A Wild Bird

To
Dorothy
With My Love
~ M. D. ~

Author’s Note: All Characters In This Book Are Imaginary.

Prelude

The Pathless Sky

Chapter One

There is only your own pair of wings and the pathless sky,
Bird, oh my Bird, do not close your wings.
— Rabindranath Tagore

Eve Challoner stirred in her sleep. A light shiver ran through her—and she opened her eyes; all in a moment, very wide awake, startled out of a vivid dream, that left in her waking brain only a hint of something lovely, a faint tremor along her nerves.

It was vexatious not remembering; for dreams fascinated her—partly because no one could really explain the mystery of them, partly because in dreams alone she could see and hear and feel the lost father she had worshipped as a child.

At the ripe age of eighteen and three-quarters she worshipped him still. For still, in some secret part of her, he lived on—an abiding influence, colouring the whole of life. Those rare dreams, in which he came to her, never dissolved into nonsense or eluded her on awakening: and the secret part of her knew why. They were not ordinary dreams. They were moments of mysterious, fleeting contact. In all simplicity she accepted the wonder of it. Common sense might insist, “The thing is impossible.” Nevertheless—it happened. By some means, he came to her. He was there. Her heart knew it, past question. And when the heart speaks with authority, the brain “may reason and welcome.” . . .

It was a long while since his last coming: and, in the moment of waking, she had almost felt him there. If she closed her eyes again and drifted back to sleep, holding the thought of him. . .?

But her brain was fatally wide awake, her Swiss chalet bedroom all awash with moonlight. So were the ghostly mountains that peered in through the uncurtained west window and the open glass doors, line by cold line carved on the misted grey of the sky. All that lavish beauty squandered on a world of heedless beings, who shut themselves up in stuffy boxes and buried their noses in pillows. It seemed a sin to close one’s eyes—

The luminous face of her travelling clock said half-past five. The moon was full. It must be near setting.

Thought and action were instantaneous. She was out of bed, her feet thrust into quilted boots, a woollen shawl pulled round her hips, and round her shoulders the flowered quilt snatched from the bed.

Her double doors opened on to a balcony with jutting eaves, carved railings, a table and a chair. Stepping over the threshold, she stood entranced, unable to credit those thirty-five degrees of frost in a world that seemed to be holding its breath. Moon-magic was everywhere—on glaciers and snow-fields, on sculptured pines and frosted plumes of larches. And there, above the western ridge, the moon herself hung low and large, flinging her light full upon the massive head of Grand Mouveran in the east, revealing every branch and twig and wire thickly furred with white frost.

Down in the valley mists drifted, lights twinkled. Closer at hand, they glowed steadfastly—golden yellow. Here and there icicle daggers gleamed; and round the big rink, near the Palace Hotel, electric globes were strung along an unseen wire like a necklace of pearls.

Enchantment—that was the word: a lovely, pitiless magic: and she, dissolved in it, still as all the rest: yet, under the stillness, ardently, eagerly, alive.

To her very hidden self, this wonder of moonlit mountains stood for more than six weeks in Switzerland with her dear Astra-Anne Verity, who had taught her so much else besides music. They stood for the greater amphitheatre of Kashmir; for those few vivid months of gladness and sadness out there: the delight of being with her father again shattered all too soon. Six years she had waited for that meeting; and in less than six months death had taken him from her, just as she was learning to love him with her mind as well as her heart, to guess at all they might be to each other—afterwards. One was always looking on—living for ‘afterwards’; and it seemed the meanest form of cheating when ‘afterwards’ never came.

Those anguished months of rebellion and despair, of utter inability to believe in the fact of death, had given to her blossoming girlhood an under-current of seriousness; a sense of remoteness, often, from schoolfellows, who laughed at their fathers, or grumbled at them, and never seemed to think how it might feel if death put out a ghostly hand and snatched them away.

But, in spite of the aches and the remoteness, youth and its urgent desires would not be denied. Her zest for reading was insatiable, her gift of music a delight that grew by what it fed on, her capacity for happiness unimpaired. And now, the radiance of these last few weeks—the kind of thing one dared not believe in till it laughed at your dismal doubts and cried, “I am here!”

It was all new to her, all delightful: this magnified doll’s house with its toy balconies and deep gables buried in snow; her kind friends Sir Clive and Molly Arden, with their delicious baby; the lovely music they made together—’cello and fiddle and piano—when it snowed, or the mists rolled up muffling her mountains; above all, the exhilarating sense of freedom, after the restraints of home and the herd atmosphere of school, to which she had never become truly acclimatised.

And the outside world—a breathless intoxication of blue and white and sparkling air; the dangers and delights of ski-ing; skimming down impossible slopes, knowing you couldn’t stop yourself, and not caring a bent pin if you went on for ever: the people on the rink, bright flecks of colour; Astra among them, skimming and whirling with an effortless grace that Eve could not compass for all her youth. She was far happier on the hill-side, wrestling with ungainly adorable skis. Then the big Palace Hotel, the dancing and the people; the “scrumptious” dinners and the chocolat, with fluffed cream on it, enough to demoralise a saint. Each evening she fell asleep feeling it was too perfect to last: each morning she awoke to the wonder of still being there.

‘Some people have all the luck that’s going,’ Beryl had written, when she heard of Sir Clive Arden’s invitation. Beryl—the important elder sister—was jealous. She must have all the luck going, or it wasn’t fair. Well, Eve had been given her chance for once; nor would she ever forget it while she lived.

And now the thrill of this earliest waking was happiness of quite another quality: this transfigured beauty of earth spell-bound beneath the clear composure of moon and stars; this slow intensifying of her own exalted mood, till some part of her, that belonged to the stars no less than to earth, seemed to escape from the shell of her standing there, to hang poised in the stillness like a bird on out-stretched wings

She drew a swift breath. Some faint actual sound had tumbled her back on to the balcony. Literally, that was how it felt. She had been there. She was here. The real and the unreal had changed places again.

Here was Eve, huddled in her eiderdown, faintly beginning to feel cold. There was the moon-whitened mist, the aching beauty of the mountains. And suddenly her heart cried out: “If only it wasn’t Switzerland—but Kashmir!” Next spring she would be there with Vanessa; but next spring was an age away: and her home was no true home. Waiting always chafed her impatient spirit. She would not wait. She would make a bolt for it. Nothing seemed impossible now she was mistress of her own little legacy, which her father had so thoughtfully arranged for her to receive at eighteen instead of twenty-one—it was simply a matter of thinking things out.

That small sound again. Some one was moving in the next room. It was Astra’s room. Was she awake too—perhaps composing music, stealing inspiration from the mountains and the stars? The balcony ran along the length of the chalet. Dared she present herself in this crazy attire, and confess her bold idea? There might be early tea. Astra always made her own. And she was one of those rare people to whom you could tell the things that mattered, partly because she never asked probing questions, as Mummy always did—the kind that put the lid on anything worth telling. Imagine possessing a mother like Astra! How on earth had she come to be fifty without getting married? That was one of the many, questions one never dared ask. And after all, if she had married, Eve would have missed these five years of learning music from her; of learning also to love her as she had loved no other woman, except Vanessa Vane.

The moon was setting now behind the ridge—apricot-golden, immense, patterned with black pine-tops like a Japanese print; and her own soaring spirit had dropped into depths of daily prose. As she turned quickly, her eiderdown caught in the cane chair; and the sound of movement brought Astra on to the balcony—a moonlit vision in her silvery quilted wrapper.

“Eve—you mad monkey! What are you doing out here?”

“Well—look at it!”

Eve waved a hampered arm, and Anne Verity smiled.

“I have been looking at it for a very long time. And how long have you been star-gazing in this strange attire?”

Eve sighed happily and hugged her quilt. “Truly, I haven’t a notion. And you can’t catch cold in this magic air. It’s the stuffy houses.”

“Yes, it’s the stuffy houses! All the same, come along in.” Anne Verity slipped an arm round her. “I’ll make you some fresh tea; and bundle you back to bed.”

“You are a jewel! I’d love the tea. But I won’t be bundled.”

“Yes, you will.”

There was no emphasis in the statement; but Eve knew that note of gentle inflexibility. She would be bundled—when she had swallowed her tea; but she would take her time over it.

Huddled in a cane chair, she sipped and scrunched, enjoying the warmth that pervaded her and the intimate personal atmosphere that Astra could infuse even into this alien chalet bedroom: the low table with its book-slide, the blue bowl piled with oranges, the strip of embroidery over her arm-chair, and a gold cushion from the drawing-room at Blue Hills—her cottage on Hindhead, that was more genuinely home to Eve than her stepfather’s “desirable residence”—Compton Court, Weybridge.

Astra, sipping also, leaned back against the gold cushion, her dark hair laid round her head like a coronal, letting Eve do most of the talking. And Eve—lured on by a smile here, a comment there—found herself confessing that wild impulse to have done with waiting, to fly out and join Vanessa in Kashmir.

“Crazy child! You’d put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes?” Astra challenged her with amused eyes.

“I wouldn’t wonder!” Eve retorted unabashed. “But it isn’t meant for a joke. It’s an inspiration. I thought you would understand.”

“Of course I understand—the inspiration. But it’s not practical politics.”

“Well, I’ve got to make it so.” Eve’s tone was not the least combative. She was busy scraping the last of the sugar out of her cup—a childish trick that died hard. “And you bet I will. Switzerland’s gone to my head. It makes you fizzle and crackle inside.”

“It does! But if you lay it all on Villars—I shall feel responsible “

“You’re not. It’s all off my own bat and on my own head, any mad thing I do. Truly, Astra darling, you don’t know what it’s like at Compton Court for this ‘ugly duckling’—who, anyway, isn’t mean enough to tell tales. So—she’s just going to take tinker’s leave.”

Anne Verity shook her head. “No, she’s going to be reasonable, and wait till September. Mrs. Vane—your Vanessa—must have made all her plans for the summer. And your mother may want you at home more than you realize.”

Eve wriggled rebelliously, but Astra had a way with her that there was no resisting.

“She doesn’t, truly—never did. And you know how it is, when you’re aching for a thing—a cold fit comes over you that the trump of doom may sound before you can get it. That’s how I used to feel when I was aching to go out—to Daddy. I’m supposed to be more sensible now; but you’d need a microscope to detect it! And such a wicked lot of life seems to be wasted in waiting.”

“We’re not obliged to waste it—while we’re waiting,” Anne Verity reminded her with a strange sad smile that deflected Eve’s thoughts from her own urgent concerns and stilled her impatient heart.

Their cups being empty, she found herself, gently but irresistibly “bundled back to bed,” though she insisted that no right-minded person could possibly fall asleep after six in the morning.

“Well, I’ve never yet mistaken you for a right-minded person!” Anne Verity retorted, pressing Eve’s head into the softness of the pillow, lightly fingering her thick dark hair.

And as she leaned over, Eve’s arms went up round her neck.

“Oh, I do love you!” she breathed in a muffled whisper. “I wish you were my Mummy!”

“So do I,” came the surprising answer. “Though, in that case, we might not be such good friends.”

“Yes, we surely would. Some do pull it off. But—it’s queer, isn’t it? Fathers have a good deal to answer for when they give you the wrong kind of mother.”

“They have indeed!”

Anne Verity’s voice was low and vehement; and Eve, guessing at hidden tragedy, clung to her and kissed her fervently.

Her kiss was returned with equal fervour; but not a word was said. The light clicked out. Astra was gone; and the room was filled with the cold pallor that precedes dawn. The mountains had their steely aspect. It no longer seemed a sin to close one’s eyes.

Even while she decided that sleep was quite impossible, she had drifted over the edge. . . .

Chapter Two

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead; and the bridge is love—the only survival, the only meaning.
— Thornton Wilder

And yet . . . she was wide awake again; or so it seemed.

There was morning light in the sky; and there were the snows, with their startled brightness. But these mountains were wrought upon a different scale. Here was no Dents du Midi, but the greater glory of Nanga Parbat, her glaciers and snow-fields flashing a welcome to the risen sun.

And the boards underfoot belonged to the summerhouse in the Residency garden at Gulmarg. From the garden came a whiff of June roses; and all the birds were calling with strange, clear notes. There was the old camp table, the rounded flap hanging down, the green paint rather worn, and the big cane chair—its back towards her.

With a leap of her heart she knew that he was there. He had come to her again, her lost father—not utterly lost, as her doubting brain would sometimes almost persuade her to believe.

He was sitting very still in one of his stray moods, his elbow on the arm of the chair, his closed hand pressed into the hollow of his temple. The tilt of his head showed the odd grey streak in his dark hair. And she stood there behind him, breathless with happiness; a faint tremor in her limbs, as though she were shaken a little by the too swift transition from the Eve of Villars to the Eve of Gulmarg, who still seemed to be eleven years old, though equipped with the knowledge and sensations of the budding woman. It was the woman who hesitated to intrude on his absorption. It was the child who could not wait another moment for his voice and the feel of his arms.

As he stirred, she rushed forward with the old welcoming cry, “Daddy—Daddy!”

He sat up and turned to her—lean and brown and tired-looking, yet with the friendly twinkle in his eyes.

“Hullo, Madcap! What have you been up to?” he greeted her, as if their encounter were the most ordinary affair on earth. And so, in a sense, it seemed to the Eve who was sitting on his knee, with his arm close round her, rubbing her cheek against his hair, while she told him (how strangely, yet how naturally!) that she had been standing on her balcony at half-past five, bundled in a satin quilt, to watch the moon setting over a world of snow and frost—thirty-five degrees of frost!

Of course that made him catch her closer, while he scolded her; and as she knew that he knew he would have done the same himself, she snuggled against him and kissed the hollow of his temple. The kiss was supposed to mean penitence; and the scolding was only what she called a “loving bite.” Indeed, his love was often more evident at such times—he being chary of “demonstrations.” Not that he ever repressed hers. If anyone checked them, it was always Mummy. But Mummy would be sound asleep at this unearthly hour—sound asleep at Compton Court, with another husband. The confusing knowledge gave her a queer little shock; but it was a shock of relief—a sense of being safe from maternal intrusions. It was Larry, the retriever, who nosed them out, hurling himself upon them; almost humanly jealous, when they sat entwined, yet easily patted into a dog-like content.

While Eve caressed the creature’s dark head with the tip of her shoe, they two talked, quietly and happily, of Nanga Parbat and the birds and her music, and the book about trees that he hoped to write while he was in Kashmir. And yet—he seemed to know all about Astra and school and Vanessa, in India. Sometimes she wondered if he also knew about Mummy? But such minor incongruities troubled her not at all, so poignantly real was the sense of his presence, the deep note in his voice, the dear, accustomed joy of sitting on his knee.

Though some inner sense told her he was not alive again in the ordinary way, unshakeably she knew it was his very self who held her, who ceaselessly loved her. Love was the rainbow bridge between his world and hers; and in all simplicity they accepted the fact that now and then he was able to be with her, in this strange dream-fashion, which left behind it no ache of renewed deprivation, but the comforting assurance of a veritable coming together on some rarefied plane beyond the reach of her waking mind.

While it lasted, that brief wonder of reunion, there was neither before nor after. There was only Now: and she, contented utterly, secure within the circle of his arm. . . .

*  *  *

It was quite another Eve who dragged herself out of deep sleep, to find it was after eight o’clock, the awakened Dents du Midi looking in upon her, the icicle daggers gleaming in the sun—blue opals lit with flame.

Her mad prank seemed like yesterday. She had travelled so far in between. Again the recaptured joy had slipped out of her grasp. But she had seen and felt him; she had seen Kashmir; and the renewed sense of it all quickened her craving for India and Vanessa. Thank Heaven, it was to be Vanessa now, for always—because they both wished it, and both knew that he had wished it, for reasons never mentioned between them. Eve herself had never spoken of home difficulties; yet he had surely known how little of understanding there was in Mummy’s dutiful and rather chilly affection for her “ugly duckling”—playfully so called. Eve had never quite believed in the playfulness; and the chance-given name had clung to her, making her feel more than ever shy and doubtful of herself, especially with a favoured capable elder sister showing her off to the worst advantage at every turn.

It had never seemed to count against Beryl that she was frankly selfish and greedy, in her smiling, well-behaved fashion. She could always do the proper things—in the proper way. She could tilt the silver kettle to fill up the teapot, without flicking hot water on to Mummy’s hand, as Eve was sure to do, if the chance were given her. It was always Eve who wrenched off a shoe button or lost a glove and delayed the whole party—especially if they happened to be catching a train. The very way Mummy said, “Oh, Eve—of course!” (almost implying you had done it on purpose) made you dead certain to do it again. In her view, one was simply “good” or “naughty”; beyond that, she either could not or would not trouble to understand. Yet Daddy, who had not seen her since she was six, had seemed to know, at once, all about her hidden shrinkings and her crazy impulses. To him she was no ugly duckling; and because he had troubled to understand, he had magically resolved all the difficulties and depressions. He had known how to stir the sense of mystery in the mind of a child; and she had seen herself growing up into a daughter who could truly companion him, with her music and her abiding love. Wonderful doings they had planned together for his next long leave; and only afterwards it occurred to her that Mummy never came into these plans.

Even then she had been vaguely aware of something amiss between those two; something indefinable, yet painfully real to the dawning perspicacity of eleven years old. You couldn’t say they quarrelled; but so often there was the uncomfortable feeling of a quarrel going on underneath; and there were times when Daddy’s tired, worried look had made her almost hate Mummy. A wicked sin: but you couldn’t love even your own mother to order. Perhaps not even your own wife, she reflected, with the mingled wisdom and daring of modern nineteen.

Already she saw that dangerous high explosive the human heart as a wild bird caged in a body that must outwardly behave. But the heart can no man tame, was her private rendering of the apostle’s dictum. Perhaps St. James had not thought of the heart because his own had never exploded—he being such a holy man. She had been made to learn those verses one Sunday for calling Beryl names—perfectly true names, which of course had aggravated her sin. Certainly her tongue was an unruly member; yet it could be tamed into saying polite things; while her heart could never be tamed into loving Beryl and Mummy as she loved Daddy and—long afterwards—Vanessa Vane.

It was when they left Peshawar and went up to Kashmir that Vanessa had come into the picture: Vanessa with her music and her way with birds—not to mention her way with people!—and her inspired way of teaching the violin to a pupil whose heart she had taken by storm.

In Eve’s own mind she had always been “Daddy’s Mrs. Vane,” long before it became clear that the secret trouble between those two was, in some way, connected with her. Mummy hated her. Daddy loved her. Eve simply adored her. But—looking backward—the shadow of her own perplexity, the deeper shadow of “afterwards,” lay like a veil over those most vital months of her life, over the terrible bewildering climax. Mummy rushing off to Bombay, and rushing back again—though none of them really wanted her. Of course there had been that accident at Home; but Daddy was ill before she rushed off like that. And Mummy knew it. Vanessa said so, the only time they had spoken of that awful week. As to what really happened between them, Eve had no idea to this day. But she had gathered that, if Mummy had only been decent and not left Daddy alone, it might have made all the difference. He might even be alive, and in India now. In the first violence of her anguish she remembered crying out to Vanessa: “I nearly hate her! She made him die!” That, of course, was not strictly true; but the conviction lodged in her heart, like a morsel of ice, that had never quite melted to this day.

At the time, she could only suffer and resent, in a state of blind confusion. Now, considering it all from the altitude of nearly nineteen, she understood—or believed she understood.

Daddy must have loved Mummy once upon a time. And probably she had killed his love before he ever saw Vanessa. For six whole years he had been left alone in India; and she could clearly perceive, now, the peril that had been involved—for him, for Vanessa, for them all; though the whole affair was too deeply personal for the stark problem of right or wrong to enter in. In those days, her child’s heart had ached for Daddy, afflicted with a wife like Mummy. And even now—peril or no—she could not but feel thankful that he had found some one who loved him with an understanding heart and mind. Had Vanessa ever told him so? Had he ever realised? If so—what would, or could, have happened, supposing he had not died?

That staggering question had never yet assailed her; perhaps because she had never yet faced the fact of Vanessa in all its bearings. She had unconsciously preferred to accept the beloved woman as a fellow-devotee, a heaven-sent means of escape from Compton Court. That also had been Daddy’s doing—or rather his expressed wish at the last; practical proof how intimately he knew all that she could never tell him, because of the unspoken pact between them, that whatever Mummy said or did must be accepted without criticism. Perhaps he knew how surely she would marry again; how, no less surely, Eve would refuse to recognise any stray man who stepped into his place—as Mr. Hensley-Harrison had done, to her wrath and amazement, after only one year.

How Mummy could——? Compared with Daddy he was a worm. Quite a friendly worm. But even now she rebelled—not only against her mother’s second marriage, but against the entire smug Compton Court philosophy of life. Better to suffer from these vehement feelings—that refused to “lie-down-dog” at command—than to be a cornflour-shape sort of person like Mummy, so cool and smooth and set. Obviously they could never get within miles of understanding each other; so why keep up the pretence? If she ever dared ask that sane question, she would be accused of belittling family ties. Mummy loved keeping up a pretence; and Eve, detesting it, bungled badly. So all the advantage—badly put—was on the side of dishonesty.

This last year, with Vanessa in India, she had had her fill of holidays at Compton Court. But for Astra and the music, she would have flown off at a tangent—done something desperate. And now—the prospect of a whole summer . . .! The same everlasting garden parties and smooth young men in flannels; Beryl with her smart frocks and superior airs—everything in the house moving like clockwork . . .

All very well for Astra to bid her wait. She didn’t realise—— She knew, of course, that home was difficult, but she had not a glimmering idea of Mummy at her brightest and best! It wasn’t decent to grouse or tell tales about your own mother and sister, even to avoid being misjudged. The best way to avoid that was to sit it out till September. Very well, she would try; and she would not waste the months of waiting.

And suddenly out of the blue and white morning sprang a minor inspiration. If the spring, with its million little leaves and vast white clouds, showed fatal signs of going to her head, it would be a lesser way of escape to wander off on a lone walking tour, to think and read and prowl at will, without some one eternally murmuring, “Don’t be late for lunch,” or “You’d better take a mackintosh. It looks like rain.”

Decidedly it would be worth thinking about; but oh, when the critical moment came—what arguments, what holy horrors there would be!

Steps in the passage recalled her to the day’s demands and delights. They were to start early for a long skiing expedition beyond Bretaye—six of them: the Ardens, Lady Carlyon and her husband, from another chalet, herself and Basil Sherwood—a clever London young man, who had sought her out persistently of late. He was one of her best partners at the Hotel dances; more skilful in the ballroom than on skis. He wrote books and articles, chiefly about modern music—very modern. He scorned the grand old symphonies, scorned anything in the nature of melody, preferring what Sir Clive called farmyard noises. So they quarrelled over music; but on the whole she enjoyed his cultivated talk, his pleasure in her society even if he had a way of looking, now and then, that made you want to hit him.

The whole day on skis: an intoxicating prospect! She sprang out of bed, the blood singing in her veins. Out here, everything and everyone seemed in league to spoil her—especially Clive; and she was shamelessly enjoying the process.

The awful results would only be apparent when she returned home.

Standing, half dressed, before the mirror, running a comb through her thick, dark hair, till it crackled and stood on end, she let out a sigh of profound content.

Then she grimaced at herself and muttered, “Golliwog! Spoilt, excitable Golliwog—that’s what you are!”

Mummy would agree about the Golliwog, and thoroughly disapprove of the spoiling. Why were some people so mortally afraid of being too kind, yet never afraid of being harsh or chilly? That was beyond her. She gave it up—and attended to her hair.

Swiftly and deftly, she translated the Golliwog into a personable young woman with a decided nose, a sensitive, humorous mouth and true Challoner eyes—grey-green, and deeply set, under eyebrows that kinked where they should have gracefully curved. By way of compensation there was the natural wave in her hair that improved the effect of her shingled head and reduced the cost of hair-dressing—a much more important detail.

“Not so bad on the whole!” she commended her own reflection, put out a lady-like tip of her tongue at it, and slipped into her green sweater—the joy of her life—whistling a sad haunting air to which she had danced the tango, last night, with Basil Sherwood.

To-night she would probably dance it with him again.

Chapter Three

I felt so young . . .
So glad, I could not choose be very wise.
— E. B. Browning

Eve did not dance her favourite tango that night with Basil Sherwood. She danced it with her host, Sir Clive Arden, whom she had been invited to call Clive. Though he was just turned thirty, he and Astra were devoted friends. Partly, no doubt, it was the music; but Eve’s intuition guessed at some deeper personal link. She had met him fairly often at Blue Hills and in his big town house; and had thought him rather formidable. But out here she had found him the most casual and delightful person; very patient with her ignorant fearlessness on the beloved skis; always ready to accompany her violin—as he accompanied Astra’s ’cello—and doing it divinely. He was delicious with Molly; very pleased—in a quaintly detached way—with his infant son, Henry Verity Arden; a superlative dancer, and as keen on ski-ing as Eve herself. Altogether, in Eve’s private opinion, he was a find.

Only in one respect he had faintly worried her of late. He seemed, for some reason, to disapprove of Basil Sherwood; called him, only half in joke, ‘your super-post-war Chelsea young man’; and very seldom invited him to the chalet. When Basil snatched too many dances, Clive would be aware of it. He had a way of seeing more than he appeared to see; and there were times when Eve appreciated his brotherly concern; times when she resented it—and favoured Basil the more.

To-day, out ski-ing, they had gone off together at Basil’s insistence; Eve, in a reckless mood, setting the pace, choosing the slopes, daring him to follow her lead; Basil, no sportsman, refusing to compete, spurring her to fresh exploits by shouts of applause.

The sunshine and the leagues of snow and her own increasing skill had lifted her above herself. Tempted to try a slope perilously steep, she had muddled her ‘stop-christie’—and crashed ignominiously, to Basil’s dismay.

Limping back to the others—bumped and bruised, but uncrushed in spirit—she had brazened out a severe scolding from Clive, who could be severe on occasion. Of course he had blamed Basil by implication, which angered Eve; and there had been quite a little clash about coming over to the hotel this evening. But Astra had been skilfully won over; and Clive had at last given in—with a good grace.

In fur coats and snow-boots, they had all four tramped across paths of frozen snow to the monster Palace Hotel that dominated the landscape; the keen night air so still that one was not aware of cold. And inside the big double doors, an atmosphere as thick as pea soup.

The lofty lounge, with its wide balcony, looked southward through immense plate-glass windows that invited the snow and the pines and the flaming sunsets to enter in and share any kind of fun that was toward. No pretentious pictures disfigured the pale walls. Instead, there were skins and shields and bundles of spears that gave the vast room a baronial aspect.

Here, from nine o’clock onward, the Jazz Boys jazzed and tireless dancers clapped, and the rest shouted perseveringly at one another. For these were the informal days, when the crowds of January had melted away, and the big ballroom had been closed down. So the tireless ones must glide and waggle and click their heels on the tessellated floor of the lounge; and the rest must endure the infliction.

To-night, owing to that little clash, the chalet party had arrived rather late. Clive had secured the first dance; and their favourite tango had charmed away friction. Now it was over. They had retired to a distant corner; and she was talking more freely than usual of India and the mountains, of her longing to get right away among them, beyond human ken.

“If only I were a man,” she sighed, with a rueful glance at her most becoming frock, “I’d explore without end—all the mountains of all the earth.”

“Just for exploring’s sake?” he asked; and his tone told her she had struck a vein of serious interest.

“Yes; and partly hoping I might put some of it . . . into music. I always feel that mountains have some secret music of their own. If one went high up into their very world, among the clouds and the stars, one might hear a ghostly symphony. Not exactly hear . . . Oh, I can’t explain——” Sudden shyness confused the clear thought she was trying to express. “I’m talking nonsense.”

“You’re talking rarefied sense,” he said gravely. “Only high mountains and music give one that feeling of liberation——”

“Yes—that’s it,” she agreed eagerly; shy no longer, because he understood. “My father was like me—crazed on mountains and exploring. But, he could never properly escape—because there were all of us. I remember he said once that, if you had eyes to see, you could find, in this world, the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem—‘every gate a pearl.’ Don’t those words give you a thrill inside—like music? Sometimes I wonder which thrills me most. Some day I believe I will make some kind of beauty out of one or the other. Which?”

“Music,” he said without hesitation. He was a very decided person. “Don’t write, Eve. It’s coming to be almost a feminine disease.”

She made a small moue of distaste. “I don’t want to be a disease! Perhaps I’d better refrain. Besides—music can say everything. Words get in the way. Too much ‘scratching on the match-box.’ Did you really think it might be music—before I spoke?”

“Honestly I did. Ask Anne.”

“O-oh! That’s the most wonderful thing anyone has said to me—ever. And I utterly don’t deserve it, after the way I behaved this evening.—Look, there’s Basil prowling round. He’ll be biting my nose off next.”

“I can’t allow that. It’s my privilege——!”

He could say no more, for Basil Sherwood had sauntered up with his proprietary air that annoyed Sir Clive and rather amused Eve.

He was a fair young man, self-possessed and hyper-civilised, with a good deal of admirable forehead, an unadmirable mouth, bold grey eyes and a Puckish smile—his chief charm, of which he was too obviously aware. He was clever in a variety of ways; and too much aware of that also. He owned a studio in Chelsea, where he dabbled in modern sculpture. He also criticised music for a high-brow weekly paper; his fluent talk revolved unfailingly round one central point of interest—Basil Sherwood. He seemed to thrive on a flourishing crop of discontents. The latest was urging him to drop musical criticism; and as sculpture offered small hope of a livelihood, he was trying his hand at up-to-date short stories—chippy, disillusioned, satirical: “Flashlights” he would call them in book form. He was, in fact, so forthcoming about himself that she wondered whether he even noticed how little she told him in return. Most of it genuinely interested Eve; and there were moments when she really liked him; other moments when she wanted to hit him. But, on the whole, with his cleverness and his element of uncertainty, he intrigued her more than the average winter-sports young man. He had been rather ‘coming on,’ these last ten days: and in spite of her friendly greeting, he chose to be annoyed, because they had arrived late; vowed he was on the point of arranging to dance all the evening with Miss Van Doran, the lively American girl, who threw chocolates for the Jazz Boys to catch, who read his articles and asked him up to her mother’s private sitting-room.

When Eve said coolly; “Well, I’m not preventing you!” he retorted, with one of his looks. “You are preventing me. You’re simply devastating in that green sheath—and you know it!”

Useless to protest that she knew nothing of the sort. But she did know that there was some kind of magic in her lily of the valley frock, designed by Astra. Straight and simple above, it blossomed into an effect of filmy green petals, powdered with a dew of silver beads. Four long points, drooping below the petals, gave them the look of breaking from a calyx that was a joy to behold. And she was only now beginning to discover the mysterious effect clothes could have upon oneself—and others. Sometimes—as to-night—the miracle happened. She knew it by the way men looked at her. Lifted out of shyness and self-consciousness, she moved in a haze of soft light. She could be at her best, because they all happened to see her so.

To-night she was dancing not only with her feet but with her whole being; absorbed in the music and the movement and the shifting scene; the lights and colours, the way couples danced or looked at one another, the faces you watched for and wondered about. It all seemed to open little secret doors in one’s brain, to set imagination stirring.

Each time the music began afresh, Basil said with his Puckish smile, “Shall we go on?” And, as Eve had no objection, they went on. More often than not it was a Charleston—the mania of the moment; not ungraceful in its modified form, though the music teased her fastidious ear—the jerky rhythms, the hooting saxophone, the plong, plong of the banjo . . .

It ceased, on the fourth occasion, with a discordant crash: and they hurried to a couple of favourite armchairs in an empty corner. The big room became emptier every day.

