her and strove

to silence it. But an immense weariness lamed him. All the life and

hope which he had gathered to himself out there on those wild fastnesses

died out of him.

"They're not, Anne--heaven forbid. Because you and I are to live

together all our lives--because we care for each other, our

personalities don't cease to exist. We have both our secrets--our very

thoughts are secret. We can't help it. I'll wager you don't tell me

everything you think about me. Do you?"

She got up slowly. She went and stood by the light, her head averted.

She was very truthful. She recognized the truth of what he had said.

She could not have told him then what she thought.

"I daresay--you're right. It was silly of me." But an immense desire

possessed her--a primitive desire beyond her control and based on she

knew not what knowledge--the desire to hurt him. "By the way, Sigrid

Fersen was married this afternoon," she said.

He did not answer for a moment. She heard him re-light his pipe. The

stem was evidently choked, for it drew badly and noisily.

"Well, that was to be expected," he said. "My word--I am tired--just

dog-tired."

She kept her eyes averted. She was stifled by an emotion that was half

shame, half anger. Presently the shame predominated. She turned to

him, a word of reluctant kindness ready on her lips.

His head had fallen back among the cushions. His outstretched hand

still held the pipe, which had gone out again. She saw the great

muscles of his bare neck--of the half-exposed chest. His eyes were

closed and he breathed deeply and smoothly like a child.

The pipe slipped from his hand and fell on the mat with a dull little

thud. She crept nearer and picked it up, her lips drawn together in

ungovernable disgust.

*CHAPTER V*

*CRISIS*

The Comptons had rushed into debt with their eyes open and their teeth

clenched. More than one piece of valuable Sevres had vanished from

their collection and its place been filled by a judicious rearrangement

of the remaining gods. Colonel Armstrong never met the Captain without

dropping a hint as to the inexpediency of opposing oneself to the

feelings of a touch-and-go community like Gaya. The Comptons persisted

recklessly on their course. Archie Compton, no military genius, was a

fine soldier, prepared to fight to the last cartridge and go down with

his superior officer, colours flying.

His superior officer in this particular affair was one Mary, his wife,

and the last cartridge was about to be fired at her command.

It could not be said that she faced this last encounter with perfect

equanimity. Throughout the day she had felt her heart beat loudly and

heavily. At the approach of the fatal hour, woman-like, she had arrayed

herself in her very best, her courage trickling back to her in the

measure that she discovered herself still presentable. The look of awed

admiration which her husband threw her from time to time gave her

strength to meet the advance-guards of the enemy forces.

Were they enemy forces or was it a capitulation? At any rate Gaya had

not turned its back, and that was something to be thankful for. Mrs.

Bosanquet, with George in tow, was the first to arrive--probably an

intentional move on the part of that good-natured and loyal soul. She

kissed Mary on both cheeks and squeezed her hand.

"_Morituri te salutant_," she whispered. "My dear, you have done things

wonderfully. I had hardly recognized the place. What are you giving

them to drink?"

"Champagne--the very best," Mary Compton replied grimly. "Twenty rupees

a bottle, and unlimited supplies. I've borrowed a cook from the Prevets

at Lucknow. He's supposed to be a wonder. We may pull it off."

"We may," Mrs. Bosanquet agreed. "Gaya isn't an ass. It would be a

dull station without Sigrid, and it knows it. Unless anything unlucky

happens they'll give in gracefully--especially after dinner. But why on

earth did these two go and get married like that? It adds a kind of

scandal----"

Mrs. Compton sighed.

"That man wanted it. He was finding the half and half situation too

trying. They both wished it to be quiet--Sigrid especially. I think

she thought we'd rather be out of it----"

"I don't wonder----" Mrs. Bosanquet began and checked herself. She was

in the unfortunate position of doing something whole-heartedly of which

she equally whole-heartedly disapproved.

A fresh influx of guests sent her adrift. Everybody who had a right to

be considered in the first flight had been invited and had accepted.

They came in with more formality than was usual with them. It was as

though they recognized that the occasion was in the nature of

ceremony--a kind of symbolic festival. If they swallowed Mrs. Compton's

dinner it was only to be understood that they swallowed the Barclays

with it. Mrs. Compton's manner, if not her actual invitation, had made

that clear.

Mrs. Compton heaved a sigh of relief when Colonel Armstrong and his

washed-out-looking wife made their appearance. He paid her a little

old-fashioned compliment, and she understood from his manner that he had

reached toleration, if not approval. Mrs. Boucicault swept both out of

her path. She was radiant. Even the painted cheeks and reckless

display of jewellery could not detract from the wonder of her vitality,

her irrepressible joy of life. It was as though all the winds of heaven

had blown in with her.

"I passed the Barclays as I came along," she said. "Mr. Barclay has such

wonderful horses. He told me he has the finest polo ponies in India

just eating their heads off. Won't it be splendid if we win the cup?

Do look at Tristram, Mary! Doesn't he look odd in uniform? Anne, of

course, loves it. She would, wouldn't she? She made that dress of

hers. It's not economy. She has a sort of idea that it's wicked to be

beautiful. And Anne is so good." She gave a little malicious laugh.

"I don't know how she came to be my daughter."

She rambled on erratically, but Mary Compton heard her only as a vague

murmur. That moment of which she had been so painfully conscious for

the last week had come. She drew her breath sharply between her teeth.

She had seen Sigrid--Sigrid and her husband. The little groups went on

talking, but there had been a general, involuntary movement. It was not

hostile. They turned towards her as they had always done, scarcely

knowing that they did so, drawn by the magnetism stronger than either

good-breeding or dislike. And tonight it was not easy to turn away.

There was something new about her--something more arresting than either

beauty or even the vivid life which had made her powerful amongst them.

They could not have defined it. She was not radiant, not triumphant,

not challenging. The gold hair was smoothed down on either side of the

small, erect head. Her face was colourless, the mouth composed,

unsmiling. The eyes were wide open and intensely bright. There was a

touch of gold on the white, full-skirted dress--on the slippers, on the

small, perfect feet. She was a study of a burning pallor--a white

flame. Barclay came behind her. He looked proportionately dark and

very handsome. The cut of his evening clothes proclaimed Bond Street.

He wore a red silk button in the lapel of his coat--an order given him

by King Leopold in recognition of short but effective service in the

unhappy Congo. He glanced about him with a sombre distrust.

Gaya hesitated. Even a gathering of well-bred English men and women can

be swept by an invisible wave of panic, and Gaya was panic-stricken,

torn between a headstrong admiration and an instinctive, inherent

dislike. Moreover, it was not easy to take the initiative, and the most

seasoned among them wavered.

But before Sigrid and her companion could reach their hostess Tristram

had left his wife's side and gone to meet her.