Eve flopped into the softness and put her hands to her ears. “Call that syncopated howling music! And the saxophone all out of tune! I like the shivery tom-tom effect. But I’ve heard the real thing in India with jackals thrown in; and the saxophone’s a poor substitute. Out there it’s fascinating. It belongs. In our ballrooms, it doesn’t belong. We’re only pretending to be primitive. We know what beauty is——”

“‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’!” he annoyingly quoted at her. “Most modern art is an impatient reaction from the pretty-pretty. Caviare, after sugar plums. I’m not holding any brief for this particular kind of noise—America’s form of peaceful penetration. It’s the syncopation—the queer effect of it on the nerves, something like cocaine. Though probably not one dancer in fifty is aware of it, I wouldn’t mind betting it has saved a good few of the post-war disillusioned from running down a steep place to perdition. A blighter named Basil Sherwood, for instance——”

“You!” She gazed at him blankly. He was talking for effect again: and the sole effect it had on her was to alienate sympathy, because he was making a bid for it.

“Well, I’m a product of my age. A victim of the prevalent disease. And at least I’ve the honesty to recognise that myself’s the matter with myself!”

It was probably the truth. But she could not believe he had really suffered—as she had, for instance. This was something different, this disease of disillusion.

Unable to speak her thought, she could only murmur inadequately, “I suppose most of us feel that way sometimes.”

“I don’t suppose you ever do, for a moment,” he flung out. And his look told her she had bungled. “You don’t know the meaning of disillusion. You’ve never doubted the objective value of Life.”

“Is that really as terrible as it sounds?” she ventured with her twinkle. “I have been bitterly unhappy; and I often feel sick of myself. But life—objective values . . .? Aren’t they a good deal bigger than all that?”

“Of course they are—if you find them so, you refreshingly sane young woman! With Life, as with everything else, it’s a case of what you bring to it.”

Eve applauded with her finger-tips. At least he was talking sense now; but she was not sorry to hear the four young men, who made noise enough for twenty, inviting them back to what Clive called the pavement.

And when she stood up, there he was coming towards them.

“My turn this time?” he said, claiming her, as if by some previous arrangement. “Good luck—it’s the tango again.”

And she submitted happily enough; though poor Basil did look a trifle disconcerted.

As they took the floor, Clive shifted her—so that they faced one another—and smiled into her eyes.

“Surprise you?” he asked.

“Yes—a little bit.”

“Surprised him a little bit too! Having generously permitted you to come, I consider two or three dances are my due—especially when you’re wearing the magic frock.”

With a sigh of pleasure she surrendered herself to the music, to the perfection of his dancing—because he too had music in his veins. It was a real link with him, as with Astra. For all three of them music was part of the fabric of life. They could not imagine living without it.

Though the negroid cacophony jarred her nerves, the mournful strains of the tango went through and through her. Moving to the lilt of it with familiar precision, beguiled by the two-in-one sensation of dancing at its best, her inner self could at times float almost clear of her surroundings. . . .

It was during one of those withdrawn moments that Clive’s voice said in her ear:

“You’re inspired to-night!—Hope you really didn’t mind my cutting in like that?”

“Of course not. I’d sooner dance the tango with you than with anyone.”

“Good. I shall claim you for the next, whoever’s in the field. We must do some more of this together—afterwards.”

His praise set up a happy little stir inside; but at that casual ‘afterwards’—a cold finger-tip touched her heart. In less than ten days, now, she would be Eve turned out of Paradise—an Eve innocent of over-persuading any Adam. Always these uprootings, this inexorable passing on; and she, too intense a creature not to suffer unduly in the process. . . .

The music ceased. She was herself again. Clive was thanking her; Astra standing near, in her silvery frock with parma violets on her shoulder.

And there was Basil looking hard in their direction, not seeming to share the joke that convulsed his partner. If Clive had further designs in that connection, they were frustrated. For Basil came straight across the room—leaving Miss Van Doran with a lively group of men—and secured her for the next dance under Clive’s nose.

“Base desertion!” he reproached her, as they moved away. “I thought we were partners for the evening.”

“I never said so.”

“Give me the next three, anyhow. I believe Arden cut in impromptu.”

“That’s for him to say,” she answered, very demure in look and tone. “This slow valse is perfect. Don’t let’s talk.”

The beguiling melody, the simplicity of movement wafted her miles away from him into her own private ecstasy. Other couples floated past; the newly-engaged pair, who danced face to face, almost in each other’s arms; Molly and Clive, easily the most distinguished couple in the room; Molly, with a look of beatitude in her eyes, that set Eve wondering deeply about ‘all that’; wondering why the secret whisper in her own heart was a whisper of dread——

When it was over, she stood silent, still half lost in her dream.

Some one touched her arm. It was Basil.

“Didn’t you hear me speak?”

“No—I was thinking.”

He stared at her so hard that she suddenly felt hot all over.

“And I was wondering . . . what the devil you could be thinking about as deeply as that?”

“Well, you can go on wondering!” She nodded at him, no longer discomposed. “I don’t tell my thoughts—to stray people.”

“Call me a stray person, after all these weeks?”

“Moderately stray!” She toned it down—and whisked across the room to secure her favourite chair, hoping to escape from personalities.

But flight availed her nothing. He was in an odd mood to-night. Drawing his own chair needlessly close, he returned to the charge.

“Moderately stray, am I? Are you implying that I’m all very well to play with here, but an outsider in Sir Clive Arden’s exclusive world?”

This was worse than ever.

“I’m not implying anything,” she asserted, on the bare chance of being believed. “I don’t know Clive’s world. And as I’m going to India soon, we aren’t very likely to meet again. That’s all. But don’t let’s talk about—afterwards.”

“When do you go to India?” he persisted, ignoring her appeal.

“Probably in the autumn.”

“And where d’you live meanwhile?”

It was useless. She gave it up, and announced in a guide-book voice:

“My mother lives at Weybridge. She’s not Mrs. Challoner now. She is Mrs. Hensley-Harrison—a very poor exchange.”

He seemed to think otherwise.

“What—H. H.? The power behind the Coming Era?”

“Yes. He doesn’t look much like a power! D’you know him?”

“Not personally. But he’s a leading light in the journalistic world—which is mine. So we aren’t in such different circles! I’ll run down to Weybridge some Sunday, in my new two-seater, and call on Mrs. Hensley-Harrison.”

“She’s always at home on Sunday. But I’m not sure if you’d find her . . . exactly your sort.”

“Well, of course, it’s the daughter I’d be coming to see.”

She glanced at him wickedly under her lashes.

“The daughter mightn’t be there.”

“You bet I’d make sure of that before I wasted my petrol! Is the daughter not favouring that select locality?”

“Not very much,” Eve retorted crisply. She had no intention of discussing home or her own private plans with this aggressive young man. Again he treated her to one of his discomposing looks that made her want, suddenly and violently, to push him away from her. He had never been quite like this before. She felt penned up, wishing the music would begin.

And he surprised her by saying in quite a different manner, “You might be a shade more gracious to a fellow—having enslaved him.”

“The nonsense you talk!” she murmured, not believing him for a moment. But he had an unfair advantage when he smiled like that. “I don’t mean to be horrid. It’s the way you behave.”

“If only you’ll be gracious, I won’t ‘behave.’” Sounds from the alcove hinted that the brief pause was to be briefer than usual.—”Look here,” he said persuasively. “Let’s skip this one, and dance the next. Come along to the bar downstairs, and we’ll sample their new brew of punch. Marvellous stuff. I won’t worry you to partake.”

He rose and stood smiling down at her, while she twisted a bead tassel on her bag. A few minutes ago she had almost hated him; and now—it was strange.

She sighed and stood up also. “Of course I’d rather dance; but if you’re fearfully keen . . .?”

“I am—fearfully keen.”

Making their way towards the big double doors, they passed Clive and Molly on a low settee, enjoying some private joke.

As the other two approached, they stood up.

“Hullo!” Clive greeted them. “Where are you running away to?”

Something in his tone told Eve that he guessed, before Basil answered, in an off-hand tone, “We’re taking a breather. She’s coming down to the bar.”

“I’m to look on while he drinks rum punch,” Eve stated gravely.

“Fun for you!” murmured Molly.

Clive was listening to the music.

“Tango again!” he said, a wicked gleam in his eye. “Dare deny it, Eve—this is ours!”

Eve was given no chance to deny anything. It was Basil who spoke.

“Sorry, Arden. But I’m engaged to her for this one—and the next.”

His stiffened manner was wasted on Clive.

“On your own confession, you aren’t dancing this. And you can drink rum punch unassisted! I booked Eve for the next tango. And afterwards I’m afraid we must be going——” He turned to her. “Molly’s a bit tired, and you overdid it this afternoon.”

Again it was Basil who spoke.

“I say, Arden, this is rather drastic. I can perfectly well see her home.”

For all his studied coolness, it was clear to Eve that he suspected Clive was doing it on purpose—and so did she; but she had long ago discovered that one could not shift Clive from his purpose by argument. With an equal coolness, he turned down Basil’s happy thought.

“Thanks very much. But I’d rather she came along with us.”

And Eve could only look her regrets.

“Then it’s good night,” Basil said in a low tone, under cover of the music. “Beastly unfair of Arden. Tea at the Creamery to-morrow. Don’t forget.”

Moving away with Clive, she found herself wondering whether he really had done it on purpose. The least hint of coercion stirred the rebel in her; inclined her also to think more kindly of Basil than she might have done at the end of the next two dances, seeing the mood he was in to-night. But Clive said nothing; saying nothing was his strong suit. Only, for a few turns, he seemed to hold her a shade closer than usual, as if he were protecting her—from what?

Chapter Four

Mad with the beauty of all things that are
And will be, though we pass ; we to whom love
Is fear and wonder; we whose treasure of years
Is still unspent, we only may be sad——
— Helen Simpson

But when to-morrow came, there was no tea at the Creamery. The Carlyons had booked them all for a long outing: and Basil had not been asked. That involved a telephone message to put him off; and it was a distinct relief when the concierge took it; for she hated having to disappoint him again.

Her own disappointment was speedily dissolved in the heightened sense of life that was the gift of these Alpine hill-sides; the crisp snow underfoot, the sun’s caressing warmth that never robbed the air of its tingling quality. And there was no earthly sensation comparable to jumping on skis—the nearest thing to flight.

To-day, encouraged by Clive and Mr. Lutyens-Carlyon, she excelled herself; confidence increasing every time she brought it off without mishap. Again and again, the downward rush to the wide shelf of snow, the thrill of that sharpened moment on the knife-edge of peril. Then the flying leap—hills and trees and the sky rushing up as she flew down; the resounding whack on to firm snow; crouching, sliding, erect again, poised for the final sweep down the long slope; down and down—the joy of rushing for ever through that crystal air.

Too soon the end of the slope; the wide curve among wreaths of whirling snow, like the foam of a breaker—achievement! And she, a throbbing triumphant atom of life, alone in that stainless stillness. From some far unseen track came the silvery crash of sleigh bells; and as she mounted the slope, foot over foot, Clive whizzed past, waving his ski-stick, shouting compliments on her style..

It was one of her rare, unshadowed days; and instinctively she seized it with every faculty. For always, at the back of her brain, hovered the sense of things precious slipping too swiftly through her fingers. If she did not actively miss Basil, he dominated her thoughts more than he would have done had he been present in person; and she felt defrauded when she found there would be no dancing after dinner. The Carlyons were dining; and they preferred music. So—normally—did Eve, but for a renewed suspicion of Clive’s hand on the rein; and she flung into one of Dvorak’s Slavonic dances the impish spirit of rebellion that flashed through her music and evaporated while she played. Inside, she was behaving like a spoilt child; but, on the fiddle, her fingers were running away with her. And what did anything on earth matter so long as you could play like that?

They were clapping. And Clive—too discerning by half—said quizzically, “Eve’s in a temper. And we’ve had the benefit! Never heard you play better. How can I put you in a temper again?”

“By talking to me like that,” she retorted. But her glance was for Astra at the piano—as always, when she knew she had done well. “Besides, I’m not in a temper. Listen!”

Settling her father’s violin with a little hug between shoulder and chin, she lifted her bow and gave them Vanessa’s solo arrangement of ‘The Lark Ascending’; lost herself in it, banished them all from her mind—even Astra, who accompanied her to perfection. And as she played, something within her seemed to escape, to soar with the lark, on wings of melody.

Drifting through the melody, came the words of Tagore, that were almost music:

“Dawn sleeps behind the shadowy hills . . .
The stars hold their breath counting the hours,
Bird, oh my Bird, listen to me, do not close your wings.”

Then—the down-dropping moment; the last reluctant notes; the faces, the voices—

And she emerged from her brief abstraction to learn that she was “wanted on the ’phone.”

“Like me to answer it for you?” Clive winked at her. But she was very much on her dignity. She would not be winked at ‘in that tone of voice.’

Dignity or no, she unhooked the receiver with a faint prick of apprehension. She had never told Basil they were not coming this evening. He would be fearfully annoyed. He was fearfully annoyed. She heard a muttered swear that she may, or may not, have been intended to hear.

Would she deign to fix up an engagement with him for to-morrow? Say a mild outing on skis, followed by the tea they had missed this afternoon? Would she fix that—and stick to it?

Amused at his scepticism, flattered by his persistence, she fixed it. And she stuck to it. And she thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. He was in his most attractive mood, not pestering her with personalities; drawing her out, in consequence, with a skill and subtlety it was not in her to perceive.

*  *  *

But already, over each day’s delight, hovered the encroaching shadow of the end. Too many yesterdays, now, too few to-morrows. And the little dark imp—who lived at the back of her brain and made disconcerting remarks—meanly reminded her that so it would always be; more acutely so in the unbelievable days when one began to grow old.

“To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow . . .”

(Shakespeare was almost as bad.)

“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death——”

Was that the sole function of all her radiant yesterdays? Had they no more vital significance for her or others? How comfortable it must be to feel dead sure—like Beryl—of your own importance in this exciting and bewildering world, untroubled by the urge to seize and express the secret hidden in all living things, the beauty that passed like a wandering gleam, or a whispered promise—and was gone.

Beryl would say you were ‘dotty’ if you talked like that; but Astra would understand. Was it because she had suffered, in some way unguessed at by Eve, that she could catch the overtones of life? Eve wanted keenly to hear those over-tones; but not at that price. She had suffered herself, too early and too poignantly, not to shrink from the thought of suffering so again. But suppose—suppose it had to be?

Impatiently she brushed aside the morbid thought—the too clear foreknowledge of all the striving and hoping and suffering that lay in wait for one along those invisible miles of road. . . .

For the swiftly passing golden days were sufficient unto themselves—brimful of the simple deliciousness of life: the joy of going out each morning into that world of sun and snow; high day dissolving into golden evening; the hills fading into starlit ghosts the promise of sure and certain resurrection. A disastrous thaw presaged the end. Yet it was not the end. A tingle of frost crept back into the air, the clouds loomed up again, heavy with snow. Then—down it came, for a day and a night, softly, insidiously muffling the world; and the black choughs sat in rows on balcony railings, or perched solitary on the tips of shrouded pines.

Next morning, Eve awoke to the ‘splendour of a silver day’: opal mists hiding the valley, and the mountains brooding above them; sun-gilt patches of grey crag cutting the sky far beyond the venturesome pine woods.

Of course they were on skis all day; even Basil outdoing himself. And they had tea at the Hotel. It was far quieter now. Every day parties of people were going down the hill. Basil had been bound for Monte Carlo and tennis; but some family complication—which he roundly cursed—was dragging him back to England in the ‘unholy month of March.’ He would console himself, he told Eve, with running down to Weybridge and paying his respects—by arrangement—so that the elusive daughter might not be elsewhere.

They were sitting out after tea, lazily smoking on the wide balcony, peaks and winged curves of the Alps alight with fires of sunset. Eve leaned back, puffing smoke rings, watching blown streamers of cloud, waiting for them to catch fire; presenting to her companion’s appreciative gaze the oddly attractive blend of girl and boy that after-war fashions had produced.

He himself, even in ski-ing kit, retained the feminine-masculine aspect of his type and generation. The blended tones of his Fair Isle sweater harmonised a shade too well with the pale brown hair brushed back from his forehead. His loosely-knit figure had the grace and suppleness of the cat tribe; and his long nervous hands were too noticeably well kept. Eve, the artist, had an eye for all that; while Eve, the woman, preferred the masculine simplicities of a Clive Arden or a John Lutyens-Carlyon. Instinct told her that these things were not mere externals. They revealed the man.

This particular man, blind to the behaviour of clouds, was revealing himself in his most engaging aspect, which possibly accounted for her undesigned answer to his last remark.

“The elusive daughter,” she said, still intent on her clouds, “is hoping to be a good deal elsewhere.”

“More and more elusive?” he twitted her. “And very mysterious!”

“Not at all, only—rather unsettled. I might be on Hindhead with Miss Verity. And part of the time, I might be—on the wander.”

“Not much of a home bird, are you?”

“No. I don’t think I ever will be.”

“Till the Inevitable trips you up?”

She frowned at that. “It won’t. I shall always dodge the Inevitable.”

“And it’ll always be after you. A ghostly game of hide and seek. But the Bogey’ll get you in the end!”

A small inside shiver provoked her to defiance.

“Well, I’ll have a good run for my money. Better than strolling tamely down Its throat!” She flung her cigarette end far far into the air. “What a lot of words about me! Why do you make me talk like this?”

“Because I’m interested. When d’you think of going on the loose—and where?”

“Oh—that!” His persistence annoyed her. “I never said—on the loose.”

“Well, on the wander—much the same thing! All by your lonely?”

“Yes. That would be the point. I’d be quite happy alone so long as I had trees and birds and the sky, and a pet book or two. And I’d somehow have to carry the fiddle!”

“Marvellous! A travel with a donkey?”

“Me being the donkey?” Warming to her theme, annoyance evaporated. “With a neat rucksack and a shabby felt hat and this precious suit, I might pass for a rather fresh undergrad on the prowl.”

“You simply want to tramp the roads?”

He seemed so incredulous that she laughed softly.

“Oh no. Anything but the roads!”

“And sleep under hedges?”

“A haystack for preference—when handy. If it happened to be wet, one could always find an inn or a room. Not knowing and not caring a bean would be more than half the fun.”

Sherwood considered her pensively.

“You’re a bit of a scaramouch, in fact? I didn’t suspect it of you.”

“Oh, I am. Mad as several March hares—when the moon’s full on! Only hampered by the curse of being a girl.”

“One’s curse may be another’s blessing,” he reminded her with a meaning look.

“I don’t want to be another’s blessing! I want to be free of the whole earth and all that therein is. Doesn’t the whole earth tempt you?”

He shook his head. “I’m a strictly urban specimen. The country’s all right for tooling about in the car. As for tramping like a snail, with your house on your back—sounds penitential. I don’t mind betting you’ll find it so in less than a week.”

“That’s frightfully rash of you. But I’ll take it on. What odds?”

“Five to one,” he said glibly.

“Shillings?”

“Pounds, if you prefer. . . I shan’t have to pay.”

“You wait! When I’ve been wandering less than a week, I shall boldly write and claim it!”

He chuckled at that.

“You’re the quaintest girl. What’s your plan of campaign?”

“Just to prowl round and absorb England in May and June. I don’t hold with plans.”

She spoke absently. The clouds were distracting her again. Over the distant range they billowed, light-soaked and gleaming. Near at hand they were dissolving into flakes of palpitating colour. Seeing was not enough. There must be music, could one only hear it, in that miracle of light. Already, in spirit, she was realising her dream.

“Think of the New Forest in May,” she mused aloud. “I’d love to tramp over every foot of it.”

“You might do worse. I know it rather well. I often stay near there in the summer. I can give you an address of decent rooms if you like, in the Lyndhurst region. Might be a pleasant change from your haystacks and your stray inns. The woman’s a good sort. I patronise her sometimes for week ends.”

“Thanks awfully. It might come in handy.—Hullo! Here’s Anne waiting to carry me off.”

She stood up, smiling at him in simple friendliness, liking him better than she had supposed possible at first.

When Anne Verity joined them, he drifted away to make up a four at bridge.

*  *  *

And the day after that—it was over; irrevocably over. The familiar sitting-room—starkly tidy, a valley of dry bones; her beloved bedroom denuded, the passage choked with dismal boxes, seen as symbols of adventure only a few weeks ago!

A few weeks?

It seemed a century since the day they had all crowded on to the horrid Channel steamer, and she had come through a lively crossing unscathed.

Now the big Hotel was closing down. The lounge looked like a dismantled ball-room; portly sofas and chairs sunning themselves on the wide balcony. The final batch of visitors were going down the hill in their train—Basil among them. He had been specially pleasant these last few days. Even Clive had seemed friendlier to him; perhaps because it was the end, and he did not suppose she would be likely to see him again. Neither did she, in spite of all his talk, and the card he had given her with his Chelsea address in one corner, his New Forest rooms scribbled on the back. Because of her talent for losing things, she had tucked it away in the worn and cherished letter case that had once belonged to her father. In that case she had found a sketch of a blue poppy painted by Vanessa, dated the summer before he died. She had often wondered about that blue poppy; but had felt shy of showing it to Vanessa, who perhaps had never known all that the little sketch told Eve. As he had secretly treasured it, so did she: and there it reposed now with Basil’s card and Molly’s snapshots of the mountains and the dear Baby—to remind her of all that she would never, never forget.

At last, they were actually in the little toy train, with its bare wooden seats and fierce steam heating and patriotic Swiss windows that refused to open. Coming up, it had seemed an emissary of the gods. Now it had only one virtue—it crawled. Sometimes it even stopped to think!

It was crawling now along the narrow track that fell away to a savage looking gorge, all rocks and pines—a gorge that was verily Kashmir. And as the track turned, it seemed as if the mountains turned also, bringing fresh vistas; blue-white masses beetling into pinnacles and rugged crags, lesser heights muffled in scarfs of cloud. Now it was the village of Arveyes with the very last glimpse of Mont Blanc; and Eve uncomfortably aware of an ache in her throat, a foretaste of the nostalgia that would beset her when she was back on earth again.

She had snatched a window seat on the “khud” side—Basil laughing at her Anglo-Indian word; and had borrowed Henry Verity from his mother. She loved the warm feel of him in her arms, and it soothed her to hold anything so placid and unconcerned. He was fearfully interested in the brass door-handle; very much annoyed because it refused to come off and be sucked; almost as persistent over it as Clive was over the patriotic window, when the sun through the glass, and the boiler under the seat, threatened to roast them alive.

The cheerful Swiss party, on the other side of the open compartment, glanced nervously at Clive every time he returned to the attack: and when, at last, he discovered the trick—a case of twisting not tugging —their obvious dismay moved him to explain politely that English people had an odd prejudice against travelling ‘en casserole’! That made them laugh, if it did not reconcile them to the dangerous draught of fresh air.

Down and down; no shred of snow on the trees; only wisps on the deep roofs; the sloping banks more and more disfigured by unsightly patches of brown grass. Now it was Gryon, with its old carven chalets—that had so delighted them on the upward journey—and rugged peaks of the Diablerets miles high up in the air.

Did any of them feel the ache of leaving it all as she felt it—Eve wondered, glancing at their faces, which told so little.

Astra hardly ever looked away from the unfolding panorama of peak and forest, meadow and ravine. She loved the hills as Eve loved them; but perhaps, grown older, she had learnt to accept these wrenchings in a more philosophic spirit.

Clive sat opposite, smoking and gazing, with those curiously intent eyes of his that never gave him away. Basil, sitting next to Eve, seemed absorbed in his Saturday paper—a week old.

Once or twice she stole a glance at him, seeing him in a fresh light, entirely detached from herself. She liked his eyes, but not the full eyelid, nor the lines of his mouth in repose. Intuition, rather than discernment, hinted that you could never feel sure of him, as you could feel sure of Clive. Yet it was an interesting face. She would miss him and his talk and his frank appreciation of herself. Also, the mere fact that he was linked with the happiest weeks of her life—since Kashmir—would always give him a special place in her thoughts. The Challoner strain of fastidiousness and reserve had kept her singularly free from school-girl sentimentalities. Now, for the first time, a man had come close enough—in her own phrase—to stir some part of her that had, so far, been unstirred: a sensation that had nothing to do with liking or not liking him. Probably when he was no longer there it would pass.

Arrived at that sane conclusion, she glanced round again, wondering . . .?

This time by chance he also turned his head, and his eyes looked full into hers. He seemed deliberately to hold them so that she could not look away. Then he smiled, in his sudden charming fashion—and released her. That was the indefinable sensation; rather queer, rather exciting; but, for the moment, it so sharply antagonised her that she then and there decided she would prefer not to meet him again.

Down and down—winding through leafless woods, where the first primroses were peeping. Now it was Bex—shabby houses, pink and buff, with green shutters and flat fronts, and stiff rows of windows, the kind of houses you drew when you were five years old: and shops full of ugly cheap things; the little toy train running between them, like a tame animal till it stopped at the station, opposite the verandah of the dingy Café that had seemed so delightfully foreign and fascinating on the way up.

No sign of snow any more. After six weeks of treading only on that magical substance, they stepped out of the train on to mere earth—mere mud.

Utter dejection flooded her. She could have howled, as a child howls over a broken toy. Perhaps she looked like it. For she was suddenly aware of Clive’s hand closing on her arm, just above the elbow, ostensibly pulling her aside from a truck of luggage—telling her he understood.

“Never mind, Eve,” he said in her ear. “We must do it again some day. The more I see of men, the more I love snow!”

Book One

Brave Wings

Chapter One

She had lived, we’ll say,
A harmless life, she called a virtuous life,
. . . Which was not life at all,
But that she had not lived enough to know.
— E. B. Browning

Compton Court was an impressive house, of its type, in a residential region of singular natural beauty, not yet obliterated by the democratic conviction that all men—equally—must live. Edyth Hensley-Harrison, tacitly a democrat, had never subscribed to that particular fallacy; though the pestilential zeal of builders and bureaucrats in no way troubled her innately suburban soul, serenely encased as she was in her own surroundings, her immediate personal interests and desires. Her large garden had its tennis courts and croquet lawn, framed in dense shrubberies; its flower-beds bitten out of immaculate lawns, and a few fine trees, graciously permitted to grow as they pleased, in return for shade provided, when absent-minded English summers remembered to provide sunshine.

As was her garden, so was her house—an appropriate setting for her placid and prosperous way of life: more elegance than taste, more comfort than distinction: radiators, large cushions, a few hothouse plants and flower vases; no personal litter in the drawing-room, save for magazines and newspapers, and the library volume each one happened to be reading. Occasional review copies of serious works hinted at an intellectual atmosphere; but books as books were mainly confined to Eve’s bedroom and Hensley’s study, where disorder reigned—because Hensley would have it so. Very much absorbed in his work, and most of the day in Town, he was neither a difficult nor a disturbing element in her life—as Ian had always been.

He had wanted to marry her almost indecently soon after that terrible return journey from India; and she herself had been rather shocked at the discovery that she also wanted to marry him, though he was three years her junior, and she less than five months a widow. But, for dignity’s sake, she had insisted on waiting a full year: a year of trouble and strain. Her peculiarly devoted friend, Carlotta Randall, had been crazed with jealousy. Tony—youngest and dearest of her four children—had frightened her to death by catching diphtheria. Carlotta, who nursed him, had caught it and died, leaving Edyth a surprisingly large sum of money. Altogether it had been a most uncomfortable time.

Comfort, a well-ordered house and a not too exacting husband, her second marriage had given her. Five uneventful years, interrupted only by the arrival of Dick—now nearly four—a pleasing replica of herself. She had been glad of her belated achievement for Hensley’s sake, as well as her own. He was so kind to all the others; much too kind to Eve, whose behaviour had been deplorable. She was still an impossible child; the one tempestuous element in the becalmed atmosphere of Compton Court. Mercifully John and Beryl were polite and affectionate; called him ‘Harry’ in their young casual way. Tony—who never knew his father—called him ‘Pater.’ But when Eve condescended to call him anything, it was still Mr. Harrison, or ‘him,’ with an inelegant jerk of her head. Of course it was quite normal that the child should feel her father’s death more than the others. She had always adored him, and had been there at the time; but it was not normal to go on feeling it as she still seemed to do. One got over things, however terrible they were at the time. Edyth herself had got over her one supreme sorrow, the loss of her second boy, and that one terrible experience—the climax of her deadly seven months in India. Though they could never be quite forgotten, she would not suffer vain memories to disturb this St. Martin’s summer of early middle age.

Unfortunately there were certain reminders, less easily dismissed. Her children were also Ian’s—a detail she had always been apt to overlook. Certainly John and Beryl showed small trace of their father, except his name. The two who advertised the fact were Tony and Eve. Tony, the fruit of that first War year—when she had cared for Ian as never before or since—grew increasingly like his father. He also seemed to be growing away from her—inevitably. A few mothers there were who apparently managed not to lose touch with their sons through the difficult public school period; but they never seemed able to explain how it was done. And Tony, in the process of growing away, had transferred his devotion to Eve—a fresh count against that most individual, most troublesome of all her children, the sole living reminder of her awful time in India.

Like Tony, Eve had the haunting look of Ian; and after all these years he still seemed a part of her life. One never knew when she would talk of him or quote his opinions—even to Hensley’s face. So tactless of her. One should regard the dead as sacred, not drag them into every-day conversation. ‘Let the dead past bury its dead.’ Longfellow must have been a sensible man—in spite of being a poet. But how if the dead refused to stay buried? It was less simple than it sounded, this normal affair of keeping the past in its place. Here was Ian, after seven years, still subtly invading her life with another husband, in the persons of Tony and Eve.

And this afternoon Eve was coming home. John was coming also for the week-end—a far more welcome event. The child must have had a very good time in Switzerland; but of course it should have been Beryl, the true home daughter, who too seldom got invitations of that kind. Eve had a curious knack of attracting outsiders; but at home she was always an uncomfortable element, a bundle of contradictions; so shy, yet so independent; quaintly reserved about some things, yet tactlessly outspoken about others. Mrs. Vane had really been very kind, having her for the holidays whenever she came to England; and in the autumn she was virtually taking her over for good—an excellent arrangement all round.

Edyth had, at first, raised difficulties—on principle; partly for love of asserting her rights, partly for the base and secret satisfaction of thwarting Mrs. Vane, who had wanted, years ago, to adopt her officially, because of something Ian said when he was ill. It had all been so tragic and terrible, that she had given in for the moment—a concession to the wishes of the dead; but it would have been positively immoral—handing over your own child to a woman who was in love with your husband. So it had been further gracious concessions all along the line; and if sometimes it had been a case for gratitude, Mrs. Vane had never been allowed to know. In effect, for her own convenience, Edyth had implicitly accepted the very position she had denounced in fact.

As regards India, Eve was old enough now to do as she pleased, and that little legacy had increased her natural independence. Very unwise of Ian, making it payable at eighteen instead of at twenty-one, but he never had been wise about Eve. Meantime, she must put up with the milder gaieties of Weybridge, which no doubt she would find very dull after all her ski-ing and her hotel dancing and her London friends. Though Miss Verity was only a music mistress and a composer of sorts, the Ardens were a distinguished family. Hensley was reviewing the Arden “Letters” himself—an unusual honour. It was to be hoped that, between them, they had not quite turned Eve’s head.

Mercifully she had chosen a convenient train. The car that brought Hensley back from Town, was calling at the station to pick her up. It would be nice if John arrived first so that they two could have a little quiet time together.

She had just come in from a brisk walk; and she was sitting in her accustomed chair near the freshly lit fire, still in her coat and hat—a becoming hat. She had noticed it in the hall mirror; noticed also that she looked a good deal less than forty, thanks to her de Wynton complexion and a severely disciplined figure. As she unbuttoned her coat—feeling pleased with herself and life—she heard a car purring along the drive. That must be John: still, as always, first in her heart.

She rose when he entered—tall and fair as herself, with the same unobtrusive good looks.

“All alone?” he greeted her. “Very smart in your new spring outfit. And you don’t need telling. Vain woman!”

“Well, I like being told—by you,” she said, as he kissed her.

“Eve returning to the fold to-day?” he asked.

“Yes. Who told you?”

“Winnie’s taking a wire from her over the ’phone, Missed her train, or something.”

“Missed her train! Tiresome child——”

She was checked by the appearance of her young parlour-maid—smart and shingled, with a good deal of stocking in evidence.

As the girl went out, Edyth glanced at the written message.

“‘So sorry. Missed train. Arriving 7.15. Eve,’ Most inconvenient. Upsetting everything.”

She crumpled up the offending paper, and sat down again, feeling a shade less pleased with life.

“Hensley will be taken out of his way only to hang about for that wretched train. I shall have to send Moreton out again, when he fancies he’s finished his day’s work. And he’s been on his high horse lately.”

“Thank God, I don’t own a chauffeur,” was John’s comment on that. “But no need to fret yourself over a trifle, Mum. You’re laying it on a bit, you know—simply to make a bigger grouse against Eve! I can tool along and collect her myself; give her a mild dressing-down en route. I can also ring up the station-master, and announce the catastrophe. Save old Harry pottering about for the wrong train.”

Edyth, watching him, felt pleased with his consideration; while yet she was reluctantly aware that John seldom put himself out for anyone. If he offered to go and meet Eve, he probably wanted to meet her. But if he fancied she would be let off with a make-believe scolding, he was much mistaken.

When Hensley arrived, he gathered fresh kudos for that opportune message.

“Good man!” his step-father commended him. “I peculiarly abhor a tête-à-tête with a station platform. Rough on Eve missing her train.”

Edyth gazed at him for a moment. That view of it had simply not occurred to her.

“I expect it was her own fault,” she said, “and it won’t worry her that I have to put dinner back a quarter of an hour—if you don’t mind waiting, dear?”

“I might survive! But I don’t quite see the necessity. With any luck, she’ll be here just in time.”

“But she must go and tidy up. I can’t have her coming in to dinner all anyhow.”

His smile had a tinge of amusement, as he lightly touched her cheek.

“How she does keep us all up to the mark!”

Then he sat down, and fell into his man’s talk with John; the sins of the Government, the increasing cataract of spring books—novels and again more novels; a hundred or so littering up the office; impossible to get half of them reviewed or even mentioned.

“It amounts to mass production,” he declared with the frank disgust of a man for whom books are—or should be—literature. “The worst sinners in the publishing line are defeating their own ends.”

“And who does get time to read ’em all?” John queried sagely. “I’ve often wondered.”

“Infants and invalids. And privileged persons on the dole!”

Edyth bridled at that. She rather fancied herself as a reader.

“Which of the three am I?” she asked, with so aggrieved an air that both men laughed.

But Hensley had his wits about him.

“One of the few brilliant exceptions, my dear!” he said so promptly that she forgave him, and shed a light kiss on his hair before departing to bring Dicky downstairs for his evening hour.

While removing her hat, and smoothing her immaculately smooth fair hair, she fell to thinking of Eve. It would be nice to see the child again. She had her own endearing ways—when she behaved. Why must she go and spoil her welcome? By good luck that particular train was punctual, more often than not—

*  *  *

But inevitably, being Eve’s train, it was ten minutes late—time for the warmest welcome to cool down.

She came in laughing at some joke of John’s; very distinguished looking in her green coat and soft green hat, where a jay’s wing flashed gaily; her cheeks pink from the keen wind; no sign of the conscious delinquent in look or manner. And Edyth—who liked being propitiated—hardened her heart.

To her mother Eve presented a smooth cool cheek. Her step-father and Beryl she included in a friendly gesture.

“This is too awful! Everything in league against me. I did hope you wouldn’t wait—only for me.”

“Dinner isn’t a casual meal, dear, in this house,” Edyth patiently reminded her. “I put it back a quarter of an hour, for you—and John.”

“Oh yes—John.” She seemed rather amused. “I’m in the soup all round. Please don’t do any more waiting. If you’ll pass my frock, I can shed the rest in the hall.”

Edyth—thoroughly annoyed at her coolness—murmured assent. And as they trailed in to dinner, she secured John’s arm, smiling at Beryl, who never missed trains or delayed dinner. She was looking charming to-night in that mauve and silver, a true de Wynton; and the curves of her young figure made Eve seem rather lanky by comparison.

At table, as usual, it was Beryl one side of her, and John the other. Eve sat down by her step-father, whose friendly glance evoked her first word of contrition.

“I hope you aren’t cursing me also? I’m awfully sorry. But I couldn’t command the waves. The boat was late. Likewise the train.”

“So I imagined,” he said. (And Edyth, who had not imagined, wondered why he hadn’t said so to her.) “Bad luck, after all your fun, being racketed in the Channel.”

Eve nodded. “It was rather a nightmare. I was fearfully sick.”

John expressed his sympathy by grinning broadly—as only the immune can grin.

And Edyth thought with a shiver of distaste: “No one but Eve would say it at the dinner-table.”

Beyond that interesting piece of information, she had not much to say about her lively doings at Villars: and it was an all-round relief when the strained family meal was over.

In the drawing-room, John demanded the gramophone. Removing a few rugs from the parquet flooring, he sampled his sister’s turn-about, and further annoyed Edyth by telling Eve she could give Beryl points in all the new steps. To which Beryl rejoined with a shade of tartness, “Well, look at the practice she’s had. Every single night, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Most nights,” Eve admitted demurely, disengaging herself from John, who seemed to be aware that he had sinned. “No more, thanks, Jacko. I’m a drownded rat, fit for nothing but bed.”

Edyth’s attempt at a friendlier “Good night” only elicited one of her queer little smiles—Ian to the life. When he smiled so, she used always to feel helpless; a sensation she resented in connection with a child not yet nineteen.

*  *  *

Later on, sauntering up stairs, she noticed that the door of Eve’s room—just beyond her own—stood ajar. Beryl was in there too. She seemed to be speaking her mind about something in unguarded tones.

“You are a blinking fool, Eve!” (The sisterly compliment moved Edyth to a small smile.) “Why the devil didn’t you speak up at once about that boat-train? Riling Mummy and putting her in the wrong, which she loves to fancy she never can be. She’s as placid and sweet as a bowl of cream, when you’re off the map. But you go out of your way to turn the cream sour.”

Instinctively Edyth had moved forward and halted; telling herself she had every right—because she had every wish—to hear Eve’s answer. The child’s voice was lower than Beryl’s, but defiant and off-hand.

“That’s always been the convenient family notion. Sometimes I wish they could disband families by Act of Parliament!”

Beryl laughed. “Well, they’re crumbling automatically. Sensible people don’t have them. But that’s no answer to my question—talking putrid rot and trying to be funny.”

“Thanks awfully for noticing my effort! As a matter of fact I wasn’t heart-broken over missing that train. But I did feel rather bad about upsetting the sacred function of dinner. John warned me Mummy was very busy piling it on!” (‘John’s idea of a scolding,’ thought Edyth in parenthesis.) “And when I saw her face, I knew I’d spoilt my nice little lukewarm welcome. It was bound to be all wrong whatever I said. So the devil entered into me—and I let him rip! As H.H. seemed trying to be decent, I told him the truth. More fool me, I suppose.”

‘You’re too thin-skinned, Eve. That’s what’s the matter with you,” Beryl’s casual tone sounded almost sympathetic. “We’ve got to be philosophic and accept these elderlies the way they’re made.”

Eve sighed. We’ve got to become elderlies—which is a worse predicament.”

“Let’s hope we may be brighter specimens. But you can take it from me, silly, Mum hasn’t really got a down on you. If only you had a shade more common sense . . .”

“I’d make you a handsome present of the lot,” Eve cut in gracelessly. “Anyway—if I am downed by my loving family, I propose to survive. So you needn’t worry about me. I’ll be off the map again, first possible chance. Now do clear out, old thing. Very sweet of you and all that. But I’m dead sleepy and I feel as if I might be sick again. You wouldn’t enjoy that one little bit!”

And Edyth—glad of the warning, however indelicate—beat a swift and soundless retreat.

Alone in her room, she was smitten with shame at the indignity of her action; smitten also by the memory of another occasion on which she had been guilty of listening unseen—years and years ago—to Ian and Mrs. Vane. She had heard nothing of any moment, and had been disastrously caught out. To-night she had escaped that crowning ignominy; but it was bad enough to have done it, and to feel small in her own eyes. Their young unflattering allusions to herself and her generation—which she deemed far superior to theirs—subtly wounded her maternal vanity, her genuine affection even for that bad child who talked so casually of the devil entering in, and knew it was bound to be all wrong whatever she said. That sounded unfair; and it was one of Edyth’s fundamental beliefs that she was never unfair to any of her children. Clearly, then, Eve was being unfair to her. But the child had seemed a little sad under her light air of defiance. She had that queer unhappy streak in her; Ian again. And with her, as with him, things so often took an unlucky twist. She had not really been to blame; and as it was a case of injured feelings, for the child’s sake, and for her own credit, she would try to make amends.

That virtuous resolve restored her shaken self-esteem; It was fortunate that she had listened to them after all. Characteristically she overlooked the trifling detail that as it takes two to make a quarrel, so it takes two to make amends.

Chapter Two

I’ll walk where my own spirit will be leading,
It vexes me to choose another guide.
— Emily Brontë

Eve’s confession that she had not been heartbroken over missing that train was a flagrant understatement. She had been overjoyed; and as there had seemed no point in arriving till dinner-time, they had all rushed off—leaving registered boxes to be retrieved next morning—to Clive’s big house in Queen’s Gate, had spent a delicious hour, warming up and talking Villars in the library, with its log fire and welcoming air of home. They had secured her for a Saturday matinée at the end of the week. Then Clive had driven her back to Waterloo; and to crown all, he had kissed her at parting—as if he knew.

When at last she found herself alone in the carriage, she had ignominiously dissolved in tears: fatal result of six weeks’ spoiling. And yet—why be ashamed? Tears were given for shedding; and the relief had enabled her to scold herself mentally, to laugh at the jokes in Punch, and to accept, with philosophic calm, the vicious behaviour of her express train.

John’s warning had unsteadied her good resolutions, and at sight of Mummy’s face the devil had entered in. To be rid of him, once admitted, was a hard matter. He seemed to throw some sort of evil dust in one’s eyes that distorted one’s view of people and things. That was how it felt, those first few days at home, after six weeks of Villars and the Clives and Anne and the music that was their daily bread.

From her father Eve inherited a keen sense of atmosphere. Her surroundings were never mere surroundings; they were an essential part of life. And at Compton Court they affected her like boring people, who would never allow you to forget they were there. But her own little room, facing east, with her books and Indian treasures and the fiddle stand and untidy piles of music, was sanctuary. In younger days, when she was impudent or disobedient and Mummy said sternly, “Eve, go to your room,” she would saunter off, never revealing by the flicker of an eyelid how she revelled in her punishment. And how—in these first few days of reaction—it gave her comfort of a sort. No doubt it was mainly her own fault that at home she always felt a misfit, and never at Blue Hills with Astra, whom she was now privileged to call Anne: proof that they had taken possession of her—they three; had made her one of themselves.

There, in that foreign chalet, she had felt at home; able to speak her real thoughts, or to say any nonsensical thing that came into her head. Here she would sometimes sit through a meal and hardly open her lips. They spoke different languages—that was the trouble. H.H. seemed rather pleasanter than usual, and he wanted to hear about Clive because of the “Letters”; but even on that theme, from sheer habit, she could not expand. Beryl was far more interested in the new evening frocks—who made them and what price?—than in her wonderful snow photographs. Mummy went through those with polite inattention and murmured, “Very beautiful, dear; but it looks too chilly for my taste. No wonder they all get ’flu out there.” It was useless insisting that chilly was the word for England; that only the stuffy hotels bred ’flu. And that disposed of Villars. They had each taken an interest—after their kind; and Eve had told them virtually nothing.

But it did dawn on her, at first, that Mummy was trying to be ‘nice,’ in odd little ways, perhaps wishing to atone for her chilly welcome. And on Wednesday, she fairly startled Eve by proposing to take her for a little jaunt, because she might be feeling dull after all her gaieties.

The jaunt amounted to a day’s shopping in town—they two, hermetically sealed in the new saloon car. And of course it was a perfect morning; March behaving like May. A run in an open car would have atoned for much; but a sulky saloon, that refused to open in any weather, made you feel like stumbling into your own coffin. Through the long windows one saw the landscape in slabs, and the near trees only up to their middles. No delicious breeze; no clouds careering overhead. And Mummy—well compressed against her cushion—was chiefly concerned not to let any stray whiff of air creep between her fur collar and the back of her neck.

They said little. There never seemed anything to say. And Eve was very busy noticing patterns of branches on the blue, pictures on hoardings, faces of people hurrying by, absorbed in their own important lives.

Soon there were no trees worth mentioning, only the tangled forest of bricks and mortar that was London. But the sooty bushes in parks and gardens were powdered with flecks of emerald green, and daffodils made gay splashes of light in the fruit shops and flower stalls. Finally they passed into the great thoroughfares; a turgid stream of buses and cars and taxis crawling between miles of plate-glass windows. Then Mummy roused herself, and the real business began, trailing from shop to shop, from counter to counter; Mummy appealing to her now and then the texture of a crêpe-de-chine nightgown, the exact shade of various silk stockings, “Because you’ve such a good eye for colour, dear”; and Eve longing all the while to rush off and make a raid on a certain house in Queen’s Gate.

Lunch at Harrod’s, followed by a deadly interlude of kitchenware: then tea with Lady Bambridge—a wash-out. The things they talked about, these elderlies!

It was a positive relief to dig H.H. out of his office and have done with her exciting day in Town. The grim prospect of perching opposite those two all the way home moved her to ask if she might sit in front with Moreton.

“You odd child!” Mummy mildly demurred; but Eve’s oddness was a very old story, and they were probably glad to be by themselves.

Sitting beside Moreton, who seldom wasted words, she revelled in her escape from captivity. If only they were the least bit offensive or disagreeable, she could revel with a sustaining sense of justification. But they were stark harmless, without salt or savour; so it made her feel a graceless beast, especially as one of them had the misfortune to be her mother.

Released from boredom, her thoughts raced forward to her real little jaunt. Only two more days! The prospect lit up the long suburban road as the low sun lit up all its westward windows with a fugitive glory, and powdered its budding bushes with sparks of green flame.

A wandering cloud eclipsed the magic effect. A sharp scurry of rain peppered the windscreen. Then the sun flashed out, and all the windows caught fire again. Raindrops were bewitched into a shower of jewels. It seemed a miracle to be alive and young; too empty of earthly care to count in the purposeful world of buses and cars, all intent on ‘getting there,’ blind to the magic of this in-and-out spring day that made her feel light as a thistledown, drifting towards some loveliness, unguessed at, and not too urgently desired.

There was virtue in that last; for her fervent spirit had a tendency to spoil things by letting them hurt too much. Even happiness could hurt too much—as she had very early discovered.

*  *  *

On Friday she was cheered by a long delicious letter from Vanessa. She had been staying at the Srinagar Residency, helping Colonel Havelock Thorne—the bachelor Resident—to entertain a big shooting party. She had clearly enjoyed the whole affair, and had sat down to share it all with Eve. Calling up visions of the familiar scene, she called up, more clearly still, a vision of herself, sitting at the inlaid bureau (where Mummy was always writing mail letters, and watering them with her tears), dressed in some delicious coloured frock; her thick, goldy brown hair, her straight nose, jutting delicately, and the way her eyebrows sloped up as if she must always be questioning life—as indeed she always did.

She wrote more than usual, this time, about Colonel Thorne, whom she now called “Havelock.” Eve had only seen him once since Gulmarg days, when he was Home on furlough; and she was troubled with a lurking suspicion that he wanted to marry Vanessa. Poor man! Who could help it? The awful question was—did Vanessa . . .? Quite unreasonably, Eve resented the bare possibility; partly on her own account (rank selfishness), partly on account of her father’s memory, the most vital link between them. That long postscript to Vanessa’s gay and gallant letter, stirred a tremor of fear.

“To-day,” she wrote, “has been a day to dream of in a monsoon deluge, or a London fog. A silver morning of hoar-frost, all the near hills mantled in snow; but a midday sun, hot as April; crocuses! like little spurts of flame, and the long willow shoots blurred with green. Just before tiffin, I saw the first butterfly. It made me feel—well, you don’t need telling; though happily, you’re too young yet to know the ache of the Spring, that poignant season, when those that are lonely in spirit realise it most. I mean—the simple human need, not the artist’s inescapable loneliness, which comes from feeling too acutely the inner truth about things. Dear, oh dear! If I start babbling of green fields, like poor old Falstaff, my p.s. will outrun my letter.

“It cheers me hugely to think of you at Villars. Next winter, we must join the All India Ski-ing Club. There are fine slopes round Gulmarg. And you shall show us how they do it in the Alps! V.V.”

If the letter gave you her doings the postscript gave you her mood; and it stirred an answering ache in Eve—for all the years between—because their diverse natures were coloured by the same indelible memory, and by the artist’s response to life.

Re-reading it quickened her own private anxiety. The ‘simple human need’ would be Colonel Thorne’s ally; and here was Eve living for the day when at last she could join Vanessa, free from trammels of home and school. For the perfect fulfilling of that dream, Vanessa must be untrammelled also. Poor Colonel Thorne! But if he succeeded in capturing Vanessa—poor Eve! In the bewildering tangle of life some one must always be hurt. And how could you help hoping that it might not be yourself?

With her mind full of Vanessa, she picked up a note from Basil Sherwood, the first she had heard of him since their unromantic parting at Victoria. The sight of it pricked her curiosity. Would he succeed in making her feel that she did want to see him again, in spite of her drastic decision to the contrary?

“My dear Eve,” she read, “This is to certify that I am remembering you—in lucid intervals! At present, I’m up to the neck in family affairs. And if there’s anything duller on earth, I’ve yet to discover it.

“How goes it with you in the wilds of Weybridge, after that unkind finale? We were not precisely a heroic pair. On a lively Channel steamer, I am no ‘Casabianca’! Never mind. We’ll meet again—more becomingly, when I’m free to run out and pay that call. So say nice things about me to your lady mother and your distinguished step-father.

“Very sincerely yours (and I mean it)

“Basil Sherwood.”

She read that mannered note twice over. It vaguely antagonised the real Eve, whom he scarcely knew, while the man himself contrived to attract the other Eve, in some unwilling fashion of which she felt half ashamed. She still did not really want to see him again; though it pleased her that he should wish to come.

And here was a letter from Molly—far more welcome, telling that Clive had secured their seats for ‘The Constant Nymph.’ They would meet her in the car at Waterloo. Lunch at the Ritz and tea at home. She could scarcely contain herself at the near prospect of it all. . . .

*  *  *

And then—it was over. Eight perfect hours gone in a flash. But there would be other Saturdays, other delights; the summer itself would pass in a flash. She would be sensible and stick it out; if only to acquire merit in Anne’s eyes.

So she resolved, in exalted mood, while rushing at express speed from Waterloo to Weybridge, from virtuous decision to impulsive action.

On reaching home, there was the usual sense of landing with a bump, after any heady excursion into the upper air. Yet, she came down to dinner in a rare mood of wanting to tell them all about it. Luckily she remembered in time that Mummy had banned ‘The Constant Nymph.’ As it was not a ‘nice’ book, one couldn’t talk freely of the play—or expatiate on the joy of being with those three again. So, in spite of feeling conversational, she had not a great deal to say for herself.

It was H.H. who happened to be in a talkative mood, and who fatally fell to disparaging the Reform-ridden Anglo-Indian official, in his cool arm-chair manner that set Eve’s prickles on end. He was not, as a rule, an unfair man; but his attitude to Anglo-Indians seemed almost inimical. Mummy was quite as bad; and neither of them seemed aware of the implied reflection on Daddy. He no longer mattered. He had been dead nearly seven years. More than once Eve had flashed out irresistibly—and had been obliged to apologise afterwards. H.H. had been very decent about it; but apparently he could not help himself.

To-night he was effervescing over a distinguished Punjab Civilian, who had been quarrelling with him about certain articles, in praise of Hindu-Moslem fraternity, lately issued in the Coming Era. The privileged intruder, admitted for ten minutes, had stayed more than an hour, talking flat heresy about Goldring’s well-informed statement of the case.

“You know his line, my dear,” H.H. concluded, with a wink at his attentive wife. “In perfect good faith he distorts the whole picture. And of course he wouldn’t admit that a wide-awake onlooker, like Goldring, may see more of the game than the men who are playing it, with their noses glued to those eternal files, that form a sort of film between the official view of India and the real thing. Saw it as a cheap sneer at his sacred I.C.S.”

Mummy was smiling and bridling, very pleased with her clever husband.

“Yes, they’re all like that; Argument is useless. If one happens to see things differently, one is disloyal.”

Eve, beginning to bubble, could imagine her out there, trying to argue with Daddy.

“Well, I had my whack at Auckland. And he took it in good part. Of course he was all for the strong silent masses. His sort invariably trot ’em out. It gives them a pleasantly paternal feeling under their left ribs. Champions of the real India, the White Man’s burden. They’ve got it all off pat; never guessing that most of us know pretty well what it amounts to—their championship and their ‘burden.’ They enjoy being Somebody out there, feeling vastly superior—by virtue of a white skin—to the whole Indian continent; propping up the doomed prestige of Sahib-dom by seven-course dinners and the fetish of evening dress; till even the Indians begin to fancy there must be some mysterious virtue in over-eating and the hard-boiled shirt——”

“They don’t—It’s nothing to do with shirts or dinners. You’re being horribly unfair. . . Eve challenged him at last. “It isn’t all pomps and vanities out there. What do you know about the hot weather? They don’t talk about that. They work themselves to death——”

A foolish catch in her throat checked her torrent of protest, and of course it was Mummy who cut in.

“Eve—control yourself! You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I do.” She had swallowed her emotion, but her temper was rising. “And you know all that too. Why don’t you tell him?”

“My dear child,”—It was H.H. this time, suave as ever.—“Mother knows I don’t need telling that the modern Indian Civilian, as regards his job, has a pretty thin time of it. No one’s denying that they give of their best and get small thanks in return. Their trouble is that not one in a hundred can get inside the other man’s skin, or grasp the elementary fact that we can only make Indians trust us by giving ’em practical political proof that we trust them. . . .”

“But how can we—when it’s not one country or one period? Colonel Thorne says all the different centuries are mixed up out there; and most Indians have no true political instinct. Look at the bribery and corruption. How can you run a Government on those lines? But they think it’s only common sense. Anyhow—it’s dastur.¹ That settles it!” (She appealed to Mummy, who remained entirely detached, knowing nothing about dastur.) “When Colonel Thorne was at home an awfully nice Indian came to see us; and he said it was getting rampant again now, especially in the Police; that the only way to keep it under was—to double the British staff everywhere.”

“Good God! More Englishmen!” (H.H.’s face was a study.) “It’s combing them out we’re after—for India’s benefit. The fellow must have been talking through his hat.”

“No. He was in dead earnest. He said they wanted more Englishmen like—like Colonel Challoner Sahib——”

“Eve—!”

That warning note, whenever she mentioned her father, maddened Eve.

“Well, he did say it. And why shouldn’t I?” she flashed irrepressibly. “I’m proud of it. And you ought to be too—”

That was fatal. Her unruly member had done it this time.

“Really, child! You’re getting above yourself. Lecturing me and contradicting your step-father, who’s much too patient with you. It may be the fashion to despise your elders——”

“I don’t—I haven’t ever,” Eve retorted desperately, thinking of Vanessa and Anne. “I only——”

“Be quiet. Contradicting again.”

“Don’t badger her, Edyth.” H.H. surprisingly intervened. “It doesn’t worry me. If she is a little spitfire, she’s got some brains.”

“She hasn’t any manners—which is more to the point at her age. Switzerland has demoralised her. I’ve always heard they’re so rowdy in those big hotels.”

“They’re not! And you know I wasn’t at the Hotel.” Eve’s resentment flared afresh at the injustice of it; always Switzerland dragged in. “You say that kind of thing when you know it makes me angry. Then you swear at my temper and my manners.”

She had done it now—fatally lost her head.

“Eve, I’m ashamed of you. I never swear at anyone.”

“No—you only make other people swear,” Eve muttered, in spite of herself; and her mother’s hand came sharply down on the table.

“That’s enough. Go out of the room.”

It was the tone of school-room days; and it goaded her to sudden drastic decision.

“I am going—right away,” she said, in a voice of deadly quiet. “I’m not a child now. And I won’t be snapped at. As I don’t seem very popular at home. I’ll cut loose again—till the holidays come round.”

That startled Mummy out of her coolness. “Cut loose? What an expression! What am I to understand by that?”

It was Eve’s turn to be cool.

“I was only alluding to a tame little walking tour. Rather early in the year, but I shall love it. And it’ll be a godsend just now—for us both.”

“I never heard such nonsense.” The blank voice matched the blank eyes. “I suppose you got the idea from some irresponsible modern novel? Among people like ourselves, that kind of thing is not done.”

“Truly, Mummy, it’s done daily. Beryl knows.”

Eve spoke at random; and Beryl grinned. Her eyes said, “Go it, Eve!” But beyond that Eve knew she would get no help from her ancient enemy. It was her mother who spoke.

“Beryl knows nothing of the kind. You might be assaulted and robbed. In any case, I won’t hear of it. I presume you have some regard for my wishes?”

There was a perceptible change in her mother’s tone; It was as if they had each taken a step across the bridge between, and were measuring each other as human beings: a queer sensation to Eve. And that first semblance of an appeal moved her to say, in a low tone, “I would have some regard . . . if I felt—you cared.”

“My dear child, naturally I care. I’m your mother.”

The implied reproach glanced off Eve, who suddenly saw her chance to have done with these hampering pretences. No one ever told Mummy the truth.

“That’s the odd part about it,” she said simply. “But you don’t. You haven’t ever . . . like you care for the others. It used to hurt—long ago. Now I . . . don’t seem to care either. And where’s the use of pretending? You know you’ll be fearfully relieved when I’m gone. All of us know it too. Why can’t you say so, and let me go in peace?”

At that sudden unveiling of the decently veiled truth, her mother blinked as if a light had been flashed in her eyes.

“Really, Eve you’re an impossible person! Saying things like that to my face. I expect Miss Verity’s been putting ideas into your head. These musical people have no principles, no family feeling——”

“Oh, shut up about Anne!” Eve’s studied coolness deserted her utterly. “She’s miles above any of us——”

Her mother checked her, with a lifted hand, and rose to depart.

“I’ve had enough of this unbalanced talk. As you seem thoroughly upset by your day in Town, you’d better go straight to bed. If you’re sorry in the morning, for the extraordinary things you’ve said, I’ll overlook them. But I won’t have you running round the country by yourself. Understand that!”

“I’m going all the same,” Eve murmured unabashed.

And before her mother had quite taken it in, the voice of H.H. said soothingly, “Let her alone, Edyth. She’s got a head on her shoulders, and good blood in her veins. She won’t come to any harm.”

His wife stared at him blankly, but Eve flung him a grateful look. It was more than she deserved.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m glad some one thinks I’m not all of a fool. Good night.”

He had risen, and impulsively she held out her hand. His friendly squeeze was again more than she deserved. For she had been unspeakable to Mummy, who was walking out in stately dudgeon, followed by Beryl— the perfect daughter, who only said ‘things’ behind her back, never to her face.

As the door closed on them, Eve felt suddenly penitent. Swallowing her distaste for apologies,, she forced herself to say, “I’m sorry. Honestly I didn’t mean to be rude. But it’s rather a stiff problem—being truthful, or polite. If you say what you think, you’re perpetually in the soup. And if you keep it all bottled up—where’s the use of trying to think at all?”

He smiled at that, not as an elder smiles at youth’s dilemmas, but as one who understands.

“Speaking impartially,” he said, “as thinking’s healthy exercise, I’d sooner speak out—and risk being in the soup!”

She nodded. “So would I. Thanks awfully, for seeing what I mean.”

He politely held the door open for her; and she strolled up to bed with an air of obeying inclination rather than obeying orders.

*  *  *

She lay awake till midnight devouring a book about Beethoven, whose rebel spirit fascinated her hardly less than his music. And she woke before six, just as the false dawn was painting a few long wisps of cloud with the softest shades of flamingo and rose: woke with a faint tremor along her nerves, a tantalising certainty that she had hovered on the edge of her dream and stirred a few seconds too soon.

She had been walking along a narrow hill-path. He was there—coming quickly towards her. Another moment, and she would have been in his arms . . .

Instead, she lay alone, wide awake, defrauded of her ecstasy, gazing at a delicate pattern of beech boughs wrought upon the quickening sky.

Then she remembered last night. She had said she was going: and go she must—where? It was quite the wrong season—since haystacks would be at a discount. But here was March still behaving like May; and, for all one knew, May might choose to behave like February. These English months seemed to love whisking about and changing places in the calendar—precisely as she would have loved it, had she been born an English month instead of an ill-regulated half-Scotch young woman.

She sat up in bed and peered out. It was a morning of mist and light east wind, a missel thrush shouting for joy that he was made, small wings cutting the air. The bird’s song and the sleeping garden and that little pang of frustration waked a sudden memory of early spring mornings in Srinagar; of creeping into her father’s dressing-room, where they often shared a secret chota hazri. Then they would be off for a scamper before the day was ‘aired’—creeping out like conspirators, very careful not to disturb Mummy.

Lying back on her pillow again, she hugged the poignant memory of a happiness that was new every morning, like the love of God in her favourite hymn, which made mere going to bed seem a dangerous adventure through which one had to be ‘safely brought,’ and then bumped you down to earth with ‘the daily round, the common task, will furnish all we ought to ask.’ Not for Eve. Then, as now, the daily round personified her mother—and the very things from which she yearned to flee. Though how one fled from the basic elements of life she had never seriously considered. To-day, at least, she was going to get outside the correct cramping shell of Compton Court.

Her early waking seemed a good omen; a heaven-sent chance to pack up her troubles in a rucksack, slip into her ski-ing suit, and let herself out before even the maids were astir. Everything must be ready in less than an hour. And it was so.

Into her rucksack went her soft green travelling frock, the green hat that rolled up, her father’s picture, with Vanessa’s, in the folding case, a small favourite anthology and Travels with a Donkey, from her pocket R.L.S. A surprising number of oddments seemed essential even to the simplest form of simple life. Lastly there was her fiddle case in its waterproof cover, and her Villars stick, with edelweiss carved on it. She would take John’s old Homburger out of the hall; help herself to fruit and biscuits—and walnuts, which she adored.

She had announced her intention of going. If Mummy refused to believe it—because she so often said what she didn’t mean—that was her own affair. But it might be considerate and correct to leave a note fixed to her pin-cushion. She still had eight minutes, but there was not much to say. It had all been said last night.

“Dear Mummy,” she wrote in pencil, “I said I was going for a tame walking tour—and I’m starting now. I hope you won’t really mind. In fact, I’m sure you won’t in your heart. I can’t give an address, because I don’t know where I’m going, and I’ll be moving all the time. So you will be saved the bother of answering this. I’ll fire off a p.c. to Beryl now and then, to let you know I’ve not been assaulted or robbed! And I’ll give you fair warning when to expect your troublesome child, Eve Challoner.”

She was out of the house, walking briskly towards the station by the time Winnie—five minutes late—came downstairs.

Chapter Three

In my youth of eagle . . . I care not, though the firmament be wide. I care not, though the path be steep.
— Saint Milarapa

Often she had dreamed of it; now, at last, she had done it—eloped with herself alone!

Purely on impulse she had taken a ticket to Haslemere, knowing the region from drives with Anne. Thence she could prowl peacefully to sleepy Midhurst, and so on to the New Forest—an earthly Paradise, with or without its million leaves. Bare branches would give freer access to the sun and moon. They would weave lovelier patterns on the sky. That her walking tour should start in a train, was no matter at all. She was free to go her own way, in her own way: an Impromptu, by Eve Challoner—musical directions, “Con amore.”

Not till she was out on the open road, tramping away from Haslemere—where she had collected her picnic lunch—did she fully relish the exciting sense of escapade that recalled very young days, when she would creep out of the house, on radiant summer mornings, and escape into a little copse of birch and larch trees that was her own private corner of fairyland. She had never revealed her secret to the others. They would have laughed at her fairies and scared them away. More than once she had been caught and punished for running wild in her ‘unladylike’ fashion. But running wild was a game eternally worth the candle. Here she was—at it again.