"I wish my bracelet-sister all happiness," he said in a low tone. He

held her hand for an instant and then turned to Barclay and greeted him

frankly as though nothing had ever passed between them. But Barclay's

hand hung at his side. He bowed with an exaggeration that was a veiled

sneer.

But the ice had been broken, if not dispersed. Others came forward,

murmuring incoherencies which, they thanked heaven, no one could wait to

disentangle. They tried earnestly, and they believed successfully, to

include Barclay in their welcome, and they would have been surprised to

learn that the most any of them accomplished was a sightless nod in his

direction. Perhaps, at the bottom, they were of opinion that their

resignation to his presence was enough.

But it all looked well enough from a distance, and there was colour in

Mrs. Compton's cheeks as she kissed Sigrid.

"We've won," she whispered. "You've won, dear." She gave Barclay her

hand with a little vacant smile. "You've got to take your wife in, Mr.

Barclay," she said. "You two are the guests of the evening, and must

lead the way. I'm sure we're all ready."

Then another little rush of misery and panic swamped her. She had gone

over the points of precedence very carefully. It had seemed to her best

and most courageous to take the bull by the horns, to drive the nail

home with all her strength. The Barclays were not to slip in--they were

to be the people of the evening. Gaya had got to accept them

whole-heartedly and with its eyes open. Now she realized the

horribleness of theories when applied to human beings. She saw that she

had made a blunder and had set one person at least an almost intolerable

task. Sigrid laid her hand on her husband's arm. The entrance to the

dining-room was immediately opposite her--half a dozen yards away, Gaya

between. It was like running the gauntlet. An almost imperceptible

spasm passed over the dead-white face. For an instant Mary Compton

thought she faltered. Then the two incongruous figures made their way

slowly across the room.

But Mrs. Compton had seen that scarcely perceptible change. She forgot

her guests. She stood there, lost in misery and helpless speculation.

For what was this intolerable price paid? Was this the splendour of

living for which a woman might sell herself? What silence could be

worth such galling humiliation? If Sigrid had committed a crime, surely

it was not in this way she would have chosen to escape?

Then Mrs. Compton, finding herself on the verge of tears, became

exasperated and seized the arm of the man nearest her.

"Please--please take me in," she said imperatively.

He obeyed, perhaps aware of the nearness of disaster, and thereby the

order and decorum of the evening went to the winds. Gaya, however,

itself ill at ease, accepted the situation, and followed haphazard, the

two forsaken and ill-assorted partners joining forces in good-natured

resignation.

Only Compton himself lingered. He had excused himself to Mrs.

Bosanquet, who had fallen to his lot, and whose understanding of the

situation was probably more poignant than his own. As a rule, he knew

what his wife let him know and saw what she pointed out to him, but not

much else. He had not the vaguest idea why she had, as he expressed it,

"stampeded," but he did realize, as a painstaking host, that one guest

had been forgotten--and that guest a personage who would be unlikely to

accept the oversight gracefully.

Compton set himself to wait, therefore, with as much patience as he

could muster.

It was not till ten minutes later that Rasaldu made his appearance.

Unpunctuality was with him a fetish. On this occasion his ordinary

habit had been exaggerated by circumstances which he explained

elaborately as he smoothed his sleek black hair before a glass.

"Only got back this afternoon--marvellous fine shooting--two tigers and

a cheetah. I got the tigers myself--magnificent specimens. The biggest

made a devilish fine fight; if it hadn't been for my mahout I mightn't

be here now. Sorry to have kept you waiting."

"Not a bit of it," Compton assured him in his languid, incoherent way.

"Seems a special sort of affair. Anything up?"

Compton stroked his little moustache. There were times when the Rajah's

Anglo-Saxon brevity jarred on him. Moreover, for other reasons, he felt

disinclined to be communicative.

"No--nothing special," he said.

"All right. I'm ready."

For all his apparent good-humour, Rasaldu was in a sulky mood. The

tiger-hunt had been the expression of an incoherent rage and sense of

unforgivable humiliation which Gaya had found amusing and not at all

serious. But to Rasaldu the whole matter had been serious. He had

dispensed European hospitality the while retaining an entirely Oriental

mentality. Sigrid Fersen had been in part his guest. Her marriage was

therefore an insult and a gibe. She had made fun of him. In his own

language, "she had made a fool of him." And he was not given either to

forgetting or forgiving.

And now a fresh slight had been put on him. They had gone in without

him. They had deprived him of that sense of grandiose arrival which was

the most pleasing part of any entertainment. It made him, at least for

a moment, the person of paramount importance.

His round face was therefore creased with sulkiness as he reached his

place at the Comptons' table. Not even the beauty and promise of the

display soothed him. Mary Compton had borrowed and been within an ace

of stealing in order to produce a result which would soften the

bitterest opposition. But she had counted without the Oriental

character. Rasaldu merely bowed in her direction, then, before seating

himself, he looked round, making the most of his moment.

Barclay sat immediately opposite him in the centre of the table, with

Sigrid on his right hand. Outwardly he had borne himself coolly enough,

accepting his conspicuous place of honour with an air of rather insolent

ease. But below the surface the whole man had been tense, agonized,

quivering with memories of past humiliations. In every glance, in every

word, he read the disparagement which his instinct knew was still in

arms against him. He had won. He could look down the length of the

table and tell himself that these people were here to meet him, to do

him honour. He could remember the hour when his hostess had left him

standing in the dust of her cart-wheels. He could look at Tristram and

recall that twilight scene by the temple. Best of all, there was the

woman beside him. He could turn to her white, quiet face with the memory

of a night when these two had watched him slink out before them like a

beaten dog.

Yes, he had won. He had broken through the invisible barrier of their

caste. He had fought his way into their citadel, and yet----! It was

as though he had grasped at shadows and they had eluded him. He knew

that he had never been further from them--never more the stranger and

pariah. The English blood in him arose against him in triumph. It

showed him what otherwise might have remained hidden--what Rasaldu could

never have seen--the hearts of these people, their splendid isolation,

the impregnable aloofness, their blank denial of himself. As he sat

there listening to their quiet, self-certain intercourse, the bandages

which he had wrapped about his bleeding pride were ripped off and with

them every trace of healing. The sweat stood out on his dark forehead.

He hated them. He desired them. He wanted to spit in these serene,

immaculate faces. He would have grovelled to them for one word of

fellowship. He had as yet scarcely touched the wine before him, but his

blood was in an uproar, warring against itself.

Then suddenly he looked up at Rasaldu across the table, staring at him.