And she would neither be caught nor punished this time.

*  *  *

The misted morning had ripened into a divine day. Up on Marley Heights, the unawakened heath was a closely woven carpet of browns and greens powdered all over with the rose-madder bloom that is its peculiar glory. Two yellow butterflies wavered past. Little flames of gorse were alight in the sombre green of ancient bushes that were almost trees. Young whortleberry tips gleamed in the dusky heather. Finches and linnets dipped and darted with small happy cries.

Seated on a springy tussock, she enjoyed her buttered scone and cheese—ordinary mouse-trap—and she had forgotten to buy salt; but no mortal cheese ever tasted so good. Chocolates and walnuts, and a large orange completed her ambrosial meal.

Then she used her tussock for a pillow—lying full stretch, hands under her head. While the spring sunlight, soft as velvet, caressed her face and neck, she surrendered herself to the blissful sense of freedom, the fun of being lost to human ken.

Though dangers and disappointments might be lurking round the next corner, this perfect morning was a possession for ever: simply to lie alone in the heather, careless of time, vibrating with all that life had not yet claimed from her, all that she intended to claim from life, with dreams and ardours of youth that come only in rare moments of quiescence, when to all one may do or be there seems no limit set.

Through her Scottish father she came of a race never really held captive to life and its demands, never content to sit by the hearth-stone and accept the caprices of Fate; always adventuring outside the realm of the possible, impelled by a passion for the unspecified, for striving, seeking, looking over the edge. Her eager spirit would always hear to-morrow calling, as the sea calls from the shore, as realms beyond man’s sight and knowledge seem to call in the blaze that heralds sunset and dawn.

And always behind that adventuring impulse lurked a whispered fear of the incalculable element that was Life—one moment glowing and kindly; the next, hostile and swift to smite. Yet the fear itself acted as a spur. The more you were terrified of lurking dragons, the more it behoved you to shut your eyes, and pretend and go forward.

But into her sun-warmed hour crept no fear of the next corner; only the prosaic reminder that tea and dinner and bed could no longer be counted on to fall like manna from heaven. The fact that they must be hunted for and paid for gave them a new interest in her eyes. The more you ran wild, the more, it seemed, you had to be practical; though the true, unpractical Eve would have loved to stay out on the heath all night—dinner or no dinner, bed or no bed.

By tea-time she had dropped into Midhurst—a fragment of unspoiled England—cottages, elms, deep weathered roofs of old farm buildings, a sturdy church tower sitting in the midst, and drifts of blue smoke dissolving in the still air. Here was beauty—of a kind; an ordered, static beauty that stirred no response in her veins. Cows and cottages, the droop and poise of prevailing elms, suggested content untroubled by striving—a Gray’s elegy atmosphere, tinged with the wrong kind of melancholy. Not the strange sadness of high moors or stony places, nor the wail of a lost soul that cried in the skirling of bagpipes, but a settled, muffled dullness of the spirit.

Looking down upon it all from higher ground, wondering where she would lay her head, it seemed suddenly not so delightful to be lost and stray. Here one could feel depression, as never up on the heath, among the gorse bushes, and the linnets and the wayward pines—rooted like any other trees, yet seeming merely to stand about, with their wild casual air, as if they could wander off at will into another county. And how about the cold spring evenings with no corner to call her own? If things started badly, she would feel a fool for being rushed into this March madness on rather slender provocation. Mummy had enraged her, but that was a very old story.

However—she had done it now; and who said failure? No tea-shop in evidence; but the Inn provided a worthy meal of bread and butter with inferior jam. The single bedroom, exhibited afterwards by a capless maid, seemed to Eve’s fastidious eye the acme of desolation; and its one small window looked into a stable-yard. She could not—would not— spend her first night of freedom in that forbidding room.

But where else?

For more than half an hour she wandered, seeking a sign; pausing once before a new pretentious house that proffered ‘Apartments (with or without board).’ It would cost too much, and she was not after that kind of thing.

At last she sighted a paling that flaunted the legend, ‘Single Bedroom to let’; and behind it an attractive old cottage sprawled over by an evergreen rose. On one side of it, scattering chicken’s food, stood a bulky woman with a large sunburnt face and a flourishing moustache. Not an inviting apparition; but Eve coolly unlatched the gate.

Out from the porch sprang a rough-haired terrier. Barking furiously, he flew at her and buried his teeth in a solid mouthful of puttee. More startled than hurt, she had the sense not to use her stick. She loved the whole dog tribe too well to be afraid of one—even in a rage.

And the woman called out in a deep voice, “Come off it, you young devil!”

“Meaning me—or him?” Eve queried half aloud, offering her gloved hand to the devil, and paying him compliments that lured him near again, his tail carried half mast and crooked, his eyes rimmed with white semicircles, begging her pardon for an error of judgment.

His mistress apologised also.

“I’m very sorry, sir,” she said, coming forward. “But the boys round here they do worrit him. ’E don’t bite in a general way.”

“He did his best this time! Lucky my puttees are thick.”

She was patting the devil’s head now, while he abjectly licked her glove.

The woman did not answer at once. She was staring at Eve’s puttees, at her masculine hat and feminine face.

“Be you a young leddy!” she asked abruptly; and Eve laughed:

“Yes, I be!”

“Well, I’m sure I beg yer pardon. But nowadays, in them things a body can’t tell ’tother from which.”

“You needn’t apologise, I’d far rather not be a young lady.”

“Ah well! That’s the Lord’s affair. Us can’t pick and choose.” Her windy sigh suggested that she too might have found her way into the wrong envelope. “Be you wantin’ the room?”

“I’d like to look at it——” Eve was cautious, remembering the Inn. “If this gentleman will let me have my stick.” He was wrestling with the end of it, snarling gleefully, “What do you call him?”

“I calls him Jarge after me son in furrin parts.”

“Well, no wonder he bites strange people. He must feel the responsibility.”

She said it quite gravely; and again the woman stared. “You do be a queer young leddy.”

“Oh, I do—sometimes. But I’m not a wandering lunatic. You won’t have the police here after me!”

The woman gravely shook her head.

“You be gentry. I know the breed when I see ’un, no matter how queer they do behave. My old man—name of Crump—he wur second gardener up to the big House. Come your ways in.”

And she lumbered down the path, looking several sizes too big for the doll’s house so ably guarded by Jarge. She escorted Eve to a box of a room, overfilled with a ponderous bed and a padded arm-chair. A blue curtain across a corner served as wardrobe, and shorter ones in the window looked clean and freshly ironed. A stodgy, stuffy little room, but it had a human air—big spiny shells, photographs, and a text or two. It was Hobson’s choice; and goodness knew where she was to spend her evening.

“Only the one night?” Mrs. Crump looked disappointed.

“Well, I’m walking on you see—to the New Forest.”

“What a tale! You won’t see nothin’ there now but a lot o’ bare trees.”

“No, I’ve rather muddled my dates,” Eve lucidly explained. “I’m going to have some fun out of it, all the same.”

The woman’s large smile was almost motherly; and they did not quarrel over terms. Eve was glad to find she need not seek her dinner at the dreary Inn. Mrs. Crump would serve her ‘a bite’ in the parlour, which was chilly and stuffy, like the bedroom, and lit by a single lamp. Eve would have preferred the kitchen. There would be a fire. There would also be Jarge. But hampered by dignity and shyness, she resigned herself to the parlour, to mutton chops and a square slab of greens and some horribly damp potatoes, supplemented by two baked apples and a cube of stale cheese. That dumped-down, unappetising meal brought home to her, in plain terms, the sheltered fastidious creature she was; but, being hungry, she ate most of it with zest, if without relish, reading Travels with a Donkey between the mouthfuls.

It was a longish drop from Stevenson’s night under the stars to that pale chunk of cheese—a very distant relation to the ambrosial mouse-trap of Marley Heights. Eat it she could not; yet Mrs. Crump might feel pained if it were left untouched.

Happy thought! There was Jarge nosing at the door. He trotted in hopefully. Anticipation gleamed in his eye, and quivered in the tip of his tail. He was the dearest person. She cleft the chunk in two —nearly smashing the plate—flung him the larger half, which he gulped down with the comfortable, unashamed greed of a dog, his gaze telling her plainly that he was her abject slave for evermore. At the risk of sinning against the parlour carpet, she gave him the two bones as well, and he seized them with furtive eagerness, darting behind the one big chair, as if he knew all about the risk, and would not implicate her for the world.

And after all that, it was barely half-past eight. She felt too chilly and restless for any settled occupation. The fire behind its cheap screen was temptingly laid. Why not? This was her first lone evening; and the little dark imp who lurked in the shadows, must not be allowed to make depressing remarks. So a match was applied to the fire, also to the end of a cigarette. Then she crept upstairs to fetch a slim green book in which all the doings of her wander-month were to be truthfully recorded for the benefit of Vanessa and Anne.

She returned to find the fire crackling bravely. The corpse of her meal had vanished, and Jarge lay on the hearthrug—a whited sepulchre; within were dead sheep’s bones. He thudded with his tail at sight of her as if he had loved her for years, and was trying, in his doggy fashion, to save her from feeling too successfully lost and lone.

Of course she made love to him, which was what he wanted. Then she opened her book and pensively turned its blank pages, wondering what would be written on them in a week’s time. Probably nothing of any moment, in spite of Mummy’s melodramatic forecasts. Stealing John’s hat amounted to an inspiration.

Back to page one, that seemed to demand some form of headline. Recalling her thought in the train, she wrote: “Impromptu: By Eve Challoner. Op: I. Con amore.”

“Resolved: Not to babble too much about myself.

“Not to make my penny plain picture tuppence coloured, by way of enhancing the effect.

“Not to mislay my ever-present sense of humour.”

“That’s the most important of all,” she sagely reflected, “so long as you can laugh at yourself, you can always worry through.”

For a full hour she wrote briskly and happily, recording the impressions and sensations of this very first day, that had a peculiar significance over and above the rest. The kindliness of it and that wonderful morning on the moor, gave her a sense of benediction, silenced the dark imp and his fatalistic forebodings.

*  *  *

By half-past nine, she was on the road again, having resisted the temptation to spend a second night with Mrs. Crump—though she might not have such luck again. The kindly creature had pressed her to accept a lift from a young carter, who happened to be going her way for a matter of seven miles.

He was a heavily silent young man. By the end of her seven miles they had barely exchanged half a dozen remarks: but he accepted her shyly proffered three shillings with a capacious grin and a muttered, “Thankee kindly, miss,” as she set her foot on the wheel, and dropped lightly down to the road.

Bereft of those silent, companionable presences, she felt like a stray parcel dropped on the map of England. Clouds had blown up, bringing a fine spatter of rain, and Lyndhurst still seemed a long way off. For three hours she tramped, regardless of rain; lunched inside a ruined shed, and decided that something drastic must be done, if she were to reach Lyndhurst for dinner. An approaching tradesman’s car fired her to a bold inspiration. She would pay any reasonable price for another lift: and up went her stick—just in time.

The driver—bound for Winchester—was as willing as Barkis; asking no payment, content with a tip. His melancholy face belied him. He talked on and off the whole time; and lifted his cap at parting.

The old grey city tempted her; but time was too precious for a prolonged explore. In a certain famous tea-shop she spent a satisfying half-hour; and lumbered on to Lyndhurst in one of the ubiquitous green buses that haunt the highways of Hampshire and Dorset. Buses were not in the bond; and there must be no more compromises, once she reached her true destination—the New Forest.

Chapter Four

Yet often, borne upon strange wings
Into my heart, there stirs in me
Some questing dauntless soul, that finds
No comfort in serenity.
— H. Simpson

A clear night of moon and stars, a nip of frost in the air, intensifying the stillness; and all around her, for miles on miles, that noble and varied expanse of English country ineptly called the New Forest—nowhere more beautiful than in the beech-haunted regions of Burley Old Wood and Emery Down.

For all its towns and villages, its meadows and tracts of open heath, for all the impertinent intrusions of urban-minded man, it is still in the main a world of trees. And to the daughter of Ian Challoner a tree was no mere “green thing that stands in the way.” She had read and re-read every word he had written about trees in the unfinished book she was to work at with Vanessa in Kashmir—the book he had prefaced with Edward Carpenter’s challenging question, “Has any one of us ever seen a tree?” Walking among them, in this mystery of moonlight and white frost, she felt livingly aware of them all about her—astir with the secret process of renewal, from their roots to their loftiest branches, ‘sharing and uniting the life of Earth and Sky.’ Instinct with the sadness and beauty of all wild things, in darkness they regain their age-old majesty.

It was a poet who called the silver birch ‘Lady of the Wood’; he spoke truth, and the poet, as distinct from the dreamer, is he who sees and knows; a spirit acutely alive and awake in a sleep-walking world. But if the Birch is a lady, the Beech is of the blood royal: and to-night Eve moved in a world of beeches—sculptured limbs, all moon-silvered, a riot of outflung branches tapering to leaf buds delicately curved like claws.

On and on she wandered, careless of direction as a bird in the air—the Bird of Tagore’s loveliest poem:

‘There is no word, no whisper, no cry . . .
There is only your own pair of wings and the pathless sky,
Bird, oh my Bird, listen to me, do not close your wings——’

On and on again, choosing the old grass paths for the feel of turf under foot and for love of deserting the beaten track. This was the real thing at last; not tramping to get there, but simply walking, world without end. Even if she lost her bearings, if she found no stray corner where she could snatch a few hours’ sleep, it would be no great matter. There would be no one to fuss over it. (Hallelujah!) Fortified by that hotel dinner at Lyndhurst—on which she had splashed wisely and well—she could walk on and off, if needs must, till dawn. Her abounding youth and vigour would survive.

Here was beauty, here was happiness unalloyed, in these few exquisite hours that were slipping away with every breath she drew. Already the artist in her divined that Beauty can neither be known nor held, that all achievement is but a ceaseless pilgrimage towards That Unattainable.

And passionately she desired to achieve; to be one of those who wait ‘by the pool of silence in their own hearts and declare to the world the music they have heard.’

But that was for afterwards. Meantime, there came these lovely moments, sufficient unto themselves; to be alone in this world of eerie light and shadow, of life unseen, unheard; to watch it all with a delicious be-creeped feeling, but no shiver of fear; to listen for the many stray sounds of night; small creatures stirring in the beech-mast, owls hooting, the whisper of falling leaves, that had clung, here and there, through the winter only to be pushed off by the swelling buds of Spring—an orchestra of tiny instruments, playing on muted strings. It was her complete absorption in it all, the reality of her tree-sense that cast out fear. Lost in her surroundings, she almost forgot her seeking self, her lone adventure, in her sense of being one with the forest and the night. . . .

A little way off the path, ancient and splendid beeches stood about in groups as though conferring together. Tempted to wander among them, she turned aside into the muffled ways of the forest, and stood still at last under one of them, so majestic and far spreading, it seemed a world rather than a single tree.

Dumping down her rucksack and fiddle-case, she leaned against it, patting the mossy trunk as if it were a friendly dog, and gazing up into soaring branches, stirred by a breath of night that could not be felt down here. So standing, so gazing, she could almost feel how very much alive the creature was, brooding through the centuries, wrapped in its cloak of secret wisdom. Even science—long after the poets—was discovering the thrill in matter, the pulse of sentient growth. It was all around her now—urgent, life, awake and possessing the earth, everywhere, pushing up out of the dark; and the artist in her craved, suddenly, imperiously, to express her own inner awareness of it all. . . .

Sudden inspiration flashed. Here were she and the beloved fiddle alone with these great trees and the moon and the stars. Was there ever such an audience? Wasn’t it worth being a March Hare—or his first cousin—to stumble on a chance like this?

Stooping down, she opened her case, took out the violin, and tightened her bow. Then, very softly she tuned up her instrument. Then, clear and true, rang out the single poignant notes of the Last Post—its solemn call (the soldiers’ ‘Come Home’) rising and falling, and again rising, out of anguish to triumph at the close.

Her right hand dropped to her side. She stood motionless, hearing it over again, like a wraith of sound wandering in the moon-splashed darkness. Perhaps it was a magic wrought by her royal audience. Perhaps they wanted more. She would give them more.

This time it was the air of a Beethoven Largo, enriched with double stopping—a quiet noble thing that seemed created to express the scene and the hour and these large friendly trees, unaware of their surpassing beauty.

From the Largo, with a small shiver of ecstasy, she slipped into that loveliest of Celtic melodies, ‘The Londonderry Air’—the deep-toned opening bars, piano pianissimo, as if she were thinking aloud; thought blossoming into speech, into song, as the melody soared from bass to treble; its grave beauty enhanced by Kreisler’s iridescent harmonies. Now she gave it out freely, with dignity and fervour, a large simplicity of rendering, learnt from Anne; working up to the climax with a thrill of triumph, undimmed by repetition—the triumph of reaching the mountain-top and seeing the Other Side.

That was the inner meaning of it all for Eve, an perhaps it had meant that to her father also? Could he hear his Madcap Eve playing it now? Perhaps . . . perhaps . . .?

When she ‘came to,’ her hands and feet were cold. To warm them she walked briskly up and down; loth to leave this enchanted spot; possessed by the spirit of music as never yet; wandering melodies taking shape in her brain, as if she were a human violin in the hands of some daemonic virtuoso, who could play upon her as he would. She halted, feeling warmer now, amazedly aware that she had been making—hearing her own music, not other people’s. Could she reproduce it on the fiddle?

Returning to her beech tree, she stood erect, her bow poised, as if waiting for some ghostly conductor to give the signal.

It was there. It came—tentatively at first, with a sense of feeling her way, listening while she played, intent on the thought behind her music.

‘I am restless, I am athirst for far-away things,
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance,
O Farthest End—O the keen call of thy flute . . .’

In all music that ever she made, there would be that suggestion of flight, that beating of wings——

Suddenly there seemed no more to say; no more to hear. It was over. To-morrow she would write it all down—perhaps only to find it was a fresh pattern woven from echoes of remembered things. Even so, she had had her moment, her first audience—the beeches of the Forest, the moon and the stars.

Now, back on earth, she felt cold and hungry, aware that she was virtually lost, and quite untroubled by the fact. She must walk briskly, munch her stick of chocolate, try to be sensible—after all that!

While replacing the violin, she became aware of a definite movement among the many small sounds that made up the silence of the Forest. A footstep? Could there be other March hares abroad at this witching hour? And she, by her music, had been advertising her whereabouts.

Oddly enough, the first hint of another human presence stirred the first shiver of fear.

That sound again; cautious footsteps coming her way.

Hurriedly she snapped her case, slipped on her rucksack, and fled along the grass track, heedless of direction, so it be away from the stealthy intruder—instinctively visualised as a man. And what harm in a man? she reasoned with herself, beginning to feel rather a fool. It was Mummy’s fault for saying she might be assaulted and robbed.

The steps seemed to be following her—quicker and quicker, thudding softly on the grass. And as she sprang aside from the path, her ear caught the familiar rhythm: hoofs!

Next moment two forest ponies trotted past, black in the pearl-grey light. Dear and beautiful creatures! Had the mysterious sound attracted them, and, in some way, excited them? No one really knew anything about the effect of music on animals. And she—the veriest owl—bolting away from her own audience!

The short sharp run had warmed her; and now—what next? She consulted her wrist-watch. It was just after one o’clock. Would she really have to tramp all night? There might be houses and people within easy reach, if she only knew? As well turn back, as go on; so she walked back, munching her chocolate, no longer afraid.

Looking this way and that, her eye was attracted by a solitary gleam; and she made straight towards it through the trees. It proved to be an electric lantern hanging from an arch above a wrought-iron gate. Behind the gate loomed a black and white house—sound asleep. Buildings on the right (stable or farm?) offered the chance of slipping through a gate on the latch—a shed, a hayloft, the nearest thing to a haystack that the wrong season could offer.

She found a gate, and gingerly pushed it open. This was a mild and pedestrian adventure; but dearly she loved it. Exploring with care and caution, she came on an open shed that smelled invitingly of corn and leather: through a high window the moon looked in, and showed her a bundle of horse blankets in one corner, more inviting still. And the smell of stables was Peshawar—Shahzada, Zaidée, all the dear horses.

Huddled between two blankets, with her rucksack for a lumpy pillow, and her fiddle-case in her arms, she dropped sound asleep—on an unfinished thought that she must manage to wake early, and not be caught out.

*  *  *

Naturally she failed to wake early. She was roused by a hand dragging off her blanket and a man’s voice saying roughly: “Cool sort o’ fish you are. Makin’ free o’ the General’s blankits. You jes’ clear out. You deserve I should report you.”

For a second her wits were astray; but when the speaker laid hands on her fiddle-case, she sprang up and faced a big man in shirt-sleeves with nice eyes, and a look of habitual temper about his mouth.

Already he was staring at her as if his wits were astray.

“Beg pard’n, Miss,” he stammered, in reply to her brief apology, “but we ain’t useter this kind o’ thing.”

“Nor am I!” She smiled at him, pushing back her tumbled hair; and briefly she translated her ‘explore’ into a plausible-sounding dilemma, that she might not forfeit his respect.

“As my father was a Colonel,” she added, on a happy afterthought, “I think the General—if he knew—would forgive me this once!”

The nice eyes smiled at that, and the tempersome mouth relaxed. It was surprising how her shyness evaporated in contact with these unvarnished country people, of whom she had seen too little in her suburban life.

It seemed entirely simple and natural to accept the suggestion of a breakfast in the head groom’s cottage with his brisk wife and two children; only strange to find that, for all her wandering, she was still in the Lyndhurst region. Taking so many random turns she must have swerved and circled back unaware. The brisk wife showed her a map of the Forest, and directed her to a village shop. Then she was off again, bound for Mark Ash, the loveliest beech wood in the region.

There she would sit and scribble her music, also a letter to Blue Hills. After that—the eternally fascinating ‘What next?’

It was a morning of muffled light, a little lazy wind stirring the tree-tops, cloud films veiling the sun. Beneath that veil the spring seemed withdrawn and waiting, giving out fragrance of moss and budding leaves and moist earth. Here and there a gleam of blackthorn blossoms, frail as snow-flakes, and the ardent emerald of young hawthorn leaves unfolding in this deceptive early warmth. Except for the birds, everything was quiet—a living quiet with promise at its core; a million leaves, sheathed in swelling buds, on the boughs of masculine oaks, all knuckles and elbows, on stately chestnuts and beautiful bare ash trees, like branching coral: everywhere the mysterious sense of quickening. And in her own veins the same unresting pulse, never missing a heart-beat in all the days and months and years.

If one could but catch and hold the spring—invent a charm that would keep the very young leaves unchanged, were it only for a few weeks. But, no! For all its deceptive stillness, the seconds and minutes were urging it ruthlessly on, dispelling her trance of unimpassioned peace, with its whispered hint of great things to be. Perhaps something big and breathless would sweep her right out of the world of good behaviour, where she often felt stifled and wanted to scream. There seemed no end to the exciting possibilities ahead, when one was not yet nineteen.

Possessed by the mood of Spring, she was in no hurry for them to happen. She preferred to feel them hovering on unseen wings. To be alone with her budding gift, her elusive vision, to escape from intimate human contact—these were the driving impulses of the moment, nor did she seek to analyse them. With all her faculties she was absorbing here and now, saying softly to herself:

“Do not wander too far into time at all, lest with the Everlasting Now, the centre of all life and experience, and your own true lover, you fail to keep your first appointment.”

Edward Carpenter drew his wisdom from the woods. He knew. Wandering too far into time was a sure and certain way to rouse the little dark imp in the shadows. Already she was aware of the creature, was trying to ignore his malign murmur that those exciting possibilities might never materialise, that life has a mean trick of letting you down in all manner of unexpected ways. You might lose a finger—and no more going mad on the fiddle. You might become blind and have to live in the dark—you and the imp together. In that case, you would probably go mad, quite a merciful form of piling on the agony. You might make a fool of yourself and marry the wrong man, an even more scarifying thought, because it seemed the more probable. If you were not really clever about men, once you began having sensations about them you might be all kinds of an idiot. That was the penalty one paid for the ‘sorrowful great gift of imagination’—seeing both sides of the medal, realising too sharply that it was at once a glorious and a tragic thing to be young.

The idea of marriage, in any case, vaguely alarmed her. Partly no doubt it was her zigzag temperament; but mainly it was her clear inner sense of life as something very real and private, something intrinsically your own, that you could not share with any other, even if you would. But then, she was not a true sharer—like Molly, for instance. Hers was the shy, intense, separate nature that hides its treasure as a dog hides its bone. Subconsciously too, her whole idea of marriage—the very word domestic—was coloured by association with her mother, by the clock-work correctness of Compton Court, by the unplumbed tragedy of her father’s married life. On the other side of the medal—Vanessa and Anne; both enviably free, as she saw it, to lead fuller, more varied lives untrammelled by husbands, beloved or otherwise. Intuition might whisper that freedom—like any other earthly good—must be bought with a price. To the winged spirit of the artist, almost any price seemed worth paying. If there were going to be large freedoms available, in her world of mountains, she purposed enjoying them to the full: no perch to perch hittings, but the pathless sky. Her little dark imp might whisper—and welcome. She would neither heed, nor close her wings. She was happy.

And the evening and the morning were the third day.

But the third day, before it closed, meanly dissolved in wind and rain. The downpour caught Eve not far from Mark Ash, where she had lunched in high content among kingly old trees, each in itself a noble picture. Grouped in careless grandeur, they formed a sylvan cathedral without walls; pillars and lofty aisles gilded with pale sunlight; no roof at this season but the sky; and beyond, through those living aisles, a vision of wild heath-land, where the gorse was beginning to light up.

Here indeed was sanctuary; and it gave one an inward shiver to think of these noble trees, built up through the ages by sun and soil, at the mercy of man with his short-sighted craving for quick returns. Even here, where they seemed safe from human greed, grand old beeches were being felled (so Anne told her) to be replaced by more pines, natural enemies of the Forest trees, because the wood ripened rapidly and was favoured by jerry-builders—pests of the countryside; and the beech had now no virtue to commend her but her surpassing beauty; an unregarded asset in a utilitarian age. Happily there remained a few who cared, who still had power to save.

Eve had spent two blissful hours under the mightiest beech of them all, that split into six vertical columns, with never a branch till somewhere near twenty feet above the ground. The sun had peered out and smiled on her, while she munched sandwiches and scribbled her very first fragment of music, discovering in the process all the demons that haunt the dark transit from vision to expression.

Then the wind blew up out of the west, and a driving rain sent her back at a brisk trot to the prose of roofs and fireside—the precious fiddle-case, for double security, tucked under her coat. It was damping and disheartening to be a drowned rat so early in the day; to be blustered at, as if Fate, with a gigantic broom were trying to sweep her out of Paradise. But she would not be swept out. She would not be treated like one of last year’s leaves.

And suddenly she remembered—Basil’s rooms were in this region. Common sense urged that it might be wiser to secure a foothold, in the heart of things; to strike out in various directions, not carrying your house on your shoulders. The woman at the village shop would surely know where this Mrs. Bardopp was to be found.

She did know. And by six o’clock Eve was translated into a correct young lady, wearing her green frock, sitting by the fire in her own room—such as it was. A ‘room’s room,’ she lucidly defined it: two arm-chairs, fumed oak sideboard, curtains and tablecloth of harmless art-green serge, a copper bowl and a few slim vases striking an artistic note. Yet she did not like it nearly so well as Mrs. Crump’s parlour. Here was no feeling of home, no background; only an attempt at being ‘genteel.’ Nor did Mrs. Bardopp—flat-faced, with restless eyes and a trick of furtively moistening her lips—inspire the same confidence as her friend of the fourteen stone and the flourishing moustache.

Oh yes, she knew young Mr. Sherwood well. Any friend of his could rely on her best attention. And Eve, feeling shy, almost distrustful, made her modest arrangements for bed and breakfast; picnic lunch and hot supper, as required. To-day, after her wet tramp, she voted for a late substantial tea. Then, if the sky cleared, she would wander in another direction, hoping to hear more music in her head.

It cleared beyond her best anticipation; but before starting, she must see Mrs. Bardopp and gently intimate that she was not the bed-at-ten, tea-at-eight kind of lodger. Hideous word! Probably the creature called them ‘guests.’

She appeared on demand, very elegant, in grey silk and false pearls.

“As it’s fine now, and the moon’s full, I’m going for a tramp,” Eve announced. “I might be rather late coming back——”

“No matter at all, Miss Challoner. I send Florence to bed at ten, but I’m always up till half-past.”

The compressed smile dared her exceed that generous length of rope.

“But isn’t there a key you could let me have? I might be later than that. I love walking at night.”

It was the simple truth; yet it did not sound convincing. She could feel those restless eyes probing her with mingled curiosity and amusement.

“Well, of course I have duplicate keys; but it’s not my custom. And it’s cold for strolling by moonlight. If you’d prefer to bring the young gentleman here——?”

“There’s no gentleman to bring.” Eve tingled as if the woman had slapped her face. “I like walking in the Forest at night. I—I compose music.”

She hated saying that, on the strength of a page or two; but it might carry conviction.

It evidently did.

“I’m sure I beg your pardon, Miss Challoner.” No mistaking the subtle change in look and tone. “Musical folk do have queer tastes. You’re welcome to a key; but I wouldn’t advise later than eleven. It’ll be damp after all that rain.”

The murmur of prudent ‘do’s and don’ts’ pursuing her even here! She accepted the key with dignity—not quite certain, even now, whether she was believed. What did Basil mean by it—recommending to her a woman who could suppose . . .? Probably that sort of thing wouldn’t worry him, if she gave him good dinners and hot baths. But Eve could not long remain with those restless eyes, that suspicious mind. For a few days she would scour this lovely region, enjoy the pleasure of walking unburdened; then she would push on, taking her chance. That, after all, was the essence of adventure.

The intrusion of Basil reminded her that here she was winning her bet—and at the wrong time of year. To-morrow she might fire off a note to that effect, thanking him for this address; but of course the bet was a ‘wash-out.’ She only wanted to enjoy her small triumph. It was also about time to favour Beryl with a picture postcard, in case Mummy was troubled with qualms. Impossible, being human, to prevent the world from breaking in; but it should not intrude upon her evening hour.

Walking briskly, through a wide belt of forest, she emerged on to open moorland—just in time. All the tree-tops were alight, the wind very quiet, the dusky heather blotched with violet shadows. Torn cloud-fleeces, mingling softly and softly disengaging, were flushed like the inside of a shell, and the sun was smouldering behind a wooded hill: high Hampshire and the wilds of Dorset meeting the sky in a clear wash of blues and greens empurpled by rain. In the blue of distance there was more than enchantment, there was a shifting of values. In life, as in art, so much seemed to depend on distance; luring the mind from the near thing, with its air of immediate importance, keeping the balance true. And beyond that blue distance, miles and miles of lovely English counties, all aglow in the last of the daylight.

Presently the sun vanished and the wind dropped to a tuneless sighing among dried heath-bells. As the mist rose from the valley, all sharp outlines were lost, and Earth shook herself down to the sleep that was renewal of life. Under this quiet sky, it seemed simple and natural to sink into her breast, simple and natural to believe there was renewal of life also in the profounder sleep of Death. . . .

Drunk with fine gladness and the chill fragrance of the spring night, she would fain have run wild on the moon-bewitched heath till dawn. But to-night, she must not lose herself, in spite of her key. Mrs. Bardopp would sleep with one ear open, would know to a minute when her ill-regulated guest crept up to bed. One might almost as well be tamely playing truant from Compton Court. In a few days she would cut loose again: once more be a bird on the wing.

Chapter Five

God made him—therefore let him pass for a man.
— Shakespeare

Wednesday dawned, serene and splendid; and if Mrs. Bardopp had kept one ear open, she said no word. She supplied a picnic lunch on demand; very polite, very correct—but none the less detestable; and Eve set out for her tramp burdened only by lunch and her Anthology, pencil and paper.