Perhaps that silent, deadly exchange lasted no more than a second or

two, yet the unbridled ferocity of it rested like a chilling hand on

those nearest and passed on down the table so that the last murmur sank

into an appalled quiet. Something tigerish had leapt up in the breasts

of both men. On the one side the Oriental, wounded in every

susceptibility, threw off the mask of English breeding; on the other,

the English blood, fevered by the maternal heritage, boiled under the

insult of those eyes, broke from its own frail bondage of self-control,

and by a mad paradox became native blood, native hatred.

The seconds passed. Then Rasaldu, with an insolent little movement of

the shoulders, bent down to Colonel Armstrong on his right and spoke to

him in an undertone. The unhappy Colonel listened, tugging painfully at

his moustache. Mrs. Compton had half-risen, but Barclay forestalled

her. He got up, leaning across towards Rasaldu.

"What's the matter with you?" he said.

Rasaldu's thick lips curled. He looked at Sigrid with the bloodshot,

hating eyes of a thwarted animal.

"I don't eat with half-castes," he said.

Barclay seized his glass and threw the contents full into the Rajah's

distorted face.

"You swineherd upstart!" he gasped thickly. Then, with a glance that

swept the table, he turned and strode out of the room.

The silence continued. No uproar could have been more terrible than its

unendingness. The Rajah stood there quite still, his mouth open, the

wine trickling from his face on to the immaculate shirt-front--a

ridiculous, sinister figure. Mrs. Compton tried to master her voice, to

say something, but it was as though a gag stifled her. She saw Sigrid

get up--very slowly.

She stood there looking round her--and then across at Tristram. He made

a movement as though he would have risen, but she lifted her hand

slightly, imperatively, and he sank back, not looking at her. Her lips

were a little parted with an odd, pathetic little smile. It seemed, as

she stood here, that she was trying, not to speak, but to grope her way

to some thought, to some answer.

Nobody spoke to her or tried to stop her. But at that moment she

belonged to them, was one of them--for the last time. Sheer futility

lamed all movement, all expression of what they felt. It was as though

a frail, beautiful ship had broken from its moorings in a great tempest

and they stood there and watched it drift out seawards beyond the reach

of their voices, of their help or pity.

Only Mrs. Bosanquet cried openly--the tears rolling down her fat cheeks.

Sigrid went out through the silence. She found Barclay already in the

driving seat of his dog-cart and without a word clambered up beside him.

He glanced at her and brought the whip down savagely across the horse's

head. The animal did not need the blow. It felt the madness in the

man's hand and broke into a wild gallop. They swung through the

compound gates out on to the white moonlit road. For an instant they

seemed to hover in mid-air, and then, with a grinding jar, the off-wheel

came back on to the ground and they raced on, down through the black

belt of the palm-trees and out again into the silver road, pursued by

their own frantic shadows.

Only once did Barclay speak, and then it was to himself between clenched

teeth:

"Now I know," he whispered. "Now I can see clear."

She did not answer. She sat very still, gazing steadily ahead into the

half-light which ran before them, and encircled them with odd,

treacherous shapes, so that now there seemed a barrier where there was

none, and now a clear road where suddenly it curved and dipped. He

drove well. Once the horse shied violently at an overhanging branch,

and with a turn of his wrist he brought the animal to a baulked,

fretting submission. Sigrid gave a short laugh, and he glanced sideways

at her. Perhaps in that moment a grim admiration one for the other rose

between them. At least neither had shown fear.

A syce, drowsing on the steps of the old bungalow, ran out to meet them

and caught the restive, sweating animal by the head. Barclay threw him

an order in Hindustani and then, without a glance at his companion, led

the way to the room where the amazing Venus held her lamp. He crossed

straight over to the wide-open windows and pulled the curtains to.

The door behind Sigrid closed softly.

Still Barclay did not look at her. He opened a cigarette box with a

theatrical affectation of deliberation, but when he struck a match she

saw that his hand shook. The tiny flame near to his face betrayed new,

ugly lines cut deep about the mouth and nostrils.

"I'll tell you something queer," he said, glancing up over the lighted

match. "Tristram Senior was murdered in this room--just here, where I'm

standing. There's a stain under the carpet. The place is supposed to

be haunted."

She lifted her eyebrows. Her eyes were very steady and watchful.

"Yes?" she queried.

"He was murdered by my mother's husband. You see, he had betrayed her.

It was a sort of insult to my people." The match went out almost at his

finger-tips. He threw it away. "Strange how things happen, isn't it?"

She made no answer. Her cloak had slipped from her bare shoulders and

she put her hand up and drew it back, holding it across her breast. He

began to move restlessly about the room.

"And now Tristram Junior is in love with my wife."

"You do not know----"

"Oh, I know well enough, I've seen it. What was--is. I imagine a man

doesn't forget you for that puling little saint. How he must wince! Or

have you told him? Well, you'll have something else to tell

him--tomorrow."

"We made a bargain," she said sharply.

"A bargain! What have you done of your share?"

"All that lay in my power."

He gave a wretched laugh.

"This evening, for instance? Well--it's finished, do you hear? I've

done with the whole thing. I gave them and you a last chance. Now I'm

going my own way--and you're my wife. I've got that right left."

"You've no right but what I choose to give you."

"You'll choose--you've got to--you're helpless." He paused, choking.

He threw the half-burnt cigarette on the floor and ground it under his

heel. "There's no one in this place that's going to bother about either

of us. Tristram won't play _deus ex machina_ this time--you and I--we're

going to have this out alone."

He saw her glance towards the door. "It's locked. You can scream to

your heart's content. Your Smithy may hear, but she won't help. The

servants have their orders. Besides--what right has any one to

interfere. You're my wife. You swore before the altar----" He stopped

again. Like an animal lashing itself to fury, he strode towards her and

then turned and came back, his face swollen and quivering. His words

came in a broken torrent of passion. "There's--there's a sort of

compensation--in things--my mother's body was found out there in the

well--she was good enough for an hour's sport--a native--what did it

matter?--a sort of superior toy for an Englishman's pleasure-and the

result--a half-caste, a mincing, feckless muddle of two races--let him

rot in some stuffy Eurasian quarter and drink himself to death. If he

dares rise--if he dares come among us--if he dares aspire to one of our

blood--then spew upon him--roll him in the dust--kick him out--let him

feel the whip like the misbegotten hound he is. As to our

womankind--hands off, or heaven help him----"

"I understand," she threw in breathlessly. "I am to be your revenge--on

them--on your brother----"

He turned back to her, staring at her. Then he burst into a laugh.

"Revenge? Oh, I don't know--nothing perhaps so--so high-flown as that.

After all--they'd hardly know, would they? It's--it's a sort of

instinct--to get level--in one way or another. Besides--I want you----"

He measured her with a savage deliberation. "My God--it's natural

enough." He was shaking from head to foot. Swift and soundless as a

flash of light she put the table between them and stood confronting him.