It was a day of days; and Thursday almost equalled it, though there were signs of coming change. This time she remembered the dutiful postcard and the note to Basil, claiming her triumph, disowning her bet; adding that probably to-morrow she would be on the move again. So he need not trouble to write. If they met in the Easter holidays, she would tell him about the Great Trek.

By Thursday evening, she had enjoyed her fill of walking without end. Blissfully tired, she tumbled into bed before ten, and slept till after eight, like any correct lodger from London.

Grey skies and the patter of rain reconciled her to even Mrs. Bardopp’s fireside, where she could peacefully write up her diary and finish her mail letter, wearing her green frock and pretending to be a lady. She had bought some early daffodils, and the freshly lit fire gave the room a companionable air that waked the natural human need to talk, to listen. But she would be deliciously happy alone. For all her fervours, she was a born solitary, like her father. She must escape, at times, from all human demands. By a rare stroke of courage, she had escaped; and it was satisfying to feel that until one pressed the button the world could not break in.

As she tapped her boiled egg, there came a knock at the door. It was Florence.

“A telegram for you, Miss. Any answer?”

Eve took the thing gingerly, as if it were a live bomb. The world violently breaking in. . . . She read it at a glance.

“Don’t melt into the landscape. Coming Lyndhurst Crown Hotel for week-end. Arrive this afternoon. Writing, Sherwood.”

“No answer,” she said without looking up.

As the door closed she re-read that amazing message; crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the fire. What right had he to order her about? Nothing would be simpler than to drop a polite note at the hotel—and melt into the landscape, as planned. Ghostly fingers plucked at her heart, urging her to go. Yet, in the face of that telegram, she could not see herself behaving so. Why?

She sat staring at the ponderous blue satin cosy, with impossible tulips painted on it, while her egg grew cold.

It was nice of him wanting to come, argued the Eve who had a way of taking his part. He was clever and amusing. It would be a reminder of Villars; and indirectly it was her own doing. The fool she was, flaunting her twopenny triumph. The bigger fool she would look running away from a harmless young man, making too much of herself and the whole thing. His intrusion could do no more than ripple the surface of her deep content; and yet, recalling that look in the train, she felt half afraid—of what?

She grimaced at herself, at the undesired intrusion, at her mouthfuls of tepid egg—a particular abomination.

Finally she decided to take her walk in the Lyndhurst direction, and leave a note at his hotel, asking him to dinner. A postscript informed him that she was off for the day, but would try to be back for tea. Vainly she clutched those last few hours of solitude. Basil’s invasion had already begun. She was no more really alone than if he were walking at her side.

The morning of thin laminated cloud blossomed into a perfect afternoon; and the Eve who disapproved was longing to be alone with the evening lights among the trees. Why should she go back for tea? He had virtually invited himself—though she foresaw how skilfully he would twist it the other way round. But, constrained by simple good breeding, she returned just before five.

There was the two-seater—an elegant silver grey Singer, and from her sitting-room came strange melancholy sounds. He was trying to coax some semblance of music out of her violin. How dared he lay unskilled hands on her treasure?

He was on his feet when she entered, the fiddle set aside, but she glanced at it as they shook hands.

“Did you hear my moans of anguish?” he answered her glance. “I was half afraid you’d skilfully succeeded in getting lost!”

He was holding her hand close, holding her eyes also; looking her up and down, with undisguised satisfaction.

“A treat to see you again—in Villars kit. And you’ve not lost your sunburn. It suits you, running round on the loose.”

“It suits me better than anything in life.”

“This little place came in handy all the same? Mrs. B.’s a good caterer, isn’t she? Thanked me for the introduction. ‘Such a clever young lady. So energetic. Tramps about the Forest half the night.’ Is that the moon madness?”

Eve nodded; annoyed with Mrs. Bardopp, and feeling instinctively on her guard.

“Still keen on your own company?” he twitted her, with his engaging smile. “Rather bored because I jumped at the chance? But you fairly asked for it.”

“I didn’t. I never dreamed you’d come rushing into the country at this time of year.”

“You underrated the power of the magnet! Anyhow, I’m definitely glad I came, even if I’m not received with open arms! And thanks for suggesting dinner. Much pleasanter here, with a little room to ourselves; but you must honour me to-morrow. I looked in on a wine-merchant, and bought a bottle of Moselle. Sparkling stuff, and not too dry—— Hullo, here’s tea! I’m ready for it.”

Eve was thankful for it. The simple act of pouring out his tea, of sharing a meal, eased her constraint. And she liked the harmonious look of him; the new suit, in which greens and blues were cunningly mingled; blue socks and tie, the glimpse of blue silk shirt and suède shoes. Too feminine, the whole effect; but it satisfied her eye for colour. And by the time they had arrived at cigarettes, he was expatiating on Basil Sherwood—his life and work—quite in the manner of Villars days. Her note, it seemed, had arrived at a moment when he was in difficulties with a bust that wouldn’t come alive, and a short story that refused to march.

“Amounted to an inspiration,” he informed her with one of his looks. “You must let me run you round the Forest, and we’ll have some fun incog. I’ve not forgotten that you’re as mad as several March hares when the moon’s full on.”

She wrinkled her brows over that March hare reminder. Impossible to explain that her moon-madness was an effervescence of the spirit. He would no more understand than she quite understood what his idea of having some fun might be. So she smiled and said nothing. On the whole she preferred to listen.

He was enlarging now on his main grievance—the short story. Tempted by a competition offering a substantial prize, he had dashed into it unprepared; and after a brilliant start, all the life had gone out of it.

“Stuck! That’s my dilemma.” He helped himself to another cigarette. “Not a puppet of them all will shake a foot. A few days on the loose with you may reverse the process. One never can tell. We authors are at the mercy of something not ourselves, that doesn’t always make for righteousness. It’s one of the penalties of being an artist.”

She regarded him pensively. He never seemed genuine when he talked like that. It wasn’t the mark of the real thing. Anne never babbled about being an artist. The fact was as obvious as the colour of her eyes.

“How—how exactly would you define being an artist?” she ventured, moved by more than mere curiosity.

His eyebrows ran up.

“Definitions are the root of all evil. What’s yours? Being it—you ought to know.”

She laughed and shook her head. “I can’t put things like that into words.”

“You never know till you try. What do you feel about it?”

“Well, I chiefly feel that it has nothing to do with being clever. It simply—colours everything. It throws magic dust in your eyes. . . . You know ‘That’s a tree, that’s a violin.’ At the same time, you feel, ‘It’s a miracle—an ecstasy.’ Oh dear! That sounds utter nonsense. But it isn’t——”

“No, it isn’t!” His abrupt laugh seemed rather forced. “And if you’ve got it right, I’m nowhere. For me—unless I’m blotto—a tree’s a tree, a fiddle’s a fiddle: though it may approach being a miracle, when handled by you!”

“That’s not the point.” Why must he always drag things back to themselves? “But if you will twist it round to you and me, well—you’re a brilliant person. And you know it! I’m an ill-mannered girl, talking nonsense and applying the wrong kind of stimulant!”

“You’re a lot more than that. And you know it.”

Moved by the genuine feeling in his voice, she flung out her hand in a gesture of contrition.

“Basil, I’m not just being perverse. I want to apply the right kind of stimulant.”

For answer, he captured her hand, and kissed the soft inside of her wrist.

Startled and angry, she snatched it away, rubbing the spot he had kissed against her knee; wondering uneasily—what next? Was the dilemma of the short story only a plausible prelude—to this? The brief, strained silence irked her. She wanted to ring for Florence, suggest music or a walk—anything to clear the air; but she could only sit there, feeling shackled, dumb.

Cautiously she stole a glance at him; and found herself looking full into his eyes.

He smiled in a strange way, holding her gaze, as he had done in the train—continuing to hold it till she tingled, and wrenched herself free.

“You needn’t pretend about it, Eve,” he remarked to,her silence. “You’re not indifferent to me.”

“No—I’m not,” she admitted, reluctantly truthful. “Or I suppose I’d have gone away this morning, in spite of your wire. But it seemed unkind. And I felt as if . . . you wanted me.”

“A charming confession. I want you all right.” (His emphasis made her wish she had used another word.) “So you felt somehow—you couldn’t?”

That was more than she was prepared to admit.

“To be accurate, I decided . . . I wouldn’t.”

“God! What an honest girl you are.”

She sighed and smiled. “I wish I could be—though it’s usually fatal. Being honest is the most difficult thing in the world.”

“Quite. That’s why I gave it up long ago!” He reverted to his lighter manner. “But—honestly, your note tempted me. And I can resist anything except temptation! So I flung work to the winds and fled down here for some fun—hoping to find you game, as the moon’s full on.”

“Oh, that!” She stood up impatiently. “I was only talking nonsense.”

“But look here, you know——” He tilted his face sideways, and smiled up at her. “The woman tempted me—and I came to a whistle.”

“I didn’t whistle.”

“Well, as near as dammit. Anyway, you’re going to be a sport. And we will have some fun together.”

“Will we? I hope so—as I’m squandering nearly three precious days!”

And this time she did ring for Florence.

When the tea-tray had vanished, she asked in her most practical voice: “Shall we walk among the beeches, or would you prefer lone violin?”

“Yes—if you can give me some modern French stuff. We’ll prowl among the beeches after dinner. My leather driving-coat will defy the cold o’ the moon.’”

She played him some French stuff; the kind of virtuoso performance that pleased his critical sense. Usually he made her feel nervous; but to-day she was buoyed up by a sense of mastery—over the instrument, over herself, over him.

Then she must run off and change for dinner.

“The green sheath?” he asked hopefully.

“A green sheath! No dance frocks in my rucksack. Only a simple day dress. So I can’t do you proud to-morrow evening.”

He flung her a Puckish glance: “You’d do me proud if you turned up in your silk pyjamas.”

He enjoyed saying things of that kind, just to see if she would turn a hair. And she didn’t flick an eyelid.

“I don’t happen to have any of those either.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Nothing at all in your haversack?”

“Everything I need, thanks!”

And pirouetting round on her toes, she left him.

No, he was not in love with her—she decided while dressing. He was trying to make her think so; a sort of semi-serious flirtation. That would be his idea of having some fun, working up a few live thrills to put into his dead-alive story. And yet—now and then—in his looks and tones, there lurked an under-sense of danger that made him distinctly more interesting; so long as she could hold her own against him.

Dinner was easier. Mrs. Bardopp gave them of her best; and the sparkling wine set a little imp of mischief dancing in Eve’s brain. She had been lifted high on the wings of ecstasy. Now she was lured to earth and the delights of earth. To be playing the fool with him again, laughing at his risky remarks, awoke a feeling of Villars that dissolved constraint. They would be happy and irresponsible together, these few days. Then she would take wing, and love her freedom even better than before.

When Florence had removed the last trace of dinner, Eve sipped her coffee perched on the arm of the padded chair, while Basil pulled back the window curtains.

The moon was low enough to gleam like a burnished targe; high enough to be weaving her magic under the beeches, across the road.

Basil opened the window and leaned out.

“What a night! It’s dead still.”

“Almost too still,” Eve said sagely. “That tranced feeling usually means a change.”

“How have you become so weather-wise?”

“Simply from loving Nature and watching her moods.”

He looked hard at her, a meaningful look.

“Just as a man becomes weather-wise about the moods of the woman he loves?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Don’t waste your sentimental booky remarks on me! Keep them for your prize short story.”

He laughed.

“Then don’t hurl your pessimisms at me! Come and wander in the moon.” He emptied his coffee cup and put it down on the window ledge. “It’s pure witchery. But there ought to be a million leaves—and nightingales.”

“Sorry I can’t produce leaves. But I can produce nightingales—a fair imitation.”

“Nonsense!”

“True. I learnt to do several bird songs on the violin from Mrs. Vane. Look out at the trees and try to feel sentimental. Then I’ll make a magic.”

“No. Bring the fiddle along and make the magic out there. We’ll have nightingales carolling in March. Startle the sleeping forest. You’re a very witch, you beguiling creature. You might even set the leaves sprouting! Come on.”

She continued to puff her cigarette, wishing she had never mentioned nightingales. Playing in the moon-splashed forest was her own private bliss.

But he was so pleased with his bizarre idea. It would seem idiotic to refuse; and the violin might serve to head him off personalities.

So she slipped on the coat of her Burberry suit, tucked fiddle and bow under her arm, and they stepped across the road—into fairyland.

When they had walked a little way and beeches were all about them—holly bushes darkly massed here and there—Eve said quietly, “The loveliest thing is—to look up.”

He stood still and looked up into the lacey tangle of twigs. “Marvellous!” The fashionable adjective sounded futile, but his subdued tone pleased her. Had he, for one amazing moment, forgotten Basil Sherwood?

Not quite, it seemed; for he went on: “I owe this sensation to you. It’s the first time I’ve been here in March. These trees are superb ‘in their figures.’ Now—make the magic. Call your nightingales from the vasty deep. I don’t believe mortal violin can do it.”

“This is an immortal one,” she said very low, thinking of her father and softly tuning the strings.

“If you don’t believe—it doesn’t care. Stand away, please. I must fancy I’m alone, or I shall never do it.”

“You’re the quaintest thing.”

But he moved off obediently; and she wandered away in another direction hearing bird notes in her brain. It was a long while since she had attempted Nature’s loveliest love song—last summer, in Anne’s copse on Hindhead, charming a real nightingale to answer.

At length, with the undemanding quiet of the Forest all about her, she began: the soft jug-jug-jug, the liquid trills, the clear single notes . . . Basil forgotten. The night holding its breath to hear . . .

Footsteps and a voice toppled her to earth.

“Eve, you are a living wonder.”

He had crept up close behind.

“It came true,” she said, only half aware of him. Then suddenly his thought flashed on her brain; and she turned, looking straight into his eyes.

“If you ever dare—put that into a book, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“You little spitfire,” he said, startled. “What made you think of that?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes, in the dark, you can feel people’s thoughts.”

“More witchery! Wish I could feel yours.”

“You wouldn’t like many of them.”

He came closer.

“You can’t feel all mine, can you?”

“No—and I don’t want to.” She moved a step away. “You really did think of it? If I hadn’t spoken, you would?”

“Some day, perhaps. It’s the natural fate of most vivid impressions, if one happens to be a writer. But, in view of the penalty, I’ll refrain. Let’s have more music. It gives one a new sensation out here.”

“That’s all you’re after!” she scathingly murmured, but the lurking sense of danger was astir again. “Move away, please. You’re crowding me.”

She spoke in a crisp voice. His nearness vaguely disturbed her. In some dim fashion, perhaps, she was feeling his thoughts.

“Now I’ll give you something quite different, something you can put into a story—as that seems to be your aim in life!”

A spirit of mischief had seized her by the hair. Like Vanessa, she could imitate the bagpipes; and now, with excruciating pathos, she wailed out “The Land o’ the Leal,’ pacing up and down swinging an imaginary kilt, in the full certainty that the old-time melody would vex his ears as acutely as it delighted hers.

“Oh, not that mawkish stuff!” he cried, throwing up his hands.

“This any better?” she asked.

With a flourish of her bow she dashed into a Highland fling, a wild, weird melody in a minor key.

“Dance!” she commanded, her own feet moving irresistibly. “Dance. It’ll keep you warm.”

“I’m warm enough, thanks,” he answered—stock-still gazing at her.

After the fling, it was ‘Molly on the Shore’—swift, intoxicating, loud and soft by turns; and she capering like a mad thing in the moonlight, Basil forgotten again. . . .

At the height of her craziness she stumbled over a big root, flung out her hands instinctively and dropped her violin. With a little cry of dismay, she lunged forward to retrieve it—and found herself in Basil’s arms.

“Eve—you bewitching girl,” he said in a low urgent voice, pulling her against him, his face very close to hers.

She said not a word. Anger, fear, excitement made too great a tumult within her. She could only strain away from him; but his arms felt like steel.

“Let me go. I hate you!” she said at last between two panting breaths.

“No, you don’t. I startled you—that’s all. But you brought it on yourself. Listen. You said we’d have some fun together. I thought you understood. . . .”

“I didn’t understand——”

She strained away again; but instinct told her that an undignified struggle would be all to his advantage.

He only pulled her closer. “Dear, darling Eve—don’t be a dithering idiot. Anyway, you do understand now. Such amazing luck—‘the time and the place and the loved one . . .’ I want you”

“Well, you might be more polite about it,” she breathed. “Besides, it’s no use. I don’t want anyone—that way. I’m going to India.”

The sudden Puckish smile twisted his face. “Well, I don’t want anyone—that way. Nothing so grim. But I want you now. Look here. I’ll pick you up to-morrow, bag and baggage, anywhere you please. And we’ll go larking off together for a few days. I’m not bound to return on Monday. Be a sport. Eve. Lots of girls do. I’ll give you no end of a good time. I’m crazy for you—Eve!”

Before she could speak or move, he was kissing her—a long hard kiss that took away her breath, and renewed that inner tumult of anger, excitement, fear. She had listened in dazed surprise, scarcely grasping the full sense of his impossible demands: but his kiss—that had the rough urgency of passion—made everything terribly clear.

With both hands she pushed his face away.

“I do hate you. Let me go!”

“God! What a fiery little devil you are,” he said, without obeying her; there was anger in his voice now. “It’s not fair, the way you look at a man, when you haven’t a flicker of response in you. Not a flicker? Eve——?”

His face, his demanding eyes, pressed so close again that, in sudden fear, she covered her own face with both hands.

He must have seen the hostility, the fear, in her gaze; for he swore and dropped his arms so abruptly that she staggered backwards and almost fell over.

“I didn’t mean . . . to behave like that,” he muttered awkwardly. “You crazed me with your music and your witchery. Of course I thought you realized—most girls would. But if I’d known——”

“And if I’d known,” she cut him short, her confused senses quieter now, “I’d have sent you a wire and gone straight off this morning. But as you didn’t seem the sentimental kind, I thought we were just good friends.”

“Well, don’t tumble into that mistake again. Men and women are either lovers—or enemies. You mayn’t be seductive, but you’re the devastating kind. Men won’t make friends with you.”

She felt as if he had struck her. “Decent men will,” she asserted, fuller assurance in her tone than in her heart. “I thought—I believed. I don’t ever want to speak to you again.”

She hoped he did not notice the suspicion of a tremor in her voice. If he did, he gave no sign. He simply stood there in a baffling silence, granting her the last word, while she picked up her violin, and gave it a surreptitious little hug.

Only when she turned to leave him, he said, in a toneless voice:

“Aren’t you coming back to the house?”

“Not with you. I couldn’t . . . She pulled herself together, rallying her common sense. “You can tell Mrs. Bardopp I’ve gone for one of my tramps. It won’t surprise her, on this lovely night.”

Then she walked away, quickly, blindly, in among the trees——

*  *  *

For a full minute or two, Basil Sherwood remained standing where she left him, in a confused state of thought and feeling not at all to his taste: angry with her for the unexpected rebuff, for the wound to his vanity, masculine and individual; angry with himself for a disastrous error of judgment—he that so rarely failed with girl or woman.

In his own circle, they were of course an easier lot, readier for come-and-go kisses, for love that shirked the sanctified shackles of marriage. This girl was of another breed; a streak of the Puritan under her artistry and her airy talk that had misled him, while her inner difference had quickened his natural desire to make an impression just deep enough to serve his turn. Imbued with the selfish need of the minor artist to devour other lives for his own ends, he must experience the thing he wished to express: and, as a rule, he knew precisely what he wanted in the way of stimulation from the men and women he encountered—especially the women. He had a natural gift for inducing in them the heightened mental and spiritual state of being in love, while he himself remained immune.

Eve, with her youth and inexperience, her impatience of convention, had fascinated him more fatally than he realized till she was shifted out of his orbit. Her naive note had raised his hopes that, after all, he might get some fun out of her, if he had the luck to catch her in the right mood. Wisdom had urged him to be wary, but passion had mastered him—to this disastrous end. She had dealt him a blow that wounded more than his vanity; had left him feeling boulversé to an extent he would scarcely acknowledge even to himself.

Characteristically—as he strolled back to his car he reflected that perhaps it was as well that he had lost his head and rushed things to-night, since it saved him from squandering more money on her—to no purpose—than he could rightly afford. It was annoying to be aware that she appealed to more than his senses; that, in spite of everything, he would give a good deal to see her again. He had banged and bolted the door on that possibility, however. The least he could do, he decided—on a rare impulse of contrition—was to let a decent pause elapse, and then bring all his verbal skill to bear on an honest letter of apology. If he succeeded in drawing even a brief answer from her, it would be more than he deserved.

That he should see it so, was perhaps the highest tribute that he had paid her yet.

Chapter Six

God gave thy soul brave wings; use not its feathers
To stuff a bed, and sleep out all ill weathers.
— George Herbert

Eve, walking swiftly, aimlessly, among the trees—her thoughts and feelings in painful disarray—neither knew nor cared how far she had gone before her inner tumult subsided: a tumult that had no active concern with Basil Sherwood. It was simply nervous reaction from the strain of resisting him, from her sense of outrage—deep down. The hidden sensitive fragment that was ‘I’ that could not bear people coming too close—had been cavalierly assailed by a man of no account, who had yet stirred something vital in her, so that against her will she would remember him always; and because of him nothing would ever be quite the same again. If men were like that, if their kisses were like that, she would have none of them. Heedless of that inner warning, she had let him come, in simple friendliness; and he had scared away her gay fine sense of freedom, had given more power to the little dark imp and his malignities.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!” the imp was jeering at her now. “Flutter as high as you may, while you have a human heart inside you, the string will jerk you back to earth and the demands of earth.”

That whispered threat, with the ring of truth in it, waked a sudden childish need to clutch a protecting hand, to feel the slow strong pressure of her father’s fingers that meant he was thinking the kind of things he could not, or would not, say.

Sudden and swift—at thought of him—the old vain longing flooded her senses, her heart. At times it was almost physical, making seven years feel like yesterday. At other times it would seem quite safe to let her thoughts dwell on him. Then, without warning, he would put out a ghostly hand and wring her heart like this. Was there no safety from these inner assaults—no shelter from their onslaughts?

“Daddy—Daddy!”

The cry brought her back to reality. Halting under a big tree, she leaned limply against it, and let the healing tears rain unchecked. Through that greater grief the lesser turmoil found an outlet without damage to pride.

Calm followed—and the awkward discovery that she had quite lost her bearings. No spice of adventure now in the chance of wandering vainly half the night. And she had rushed off into the Forest hatless, without a thought of key or torch.

She clapped her hand to her pocket. Thank goodness, the key was there; but not the torch. A brisk wind stirred the tree-tops, and the moon was blotted out. Had the change she foretold already begun? Move she must; and she had a fair sense of direction to guide her. She could just see her way; and whenever she felt fairly sure of a clear space ahead, she ran, covering the fiddle with her coat, because very soon the rain must come——

At last a strip of open turf; a respite from the nightmare of dodging among trees that no longer seemed her friends; and suddenly a flash of lightning sizzled across the sky. The whole open space quivered, blue-white; trunks and branches showed black as ink strokes on tin. And, almost in the same breath, thunder clapped and crackled viciously, right overhead. From far away came a deep rending crash: some stricken tree giving up the ghost; vocal in death, as it had never been in life.

Breathless, she stood still, and waited for the next. There was no ‘next.’ Only that one dramatic flash and crash, like some terrific Beethoven chord. Then—down came the rain, beating on her head and shoulders; saturating her skirt that clung to her legs as she ran. Bare branches tossed dolefully. The strong wind of March, blowing through leagues of darkness, seemed to be whirling her beyond space and time. . . .

The road at last: the road across which she had stepped into fairyland with another Basil, in another life.

Quiet as a mouse she let herself in, switched on the sitting-room light, and discovered that it was half-past eleven; the fire a grey ruin, not quite dead. Just as well she had had the sense to give Basil that message, or Mrs. Bardopp would be fancying unspeakable things!

Crouching, she held her hands close above the warm ashes, ate a banana, scarcely tasting it, and tiptoed upstairs, her brain so befogged with weariness that next morning she could not remember the act of getting into bed.

*  *  *

But even in sleep malign devils were at work—tormenting her in dreams.

She was wandering half clothed in a wood full of trees that were alive—and evil. They kept moving, as she moved, flinging out their boughs to catch her as she fled. Then from the dark of an old holly-bush, that cackled with dry laughter, sprang a man who seized, and held her hard. Vainly she struggled to escape the impending kiss. His face, half-seen, had a faint mocking likeness to her father; yet in every nerve she knew it was not her father. Nor was it Basil. They were strange arms that held her, with more than human strength.

Striving vainly to wrench herself away, she woke with a cry of ‘Daddy!’—shaking all over, actual tears on her cheeks, a strange sense of foreboding in her heart.

Thank God it was morning—and the rain coming down again helter-skelter. What did it matter? What did anything matter at that disillusioned moment? To-morrow she would see things in a drier light. But just now—shaken by that horrid dream—she had fatally mislaid her ever-present sense of humour.

No doubt a good many girls would think her a fool to have resented Basil’s ‘sporting’ offer. But there were others: Beryl, for instance—smiling and self-assured, modern yet not too modern, because no one at Compton Court must be ‘too’ anything. What would Beryl genuinely think and feel about it—if you could imagine one of her tame-rabbit young men daring . . .? To that conundrum Eve could supply no answer—though they had worked and played and quarrelled together all their days. Of course Beryl would say—if one were fool enough to tell her—that it came of running wild. Trust a sister to hand you out the withering truth.

Eve, admitting it, recalled her own fatuous certainty that she would not be caught and punished this time. Did even the mildest sins always find you out? Or was it simply because she was Eve, who had no luck? The phrase had haunted her nursery and schoolroom years. Nanny used to say she would grow out of it. In those hopeful, sprouting days one grew out of everything—but not out of that. Perhaps it came of being peculiarly her father’s daughter? He had once said as much, when she was lamenting some minor misery. “Don’t let it down you, Eve. You’re a Challoner; and though Challoners have no luck, they mostly wrastle through.”

Very well—she would not let it down her. She would get up at once, and proceed to wrastle through.

Mrs. Bardopp seemed genuinely concerned over the drenched frock and stockings; and Eve, bored with offers of preventives, welcomed the generous fire piled high—at her own expense.

After breakfast—the rain still raining—she pulled up the big arm-chair, occupied yesterday by an unknown Basil; took out a cigarette—and forgot to light it. She was asking herself, “What next?”

The eternal question-mark had never looked less fascinating than at this flat, unprofitable moment. In twenty-four hours her mood had changed. The thrill had evaporated, the ‘first fine careless rapture.’ No longer a bird of the air, she had been unceremoniously dumped on to solid earth: and she resented the transfer. But resentment was not all. It troubled her, deep down, that first shock of contact with mere man. It left her feeling vaguely unsafe; a sense of danger that had no spice in it. Basil’s urgency had made her disturbingly aware of herself in a new way; aware of some potent element in life, that might suddenly now she had got to be sensible—if being sensible could ever coincide with being Eve.

At that rate, she must give up her cherished month of freedom and trundle tamely home again. She must apologise to Mummy for flouting her wishes, and play second fiddle to Beryl, in her role of discreetly dashing modern girl, with interludes of relief provided by the Clives and Anne.

Could there be a saner programme?’ Could she see a carefully repressed Eve carrying it through? Not she! In the grip of a recoil—that would presently pass—she had no use at all for eternal tennis parties and tame-rabbit young men. She would find herself suspecting even the most harmless of being Basils in disguise.

Very well then, since she could not be sensible, it might be as well to light her cigarette.

And the cigarette decided the issue—as big things are often decided by a look, a word, even by the spurt of a match. It was as if she had struck a light in her brain. Suddenly she saw her way clear out of this trivial tangle of circumstance—India!

Of course it was late; but not too late, if prompt action followed on bold decision. She could reach Karachi before the middle of April and fly straight up to Srinagar; details as to how, or with whom, could be trusted to settle themselves. Kashmir in April—as she had seen it first with her father; willows and poplars in their youngest green; lakes, like polished silver, reflecting purple and mauve of wild iris; the hills wrapped in their blue haze of spring; Nanga Parbat incredibly high and serene above her scarf of cloud. No Gulmarg frivolities, or superfluous young men. She and Vanessa, with Larry and Faizullah, would be off the first possible moment towards the Zoji-la Pass, tramping and camping through the loveliest country in the world.

The clear chance of achievement—given the pluck to face that journey alone—set her brain revolving ways and means. That formidable ticket to Paradise was to have been Vanessa’s affair. Now it could only be paid for by persuading Anne to make some arrangement with her bank; or by an advertisement offering her services—in any reasonable capacity—in return for her fare, even half her fare, to Karachi. Not a word to Mummy till all was settled: and no return to Compton Court. Her courage, that could rise to the lone voyage, quailed at the prospect of shattering scenes that would rub all the bloom off her very great adventure—Impromptu, by Eve Challoner. Op: 2. She must act first, settle everything; then announce it all in a brief letter—from Blue Hills.

She saw herself there as a matter of course; saw, with a glow at her heart, how implicitly she was counting on Anne—one of the few and rare people in this muddled world whom one could count upon even in the maddest emergency. Because she spoke the truth about things that mattered, one could speak the truth to her, tell her the whole ignominious episode, in the certainty that she would neither make too light of it, in the modern manner, nor make too much of it, which would be worse.

She would probably object to this wild dash to India. It would look too like snatching at the first plausible excuse. But she could be trusted not to plague you with vain scoldings because she happened to disapprove—the besetting sin of the older generation. Thank God for Anne!

With that pious conclusion, Eve flung away her cigarette end, and stood up, feeling braced by the need for action.

First—a telegram to Anne. “Plans upset. May I turn up late this evening. Explanations on arrival. Eve.” She would get the answer about lunch-time. Meanwhile she would borrow the Bardopp’s Morning Post, and scour its front page to see how one worded advertisements and what one had to pay. She would post it before leaving, because time was precious so late in the season. Also it would strengthen her hand if she had already taken the plunge.

She had worked her way through two columns—when the magic word ‘India’ caught her eye.

“Officer’s wife, returning India March 15, requires services reliable young woman to take charge of small boy on voyage, for second-class fare paid to Karachi. Urgent. Highest references. De Cray, Box 9912, Morning Post.

She read those few lines twice over with amazement that deepened to awe. Clearly she must be meant to go; but could she, by any stretch, be defined as a ‘reliable young woman’? Anne might swear to it; and this was not a chance to be lost by boggling at trifles. There was only one question of moment—to write or to wire? She would rather write, but Monday seemed a year hence. If you ever wanted anything in a hurry, Sunday was dead certain to stand woodenly in the way. Reliable young women in London would have an unfair advantage: and naturally she pictured the unknown Mrs. de Cray snowed under with offers of service. She would wire. She would go herself.

She went herself—and she wired: “Miss Challoner desiring voyage to India would give services for passage paid. Anglo-Indian connections. Write Blue Hills, Hindhead, if interview required.”

To any extent she was counting on Anne. She was also, with greater boldness, counting on Vanessa, who must first be apprised by telegram, then by reasons in writing, of an intrusion not according to plan. Surely the dear woman would forgive her previousness, when she knew all. Though Eve had small belief in her own luck, in a few fellow-beings she had faith abounding—rooted in that larger faith, transcending sight, without which no vital art is possible.

A brisk walk towards Mark Ash kept her happily occupied till lunch-time. The fine shower that blotted out the landscape, had passed, leaving a sky blue as forget-me-nots, masses of drifting cloud and dramatic bursts of sunshine. The trees were full of wild sweet song; and the playful day seemed luring her to laugh with it—to refrain from magnifying molehills.

On her return, she found Anne’s telegram. “Coming to fetch you. Arrive tea-time. Return Sunday.”

It was like Anne to put aside her own important concerns for an unimportant Eve, who might be basely deserting her in a week’s time. Anne did not know that—and all in a moment Eve realised how sharp a wrench it would be. Vanessa was her comrade, her dear—a kind of glorified elder sister: but, in the last few years, she had seen more of Anne; had grown to love her as she might have loved the right kind of mother. Simply to have her there was to feel more certain of oneself, of life. In her gaze, in her whole attitude, there was something utterly clear, like washed skies after rain, as though her smiling stillness enshrined some secret that a few people must have, in themselves, to keep the world going at all. Dread of hurting her, dread of parting, would make the news about India more difficult to tell than the story of Basil’s invasion and cool demands.

*  *  *

Just before tea-time, she arrived: and, being Anne, she asked no questions; only, when they kissed, she held Eve closer than usual.

During tea, they talked casually of this and that: then Eve settled Anne in the big arm-chair, while she herself remained standing, absently tapping her cigarette, uncertain how to begin.

Anne looked up at her, smiling: mystified perhaps, but understanding her dilemma.

“Well, my wild thing,” she asked. “Am I to hear what’s gone wrong?”

“Yes, of course you are.” Eve laid down her cigarette. “It’s—it’s Basil.”

“Has he been here?”

“Yes. He’s been here.”

“Darling child—tell me.”

Eve nodded, wrinkling her nose in a small moue of distaste.

“I’m for it,” she said. “Don’t scold me—if you can possibly refrain.”

To make things easier she squatted on the hearthrug, rested her cheek against Anne’s knee—and told her, without reservation, the story of Friday night.

Anne sat very quiet: only her fingers moved now and then in Eve’s hair—a sort of absent-minded caress. Eve had always been faddy about people touching her hair, or even brushing it. With nurses and governesses it had been a perfect plague. When John and Beryl wanted to tease her, they would fawn on her, in mock affection, and ‘paw’ her hair. Only her father had been privileged. He—who was so chary of caresses—had a way of fingering her hair, at times, that soothed her excitable nerves. And now here was Anne—also chary of caresses—with the same magic gift of touch, that made the tale less hard to tell. When it came to Basil’s kiss and his impossible demands, Anne’s fingers tightened, pressing Eve’s head close against her.

“I felt he was that poor kind of creature,” she said, anger vibrating in her low tone. “But I gave him credit for a few grains of discernment. A mere waster cutting in and spoiling your gay adventure.” Eve smiled. “He was supposed to be offering me a gay adventure! And I ’spec he thought me a squeamish sort of fool to refuse. I suppose some girls do . . .?”

“Not half so many, I fancy, as one would imagine from novels and plays. They talk about it more freely because that’s the fashion; but my own impression is that they’re a good deal more loose in their talk than in their actions. The real curse of to-day is the lesser nuisance of vulgarity.”

Eve chuckled softly. “Clever Anne!”

“Oh, too clever to live! But I can’t help noticing young things, because they attract me. And they’ve so little to hold on to. No religion (or very seldom). No fixed star. Only catch phrases—and what people may say. If the older, stronger views of my day were too cast-iron, they did give one some sort of foothold, something to fight against. Now it all seems like beating the air. And I don’t want to see you doing that, Eve. You may think your mother narrow and conventional, but she has given you a code—a standard——”

“Yes, she has,” Eve admitted; and could not refrain from adding, “Daddy did, too. Not by conventions, but by the way I’m made inside—like him.”

That brought her to the sequel; and, for all her qualms, she had not foreseen how hard it would be with Anne brought more intimately close to her than ever yet.

Again she listened without interruption; but under the stillness. Eve’s heightened sensibilities could feel how it was hurting her.

“My darling!” she said at last, “that’s rather drastic.”

“I know it is.” Eve nestled closer by way of apology. “Turning my molehill into a whole mountain range! Or perhaps it’s the mountains taking advantage of the molehill? Oh dearest Dear, I’m sure you think—I’m an owl.”

“I think . . . you’re a bird of the air. Not necessarily the bird of wisdom! But what about Mrs. Vane—coming home?”

“Oh, that was chiefly because of me. She’s not fearfully keen. She loves Kashmir best in the autumn. And I’ve never seen it then. Of course I would wire; and my letter would arrive a week ahead of me, if—if this ‘de Cray 9912’ creature is foolhardy enough to take me on trust.”

“And if not . . .?” The fingers stole down and caressed her cheek.

“If not?”

Suddenly perceiving the implied hope, she scrambled to her knees, flung her arms round Anne and hid her face, with a muffled sob.

“Oh, I never knew you would mind so much. And I can hardly bear to leave you. . . .”

Anne said nothing, but she held the girl closer, once or twice kissing her hair. And, in the mute fervour of her own response, Eve realised how vital was the link between them. For some temperaments the closest human relations are not of the flesh, but of the spirit. So it would always be for Eve: and so it was that the double bond, in her father’s case, seemed to defy death itself. Clinging to Anne, fighting back her tears, she knew that if this venture failed, she could not bring herself to plunge again. She believed Anne knew it also—and was comforted.

After that no more was said about Basil or India. It was over Eve’s fragment of a Nocturne—a bud of genuine promise—that they sat talking late into the night.

Chapter Seven

Now who shall decide between ‘Let it be’ and ‘Force it’?
Katherine Mansfield.

Though Anne Verity, the composer, had splendidly fulfilled herself, Anne Verity the woman, seemed marked for suffering where her heart was deeply involved. Little given to random affections, she had only by degrees allowed this gifted child, so inadequately mothered, to creep in and possess her heart. After Villars, beset by loneliness, she had contemplated stealing Eve for quite a long visit in May; and had only refrained from speaking the other day in Town, for fear of unsettling the child. How one paid, over and over, for the follies of prudence! Had she spoken then, an already invited Eve might have fled to Blue Hills from the constraints and clashes of home: might have been spared the shock of those impertinent attentions from the ‘Chelsea young man.’ Her shy yet engagingly honest account of it all had enraged Anne more than she had allowed the child to see. One had to remember that they took that kind of thing more casually, these after-war young people, than the girls of her own day. They talked of everything, they knew everything, or fancied they did. But to know was not to understand; and the fuller understanding of life’s basic realities would not come lightly or easily to a nature like Eve’s—a nature sensitive and passionate under its top layer of shyness and reserve.

Tacitly they had thrust the episode aside as unworthy of further notice. But Anne was aware that it would not so readily be banished from Eve’s thoughts; that even now there might be virtue in the right word at the right moment, coming from her. Why, in a world hungry for human contact, should one’s natural impulses be hampered by ingrained reserves at this time of day?

Faced with Eve’s lightning decision, she found it hard to see clearly where she felt so strongly; to feel sure which issue would be the better for her in the long run. A less scrupulous woman might have persuaded herself that she would only be doing her duty if she spiked Eve’s guns by refusing practical help; and there were times when Anne half envied the make of mind that would see it so as a matter of course—envied the whole philosophy enshrined in ‘Of course’ and ‘I suppose so.’ But her own inner life had been a challenge to pedestrian philosophies; and it had always amazed her the way practical people went about feeling perfectly sure of things that even a major prophet could hardly foretell.

She could only take comfort from Eve’s assurance—not fully spoken, but none the less certain for that. And if, in spite of everything, she cherished a faint hope that Mrs. de Cray would fail to jump at the child, it was extinguished by the letter that reached Blue Hills on Monday morning.

The writer was clearly in straits, having been let down at the eleventh hour by a young nursery governess who had agreed to go out with her and stay in India for three years. Her immediate need was for some one to give her personal help on the voyage and take entire charge of the child. Followed a few blunt questions that made Eve suddenly see herself as an outrageous fraud. Was she a good sailor, good-tempered, fond of children, clever with her needle . . .?

Eve, ticking them off on her fingers, glancing sidelong at Anne, gave a sudden excited gasp.

“Oh! She’s asking if I’m connected with Colonel Challoner, who was Resident of Kashmir. Fancy, if she knew Daddy? You will back me up, won’t you?”

“Of course I will. But I’m coming with you, chiefly to take stock of her. And I don’t let you go second class. I intend to pay the difference.”

Eve slipped a hand through her arm, and gave it a fierce little squeeze.

“You uttermost angel! I was dreading it. And if you pass her, and she passes me—I suppose there’ll be a frantic shopping. And then—oh Lord! . . . I’ll have to write to Mummy.”

“Yes—you bad child! Are you going to leave England without seeing her?”

Eve nodded slowly three times. There was a difficult silence.

Then she said in her most carefully detached voice: “I know it sounds perfectly awful. I suppose I am perfectly awful. But I can’t explain—even to you. It all goes too far back. I can only say, truthfully, that Mummy won’t mind one bit not seeing me before I go. I’m just bold enough to take this plunge, but I’m just not bold enough to go back and stand up to her again. So that’s that. And the real trouble is—how are we going to answer these questions?”

Together they invented diplomatic answers, and suggested Tuesday morning for an interview; Eve hardly daring to believe in her own luck. Some malign demon must be in lurk, waiting to pounce out upon her, once she had burnt her boats. She would burn them all the same; and there must be no looking back, or looking too far ahead. The really effective people made a point of living only in the present: or so they said. And one dared not ask them how they managed it. Every instant the present was slipping into the past, sprawling into the future. Strictly speaking, there was no present for those effective people to live in; but speaking as strictly as that made you feel hollow inside. The only sanity was—to clutch the things nearest you, and hope for the best. So Eve clutched Anne, and looked hopefully towards an unknown Mrs. de Cray.

A telegram invited her to come, and on Tuesday they set out together—Eve driving—in search of 52 Walburga Mansions, Acacia Road, Baron’s Court. The address sounded quite romantic. London was full of such beautifully deceptive names—Baron’s Court, Earl’s Court, Knightsbridge, Primrose Hill. Eve used often to wonder what all those places looked like when their names fitted them.

Baron’s Court was an unknown region of ancient romance: but too well she knew in advance how unromantic the reality would be. It was.

A terrible red-brick building that flared to heaven—not an acacia within five miles, nor a Baron within five centuries of its aggressive ugliness; a doll’s house flat on the fourth floor: a doll’s house room chiefly dressed in dull crimson, peppered with trivial oddments and photographs in silver frames. A bowl of scarlet tulips clashed viciously with everything, except its own splendour.

Eve drew a long steadying breath. And then—Mrs. de Cray was in the room: very smart, very closely shingled; her reddish purple dress very short and straight; her skin smooth and clear, the long black eyebrows and scarlet lips obviously emphasised to enhance the effect. There was too much cheek-bone for the narrow chin; and, to Eve’s ears, there was something deceptive in the silken softness of her voice.

“So you’re Colonel Challoner’s daughter? It’s too strange!” She was shaking hands with Eve, looking her over from top to toe. “You’re absurdly like him.”

“Did you know him?” Eve asked, eager to establish some personal link that might put her at ease.

“Yes. I knew him. The Punjab’s smaller than the world! And the cards are being shuffled all the time. We were rather friends one cold weather” (Eve resented the lurking significance of that ‘rather.’) “But I don’t remember seeing your mother. She wasn’t much in evidence just then!”

Something in the silken tone made Eve suddenly want to stand up for Mummy.

“My mother wasn’t able to go out for some time after the War,” she stated with precision.

“So I understood.” The subtle implication remained. “Great things were expected of him. It was too sad—so soon after his wife joined him, and the little girl”

“I was the little girl,” Eve said in a cool voice: and Mrs. de Cray regarded her with quickened interest.

“So you’ve been out there? And now—are you joining your mother?”

“No. She isn’t out there.” At this rate the personal link might prove embarrassing. “She married again. I’m going independently to join—a friend in Kashmir.”

Purely on instinct she avoided Vanessa’s name.

Mrs. de Cray smiled as one who understood.

“Ah—that’s it!. A ‘step’ in the family’s so apt to break things up. And you?”

She transferred to Anne her shrewd glance, her air of languid interest; and Eve murmured a belated introduction.

Anne said simply, “She is staying with me. I have known her for more than five years—teaching her music. I came to supply anything you might need in the way of reference.”

Mrs. de Cray dismissed all that with a jewelled hand. “Her father’s name is enough for me. And she’s frankly an amateur. I consider I’m in luck. No thanks to the wretched girl who coolly let me down, on account of her mother’s health. That class has no scruples, no consideration. So much nicer having the daughter of a real Sahib to help me with Peter.”—This to Eve very graciously.—“I’m a fair traveller and quite a fair sailor. But I detest burrowing in boxes and mending my clothes; and it would drive me demented to have even my own child hanging round my skirts all day. I hope you’ve a taste for little boys, and that you won’t mind travelling second class. I’m afraid I can’t run to more than that.”

When Anne explained that she intended to pay the difference, the very red lips smiled approval.

“So much pleasanter for us both! There’ll be no difficulty about a berth at this season. The boat will be empty, and the Red Sea will be hell.”

She explained that she had not intended to go out so soon, but her husband, having unexpectedly got a hill-station appointment, had pressed her to join him at once and save the drain of the double establishment. Tacitly they were invited to see her, as she saw herself—a martyr to wifely duty.

Eve’s glance at Anne said “Come away”; but just as they made a move, Mrs. de Cray suggested introducing Eve to her little charge.

“If he has just seen you once, he won’t feel so strange.”

She pressed the bell, and the little charge, actively reluctant, was propelled into the room—a small, stolid person with rusty brown hair and his mother’s shallow blue eyes. He had her cheek-bones also under the plumpness, giving the childish face a heart-shaped effect.

As the door closed behind him, he darted at his mother and hid his face against her, while she vainly exhorted him to be a good Peter, and shake hands with the nice lady who would look after him on the ship.

“Don’t want no nice lady,” came the muffled answer.

Peter, good or bad, had the merit of knowing his own mind. The harder his mother tried to push him from her, the firmer he clung, while Eve and Anne remained elaborately unaware.

“Peter’s a very rude boy. No choc after dinner. Shake hands.”

This time his mother spoke severely. At the magic word ‘choc’ an arm shot out in Eve’s direction, the face remaining resolutely turned away.

Eve held the limp fingers a moment. “We’ll make friends later on, Peter,” she managed to say.

Peter shook his head—and the introduction was effected.

“Bad boy! Run away.” Mrs. de Cray dismissed her treasure; and with all the will in the world, he ran.

“I did hope he might take a fancy to you,” his mother tacitly excused him. “He’s a sharp little fellow for his age. I’m sure you will make friends—afterwards.”

Eve could only murmur some inane platitude. At the prospect of afterwards, her heart and courage quailed to an extent that Anne must not be allowed to guess.

They were driving to Queen’s Gate for lunch; and Eve, impatient of the congested midday traffic, had very little to say for herself.

Anne, very silent also, was hoping the child s impression of her temporary mistress had been more favourable than her own. And Eve, in her secret heart, was hoping that Anne didn’t feel, as she did, the snappiness of temper under that smiling mask, and the wrong mental atmosphere, which always affected her unduly.

Suddenly Anne’s silence alarmed her. They were passing through a side street now; and turning her head, she looked round, straight into Anne’s troubled eyes.

“Darling, what are you thinking, sitting there so quiet? Do you—pass her? Tell me true.”

Anne smiled in the way that meant she was specially loving you.

“No. I don’t pass her altogether. I hoped she might be—different. But I’m glad she knew your father.”

Eve nodded. “That’s her chief virtue in my eyes. But I hated her remark about Mummy. I’m afraid I showed it.”

“I was glad you did.”

“I couldn’t stand her saying any more. That’s why I camouflaged Vanessa. You see, she and Daddy were . . . very special friends. And if that woman had started insinuating about them, I might have let fly and smashed up everything.”

“Very diplomatic!” Anne smiled—and sighed. That artless revealing added a new interest to the curious link between those two; and she caught herself half wishing that Eve had let fly—which of course could not be said. Now things were fixed, she must be careful not to unsettle the child.

And the child—her mind intent upon Anne—was thinking: “Whatever I do I mustn’t let her see that I feel disheartened. I don’t believe I’ll ever like that smiling creature—or she me.”

This time yesterday she would not have imagined that fulfilment of her wish could leave her feeling so perversely cast down—she that ought to be marvelling at her luck. What could you feel sure of in life, if you couldn’t even feel sure of yourself from hour to hour? Perhaps she had been a precipitate fool: but the thing was done. There seemed no more to be said: and they drove on together, each carefully shielding the other from knowledge that might have eased the hearts of both. So often out of mutual consideration do we weave the web of confusion.

Chapter Eight

And who can tell
What is the lovely threat and terror of wings,
For all who fly?
— Humbert Wolfe

The curse of mutual consideration shadowed, on and off, their last week together: Eve, fatally divining all she was not supposed to see; Anne, too keenly aware of those inner fluctuations for which Eve despised herself, and Anne more than ever loved her, because they were essentially Eve. It was Anne Verity’s way to love people for what they were; not to be eternally criticising them for what they never could be.

There was Eve’s lively imagination racing on ahead. There was her heart tripped up at every turn: all the hidden fingers of Blue Hills clutching at her vitals—till she could almost dissolve in tears because Fate had given her the thing she wanted, at the exorbitant price of leaving Anne.

Not least among many minor ordeals was the writing of that letter to Compton Court; trying to explain what never could be explained in Mummy’s phraseology. There was one great and glorious English language, but no two people (or groups of people) seemed to use it in quite the same way. A whole precious hour she squandered over her letter, writing and altering, re-writing and tearing up; putting in a touch of daughterly affection; scratching it all out again because she was afflicted with a mania for sincerity. In any case, her letter, whatever she wrote, would be read in the wrong tone of voice. So she gave up cudgelling her brain—since the ass did not respond to blows; took a fresh sheet and wrote quite simply all she felt able to tell. Then she read it through with Mummy’s mind—like turning a different coloured light on it; decided that it made her appear a casual, heartless little beast (which was a libel) and felt hugely relieved when at last the red pillar-box swallowed her masterpiece.

The answer from Compton Court—when it came—reduced daughterly affection to a very still, very small spark. The first few lines told Eve it was Mummy at her brightest and best; and she carried it into the verandah, lest Anne should catch a reflection of it in her face.

There, to the sound of soft strummings on the ’cello, she read:

“Dearest Eve,—

“Your news, to put it mildly, is unexpected; though I have long ceased to feel surprised at anything you may say or do. When a young girl comes under the influence of artistic women discipline and right feelings are bound to go by the board. As Miss Verity appears to be aiding and abetting you in your crazy plan—rushing out at the wrong time of year—I take it she will see to your outfit, though she can’t know much about Indian requirements. I am at a loss to understand where Mrs. Vane comes in, as you are not very explicit about details. But I take it you are not going out at her request; and I suppose it hasn’t struck you that your freakish behaviour may put her to great inconvenience?” (Mummy considering Vanessa! It was sufficiently comic, to relieve rising wrath.) “I’m quite aware that what I may say goes for nothing; but you will find, later on, that outsiders will not be nearly so lenient with your erratic ways.

“I certainly think you might have suggested coming here for one night, to say good-bye and do your own packing.” (“That’s the real point,” Eve wickedly murmured.) “Beryl is so very sweet and always ready to help. I’m sure she will do it all beautifully; and I hope you will write her a nice little note. You are so casual in those ways.”

Eve cheered up and grinned at the thought of her nice little note. “Abject thanks for sweet sisterly attentions”—that sort of thing. And if Beryl did show it to Mummy—who cared? Mummy had always waked the don’t-care devil in her. And she knew other girls, who felt the same. Mothers were lovely and terrible mysteries. She hoped she might be rather less mysterious, and more human when her turn came—if it ever did?

She sighed and glanced at the sheet again.

“All the etceteras you leave behind will be put away in a spare chest of drawers, because I may need your room for summer visitors. I hope this Mrs. de Cray is a decent sort of woman. I don’t at all like the arrangement, but that won’t worry you. Good-bye dear, I hope you have a pleasant voyage, and that all will go well with you in India.

“Always your loving mother,

“Edyth Hensley-Harrison.”

Eve sat very still, considering all that. And suddenly she decided—she would show the letter to Anne. All this while she had been carefully shielding Mummy! but the real point was—not to be misjudged by Anne. It would simply amuse her, that vicious little dig at artistic women.

As she entered the long low drawing-room, with its grand piano, and many stray books, its individual air of simplicity and rightness, Anne stopped playing the piano, and smiled at her.

“Well?” she asked, prepared for discreet camouflage; quite unprepared for what actually happened.

Eve went straight to her, holding out the letter.

“Please . . . I want you to read it,” she said. “I’ve tried not to say much about Mummy, but I do want you to understand why . . . I simply can’t go and say good-bye. So—please——?”

She remained standing near the piano while Anne read it all, seeing the most priceless bits reflected in her face. When her mouth hardened and her eyebrows twitched, she was feeling angry inside. She would understand. Those three words seemed to lift a physical weight from Eve’s chest. For the young more consciously long to be understood than to be loved j and disastrously soon they discover that the last too seldom involves the first.

Anne laid the letter on the piano—and rose with a gesture that brought Eve straight into her arms.

“My child!” she said in the repressed voice; and again—“My child” That was all. But her arms were holding Eve so close and hard that it hurt—the kind of hurt they both welcomed and needed just then.

One brief, self-revealing letter had given Anne Verity the measure of the woman who so inadequately mothered this ardent, gifted, unseizable child. There were two sides, of course. At fifty, one knew that, however little else one could claim to know about the inner mystery of human relations. And in any case she was little given to sitting in judgment—or she would scarcely have loved Henry Arden, that great and fallible man, with unshaken constancy all the difficult days of her life. In Mrs. Harrison’s eyes, she was aiding and abetting the crazy impulses of youth—which was perfectly true, though she herself might express it otherwise.

Eve, reluctantly released, picked up the letter and tore it into very small pieces. There were tears in her eyes, and a song in her heart.

“Oh Anne darling, you do understand. And I’m such an impenitent villain—specially when she writes like that. Let’s play something frantic together and blow it all away. That exciting little Allemande thing. It makes you feel so busy inside, you’ve no time to be depressed.”

So they played the exciting little Allemande with much delicate verve. Then Anne persuaded Eve to play her New Forest fragment, letting the child see clearly how it impressed her; seasoning praise with criticism because some day that delicate suggestion of a mood must be worked up into a Nocturne or a Romance.

And Eve could only murmur, “Oh, I hope so.” But within herself she was wondering—would she ever recapture the magic of that moonlit night? Into the golden bowl of her careless happiness, Basil had dropped a new ingredient that had subtly permeated everything.

Thus, quite undesignedly, that maternal slap brushed away cobwebs of mutual consideration, and brought them closer to each other, in a vital sense, than they had been since the New Forest meeting for which Basil Sherwood was responsible. For how much more he was responsible Anne would give a great deal to know—and she would probably never know.

*  *  *

All that last week they seemed to be living against time. An invading army of things to be done, helped to oust the crowding thoughts; but it equipped the hours with wings. It was morning. It was evening. Another day gone. Never had the familiar drawing-room looked so lovely, or the far hills so blue; never had the beloved cats—Ariel and Onyx—seemed more human, because she was seeing them all for the last time. Or was she really seeing them for the first time, in the light of imminent parting?

A plague of clothes and boxes dulled the normal thrill of choosing frocks and hats; but nothing could dull the thrill of a nutria fur coat contributed by Clive and Molly, or the softest green frock and hat, to wear with the important coat, contributed by Anne. Prancing in her finery, Eve forgot to be sad; but Anne—though life had dealt her sharper blows—could only force her surface mind to dwell on other things.

And into the midst of their preoccupation with each other fell a letter from Basil Sherwood, forwarded by Beryl. The conjunction tickled Eve; and the letter startled her like an intrusion from another world. But, at sight of the first sentence, her foolish tremor was stilled. Basil’s note was brief and to the point, unembroidered with any of his elegant egotisms.

It began without a prefix. “Please read this—even if you spurn the writer. I honestly feel I owe you an apology for all that happened that evening. I might have had the sense to see you were not that sort of girl. In a way, I did see it, but I lost my head and made a fool of myself. I can only say—I am sorry I behaved like acad to you. I won’t forget you in a hurry. Don’t trouble to answer.

“Yours,

“Basil Sherwood.”

It sounded sincere; and she gave him credit for regretting his lapse from grace, if it were only on account of damage to vanity. She did trouble to answer, in a few bald lines that hurt her to write; though she did not flatter herself they would hurt him to read.

And so—an end of Basil, if one could venture to judge where the effect of any human action ends.

After Basil—Tony, whose prep. school was in the neighbourhood. Eve broke the news by post, then, on Sunday, they drove to the school and brought him back to Blue Hills for the day. Anne’s excellent lunch cheered him up, while the brief joy of chewing and swallowing lasted, though he was boyishly unhappy and aggrieved over the abrupt change of plan; and at the last—nothing masculine being present—he wept without shame.

*  *  *

Of course the last two days surpassed themselves in loveliness. The dawn a clear wash of gold behind the eastward hills; moor and valley mutely reproachful. Linnets and larks shouting, “What a fool you are to run away and leave us all!”

That afternoon a stillness and warmth, that was almost summer, moved Eve to beg for tea in the garden; and there they encamped with needlework, among the early daffodils, and rose bushes tufted with young leaves, that gleamed in the sun like drops of wine. Yellow butterflies flickered about, and an early bumble-bee was blundering round in a tussock of honeyless heather, swearing to himself in bee language. The two cats sat upright, elaborately cleaning their paws. And Eve, because of those stealthy fingers plucking at her heart, was trying not to be too much aware of it all.

When tea was over, she slid from her chair on to the cool grass, moved by a vague desire to get nearer the actual earth. Lying on her front, she pressed her elbows deep into the green moisture and cupped her chin in her hands. With her trick of mentally living ahead, she was out at sea—smelling hateful ship smells, feeling the throb of hidden engines, the deadly all gone sensation at the pit of her stomach. She was longing, as simply as a child, to put her head down on her arms and howl. But partly from habit, partly from pride, she would go on seeming sensible and stony and bottled up.

She had been moody all day—as nearly sulky as her nature would permit—because at the last moment she was seeing herself, with clear-eyed detachment, as a headlong fool. She was even doubting whether Vanessa would really welcome her in the guise of a bolt from the blue. She was wobbling in fact, ignominiously; hating Basil Sherwood with a deadlier hatred than when she struggled in his arms.

Now here she was hurting Anne who had accepted her craziness, without approving of it, and had slaved for her like any mother.

That pang of remorse whisked her off the smelly ship back on to Blue Hills lawn and the whiff of a cigarette. She found herself staring at Anne’s beguiling grey shoes. What was the dear woman thinking, in the depths of her quietness, about a moody ungrateful Eve? The toe of her right foot kept moving to and fro, to and fro—why? Anne was never restless. She had an unusual capacity for sitting still; and something told Eve she was responsible for that small troubled movement.

Turning her head sideways she glanced up—straight into Anne’s eyes that had their limpid look, as if a light shone through them. Without speaking they smiled at one another: then Eve reached up, clutching the hand nearest hers, mutely asking pardon.

“Had you slipped off—very far away?” Anne asked; and Eve nodded, still gazing at her.

“I was on board ship, it was perfectly awful.” She shivered. “Darling, you don’t know what a rank coward I feel about that voyage. Not sea-sickness, or the beastly little boy. Sometimes it’s as if Daddy—but that’s nonsense”

“Eve!” Anne said sharply. “You mustn’t let that sort of thing get hold of you.”

Eve made pathetic eyes at her. “I suppose I mustn’t. But it’s there all the same. And you don’t know——”

It was hopeless. She couldn’t make it clear. So she fell silent again, watching Anne’s grey shoe—not restless any more.

Then: “I certainly do look like the veriest idiot,” she remarked in a carefully detached tone. “After moving heaven and earth to get out of England, here I am, frightened by inside whispers, wishing any mad thing might happen to prevent me from leaving—you. That Basil business did jangle my nerves rather badly. I was so fearfully happy: and I didn’t see what he was after. I’m stupid that way. But it doesn’t seem so important now. My sense of proportion went askew. And it was chiefly the prospect of trundling home to Compton Court that scared me. If it had been you——?”

“Darling child—if only you’d come here in the first place——”

“Here?” Eve gazed at her with a queer sense of dismay. There are few sharper pangs than the knowledge of an unnecessary foregoing. “O—oh! But I was afraid you were too busy. And you’d just had such a dose of me. Would you have been glad—really?”

“Yes—very glad.”

“Anne!” For a few seconds Eve lost herself in the clear shining of Anne’s eyes. Then she said under her breath, “I wonder—why do we love each other as hard as all that?”

And Anne answered simply, “I don’t know.”

“I suppose,” Eve mused, “that’s about the best kind of love, when it seems utterly a part of you—and you don’t know why——?”

“It’s the kind you can count on, though the heavens fall.”

Eve let out a slow sigh. The quiet way Anne said things like that made your heart tumble about inside. But she mastered her voice sufficiently to say:

“It would have been lovely, stopping here most of the summer. Only there’d have been fusses without end. And of course I never dreamed that you—Oh, I am an idiot!”

Her voice broke; and this time she gave it up. Dropping her head on her arms she lay there and cried like a child. Anne neither spoke nor moved. Though Eve’s sudden abandonment hurt her almost physically, she knew that the inner tension would be eased by the pain of those good tears. Yet she could not remain altogether aloof. Stooping down, she caressed the dark head lying there on the spring grass.

Eve half turned and seized her hand, pressing it against her wet cheek, against her trembling lips.

There was comfort in that mute contact for them both. Then Anne rose and went back into her house of many memories.

Till this moment, she had not allowed herself to realise how bereft she would be feeling in a few days’ time, even with Clive and Molly and the precious infant to soften the ache. “Partir c’est mourir un peu”: the profound truth of that haunting line continually stabbed her afresh. Most of all it applied in the case of young things. The Eve who returned to England—perhaps in two or three years’ time—might be quite another Eve in a score of ways; no less beloved, no less loving: but never again the early morning freshness of the half-open bud—the shy loyalties and ardours, dreams and desires, the flashes of promise that fulfilment too rarely fulfils. With all the force of her strong contained devotion, she craved for Eve, as artist, the ‘power and beauty of the path that ends in the stars.’ Yet her chief concern at the moment, was for Eve, the budding woman: Eve with her spark of genius, her delicate detachment, her terrible capacity for suffering, at the mercy of worthless males (the phrase was Clive’s), and the emotions that even an undeserving man can awaken in a high-hearted girl on the brink of womanhood. Sincere and courageous to the point of indiscretion, there was nothing, one felt, that she could not do or bear. Her whole attitude seemed a challenge to Fate; and Anne, who fain would shield her, knew very well that all true art involves the tragic note. If Eve were to possess the inmost secret of music, she must first possess the secret of life. For art is a form of life in which we discover ourselves.

Yes—in time. But would India, land of swift intimacies, give her time? That shy aloofness of hers, as Anne knew from experience, would draw men like a magnet. And Anne—who had drunk deeply of the anguish and the ecstasy—was consumed with vain longing to keep the child from plunging headlong into it all too soon.

“Not yet, not yet”—was the irrepressible cry of her heart.

Book Two

Bird Of Passage

Chapter One

Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground; ling, heath, broom furze, anything.
— Shakespeare

“Stop splashing, you little villain, and come out. You’ve been in long enough.”

Eve tried to sound stern, but she hardly expected to be obeyed. Perhaps the ‘villain’ guessed as much, and felt it would be a pity to disappoint her. In some ways he was unpleasantly sharp for his age; altogether more of a handful than she had anticipated. At times he seemed to take an impish delight in disobeying her; and if she checked him too sharply, he ran whimpering to his mother, who would look—if she did not actually say—“Is this what I engaged you for?” Then Eve would feel like shaking him in good old nursery fashion. She had never sentimentalised over children; though she could sympathise with their natural egotism and greed, their guile in circumventing grown-ups—those senseless obstructions in the straight path to the delightful and the desired—and could readily be drawn to individual children, especially little boys. But in Peter de Cray she had, so far, discovered no endearing ways. Perhaps he had been left too much with Indian servants. He would either order her about as if she were an ayah, or try to get round her in a ‘wriggly’ fashion which she disliked even more.

And to-night it seemed as if the little wretch wanted to see how far he could defy her with impunity. He was ‘full of beans,’ as lively as the horrid Bay of Biscay, whose wind-driven waves were thudding and slapping the sides of the great ship. The noise and the movement excited him, while in her it induced sensations against which she must somehow hold her own, because she was supposed to be a fair sailor, and because Peter demanded incessant attention.