Her fair small head was thrown back, her mouth set in an unfaltering

line. "By all means--it's useless--I've the right and the might----"

Suddenly, like a tiger weary of toying with its victim, he flung himself

on the table, lifting it with both hands. Then, as he did so--he

stopped short--faltering.

A full minute passed whilst they remained face to face, neither moving.

He drew himself slowly upright.

"Well--why don't you do it?" he asked.

"I don't want to--not unless I must."

"It would be an expensive business."

"I don't know. I've paid so much already--it might be better to go on

paying----"

"To get what you set out to buy? You don't need to worry about that. I

may still keep my share of the bargain. I have other plans. So you had

the draw on me all the time? Who would have thought so gentle a bosom

could hide so much deadliness?"

"I have always carried it," she answered simply. "It may seem

theatrical--but I realized--this might happen."

He smiled ironically.

"You are very cool--very brave, Sigrid. You--you inflame my admiration.

Won't you sit down? It is very early yet."

"I would rather you unlocked the door. I am tired."

"And sick with disgust? I can quite understand. You are white to the

backbone." His voice shook with an uncontrollable despair. "Still, I

warn you--if I open the door, I win. It is guarded. You see, I took

precautions--but I don't want that. I--I have that much English blood

in me--I'll fight fair."

"Very well. If there is anything you have to say----"

"Nothing--except perhaps that it is still early. I can display

patience. Won't you sit down?"

"Since you wish it."

He took his place opposite her, the table still between them. It was a

wide table and he could not have touched her. She rested her elbow on

the polished edge, the little toy-like weapon held lightly but firmly in

her lifted hand. He leant forward, his eyes on her, watchful, intent.

All passion, all desire had died out of them. They were hard and cold

with purpose.

"You will tire," he said softly.

"I am very strong."

"_A l'outrance_, then?"

She smiled faintly.

"_A l'outrance_."

But he had seen that flicker of amusement and winced under it.

"You think I am as absurd--as--as--I am beastly?" he asked.

"No--I couldn't think like that--at least, not at the bottom. I

understand too well."

"You understand?" He stared at her hungrily. "What do you understand?"

"That you would have been glad to have acted--and felt differently."

He nodded.

"I would have been their friend--a good friend. It's too late now."

"Yes--too late. I can see that----"

It grew still between them. Once he moved suddenly, testing her, but

her eyes and hand were unwavering, and he dropped back into his old

position.

As the time passed blue shadows darkened her eyes and crept about her

mouth. She seemed to grow smaller and paler, and a kind of wonder came

into his patient watchfulness of her--an almost pitying admiration.

"Spare yourself!" he whispered.

She made no answer.

The hours passed. The man and woman became grotesquely like wax figures

in their grey, pallid immobility. The lamplight began to fade. In the

dusk the empty face of the Venus looked ghostly and unreal. They could

hear a heavy bullock-wagon plough its way up the hill to the crack of

whips and native imprecations.

Barclay rose slowly and stiffly to his feet. He went across to the

window and pulled the curtains aside, letting in a flood of golden

morning.

"You've won--this time," he said. "You won hours ago."

He did not look at her. He went down the verandah steps and did not

turn even though he heard the thud of the revolver as it slipped from

her unconscious hand.

*CHAPTER VI*

*"OF YOUR BLOOD"*

Gaya awoke the next morning depressed and rather incredulous. The

daylight has a tendency to throw a chill interrogation at whatever the

previous night has held either of greatness, tragedy, or passion. The

blood cools to a little below the normal and the brain perceives things

in their flattest, dullest colours. Indeed, until lunch-time the human

constitution is too busy working up steam to produce emotion, or even to

acknowledge the possibility of anything vital save the getting of the

daily bread and the partaking thereof. So Gaya went lazily about its

business, deferring serious consideration to a convenient future, and

meantime vaguely aware of a foolish, unpleasant crack in the neat

surface of its daily life which somehow would have to be patched up.

Barclay also went about his business. Beyond a certain sombre

abstraction his manner gave no hint of any change. In the early morning

a messenger mounted on his favourite Arab rode out on the Heerut road,

and in the afternoon Lalloo, suave and impassive, made his appearance in

a bullock-wagon which had performed a fifteen-mile journey over bad

roads in little over three hours. The two, Lalloo and his patron, sat

together in the very English library and talked subduedly until the

first breath of nightfall rustled among the trees of the garden. Then

Lalloo, as he had come, took his departure, nicely tingeing respect with

disparagement and disparagement with respect.

Barclay himself did not set foot outside the bungalow.

At dinner he sat opposite his wife and ate whatsoever the noiseless

servants placed before him. Contrary to his custom--for he had a morbid

respect for all appearances he did not attempt to keep up the small talk

which usually passed between them. He scarcely spoke to her, and only

once looked in her direction.

Afterwards they stood for a moment together on the edge of the verandah,

looking out into the quiet darkness. Here, too, custom was broken. It

was the first time since their marriage that she had joined him after

their ceremonious meal. A memory shot like a light through his moody

silence.

"Aren't you afraid?" he asked brutally.

"No," she answered. There was no bravado--only a great physical

weariness in her low voice. "I want to know what is going to happen,"

she said.

"Nothing."

"I thought--as I have failed so completely----"

"--that you could clear out?" He smoked for a moment in sombre

consideration, then tossed his cigarette away from him. It glowed on

the pathway like a tiny, watchful eye. "Of course you're free," he said

finally. "I haven't any power to hold you. But if you go, then I shall

be free too. The last article of our agreement will have been annulled.

That's obvious, isn't it?"

"Yes--if you hold to your agreement."

"I shall." He gave a subdued laugh. "I am like Shylock, Sigrid. And

you are one of those good Christians trying to cheat and possibly

persecute their infidel creditor. What do you expect?"

"Just that." She waited an instant and then he felt rather than heard

that she turned away from him. "That's all I wanted to ask you."

"Well----? Have you decided?"

"There was nothing to decide. I shall go on with it--whatever it is."

He heard the curtains fall. Throughout he had not looked at her. It

was as though he withheld from her something which his eyes might have

betrayed. When all was still again he took a book haphazard from the

pompously crowded shelves and sat down beneath the light-bearing Venus

to read. He sat very still, his dark eyes resting intently on a spot

just above the page which was never turned.

The gold-faced clock on the table chimed ten o'clock. The thin, dulcet

tones dropped into the quiet like pebbles into a still pool. They

seemed to arouse the man beneath the lamplight. He got up and pulled

the curtains across the windows. There was a door in the left-hand

wall. It led into a room in which he kept his papers, and no one

entered it but himself. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.

"You are safe now," he said in the native tongue.

Ayeshi came out slowly into the light. His eyes were dazed-looking, but

rest and food had restored something of their old fire, and that very

return of life accentuated the deeper change in him. It was not only

the lines which disease and want had chiselled among his features. The

one-time boyish beauty had been hardened and sharpened by something more

subtle than physical privation. His eyes, as they grew accustomed to

the light, were no longer clouded with mystic dreams, but were stern and

penetrating. His very bearing was profoundly different. His dignity had

been gracious and unconscious; it was now conscious and commanding.

"You have done me great service," he said in an undertone. "I shall not

forget when the time comes for remembrance."

"You are rested sufficiently to go on your way?"

Ayeshi nodded. He glanced keenly into Barclay's impassive face.

"You use our tongue to me?"

Barclay shrugged his shoulders.

"Is it not mine also?"

A faint hauteur compressed the fine lips. He turned away and lifted the

edge of the curtain.

"I give you great thanks, Barclay Sahib."

"I ask no thanks of you, Ayeshi. You will find a horse at the gates.

But first, can there be no trust between us? Can you not tell me whither

you are going and to what end?"

Ayeshi turned, measuring the other man with a grave, scornful

deliberation.

"I have learnt to keep my counsel where there is English blood," he

said. He did not see the expression which passed like a withering flame

over his companion's features. He lifted his hand in salutation, and the

curtains fell noiselessly behind him.

Barclay waited, motionless. His breathing was quick and shallow, his

whole body tense with pent-up excitement. As the muffled sound of hoofs

reached him he turned the light out and the next instant was running

towards the compound gates.

A syce leading a horse by the bridle came out of the shadow. Without a

word Barclay caught the helmet and long cloak which was held out to him

and swung himself lightly into the saddle.

"Which way?"

"Towards Heerut, Sahib."

"See that you remember my orders."

"The Sahib shall be obeyed."

Barclay's steel wrist brought his nervous, fidgeting animal to an

instant's complete quiet. He listened intently. He could still hear the

sound of hoofs, beating in the distance. He drove his heels into the

Arab's flanks and rode out into the stream of pale starlight which

flowed down towards the valley.

He rode at a quick canter, dangerous enough on the steep gradation and

only justified by his knowledge of every curve in the narrowing roadway.

His riding had nothing of the recklessness with which he had driven the

night before. He held himself and his horse in the steel grip of a

definite purpose.

At the bottom of the hill on which Gaya perched itself like a beautiful

white bird he drew rein and again listened. There was no moon; the

intense clarity of an Indian night covered the parched and gasping plain

with a seeming luminousness in which nothing was visible but

unrealities. Overhead the black burnished shield of the sky blazed with

its mysterious, unreadable devices. But for the monotonous rhythmic

thud dying in the distance the silence was absolute, painful, like the

suspended breathing of a fevered body. The river was voiceless.

Barclay rode on. The road had narrowed to little more than a track

which the drought and the passing of heavy wagons to and fro to the new

bridge had made a trap of crumbling ruts and dust-covered holes. It was

five miles to the river, and nearly two hours had passed before the

rider caught the first murmur of water. It sounded faint and exhausted.

In the vague light the new bridge looked like some monstrous dragon, its

body spanning the half-empty river-bed, its thick-set limbs planted

stolidly in the sluggish water. It needed no more than a ceremony for

it to be complete. Yet Barclay turned up to the old bridge. In view of

its approaching demolition it had been neglected and part of the wooden

rail had been broken down, making the crossing at nightfall a matter of

some danger.

Barclay chose it and rode across with slack rein. On the other side he

dismounted and tethered his horse and went on on foot through the

trackless jungle grass.

When he stood still he could catch no sound, neither the thud of hoofs

nor the faintest movement. The high grass, as it yielded to his body,

rustled and cracked deafeningly in his ears. His own breathing sounded

like the loud panting of a hunted animal.

The temple lay sullen and dark and silent in the black shadow of the

jungle.

Barclay reached the gateway. The obscurity was here so dense that his

instinct alone guided him. He went forward deliberately, noisily,

sensing the hands that waited for him, the eyes that watched him. Then

he struck a light.

The next instant that for which he waited came, and, though he had

waited for it, its swiftness and deadliness drove a scream from his

lips--a scream that was smothered to a choking groan almost at its

birth. He stumbled and fell, his hands twisted behind him, his

unprotected face grazing the stones. He felt hot breath on his neck,

the cut of a cord round his wrists. Gagged and helpless, he was jerked

back to his knees and a dark lantern flashed its eye on to his bleeding

face.

Beyond the dazzling circle he could see forms no more than shadows

painted dimly against the dense blackness of the temple walls. Nearest

to the light, Vahana's wild, expressionless eyes glittered with the cold

lustre of a serpent's; but, as he grew accustomed to the light, Barclay

recognized other faces, two headmen from neighbouring villages, a

handful of priests wearing the Triple Cord on their shoulders, five

non-commissioned officers from the native regiment. They crowded round

him in a silent circle which contracted like a steel trap. But Barclay

seemed neither to fear nor heed them. He threw back his head and looked

up into Ayeshi's face. Then he drew himself together as a man does who

knows that life and death hover in the balance.

"So you were a spy after all, Mr. Barclay?" Ayeshi said in English.

"No, Rajah, your servant," was the swift answer.

The fine nostrils distended with a deep-drawn breath.

"Do you know who I am, then?"

"I know that you are Ayeshi, the son of Ram Alla, who was deposed and

driven into exile by the English. I know that you were saved by a few

faithful who feared to breathe the secret even to you. I know that you

have borne willingly a stigma which is another's. I know that you have

starved and suffered and learned in the gutters of Calcutta that an

unworthy English Sahib should go unpunished."

Ayeshi lifted his hand imperatively.

"How have you learnt these things?"

"I have ears in every village, Rajah."

"Why did you follow me?"

"I have a wish to serve you."

"You are English----"

"English!" Barclay laughed. "Yes, I have English blood in my veins. I

am the son of the old Tristram Sahib who seduced my mother and brought

about her death, who hunted down my brothers and our father's servants

and shot them from the cannon's mouth, who gave honourable life to

Tristram Sahib, the wealthy and happy and honoured, who gave life to me,

an outcaste----"

"Yet a night ago you sat and ate with these, thy people----"

"That also is true. I fought for their friendship, Rajah, I grovelled

for it. I schemed for it. I would have sold you and all these, my

brothers, if they would have made me one of them. But they would not.

They have chosen, not I. Last night, Rasaldu, the swineherd's son,

would not sit at table with me. That was the end."

"You have an English wife."

Barclay laughed again.