He and the Bay seemed in league against her: the bathroom, with the port-hole closed, smelling of steam and hot india-rubber; the crazy floor now lifting, now slipping away from under your feet; clothes on the door, towels on the rail, hanging outward at an angle peculiar to boardship in evil weather, every time the vessel turned over, like a porpoise.

And there in the bath sprawled Peter, as naked and active as an eel; shouting with laughter in reply to her stern command.

“You can’t ketch me, Misshanner!” (His telescope version of her name.) “I’m fwimming back t’ England.”

A vigorous kick sent him high up the slope at the far end of the bath; and as he slid down again a tidal wave came surging over on to the generously splashed floor, that was tilted, just then, at an impossible angle. So was the bath, to Peter’s huge delight. He could almost execute a war dance at the flat end. And Eve, with a dull pain between her brows, and a dead weight inside, dared not bend over to make a grab at him, for fear of what might happen.

A fresh shuddering lurch convinced her that it was a case of safety first and discipline nowhere.

“You’re a very naughty boy,” she told him severely. “But I’ve got to go. So you can splash a little longer. Directly I get back—out you come.”

Even in her extremity she was pleased with that true nursery touch. But some impish instinct told him she was not the real thing; and the little wretch positively giggled as she turned and fled.

When the misery was over—till next time—she struggled down the passage to her own cabin in search of sal volatile. For her head was dizzy, and her thoughts rolled about as if several screws were loose inside. Everywhere doors were banging—banging. One swung open on her left, framing a vision of the saloon: tables laid for dinner, Goanese stewards skidding about with napkins and linen-covered dishes of bread, grinning at each other when a shiver of glass announced catastrophe behind the scenes.

Bang! The vision was gone. She had reached the cabin—all untidy, because Peter would scatter things on the floor, and she didn’t dare stoop to pick them up. She had spilled some sal volatile into her tumbler, and swallowed it—far too strong—when the door swung open, and Mrs. de Cray, in a cherry-coloured evening dress, was flung almost on the top of Eve.

She clutched the girl to steady herself, and they both collapsed in a tangle on the sofa berth under the port-hole.

Mrs. de Cray laughed and righted herself. She really was a fair sailor. “The Captain says it’ll be quieter to-night. You poor girl! You do look pretty rotten. But no good giving in. Where’s Peter?”

“Splashing in the bath. I couldn’t help it. I had to——”

“Yes—yes. But you must fly back. I just looked in to be pinned securely. If you wouldn’t mind——?

Mrs. de Cray dressed early, so that Eve could use her cabin and not prevent Peter from going to sleep. A filmy cape affair from her shoulders had to be fastened delicately and exactly by two horrid little safety pins; and Eve, staggering up, managed it somehow.

Then it was a button off her single-strap shoe. “If you wouldn’t mind—after you’ve rescued the Peter-boy.”

And Eve hurried away thankful to escape from her incessant, “If you wouldn’t mind?” She had no idea of doing anything for herself that could possibly be handed on to Eve; and her insinuating formula was always a prelude to some fresh demand.

This afternoon for once, it had been otherwise, when she had astonished Eve with her, “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d rather call you by your Christian name. I can’t feel like a stranger to your father’s daughter.”

And Eve, who did mind, had no choice but to murmur polite acquiescence.

Lurching back to the bath-room, she found the precious ‘Peter-boy’ in high jubilation, with the tap full on.

“Hullo, Misshanner!” he greeted her. “Did you bee-sick? You didn’t be long.”

She ignored his pleasantry; and this time she launched no vain command. Fortified by an overdose of sal volatile, she pounced on him, grappled with his slippery nakedness, regardless of gymnastics, and hustled him back to the cabin.

The ship was a shade less active now. Not so Peter. Leaping on to his berth, he demanded a pillow fight.

“Certainly not,” she told him. “You’re going straight to bed.”

But he was doing nothing of the sort. Possessed by a minor devil, he knelt up in the berth, snatched his pillow and flung it across the cabin; snatched at anything else within reach—his shoes, his hair-brush, his Teddy bear, and hurled them at her, in a spoilt child’s paroxysm of wrath, because she would not play up to-night, as she had done on the first evening——unwisely perhaps.

Sick of vain protest, she turned to tackle him—and the Teddy bear caught her full in the face. At that she lost her temper, as she had seldom done since schoolroom days. In one bound, she caught him by the shoulders, turned him over and smacked him—hard. She had always felt it was cowardly to slap young children; and she hated doing it—even while some infuriated part of her found relief in that short, vigorous castigation.

Of course his howls brought Mrs. de Cray to the rescue, lip-stick in hand—as if her lips required further attention! And Eve stood up, already ashamed of her temper, yet resolved to hold her own.

“What on earth’s the matter? Don’t cry like that, Peter-boy.” Mrs. de Cray leaned over, caressing her prostrate son. “Did the bad ship hurt you?”

“She hurted me.” Peter flung out an accusing arm.

“She ’macked my byhind—too hard!”

Mrs. de Cray swung round and faced Eve, an angry glint in her eyes.

“You slapped him?”

Eve stiffened under her tone.

“Yes, I did. I’m sorry. I never hit children. But he was throwing things all over the place—and my head was swimming. I knew nothing else would stop him.”

“That’s a confession of weakness,” Mrs. de Cray rebuked her. “And please understand I never allow anyone to smack the boy. If it were ever necessary, I should do it myself.”

“If it hadn’t been necessary, I shouldn’t have done it.” Eve was frigid now. “He was simply being a little devil, seeing how far he could go. But another time”—Eve had a moment’s alarm at her own daring—“if I’m not to smack him, I suppose I’d better come to you?”

Mrs. de Cray looked as if she meant to snap her head off for impertinence; but perhaps she remembered that things might be uncomfortable for herself if they really clashed. In any case, her sharp look changed to a thin-lipped smile.

“Your wits aren’t asleep. Eve, though you say your head is swimming.”

“Well, it is. I’ve been sea-sick on and off all day.” She stated the fact without a shade of self-pity; and, to her surprise, Mrs. de Cray said in quite another tone: “Have you? How beastly! Take a glass of your coca-wine stuff, and lie down on my sofa. I’ll finish your little devil and hear his prayers.”

Eve, amazed and relieved, could only murmur, “Thanks awfully,” like any schoolboy, and vanish—while the kindly impulse held.

Prone on the sofa under the port-hole, she closed her eyes and let the magic stuff quiet her nerves. The ship was swaying like a hammock now; but there was still the ceaseless throb, throb of hidden engines. The whole cabin lifting, lifting, quivering in mid-air; then—with horrid shudders and spasms, sinking down—down—down: her brain filled with the melancholy savage sound of charging waves, her body helpless and buffeted, like a sack of potatoes. In the circumstances, one would rather be a sack of potatoes than a human being. Yesterday’s tempest, for instance—she quailed at the memory. Dinner had veered between a nightmare and a knock-about farce; even the practised waiters, hugging piles of plates, were jerked on to their knees; up again—down again; food shot off your plate into your lap; the ship’s officers treating it all as a huge joke; passengers vanishing hurriedly—not to reappear. And outside the closed port-holes, that terrible thudding wind, those riotous waves. The vivid recollection woke a lively dread of to-night’s ordeal.

Lying there with closed eyes, rolling limply when the ship rolled, she was praying, instinctively as a child, that some Power greater than the winds and waves might say to them, “Peace, be still!” After thirty-six hours of ceaseless unrest, those familiar words seemed the loveliest in the language.

She murmured them over and over, Coué fashion, till thought and sensation became pleasantly blurred, and she drifted into a light doze. . . .

*  *  *

She was roused by a hand on her shoulder and a voice saying, “Wake up. Nearly dinner-time.”

“Don’t want any dinner, thank you,” she murmured feebly. All she asked was to be left quiet; but she suddenly remembered—the red satin shoe.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” She dragged herself awake. “Your button!”

Mrs. de Cray laughed and flourished a neat scarlet foot. She had actually sewn on the button herself. But she pressed the point of dinner.

“It’s calmer now. Only a swell on now. Hurry up!”

Only a swell! Only that deadly rising and falling of one’s whole inside, as if screws were loose in there also. She had to lie down more than once while dressing, and to keep her eyes half shut. It was fatal to watch things swaying—fatal and irresistible.

Somehow, at last, she was dressed for dinner, sitting in her chair at the Captain’s table. A typical seaman, with a reddish beard, and china-blue eyes, Captain Gilbert was only formidable on the bridge; all things to all his lady passengers. There were but ten of them on this journey; and Mrs. de Cray came easily first—with her smart frocks, her insinuating charm of the fetch-and-carry order, her frank pursuit of promiscuous admiration.

Eve, looking on, secretly amused, marvelled how any woman with an ounce of pride in her could so patently pursue, so keenly relish the lip-service of reluctant males. She found herself, at nineteen, interested and attracted by men in general, yet shy of individuals; apt to shrink from sensations they might too readily arouse. Basil had been a case in point. Because his kiss had excited her, even while it angered her, she had hated it and him the more. It would take time and new interests, to blur the effect of his impertinent assault on her emotions—the shyest element in her reticent disposition.

Here was enough of fresh distraction—Peter permitting—to feed her imagination, her passionate curiosity about life. Here were plenty of faces to watch: and to-night, disinclined to eat or talk, she was feeling just sufficiently better to look on and listen and have fun with herself about them all.

She had not yet addressed the woman next to her, whose plain face, rather like a horse, was redeemed by kind, worried eyes that might be beautiful if they lit up. With the ship’s orchestra hammering out the latest thing in barbarous syncopation, it was easier not to talk; though most of the others kept it up valiantly.

Mrs. de Cray, on the Captain’s left hand, had some ado to hold her own against Mrs. Meldrum, on his right—heavily handsome, with fine hazel eyes, that challenged you to secrete a mean thought or a selfish motive; obviously a woman of noble purpose little given to hiding lights under bushels. Already the whole table knew that she and her husband—a discarded M.P.—were bound for Simla, as a prelude to touring Northern India in the autumn; promoting the uplift of the ‘poor dear peasant,’ whose pathetic contentment was ‘a reproach to Democracy, a hindrance to India’s rightful demand for the full status of nationhood.’

Eve did not need to be told they were Liberals. But she felt sorry for the husband, who was nervous and gaunt with a jerky manner, and looked as if he would prefer hiding under a bushel.

As for the Captain—he deserved a V.C. for maintaining his gallantry under a cross-fire of personalities and high politics, trying hard to look as if he knew all about those peasants and their reproach to democracy, when he probably didn’t know a thing.

At last Mrs. de Cray gave it up, and turned her batteries on her right-hand neighbour, a round and rosy Bombay Civilian, whose shirt had a tendency to bulge, and whose nippers were constantly being rescued from his plate and polished on a vast silk handkerchief. Eve caught scraps of their talk—mainly people and strings of initials; the excitement of discovering mutual acquaintances and colliding in brisk agreement.

She left them at it, and shifted her attention to a young man opposite, in whom she was beginning to take a hopeful interest: a plain but pleasing young man, loosely put together; the forehead of an idealist, safeguarded by a jutting chin. Because of his lively humour and the extra large ‘owls’ eyes’—that suggested port-holes to her cabin-ridden brain—she decided that he might be American, which would be something fresh. When he twice said “Sure”—and looked as if he had been caught out—she knew that it was so. Already he was on easy terms with two fledgling subalterns, not very happily placed near Mr. Forbes, the first officer—a cadaverous embodiment of gloom—who was clearly there to eat, not to make talk. In a brief respite from jazz, she heard him informing the wretched subalterns, with relish, that a secondary gale was due shortly—just as the Captain, in the kindness of his heart, was telling the ladies that gallons of oil had been poured on the waters, and they would all sleep like tops. One or other of them must be romancing. And you could hardly blame them. Passengers were always wanting to know . . .? And some of them did seem to leave their brains behind when they travelled by sea. That sallow lumpy subaltern would now be feeling sea-sick in advance; and the red-haired one, with the confluent freckles, would be chaffing him without mercy. People who made fun of sea-sickness, in Eve’s opinion, should be put through a stiff course of it straightaway.

Bored with the subalterns, she was wondering now about the empty chair between the American and Mr. Meldrum, about the nice middle-aged man who had sat there on the first evening, and had not appeared again. She had rather specially noticed his face; clever and critical, the lean, dark, shut-in kind, that suggested interesting possibilities; though no doubt the more obvious-looking fat ones were often made of finer stuff inside. Chiefly she was interested because the face had seemed vaguely familiar, in some way connected with India. Perhaps she had seen him out there as a child?

Another brief respite was giving conversation a chance: Mrs. de Cray still colliding gaily with her civilian; India’s welfare, like the band, ‘having a pause.’ Mr. Meldrum was being mildly humorous; some joke about sailors and the Freedom of the Seas. Eve had missed the connection, but the Captain chuckled.

“It’s the discipline of the seas we get knocked into us. And a ship’s routine is the finest known cure for any ailment under the sun.”

Mr. Meldrum nodded. “That’s right, Captain. Give me discipline. Most unpopular word in our time. Liberty’s like whisky—a fine stimulant, but a rank intoxicant. If a man takes his whack of either, you very soon have him under the table.”

The Captain rapped with his knife-handle.

“How’s that, Mr. Van Doran?” He cocked a china-blue eye at the young American. “If you can’t get whisky, you can all get drunk on Liberty, in God’s own country, eh?”

Mr. Van Doran—Eve’s heart gave a little leap. It sounded like Villars. Could he possibly be a relation?

He was beaming at the Captain through his ‘portholes.’

“No, sir! God’s free air is most of the liberty we’ve got left to shout about over there. If you’d have me speak without prejudice, well . . . disciplined England’s the country of the free——”

“Some spell it Scotland—and get nearer the mark,” muttered Mr. Forbes, gloomily eyeing his inadequate portion of savoury.

That caused a minor demonstration. It was the first time he had set the table laughing. But Eve was mainly concerned with Mr. Van Doran, liking him for his honesty, hoping he would give her a chance to ask about Villars.

As the steward whisked away her plate, and insinuated the savoury, a voice at her elbow said meekly, “Would you mind passing the salt?”

She passed it, with a murmured apology, and smiled into the kind worried eyes of her neighbour with the face like a horse.

“You’ve been ill, haven’t you?” said the woman. “I hope you feel better. I always dread the Bay.”

Her voice was gentle yet eager. She didn’t touch the salt. Perhaps she had simply been wanting to talk, nerving herself to approach the strange girl, so wrapped away in her own thoughts.

Eve, moved by compunction, responded with unusual warmth, which may have accounted for the fact that, in less than five minutes, this total stranger was telling her the reason of that worried look in her eyes, as total strangers were occasionally moved to do, in a railway carriage, a hotel lounge—all sorts of impossible places.

She had been summoned by cable, this nameless mother-woman, to a sick husband in the Mooltan district; having only just come home, with her third and last child, after four years of India. There were two others; and she was to have had the Easter and summer holidays with them all. Instead—only two months at Home; and no knowing when she could afford to come back again. She seemed to think her husband was not seriously ill; but being a healthy man, he was very nervous if anything went wrong inside. You could feel how intensely the children mattered to her; but she was going all the same—from visions of summer in England to the grim actuality of a hot weather in Mooltan.

“You don’t know what that means!” she said, with her sad smile. “Girls go out there and marry—not realising. They say, ‘Oh, India’s so fascinating!’ They don’t see ahead the terrible demands—the price they’ll have to pay. It doesn’t fascinate me. I almost hate it.”

She dropped her tone, because dinner was over and people were making a move, but the repressed intensity of that plain statement startled Eve.

In response to her sympathetic murmur, the woman said gently, “I’m afraid I’ve bored you—talking all about myself——”

“You didn’t! It—it was more than I deserved.”

At that the kind eyes lit up.

“You’re a nice girl. And I don’t even know your name!”

When they had exchanged names, and Mrs. Turle asked hopefully, “D’you ever play Bridge?” Eve felt quite sorry to say, “Hardly ever. On board ship—I wouldn’t dare!”

Mrs. Turle sighed. “Well, I do dare, though I’m always sorry for my partner. It helps to keep one’s thoughts in check. If I try to read—it’s hopeless. At cards one must attend—because of the others. I’m so glad I spoke to you. Good night.”

Eve wished her luck, and watched her as she wandered away. Not tall, not graceful, not even well-dressed, she moved with a quiet air of dignity—the outward sign of an inward grace—that adorned her as the lovely old paste pendant she wore adorned her mass-production grey silk frock. “Because of the others” she could rise to any effort demanded of her—a virtue as old-fashioned as her whole appearance. That kind of woman made one feel small. Yet Mrs. de Cray would dismiss her as ‘a dowd’; her partner at Bridge would curse her inwardly, if she revoked; and that self-absorbed young person, Eve Challoner, had ignored her all through the meal. At least she had the grace to be ashamed of it—now.

Mrs. de Cray’s voice at her elbow, said playfully, “You did manage to swallow a little dinner, I noticed. I was cruel only to be kind. I’m for Bridge. What’s yours?”

“I thought of going on deck for a stroll.”

“How cold! And how melancholy!”

Mrs. de Cray’s dramatic little shiver was mainly for the benefit of the second officer, Mr. Button, a dapper little man with a ‘cardboard’ profile, who came tripping up to her, dealing out Bridge ‘hands’ in dumb show.

“If you’re cold and melancholy, try a coffee and cognac before we start.”

“I’m neither—but I will. Thanks very much.”

“And—this young lady? May I?”

“This young lady,” Mrs. de Cray answered for her, “prefers communing with the stars. That’s what struck me as cold and melancholy.”

“Ah, but it all depends . . .!”

The knowing innuendo made Eve want to box his ears. It was a relief when Mrs. de Cray said briskly,

“Well run along to your stars, if you can find any among the clouds. And don’t be late turning in. You need a good night’s rest.”

It was a greater relief to escape from the saloon atmosphere, leaving Mrs. de Cray to coffee and cognac with the facetious Button, who even enjoyed making fun of his own name. Three times already Eve had overheard his pet joke. “On Fortune’s cap I am the very Button. Hamlet wasn’t you know!” As most of them didn’t know, the joke was apt to misfire, which appeared not to discourage him in the least. Mrs. de Cray had collected him casually on the very first evening and would probably need all her skill to dislodge him before the voyage was over. But that was her own affair; and it might be fun to watch.

Eve’s affair just then was to escape from them all; to revel in her one clear hour of freedom from Peter and his mother.

Chapter Two

As angels, in some brighter dreams,
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,
And into glory peep.
— Henry Vaughan

The deserted hurricane deck—islands of light in a world of shadows—had for Eve a fascination it could never possess by day. The first evening she had felt too strange and lonely to explore it. Last night physical sensations had eclipsed all others. But to-night, wrapped in her important coat, the breeze stirring her hair, clouds above and waves below, she felt liberated and enlarged, lifted high above daily trifles.

The deck itself, untroubled by restless passengers, seemed to shed all connection with the prosaic elements of travel, to assume the peculiar sadness and dignity of deserted places—an empty church, an empty street, even an empty ballroom. Down below, in that rabbit warren of cabins and saloons, the great ship seemed a mere receptacle for all Eve hated most in the way of sights and sounds and smells—especially smells. Up here, one saw her as she was—a thing of grace and swiftness, vibrating with life in her hidden depths, lonely and mysterious, travelling, as it were, by the light of her own intelligence, across pathless waters.

The breeze was still brisk; the sea far below still tossed and moaned, the bows yielding to its soft strong persuasion, the tall masts gently swaying across a patch of clear sky, where stars swarmed like golden bees. Near at hand hung the greater lights of the ship, each in its appointed place; and shadowy boats slung out on either side, suggested perils at which imagination quailed.

Wandering aft, she came to a great coil of rope; and half kneeling on　it leaned over the rail, fascinated by the broken music of waves receding from the hull. Behind the travelling ship that wide track of foam wavered and swerved like a silver snake, till it was lost in the black night of distance. Mysterious and vaguely menacing, it stirred in Eve the primal dread of darkness, oldest of all earthly dreads; cheated of its terror by civilised man, but never quite conjured away; even as science has not yet conjured away the twin mysteries of space and time. Better so, for science—and for man. To lose all the underlying mysteries would be to lose the essence of life.

To believe in the Reality beyond those mysteries—now seen in flashes, one day to be revealed—was perhaps the best that could be hoped for in an age that questioned everything and dared not affirm anything. Settled convictions, Eve supposed, must be as comfortable as an arm-chair; and the arm-chair people had their reward. But, for her, mere daily living must in some sort be an adventure. And the essence of adventure was—not knowing; to go forward, undismayed, in the teeth of not knowing; to seek for ever the beauty that lies on the far side of danger, the hidden meaning of this thing called Life, that keeps slipping away, while you try to understand it—slipping away, like that silver track of foam; tossed and troubled yet amazingly beautiful, with darkness on either side of it. One could never give up trying to seize the unseizable, to discover the undiscoverable; and and that was the main fascination of the whole bewildering business.

To one clear certainty she clung. She must always obey the still small Voice—the infinitely wise part of her, that her body itself could not turn from its secret purposes.

What was the secret purpose behind her impetuous flight, that was carrying her every hour, farther and farther away—from England and from Anne? Why did the bit that was Daddy in her seem to be pulling her back at the eleventh hour? It was invading her now, that stealthy sense of fear. It was making her long, as simply as a child, to be at home again among safe familiar things.

To dispel her foolishness she began singing softly to the darkness and the stars her favourite “Londonderry Air.” Though the modern words were inadequate, there was comfort in the heart-stirring melody; and the Lochs in the second verse were, for her, the Lakes of Kashmir. The final lines—

“And tears at parting lead to joyous meeting,
And my deep love for thee shall time outlast”

seemed always a cry from her heart to the man who was gone—yet not altogether gone.

What was that? A small crisp sound, more immediate than the splash and murmur of the sea: a sound like a cat sneezing. Turning to welcome the creature, she saw—no cat, but a tall dark figure standing by the rail, a little way off: the silhouette of a peaked cap, a jutting pipe and two hands curved round the flame of a match that explained the cat’s sneeze.

Lit by the wavering flame, fragments of a man s face sprang out of the darkness: a corner of forehead, a curve of eyebrow and nostril, the fingers of the left hand with blurred red lines between them. The weird effect fascinated Eve; the flickering light on those lines and curves

Impossible! But her eyes could not be deceived.

Something felt suddenly loose inside, and she heard her own startled whisper, “Daddy—is it you?”

The match flared and went out. The face was gone: illusion—or reality? She was in no state to decide. There was only the breathless discomfort—the excitement of seeing again those few unmistakable lines of the face she had not seen in the flesh for seven years. The thing was incredible. Yet there he stood—the square shoulders, the peaked cap, the jutting pipe: there he continued to stand, seemingly unaware of her.

An overwhelming impulse to run and fling her arms round him startled her back to sanity. But she positively could not stand there a few yards away from him—whoever . . . whatever he might be—without risk of doing something crazy. Once more she glanced at him, a mere masculine silhouette, miles removed from her and her odd sensations. Then, putting a strong constraint upon herself, she walked away.

At the top of the steps, that led down to the main deck, a little tugging ache forced her to look round—half expecting to find the place empty, the vision gone. But the mysterious unknown stood there still. He had turned his head and was looking also; his face a pale blur under the dark cap.

With a shiver along her nerves, she ran briskly down the shallow stairs, asking herself over and over, What did it mean? Had she seen an amazingly actual ghost—for the first time in her life? Or could there possibly be, on this ship, a man so like her father that her own heart was deceived? There might be many passengers she had not yet seen. Very carefully she would watch them all.

She reached her cabin in a state of mind so detached from normal things that it gave her a small shock to see Peter sleeping peacefully, his hair all tousled—a sainted cherub, whom she could not have slapped under any provocation.

She herself, by preference, slept under the port-hole. Last night it had hardly been a case of sleeping; but to-night seemed to promise better things.

Divided between the renewed pang of loss and the illusion of recapture, she lay on her back with closed eyes and deliberately called up the vision of that half-seen face. At times she could and did let herself sink into a state, between sleep and waking, in which her memory—saturated with those few months of India and her father—could recreate his whole aspect so livingly that it hurt. Half fearful, half desirous, she drifted now to the verge of sleep. . .

He was there—starting for a ride on Shahzada; a restless Shahzada, fretting against the snaffle lightly yet firmly controlled by his master’s hand. Eve knew now that some people are their hands. Daddy’s were lean and sinewy as himself, with the light, decisive touch essential to fine horsemanship. Always in the saddle, he looked younger, happier. And there was Larry, nose on paws, eyes imploring a move from his master, who was sitting so quiet, waiting—perhaps for her unpunctual self?

Though the white shikari helmet shaded his forehead, his face was illumined by the strong sun of Kashmir—the kind eyes with their hawk-like gleam, the decisive nose, the sad mouth, and those two deep lines, when he shut it tight, as if something were hurting inside. Her riveted gaze absorbed every detail: the familiar grey coat with leather buttons, the cord breeches and riding boots, the signet ring on his little finger. He had left that ring to her. It was in her jewel-box now.

And while she watched, the serious face lit up with his ‘special smile.’ In another moment she would be with him. . . .

In that moment she must have slid down the gentle incline from waking dream into true dream—so it seemed at least: and she found herself riding round the Circular Road, the glory of Gulmarg; lordly pines on the khud side, framing visions of sunlit peaks, and, far below, a mosaic of cornfields and lake and river, shimmering in the afternoon light of early June. Up on the Ridge, the air was ice-cool against her cheeks as she sped through it at an easy hand gallop on her Arab mare, the beat of Shahzada’s hoofs close behind.

The road was empty, and she sitting at ease, when Zaidée swerved sharply, her heels towards the khud. They were slipping over the unrailed edge——

Eve heard her own faint scream. And there was Daddy, out of the saddle, his hand gripping the reins close to Zaidée’s head.

“Use your whip,” he commanded; and she used it desperately.

They were safe on the path; Zaidée all a-quiver, Eve thoroughly frightened now it was over, and Daddy looking hard at her—his face a queer grey colour.

“Good God, child, don’t do that again!”

So sternly he spoke, that a sob escaped her. She put out a hand to clutch him. It closed on emptiness—and terror seized her.

But he was still there; his stern aspect had softened, his eyes looked into hers with a disturbing intensity.

“Something threatened you,” he said in an odd, sheathed voice. That was all.

She tried to speak; but loving him so hard made her throat ache, and everything seemed to be melting away. She herself was melting away; though with all her will she clung to the beloved presence.

“Daddy!”

She had lost him. She was riding through air, a Valkyr on a winged Zaidée: and beating against her heart, like a prisoned bird, the cry her lips could not utter.

The stifled sound escaped at last—and she felt a very fool. For there they were, peacefully having tea in the Residency summer-house, talking of simple happy things. It was a wonder, yet it seemed entirely natural, this sense of utter familiarity, as if some part of her still lived continuously in those surroundings, while the other part lived elsewhere; as if her spirit could be steeped simultaneously in Here and There, in Then and Now, proving its kinship with God. Perhaps some part of him went on living here too——?

He had turned away to light his pipe, one hand curved round the flaming match. The flicker of it, on his forehead and nostrils, startlingly recalled a face in darkness—seen by the other Eve, who was on a P. & O. steamer, and in a Kashmir summer-house at one and the same time.

Either she, or the other Eve, said boldly, “Darling Daddy, do you know I’m on a ship going out to India?” Though they were together in India, and she had nearly slipped over the khud, he seemed not at all surprised.

“Yes,” he said, “of course I know.”

There was another question, more important; something she wanted to ask. Here was her chance: yet she could not ask, because her idiotic dream self didn’t even know what it was.

“Daddy,” she began desperately: and he looked at her as if he understood; his face, in some mysterious way, glorified.

“Darling, I am with you on the ship.” (That was the question playing hide and seek in her brain. He had understood.) “I am always as near you as it s possible to be.”

She held her breath, keeping very still; and in his quietest voice he went on:

“We can never really lose each other. And it’s partly your doing. Remember that. We are nearer to each other this way than ever before. Don’t you feel it, Eve?”

Did she feel it? All her nerves were vibrating as if she had touched an electric wire; but her heart within her cried out, “I want you—I want you in everyday life.” She was saying it passionately inside; yet no sound came.

And again he seemed to know. His hand closed over hers with the slow strong pressure that made her feel safe and gave her a glad little stir inside. Impulsively she tried to fling her free arm round his shoulder, but he was no longer there. . . .

*  *  *

A shaft of early sunlight, striking across the cabin, disturbed Peter, who did not hesitate to disturb Eve.

She awoke with a bewildered happy sense of returning from another world; heartened and comforted by the afterglow of actual contact with her father. Illusion or no, the effect on herself was too all-pervading for doubt to enter in.

She had been with him, in that summer-house. He was with her on this ship. Perhaps he had stood there last night, by the taffrail? Perhaps the veil between seen and unseen had been lifted for those few moments of time?

Chapter Three

Who the peril of her lips shall paint?
— Sheridan

A few hours later, they were all up on deck—no longer a region of mystery and fascination. Under a sky swept clear of cloud the Atlantic lay unshadowed, a disc of blue light, its rippled surface tossing up careless flakes of foam; and between those twin immensities the gallant ship went riding, her bows gently lifting and falling; the sun winking on all her brass work—polished more fiercely than any brass ashore—her long white decks spotless as a bleached bone.

These were not crowded, as in the autumn sailings; but on so fair a morning, no self-respecting passenger remained below. Walkers walked emphatically, proud of commanding their own legs again. Loungers appropriated deck-chairs, and settled themselves with cushions and rugs, hiding their insular reserve behind illustrated papers or gaudy magazines.

Eve, her energy and interest revived, sat a little apart, with her frisky charge, who was crawling round and round her, pushing a train built of bricks, with realistic gruntings and puffings, from Gibraltar to London. Eve had been told that she was in the train, which involved a constant demand for tickets, constant bustling up to change at the next station. If she “nearly missed it,” Peter would shriek with glee; and if she happened to be otherwise absorbed, he would tug at her coat without mercy.

Irresistibly, she fell a prey to the varied human pantomime distracting her eyes and brain. There was Mr. Meldrum, elaborately nautical, in glaring white canvas shoes, yachting cap and binoculars, importantly scanning a wisp of smoke on the horizon; talking in nervous jerks to a man with a large nose and a large stomach, who looked comfortably commercial, and listened with the bored patient air of the seasoned traveller. There was the group of business men, who hung about round the smoking-room door, and punctuated their talk with explosions of ribald laughter. There were those two girls, who had already made overtures to the subalterns. Very smart in their tweed coats and bright hats, they loitered near the taffrail, gazing dreamily out to sea, when anything masculine came their way, as though giving the men a chance to observe their charms, without fear of instant capture.

Mrs. de Cray, sublimely sure of herself, never troubled to give the men a chance—other than the chance of waiting on her hand and foot. It was the Button who had settled down with her, till duty called him elsewhere. Then the deserted chair beckoned. So did the lady in her own inimitable manner. Eve marvelled at the skill with which she could entangle any passing man; a book conveniently out of reach, her scarf careening in the breeze, her silkily soft, “If you wouldn’t mind?” It was all achieved with so casual an air that it seemed injustice to suppose it otherwise.

A man from the smoking-room group had been skilfully detached, but had not succumbed to the chair. Now she had sighted fresh quarry in Eve’s neighbourhood; and when the girl sprang up to change stations she discovered that it was the Empty Chair man—who had reappeared.

He was leaning on a stanchion watching a sailor chalk the deck for quoits, talking to him fitfully, with a short straight pipe between his teeth. Eve had only a brief view, but she decided afresh that he looked interesting, not the sort of man to be snared by side glances.

When he had finished with the sailor, he sauntered past her and Peter. Presently he would saunter past Mrs. de Cray. Would she capture him with that effortless ease of hers? For a brief foolish moment it mattered intensely to Eve whether that unknown man would or would not confirm her lightning impression of him. That short straight pipe, she decided, would stroll past the siren without even looking her way.