"Who sold herself to me for a high price, who would rather die ten

deaths than be a wife to me, who loves Tristram Sahib----" He broke off

and jerked his head towards the intently watching Sadhu. "Vahana here

knows something of what I say. Let him testify for me."

The shadowy, unreal circle of faces turned for an instant. Vahana bowed

his head in assent.

"I have told you the truth," Barclay went on. "The best and the worst.

I have risked life to tell it you. I knew what might await me here--a

knife in the dark perhaps without a word spoken--and yet I had to come.

Life can be more bitter than death. A man cannot live alone as I have

done--there comes a time when his soul cries for his people."

They looked at him silently, without pity. The agony in his hoarse

voice did not touch them. For them also he was the Pariah--the

outcaste. He read their answer in their eyes and turned back to Ayeshi

with a burst of passion.

"Take me--claim me--make me one of you! I have power--I have money--I

can do for you what no other man could do. Either you must kill me or

make me one of your blood. I know too much. There is no other way out

for either of us."

Ayeshi did not move or speak. One of the two priests crept closer,

avoiding Barclay's shadow.

"What can you do for us?" he whispered.

"You know very well, O Heera Singh! The drought is on us. The crops

will fail. Is there a man in your village who does not owe all that he

has to me? What if I make our Lord Ayeshi their deliverer--if he should

free them from me? And I have money. Is all that nothing?"

The priest was silent, fingering his sacred cord with eager fingers.

But Ayeshi knelt down and looked full into the Eurasian's face.

"You said that you would have betrayed us for their friendship," he

said. "What if they came now and offered you their hands----"

"It is not in their power," was the swift and bitter answer. "They have

tried--the river is too wide for them."

There was silence again. The yellow light revealed figures lurking

behind them, black, vaguely defined forms which glided softly up and

down the temple walls. Vahana had bent down and with his claw-like

finger drew a pattern in the dust. It was the sign of Swashtika.

Barclay drew his breath between his teeth. He laid his hand on the

rough-drawn symbol and Vahana's hand closed down on his. The priest

wetted his forefinger with his tongue and touched Barclay's forehead,

tracing two horizontal lines. But Barclay did not feel him. He was only

conscious of that hand, cold, hard, scaly. It seemed to envelop him, to

glide up his arm and to reach down and close about his heart.

"One of our blood," the priest muttered, "for evil and for good we claim

you one of us."

But Ayeshi made a gesture of proud impatience.

"There can be no evil," he said. "The worst that can come to any of us

is death. And what is death but release? We who have seen our faith

insulted, our gods denied, our dreams shattered--what is death to us?

Each one of us has his own bitter wrong. Let him avenge it under my

banner." He turned authoritatively to one of the native officers. "We

have had enough of words. From henceforward there shall be nothing said

which does not translate itself into action. You, Parga, what have you

to tell me?"

The man answered with a military salute.

"All is ready, lord. We are patient. We do but await your signal."

"We have planned for the twenty-fifth of this month, lord," his

companion added.

Ayeshi nodded.

"By that time we shall have our forces on this side of the river ready.

Give me the map."

The map was spread out on the ground. Ayeshi traced a line down the

length of the river, whispering his orders. Here and there one of the

soldiers assented or offered a suggestion. The priests were silent but

watchful. Their faces glistened like burnished bronze in the yellow

light.

But Barclay felt and realized only that hand which had rested on his.

It was as though he had plunged his arm into icy water and the chill had

begun to creep through his whole body. His blood had become cold and

sluggish in his veins.

He listened, and beyond the subdued voices he heard strange sounds--an

intermittent rustling amidst the long grass, a hushed, sibilant

whispering, the crack of a branch under the weight of a writhing,

twisting body.

He lifted his head and it seemed to him that the jungle towered over

him, roofing the broken walls of the temple with its sinister shadow.

Vahana watched him unceasingly.

* * * * *

Dawn was still afar off as Barclay rode his horse over the narrow

bridge. Once on the farther bank he turned and looked back furtively.

Nothing was visible. The forest-clad mountains were no more than a

monstrous blot on the burnished shield, wiping out a part of its

mysterious quarterings. Yet their massed blackness fascinated him. They

filled him with an inexplicable horror which until now he had held

partially in abeyance; but in this loneliness it became an obsessing

force of panic. Something had happened to him. He sat there in the

saddle, but his mind, a second vitally real consciousness, crawled

through the trackless undergrowth. His ears heard strange whisperings;

things unnamable slid over his limbs and wound themselves about his

throat and body, driving the breath from him. He could not taunt

himself with feverish imaginings. The man in the saddle might have been

a shadow, a figment of the brain, but that second being struggling and

gasping for life in those jungle fastnesses was a reality--himself.

It was not imagination, but revelation. A sixth sense had been stabbed

to consciousness. Scales had fallen from his eyes.

He forced himself to ride on and in an instant the return became a

heedless, panic-stricken flight before an invisible, formless enemy.

Even in his own compound there was no safety, no escape from whatever

hunted him. Rather in the black silence of the bungalow he recognized a

new menace. He tried to master himself,--to call the sleeping syce, but

his tongue was dry and thick in his mouth and refused its office. With

shaking hands he tethered his horse and crawled stealthily across the

verandah to the open windows of his room.

He stood still on the threshold, listening. His own breathing seemed to

come from the other end of the room--from some one who crouched amidst

the ponderous furniture, watching him. He tried to strike a light, but

the match flickered and went out and he dared not try again. He felt

that no light could live in that stifling, foetid atmosphere. And the

shadows which he had awakened appalled him. He stumbled blindly to the

chair beneath the lamp and crouched down into it, hushing his labouring

lungs, forcing himself to confront the darkness, the sweat thick and icy

on his forehead.

He had dared death that night and had not known fear; but this was

different. It was something in himself--an awful disruption, the

breaking down of some secret barrier behind which had been imprisoned

untold knowledge, a horde of ghostly, inherited memories. He tried to

stem them back--vainly.

He--that second self--saw this stain beneath the carpet. He saw old

Tristram Sahib seated where he sat--Vahana crawling out of the

darkness--the uplifted weapon. He heard a woman's muffled scream--the

bumping of a body falling between narrow walls--the sullen splash of

water.

These things were to him actual--corporeal.

He turned with a shuddering gasp, burying his face in his arms, hiding

from them, awaiting in palsied helplessness for the deliverance of the

morning.

*CHAPTER VII*

*THE PRICE PAID*

Mrs. Boucicault and her daughter sat on either side of the wide-open

windows and avoided each other's eyes. It was the first time that they

had been alone together for many months, and they found nothing to say.

Had they been total strangers they could have discussed the situation

with sympathy, but they were bound together, and to the man on whose

return from death to life they waited, by too many ugly memories for any

superficial intercourse. They were like galley-slaves, hating each

other and the bonds that manacled them to an intolerable intimacy.

There was a faint, sickening taste of ether in the hot air. It seemed

to permeate everything, and to Anne, who knew nothing of the surgical

side of illness, it conveyed a suggestion of mysterious suffering and

horror. It affected her with the same physical and purely instinctive

fear which assails most human beings in their first contact with death.

It was not so much the thing that was happening as the grim, immaculate

ceremonial surrounding it which terrified her. She would have been glad

to have been alone, and in her heart she denied her mother the right to

be present. But convention and decorum were on Mrs. Boucicault's side

and against such opponents Anne felt herself powerless to make a stand.

Once she glanced quickly across at her companion and saw how cruelly the

daylight treated the small face now that it was without its persistent

animation. Neither paint nor powder could conceal the livid pallor

beneath the painful slackening of all the facial muscles. Only the mouth

retained its straight, unbreakable resolution.

"One can't live as she does without paying for it," Anne thought, and

did not acknowledge the little glow of righteous satisfaction which

passed over her. Instead she went back mentally to the man lying

unconscious at the other side of the bungalow and to her own life.

For all her painful anxiety she felt strangely content. She had the

elevated serenity of one who has passed through tribulation to a

well-earned happiness. For she had been very unhappy in her life.

There were the days of "misunderstanding" with her father, the days in

"Trichy" when she had faced the alternatives of a penniless and

ill-prepared attack on the unknown world or an ignominious return to a

life her whole soul condemned; there were days, even since her marriage,

when she realized that the man she had worshipped was not wholly worthy

of worship, that in many ways he had fallen below the standard which she

set him.

But of late these things had sunk into the background. God had been very

good. She had longed so much for a child, and that was to be given to

her. That fact alone poured like sunshine over all the past. It seemed

to her that with the beginning of that hope everything had combined

together to make her happy. Her father was to be made well and strong

again. Sigrid Fersen, save where a very few were concerned, had dropped

out of Gaya's life into a grey seclusion, and with her the man whom she

had sought to drag up the heights of her meretricious popularity. And,

best of all, that very morning, when so much hung in the balance, she

had regained her love, her humble, possessive adoration of her husband.

He had seemed so big, so strong and invincible. The fire in his steady,

absorbed eyes had thrilled her, the touch of his hand had given her a

passionate, child-like confidence.

"I know that you won't fail," she had whispered. "God bless you, Tris."

"I'm sure He will," he had answered, smiling. And though perhaps there

was something in that familiar phrase which jarred on her, still it

could not weaken her joy in him or her faith in her own blessing.

"Yes, God had been very good----"

"I think it is over," Mrs. Boucicault said suddenly. "I can hear some

one coming----"

Both women rose instinctively to their feet and turned towards the door.

Anne's heart throbbed painfully. As Dr. Martin entered she felt a

sudden weakness overcome her so that she could hardly stand. The doctor

had discarded his white overalls, but he brought in with him a deeper

tinge of that nauseating odour. Through a mist she heard him talking,

and even in that moment she was conscious of a bitter resentment. He

was speaking to her mother.

"Yes--wonderfully successful, Mrs. Boucicault. To tell you the truth I

had no idea the I.M.S. concealed such a talent for the knife.

Remarkable hand--almost inspired, one might say. Major Tristram can set

up in Harley Street any day. Of course we're not out of the wood yet.

We can't hope to see much change in your husband for some weeks. Shock

and all that, you know. There was a lot more trouble than we suspected.

Old trouble which must have caused a good deal of--eh--mental unrest."

He rubbed his chin as though on the point of some further information.

"Well, I daresay Tristram will go into details. He wants me to stop in

Gaya till we know better where we are, and I shall try and arrange to.

Very interesting case--very. Hullo, here's Major Tristram himself."

With a little cry of joy Anne turned to run to her husband, but as she

saw the man who entered her purpose faltered. She was not given to

analysis, and the change in him, because it was not entirely physical,

eluded her. And it frightened her. It was as though all her instinctive

fears had taken shape in him. He looked exhausted to the point of

breakdown, but that she had seen before, and it was not that which had

brought her to a standstill. It was something behind the white stillness

of his face the passionless detachment, the Nirvana which, had she but

known it, comes to men who have passed through a vast spiritual crisis.

"Tris!" she whispered.

She came to him at last and he put his arm round her.

"It's all right," he said simply. His eyes were on Mrs. Boucicault.

"Your husband will live," he said. "He may get well."

She nodded, twisting the rings round her thin fingers.

"How long will it take before he is strong again?"

"A few months perhaps."

"Then I--I have that much time left me."

"Mother!" Anne cried out. She felt Tristram's arm slip from her

shoulder. He went to Mrs. Boucicault and took her hand in his.

"He may change very much," he said.

She laughed.

"Perhaps--but it will be too late." She made a little grimace. "Well,

I have learned the value of time at any rate. Dr. Martin, come and see

me into my carriage. My daughter wants to have a good cry."

Dr. Martin offered his arm with a grave courtesy surprising in a man of

his somewhat casual temperament, and the two went down the verandah

steps talking in an undertone. Anne watched them in bitter silence.

The attitude of these two men towards the wizened, painted woman had

thrown a shadow of disgust over her happiness. They had treated her as

though she occupied the centre of their stage, accepting her flippant

cruelty without reproof, offering her an austere reverence. A scornful

comment trembled on Anne's lips, but, turning, she saw that Tristram had

dropped down in one of the chairs, his face hidden in his hands, and her

heart melted towards him. She knelt down and put her arms about his

neck.

"Tris!" she whispered. He looked up. "Tris!" she repeated on a note of

faint reproach. For she had seen that his face was wet, and tears in a

man had always seemed to her rather repulsive. "What's the matter,

dear?" she asked.

He smiled faintly.

"I am an ass, aren't I? I don't often do this sort of thing--some

things touch me horribly. Besides, I'm a bit rattled still. Those two

hours were devilish--you don't know----"

She kissed him solemnly.

"I know how splendid you are--Dr. Martin told us."

"Did he? Well, honestly, I don't believe any other man could have done

what I did today. No one else could have wanted to win so badly as I

did."

"For my sake, husband?"

"For yours and mine."

"That's sweet of you," she said gently. Her moment's irritation had

passed. She rested on his bigness, his redeeming strength and

tenderness. "I am very happy, Tristram."

"Are you?" He looked into her face eagerly. "Really happy?"

"Happier than ever in my life. So much that is wonderful has happened.

It seems to have made everything worth while. All the suffering." She

leant against him, her eyes half-closed in dreamy recollection.

"Sometimes I think it's all been for the best. It's taught us charity,

hasn't it--to be gentle in our judgment? I know I have often been hard

too. Today I could forgive even the man who caused it all."

His arm tightened about her.

"He'd be glad to hear that, Anne----"

"I could forgive." She drew herself up a little. "But I wouldn't help

him to escape his punishment, Tristram."

"You couldn't, dear. No one escapes."

"Yes, that's true, isn't it? Sooner or later they are found out. They

say criminals always return to the scenes of their crime. Mother told

me Ayeshi had been seen slinking about Heerut at night----"

"Ayeshi?" he interrupted perplexedly.

She gave a quick glance into his face.

"Yes--of course, I'd forgotten, no one's ever told you. You see, you

were so fond of Ayeshi, and you were ill, and so we arranged that we

wouldn't tell you unless--unless he was caught. Afterwards no one liked

to, and you're such an old hermit--you never hear anything. But now it

doesn't matter, does it? It was Ayeshi who tried to kill my father."

He pushed her away from him as though she had suddenly ceased to exist

for him.

"I don't understand----"

She laughed uncertainly--half-angrily.

"Why, Tris, I've just explained----"

"I understood that no one was suspected----"

"I've explained that, too, dear. I thought you would guess when you

heard that he had disappeared like that----"

He turned on her almost violently, but even she realized in that moment

that he was scarcely conscious of her. His blazing eyes had a sightless

look in them that frightened her to her feet.

"I might have known," he stammered, "but I am too big a fool--an idiotic

sentimentalist----" He steadied and looked at her straightly with

seeing eyes. "Ayeshi must have disappeared to shield me," he said. "It

was I who nearly killed your father."

Her face was at first only stupid-looking as though his words had had no

meaning--then every trace of colour ebbed from her lips. She wavered,

and he sprang to her side, and carried her to the chair which he had

just left. An intense, torturing pity swept him. She was so small, so

very fragile. He felt himself as something monstrous riding over all

her happiness. She clung to him.

"Tris--Tris--please don't say things to frighten me----"

"I've got to. Sooner or later I had to tell you. I didn't mean to be

so sudden. But it's true."

She freed herself. There was no strength in her arms, but he had felt

her whole body cower and shrink from him and he stood back from her as

though she had struck him.

"I can't--I can't believe----" she whispered.

"You must, Anne." He paused, and then went on quietly. "It was after

that time at Bjura. I was riding home as best I could with a

temperature God knows where--I don't tell you that as an excuse, but as

a sort of explanation--and I found your father torturing Wickie. I know

now that probably he was as mad and irresponsible as I was, but at the

moment I thought he was simply a devil. I intervened--I believe I

appealed to him I tried to stop him. He struck me repeatedly, but as

long as he didn't touch Wickie I didn't care. Then he ran Wickie

through with the sharp end of a bamboo stick--and I struck him. I am

very strong--and I had no self-control. It was as though all the brakes

had given way--and I struck too hard. That was how it happened, Anne."

He waited. He could not have said for what, but he knew that it was

something great in her. He had seen this moment many times before and

seen it both as an end and as a beginning of a new life between them.

It was in her hands. But at the last a kind of proud confidence had

swept over him. It did not occur to him to appeal to her.

Understanding is above forgiveness. Either she understood, and there

would be no need to forgive, or he was simply a murderer, and then her

forgiveness would be valueless.

But he had believed that now she would understand. She crouched in her

chair, looking at him with horror in her eyes.

"I can't--it's too terrible--to have done that--and then to have shirked

the responsibility----"

Still he waited. He had to explain--that was only fair to her and to

himself. But he began to lose hope. He saw himself with her eyes and

the eyes of her world.

"You know that I was delirious for a long time afterwards. When I

recovered the whole thing seemed finished. No one was suspected as far

as I knew. Well, your father meant to smash me. I saw that much in his

face. And, frankly, Anne, I did not choose to be ruined for his sake.

My life--my work--was of value to others to whom I owed more than I did

to him. If I made no effort to escape the consequences of what I had

done I also did not immolate myself to a false idea of justice----" He

broke off. It was not what he had meant to say to her. It was cold and

ugly. But her eyes told him that everything he could tell her, of the

deliberately accepted burden of silence, of the motive of a great filial

love which had chosen to crush the inborn, conventional instincts of

honour rather than tread the easy, chivalrous road of self-accusation,

of all that the intervening time had held of doubt, and weariness--would

be to her so much hypocrisy and cowardly subterfuge. The crisis struck

no fire of sympathy in her which might have illuminated his curt and

clumsy sentences. To her he was simply a criminal, and before her he

became one--tongue-tied, self-distrustful.

She spoke at last and instinctively he braced himself.

"Are you taking shelter behind your mother, or whom?" she asked

sneeringly. Then, as he did not answer, she got up. The stupor which

had restrained her hitherto gave way. She shivered from head to foot,

and her face was twisted and livid with the violence of her feeling.

"And then you married me!" she cried out--"just to shield yourself----"

"Anne!"

"Well, didn't you?"

He strode at her and took her by the shoulders. For a moment she

thought, in her horror of him, that he would have struck her, and she

threw back her head defying the blow with all the strength of her

contempt. But his eyes daunted her. They were neither angry nor

guilty--but bewildered.

"Anne, why in God's name did you marry me if you thought of me like

that?"

Her lips quivered.

"I didn't think of you like that."

"No, perhaps you didn't. You couldn't have thought of me at all. You

just imagined me--you never knew or wanted to know the man I really am.

Now that the image is broken, there's nothing left. I am just--somebody

you don't know--a total stranger, capable of anything----"

"Isn't it true?" she persisted stubbornly.

"No," he said. "It is not true." He thought a moment and then added

with grave simplicity, "It would never have occurred to me. You were

just some one I was very fond of. I wanted to take care of you."

She tried to laugh.

"I suppose, having murdered the father, you thought it was your duty to

marry the daughter."

His hands dropped wearily to his sides.

"If I hadn't been instrumental in your father's loss, if I had had the

faintest hope of his ever being able to take his place in your life

again, I wouldn't have asked you to be my wife. I shouldn't have dared

draw you into my life. But you were lonely and unhappy--much as I

was----"

"You felt guilty and you pitied me," she interrupted with feverish

excitement. "I suppose you think you've sacrificed yourself. You never

wanted to marry me. It was always that woman--that woman----"

"For pity's sake--don't, Anne!" he pleaded.

"Why shouldn't I? I've the right----"

"You have not the right to say that," he said sternly. "I have behaved

like a fool--I have done you, as things turned, a great wrong; but I

have never thought of any other woman as my wife."

"Not as your wife, perhaps," she interrupted wildly.