It did nothing of the kind. Its owner deliberately looked her way; and as she brushed aside her fluttering scarf, a bottle of lavender salts rolled almost to his feet.

Of course he restored it with a polite remark. Of course she detained him with “smiles and soap.” And the next time Eve looked round, he was securely established in the inviting chair. Her opinion of him went down with a run. If he was that kind of man, he could have no further interest for Eve.

Not a sign anywhere of nice Mrs. Turle, or the American, who might be connected with Villars. Peter’s game had palled; the wind was freshening, and a brisk walk might keep sensations at bay.

“Put up your bricks, Peter-boy, and come for a run,” she commanded.

Peter-boy’s grin implied that he expected her to put up the bricks—which she unwisely did. Since battles-royal made her unpopular with both, she had decided on a policy of peace—even with dishonour.

They passed the loungers at a trot. She realized already that the more assiduously she kept Peter away from his devoted mother, the better would that devoted mother be pleased. So they ran on after his favourite ball, through the deck saloon and out on to the port side.

There the breeze caught them clean and strong. Off flew Peter’s straw hat, gleefully pursued by its owner. Though Eve outran Peter, the hat outran them both; and if it blew overboard——?

It did not blow overboard. An agile young man sprang from the threshold of the smoking-room, set his foot on the brim, and smiled at Eve through horn-rimmed glasses.

“Oh, thank you!” she panted, as he picked up the hat and set it firmly on Peter’s head.

“There you are, Sonny. Suits you fine.”

He glanced at the careening waves and back at Eve with his ready smile.

“Looks sort of skittish again; but I hope we’re through. My feet have a sneaking desire to know if they’re going to hit the deck, or if the deck is going to up and hit them!”

Eve laughed. “My feet don’t like decks under them at all!”

She felt grateful to him; quite in the mood to seize opportunities. But he should have his chance of retreat with honour.

“Come along, Peter,” she said, and made a move towards the taffrail.

“Meaning me?” the American queried hopefully. “Happens to be my name!”

“No—my name.” The other Peter protested—and they both laughed.

Mr. Van Doran patted the boy’s shoulder. “Don’t excite, Sonny. I’m not trespassing. I got there first!”

Peter, unable to follow that, stated with dignity, “I don’t excite. But I am Peter.”

“Honest to God—so am I.” He beamed through his ‘port-holes’ at Eve. “May both Peters come along, if you’re taking a turn, Miss—er?”

“Miss Challoner,” Eve introduced herself. “Do come.” His evident pleasure encouraged her to add: “I heard your name at the dinner table, and I’ve been wondering—had you any relations at Villars this winter, the Palace Hotel?”

“Relations? Sure——” He checked himself with his tripped-up air. “My mother and a sister and a young brother. You knew them all?”

He seemed so delighted that she felt a fraud, having to admit that she scarcely knew them; nor could she very well explain that the thrill, for her, lay in his connection with Villars. He had actually been there himself, and had left just after the New Year.

“It was fine. Wouldn’t have run away so early—if I’d guessed——!”

From any other chance young man that would have made Eve’s petals curl up; but this eager young American was patently without guile. And he had the gift of tongues. He talked steadily and variously as they strolled aft, giving Peter’s solid ball (which he called his “Sorbo”) an occasional kick to prove he had not been quite forgotten.

It was the magic word “India” that roused Eve’s interest. He was on his way out there to join an elder sister, consumed with active zeal for what he called “the ree-naissance of the Orient.” He had never yet been to India, but he seemed to know a surprising deal about it—mainly about political India and aspirations for Swaraj. From one end of the deck to the other, he talked on and on in his suave, cultured voice. They crossed over to the starboard side; and still he talked on and on. He was telling her now of his sister’s first-hand interest in certain social and domestic aspects of Hinduism, that appeared to call for drastic reform; and they halted near the taffrail looking seaward, Peter and his Sorbo forgotten. A good deal of it passed clean over Eve’s head; but it dawned on her lively intelligence that most of the things this zealous pair would ‘have’ the Hindu reform altogether ran counter to traditions embedded in their lives by centuries of sanctified dastur. Fatally she found herself thinking of the Walrus and the Carpenter: ‘If seven maids with seven mops swept it for half a year . . .?’

But he seemed troubled with none of the Carpenter’s doubts. He was so transparently in earnest, so full of queer knowledge, so convinced that India could be ‘made over,’ if only she were educated and legislated, and so thoroughly disinfected—in matters physical, domestic and moral—that it seemed to Eve’s ignorance she would scarcely be India any more——

“Eve! Eve!”

It was Mrs. de Cray’s voice, raised in sharp vexation; and Eve, recalled to duty, found Peter clinging to his mother’s skirts, sobbing out a tragic tale about the precious Sorbo that had jumped overboard.

Hurrying to reclaim him, she heard her own indictment from his lips.

“I frowed it for Misshanner to ketch,” he explained between his sobs. “But she wouldn’ look. She was talking and talking——”

Really, Eve!” Mrs. de Cray accosted her, too much annoyed to consider the presence of others; but Mr. Van Doran came gallantly to her aid.

“If you’ll forgive the intrusion, I’m the one that was talking and talking! And I’m not the one to have Miss Challoner take the blame.”

“That’s very nice of you,” Mrs. de Cray was polite but unappeased. “I expect it was all very interesting, but its rather hard on Peter.” She looked emphatically at Eve. “He naturally expects you to play with him. He’ll be miserable without his Sorbo.”

Her surface pleasantness barely veiled the implication of negligence; and Peter, tacitly encouraged to be miserable, wept louder than ever.

Eve—in no humour to defend herself—took his hand and pulled him away, not looking at the new attaché who had witnessed her discomfiture. It was Mr. Van Doran who patted his shoulder and offered a word of cheer.

“Crying’s a mug’s game, Sonny. Wait till we make Marseilles, and then—watch me! I’ll find you the very spit of the little fellow that’s gone overboard.”

Peter cheered up just sufficiently to argue the point.

“But Sorbo couldn’ spit. He hadn’ got no mouf.”

Mr. Van Doran laughed. “You’re too cute for this earth. Anyway he’s got a twin at Marseilles. You come along this way. Ever seen an orange? That’ll put your face straight.”

It did. Peter recovered his manhood with surprising alacrity; and Eve liked her new acquaintance better than ever. But she could not so easily recover her ruffled temper. She would rise to requests. She would obey orders. But there was a certain attitude, a certain tone, that would wake the don’t-care-devil in her, whether she happened to be in the wrong or no.

She kept clear of Mrs. de Cray all the morning; but she discovered Mrs. Turle, who happily took a fancy to Peter: and when Eve complained of headache, she offered to give him his dinner.

“You go and lie down,” she urged kindly. “I love fussing round after a child.”

Eve admitted that she would be thankful to lie down; and she was still more thankful to be rid of Peter. At ease on her sofa berth, she decided to skip lunch. A delicious sense of release flowed through her. She fell sound asleep.

*  *  *

It was near four o’clock when she awoke to find the ship comparatively at peace; and she herself, equilibrium restored, feeling quite kindly disposed towards tea.

Having collected Peter and Mrs. Turle, she hesitated about joining Mrs. de Cray and her attaché at the small table she had made her own. To her surprise, she was hailed playfully from afar.

“Is the Sleeping Beauty awake at last?”

The Sleeping Beauty admitted as much without rising to the playfulness. She was still troubled with a tendency to sulk; but Mrs. de Cray, bent on being agreeable, would not heed.

“I looked in before lunch, but you never stirred. The French say, ‘qui dort, dîne.’ And as I suspected you would rather dine in your sleep, I crept quietly away.”

Tone and manner advertised her charming consideration for a young woman whose deserts were small: and Eve, always restive under the personal note, introduced Mrs. Turle, advertising her kindness to Peter. Mrs. de Cray responded by introducing the Empty Chair man as Major Monteith.

“He belongs to your part of the world,” she added.

“He’s Border Police.”

Eve brightened at that; and while she responded to the stranger’s polite overtures, Mrs. de Cray was discovering, by adroit questions, the exact status of Mrs. Turle’s husband.

She placed people entirely according to their connection with the Services, which is Anglo-India’s form of snobbishness. To be Army or Civil, was to be beyond reproach. To be Secretariat was to be beyond good and evil. Police or Forests might pass, on personal merits; while uncovenanted Civilians—Education, Public Works and the whole mission crowd—were officially of no account at all. Individually, in Mrs. de Cray’s esteem, no woman could be of much account who had failed to shingle her hair and had no idea how to put on her clothes. She very soon placed the husband, a civil engineer at work on canals—P.W.D.²; and her exact shade of pleasantness to Mrs. Turle was regulated by the discovery.

Eve, more or less alive to it all, was not making rapid headway with Major Monteith: nor did it help matters to suspect that Mrs. de Cray’s other ear caught most of their talk. She was not sorry when the meal ended, and she was able to abscond with Peter and Mrs. Turle. Resolved to retrieve her character, she played at nursery-governess assiduously; but was persuaded to let Mrs. Turle bathe the imp, who treated the gentle creature with some semblance of respect. Free at last, she fled up on deck, for a peaceful half-hour with a book, before dinner.

A gracious calm prevailed. The sun blazed across the quiet waters. A light chill wind blew from the north-east. Not wishing to be disturbed, she wedged her chair into a corner between the smoking-room and a jutting skylight. It was a perfect corner. People might pass without noticing her, yet her eyes could still be dazzled by the path of gold whenever she looked up from the entrancing page. Just now, she was lost in Conrad’s Nostromo; reading it slowly, steeping herself in the mysterious atmosphere of the Placid Gulf shadowed by the towering Cordilleras.

As sea and sky became fused in a common splendour, people wandered up from below. Footsteps and voices invaded her imaginary world; and very soon she recognized the voices of those two. Unaware of her, they paused by the taffrail to watch the fiery after-glow that burnished the darkening sea. Their figures, black against the brightness, had a flattened effect, as if they were cut out of cardboard.

Presently they moved away and sat down on the edge of the skylight—just beyond Eve’s corner—still unaware. And as the man turned his head aside to light a cigarette, she caught a profile glimpse in the brief flare of the match.

Her heart missed a beat. Instantly she knew—that was the face she had seen last night. No ghost, but an actual man had given her the amazing illusion of her father’s presence. She sat very still, staring at his back and shoulders, waiting for him to turn his head again, her heart troubled with the strangest mingling of pain and joy.

It was Mrs. de Cray who turned with her tinkling laugh; and Eve—in sudden dread of being discovered, of having to talk—hurried cautiously away.

Chapter Four

All things rush on. They look not behind, no power can hold them back; they rush on.
— Rabindranath Tagore

For the next few days Eve lived and moved in a waking dream. All she desired—and very rarely got—was leisure to sit apart with a book, somewhere near Major Monteith and Mrs. de Cray; to watch for that fugitive likeness and warm her heart with the dear delusion that it was her father actually sitting there. The likeness lurked only in certain lines seen at certain angles. Confronting him in a full light, scarcely a trace of it remained. It was a harder face than her father’s, ironical and dissatisfied; the face of a man who had been hurt by life—and had resented it. Behind the grey eyes, under level lids, dwelt quite another spirit than the spirit of Ian Challoner. Only an occasional look of distance and detachment stirred a vague sense of familiarity that quickened her interest in the man and in all he had to say.

He was not given frequent chances of saying it—to Eve. He had been definitely annexed by Mrs. de Cray: and Eve found herself more and more disliking that very smart lady; more and more alive to the strain of subtle selfishness that could feign a charming solicitude in the undeviating pursuit of its own ends; to the persistent note of falsity that lurked under her back-handed way of disparaging others, her manner of saying, “I quite understand”—sympathy incarnate—while subtly conveying an impression that to be understood was to be seen through. Not least, there was her insatiable curiosity; a plague of personal questions, to which Eve could not and did not respond any further than politeness required. “Probably,” she thought in harassed moments, “poor Major Monteith is badgered in much the same way.”

Watching for the likeness, she fancied he looked restive now and then. He would vanish into the smoking-room, some mornings; and would even at times, make tentative advances to herself; but she could not be drawn out of her shell with Mrs. de Cray always at hand, always alert to detach him skilfully if he looked like taking too much notice of Eve—who was tacitly relegated to Mr. Van Doran. With him she felt increasingly at ease. There was no resisting his kindness to Peter, his guileless optimism, his desire to be taken for an Englishman, when all the while he was the nicest kind of American. And if he did sometimes talk like a leading article, his seriousness was always spiced with humour.

Automatically the little board-ship community had crystallized into groups. Mrs. de Cray’s group, mainly masculine, included Mrs. Turle, because of her kindness to Peter and Eve, also the Meldrums. Though the Button remained firmly attached, and the ship’s doctor had surrendered at discretion, she divided her personal favours mainly between the Captain and Major Monteith.

The Mediterranean, in placid mood, was giving them a succession of blue and balmy days with the treacherous drop at sunset, which brought vividly back to Eve the “cold weather feeling” of Northern India.

To Mrs. de Cray it brought a feverish chill—the natural penalty of appearing prematurely in sleeveless, diaphanous summer frocks; and Eve, though sorry for her, wearied of waiting hand and foot on an eternally demanding, self-pitying invalid, who had been strictly forbidden by the devoted ship’s doctor to appear till lunch-time, or to venture on deck after sunset, for two days at least.

Not till after dinner, on the first day, was there any chance of escape. Leaving her patient peacefully dozing, Eve slipped on a light coat and fled aloft to breathe clean salt air, to be with herself alone.

On the main deck, groups and couples were loitering or sitting about in the dusk; fearful of being waylaid, she rounded the big skylight almost at a run; charged into something—some one—

“Damn!” It was out before she realised.

“Let me down lightly!” said the voice of Major Monteith, as he gripped her elbows to steady her.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” she breathed, flustered and excited because of that deep note in his voice which so vividly recalled her father,

“I shall survive! You seem always in a hurry. What’s up?”

“Nothing. I was only rushing on deck for a few mouthfuls of fresh air.”

“Hawa khana³—eh? Not forgotten your Hindustani?” (Had Mrs. de Cray told him about her?) “May I come and stroll with you up there?”

A hint of urgency in his tone puzzled and amused her.

“Of course you may. It’s very nice of you.”

“Is it? I hadn’t seen it so!”

She liked his ironic turn of speech; and she ran up the brass-bound stairway with a keener sense of enjoyment than she had felt since leaving England.

“How’s the invalid?” he asked presently.

“Her temperature’s a little up, and she’s restive. She hates the cabin.”

“Safest place for her,” he stated in a curious tone. It was a difficult remark to answer, so she left it in mid-air. And after a few more pulls at his pipe, he said, “As I passed the music-room, the subs had started a sing-song; so I looked in hoping you might be there—and willing to oblige.”

“Me?” She stared at him. “I don’t sing.”

He returned her stare with his quizzical look.

“Where d’you expect to die when you go to? I heard you—that evening.”

“What evening? Oh . . . after the gale. I forgot——” She stumblingly retrieved her slip. “I was only humming to myself. I don’t sing—to people.”

“I was in luck then,” he said gravely. “What was the haunting melody?”

“Don’t you know the ‘’Derry Air’?”

“Never heard of it. I’m from Argyll—and I’m an ignoramus about music. But I like the old melodies and the queer sensations I get from the pipes, or the violin.”

“That’s my instrument.”

“The violin? Let’s hear you.”

She shook her head. “It mostly needs a piano. And I don’t feel like it on board ship.”

“You will—in calmer weather. I shall insist. I must hear that ’Derry thing again. What’s the link with Kashmir?”

“Only my nonsense!” She felt shy of all that.

“Can you remember it?”

“Remember—? I was there in 1920—when I was twelve.”

“Only twelve! Lord—you’re young!”

The note of pain in his voice suggested envy. Turning she caught that fugitive likeness, and it moved her to a shy attempt at consolation.

“Being young isn’t always as gay as it sounds. Some people seem to forget that. Didn’t you often a difficult and disturbing thing to be?”

“I? Oh, very much so.” (Evidently that was not the point.) “I don’t forget the snags, but I know it was damned good to be young. I was keen about India—then. It’s difficult for any man who cares for his service to feel keen about India now. We still do our ineffectual best; but the whole atmosphere’s charged with uncertainty and distrust. Whatever we do is twisted against us. If I jail a thief, I’m a brute of a Briton. If I let him off, I’m not doing my duty in that state of life, etc. It isn’t precisely uplifting—as your friend Van Doran would say—to feel dead sure that you’re for it either way.” He glanced at her, and laughed in his abrupt fashion. “I mustn’t get boring you—jawing about shop.”

“You aren’t boring me, I like hearing Border talk. I haven’t heard any—for seven years.”

He seemed to grasp the significance of that last. At all events he gave her Border talk from the angle of his own service—“the best-abused, worst-paid and most essential service in the country.” He had spent the greater part of his time in the Border Military Police, except for the three years’ interlude—1915 to 1918—which he dismissed as “the Mespot picnic,” adding in his driest vein, “A picnic de luxe! Some of us got indigestion from eating too many good things, and haven’t rightly recovered to this day.”

Walking up and down, the ship hardly moving under foot, the moon high and small painting the deck grey-white, making the slant ropes look like twisted silver, she lost all sense of time. Even the sharp tin-tin of the ship’s bells at intervals had become too familiar to catch her attention if otherwise absorbed; and Major Monteith seemed equally oblivious.

A figure, brisk and dapper, approached them. It was the very Button.

“Hullo!” he accosted them gaily. “All the other good little boys and girls have gone to bye-bye. You two spending the night aloft?”

“Not on this occasion. We were just going below,” Major Monteith lied coolly. And as the Button tripped away with a facetious, “Night-night!” he turned to Eve.

“Cheeky little beggar. Hope you aren’t tired. I’m afraid I forgot the time in spite of those infernal bells!”

“So did I,” she said truthfully.

“Well, there’s a pair of us!” He seemed rather pleased. “But it was careless of me. Hope I haven’t let you in? I wouldn’t for anything——”

He didn’t say what, but he surprisingly held out his hand; and his close grasp seemed a mute assurance that, in this world of passing people, she had found a friend.

But how about Mrs. de Cray? She caught herself hoping that Dr. McNaughten would be high-handed over that feverish chill.

*  *  *

Her hope, for a wonder, was fulfilled. On the following evening, though the invalid was allowed to indulge in a rubber of Bridge, she was forbidden to venture up into the ‘treacherous night air’; and Eve hurried away, eager to catch the full moon slipping out of the sea. There she was, half up, orange-golden against the darkening sky; and the ‘treacherous night air’ was soft as velvet. From the farther end of the deck came the voice of the gramophone blaring out a fox-trot. Lights twinkled, shadowy figures moved or loitered about. They were dancing, and Eve felt the familiar rhythm invade her limbs. Part of her wanted to run away from that poor imitation of Villars, part of her lingered irresistibly, and was caught—by Mr. Van Doran.

His pleasure was contagious, and she hoped for the best. She found him little short of the worst. His ear for music—! Well, he couldn’t help that, poor man; and he was so full of admiration for her skill, so eager for more. But before it was over, she noticed that Major Monteith had appeared, and was standing a little away from the dancers, smoking his perpetual pipe. She thought, “Does he fancy himself too old to dance? Or could he not stop smoking for anything on earth, except food?”

When the fox-trot ended, she had her answer. He strolled towards them, pipe in pocket.

“Quite an inspiration! Why wasn’t I informed? Will you honour me with the next, Miss Challoner?”

The touch of formality seemed to detach him from the younger generation; but his straight look told her that he did not doubt her answer.

It was a tango; and as they glided along the polished deck, he said, “Nice of you taking me on trust. I’m a long way past twenty, but I like this sort of thing; and I’m up in the latest steps, or I wouldn’t have asked you—after watching your performance. At least,” he added with his chuckle, “I might have hesitated. But I believe I would have asked you all the same.”

Eve glowed at that. But he said no more, for which she was thankful. She wanted nothing but the movement, and the music. They danced it through without a break: and when a fresh record began, he smiled at her sidelong under level lids.

“Could you do with me again?”

She laughed. “I could!”

So they danced again. He was giving her this time, impossible to tell why, that curious ‘feel’ of her father, the indefinable atmosphere of his personality. And surreptitiously she would steal a glance at his profile——

They were partners for the third time when she sighted Mrs. de Cray, flatly defying medical orders, in a fur coat with a scarf round her head like a pale flame. Someone must have told her about the dancing: and Eve softly cursed that someone. But she said nothing. It was Major Monteith who remarked in an enigmatical tone:

“Hullo! Mrs. de Cray redivivus! She must have given McNaughten the slip.”

Eve, uncertain how to answer that, continued to say nothing; and Mrs. de Cray stationed herself effectively in a circle of light, advertising her arrival. A good many partnerless men had drifted away to the smoking-room. The Button was on duty, and the Captain not in evidence. So there she continued to stand.

As they circled past, her gesture of greeting looked like a command to stop; but Major Monteith merely smiled and nodded and danced on. Perhaps, like Eve, he was in a wicked mood.

As the record petered out, they happened to be at the far end near the gramophone; and to Eve’s immense amusement, he deftly shifted the needle, so that the music ran on almost without a break.

“Come along,” he commanded, his arm already round her, “we’ll have one more anyhow.”

Clearly he knew what was expected of him; and so did she.

When they passed the solitary figure, she was aware of Mrs. de Cray watching them as they went. Major Monteith’s defection, of the moment, would count against her, not against him. She would probably pay for it to-morrow in some indirect fashion. But who cared?

The music ceased, and they smiled at one another strangers no longer.

“Afraid we can’t dodge it again!” he said; and she shook her head at him severely, as if he were Peter suggesting some wickedness.

“Well, anyway—later on?”

“Yes. Another night. I’m going now. Peter wakes me fearfully early.”

“Little devil! You ought to spank him.”

“That’s not permitted!”

Mrs. de Cray was actually coming towards them—and she escaped just in time.

Chapter Five

While you live, draw your neck out of the collar.
— Shakespeare

Eve did pay for it in a direct fashion that brought matters to a crisis in more ways than one. Mrs. de Cray, still playing at privileged invalid, was queen of her little court next morning: the Captain, the devoted Doctor, and minor satellites hovering hopefully. But Major Monteith was not among them.

He had sauntered up, while the Captain held the field, flung a quip at McNaughten’s flouted authority—“You’re not half a doctor! I’d have kept her in bed for twenty-four hours!”—and had passed on to join a group of no account, where Peter was creating diversions with Mrs. Turle and young Van Doran—now called Pete, or Peter the Great, by way of distinction from the small important person, who resented trespassing.

Unmistakably the attaché-in-chief had slipped out of hand: a fact Eve noticed between amusement and alarm. For her, the whole affair was a game, sufficiently interesting to enliven the monotony of meals and bells and perpetual Peter; though, in the man himself, she found a good deal that attracted her, apart from the link with India and her father. Preferring mental to emotional contact, she was more readily drawn to older men—especially since Basil. That brief episode had increased her natural tendency to hold people, and even things, at arm’s length from her heart: men more than all. She had a peculiar dread of being hurt that way. If only one could enjoy their companionship without the eternal risk of complications. But with this hard-bitten Police Officer, she felt safe; free to enjoy contact with the mind of a man who had seen and done real things.

So she was frankly delighted when he joined her group, and proposed a raid on the well-deck, to cheer the poor horses with apples and sugar.

Down they went, and down again, Peter and Mrs. Turle at their heels, to a region of jumbled ropes and rigging; the sea spread out behind them, in swirls of churned-up foam: Eve, at all events, utterly content.

Presently she fancied that Major Monteith was trying to detach her from the other two; but, being in a dutiful mood, she assumed a density in which he clearly did not believe. At a moment when the others lagged behind—Peter having lost, probably swallowed, two lumps of sugar—he looked her straight in the eyes.

“We’ve had enough of this. Come on up above—just ourselves. That imp of yours’ll be all safe with Mrs. Turle.”

And Eve, reluctantly stirred by that direct look, wished her sense of duty at the bottom of the sea.

“Mrs. Turle’s an angel,” she said, “but if he’s too much with her, I’ll get into hot water.”

“You won’t—if I’m anywhere around.”

That astonishing assurance routed her sense of duty.

“It wouldn’t happen while you were around! But I’ll take my chance.”

Back on the main deck, she said to Mrs. Turle, “Do you mind if I play with Major Monteith for half an hour? He wants a prowl.”

Of course she didn’t mind; Peter was purely a godsend to that solitary mother-woman. It was his time for sitting quiet before the mid-day meal; but Eve, looking guiltily back, had a final view of him careering away after Sorbo the Second, patently out of hand.

Up aloft, the mid-day sun was strong. They were nearing Port Said. To-morrow half the voyage would be over; and after all, she was enjoying it, in spasms, more than she could have believed possible during that first penitential week. It all came of sitting next to angelic Mrs. Turle, and finding this man, whose odd likeness to her father gave her at times almost the illusion of being in touch with him again. Yet intuition told her that—as men—they were radically different. It was strange. It was also fascinating: a kind of magic dust thrown in her eyes; and she, willingly deceived, for the sake of sensations that lifted, yet troubled, her heart.

He was pressing her, this morning, about the violin.

“You really must, one of these days; some time when the music-room’s empty. Or we might go forward, away from them all. Will you?”

“Some day, perhaps,” she doubtfully assented, though his request stirred a longing to handle her treasure.

“Not perhaps,” he quietly corrected her; and as she did not reply, he went on in his thoughtful vein, tinged with a melancholy that peculiarly attracted her: “You people who have an outlet in Art, for all the frustrations of Life, are luckier than you realise.”

“We do realise,” Eve assured him.

He shook his head with an odd smile.

“You hardly can—yet. But you will, no doubt—when Life mishandles you.”

The familiar deep note in his voice moved her to open one of her very private doors.

“Life did mishandle me rather early,” she reminded him, looking away into endless blue distance. “To me—my father was everything on earth.” In a low tone, she added, “He is still.”

“Forgive me. I ought not to have said that.” Again there was more in the tone than in the words. He no longer spoke as an elder to a younger. “And the music—helped?”

She nodded. “Almost more than anything.”

He did not answer at once; and the silence that sprang from their uncalculated moment of intimacy was rent by a shrill scream, a scurry of footsteps that jerked Eve’s heart. Peter—unmistakably.

“Heavens! What has he done! Why did you make me come up here?” she cried—and fled towards the brass-bound stairs, followed more leisurely by Major Monteith.

At the bottom of the steps she found them all; a screaming Peter, with blood on his head and face, in Mrs. Turle’s arms; Dr. McNaughten attending to his injuries, a big Lascar running up with a basin of water, Pete hovering sympathetically and Mrs. de Cray, a hand pressed against her heart, blue flames in her eyes, as the real delinquent came running up. “There you actually are!” Her temper flared, regardless of bystanders. “He fell right down those steps. All that brass. He might have been killed for all you troubled!”

Before Eve could collect her wits, Dr. McNaughten looked up from attentions that Peter was loudly resenting.

“Not killed this time, Miss Challoner—as you can hear. Cut his head and his lip. And he’s frightened, poor son—that’s all.”

“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry!” The child’s pain contracted her heart, which Mrs. de Cray’s just wrath, publicly administered, was calculated to harden. “I thought he was safe with Mrs. Turle.”

“It’s your job to see that he’s safe. Mrs. Turle is extremely kind, but you take advantage of her, right and left.”

Eve might have answered hotly, but that Major Monteith intervened, a flash of temper in his eyes.

“Peter was with us all the morning, Mrs. de Cray—as I think you know. We hadn’t been ten minutes on the upper deck. I over-persuaded Miss Challoner. If anyone is to be blamed for the accident, it’s myself.”

Mrs. de Cray stared at him, confounded by his tone, but still mistress of the occasion.

“I daresay you are. But responsibility can’t be shifted for convenience on to other people’s shoulders.” With that shrewd hit at both culprits, she turned frigidly to Eve. “Will you please take him to the cabin at once and keep him quiet down there till bed-time.”

Eve was no less frigid. “I would do that as a matter of course.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

Eve ignored the thrust; and the three men, looking thoroughly uncomfortable, faded away.

When Mrs. Turle would have accompanied her, she shook her head, and carried a subdued Peter down to the cabin, where she must remain a prisoner, for her sins, all through the blazing hot afternoon. That was the inner meaning of Mrs. de Cray’s command. No doubt she deserved it; and as regards Peter, she felt abjectly penitent. But her fierce pride and sensitiveness resented the whole scene—the manner and the matter of it—in front of those three nice men. She had let herself in neatly, all on account of a wretched thirty pounds.

And suddenly it occurred to her that half the voyage was over. Why not offer to pay the remaining fifteen pounds, whether she could afford it or no, and make a bid for personal freedom, the dearest thing in life? It would be a lesson for Mrs. de Cray, who was very busy, just now, administering a lesson to Eve.

The semi-invalid lunched on deck, for which Eve felt thankful. Mrs. Turle was full of sympathy and solicitude for Peter. Major Monteith and Mr. Van Doran made tactful jokes across the table. But Eve, withdrawn into her shell, fled directly the meal was over, back to the hated cabin; to Peter—fast asleep, his woes forgotten.

He was still asleep when Mrs. de Cray looked in, nearly an hour later; and on the sofa berth a very distant and decorous Eve sat mending a crêpe-de-chine under-garment—not her own. As the door swung open, she stiffened inwardly. But the mother’s anxious glance at Peter stirred a genuine impulse of contrition, and she said in a low tone:

“He’s all right now, poor lamb. I’m really fearfully sorry about the accident. But it’s true what Major Monteith said. He was with us most of the morning.”

“Major Monteith had no business to cut in,” Mrs. de Cray retorted, only half appeased. “It wasn’t his affair.”

“Well, I expect he knew I wouldn’t say anything; and he felt responsible,” Eve insisted, longing to spring her bombshell.

“That’s one way of putting it! The man’s a flirt, in that dry way of his; and if you encourage him, there’ll be no end to this sort of thing. It might be a good idea to attend to your own duties instead of running round with men, and leaving everything to Mrs. Turle.”

“I don’t leave everything,” Eve answered hotly, her impulse of contrition nipped in the bud. “I’ve waited on you hand and foot these two days. So naturally Peter’s been more with her. But as you don’t seem satisfied with my ‘services,’ I’d really rather pay the rest of my passage money—and cancel the arrangement. Of course I’d help you with Peter,” she added quickly, seeing the dawn of amazement and dismay, “but we’d be on a different footing. I’m rather an independent person. I’ve got a temper. And I can’t bear the way you speak to me sometimes, in front of other people. I’m not used to that sort of thing.”

She stopped for lack of breath; astonished at having achieved it all; still more astonished at the effect on Mrs. de Cray, who clearly had not expected Balaam’s ass to speak out on provocation.

“My dear girl, what nonsense! Don’t be dramatic about nothing.” Her cool tone held a hint of conciliation—of alarm. “I understood . . . you couldn’t afford?”

“Oh, I’ll manage it somehow.” Eve’s chin went up at the allusion to her resources. “I’m not being dramatic; I’m only being straightforward.”

Mrs. de Cray stared at her as if she were trying to gauge how much of that might be pure bluff. Then, “I call it flatly selfish and unsporting of you,” she said with a slight unmistakable change of manner, as of one young woman speaking her mind to another. “You make a bargain, because it happens to suit you. I only ask a fair return for my money—and you coolly propose to back out. The last thing I’d expect from your father’s daughter. Of course I’m quite willing to give you all the free time I can. And if Mrs. Turle is kind enough . . . within reason”

She herself was gracefully backing out all along the line.

“You’re just on edge because I lost my temper this morning; but as to letting me down completely, when I m still unwell and upset by the shock you two gave me—you’re not that sort, Eve. And I’m not going to believe it of you.”

By instinct or design, she had taken the right tone this time. The appeal direct, the allusion to her father, could not fail with Eve. It was her turn to surrender gracefully—not quite all along the line. She had asserted the liberty of the individual. She would be allowed to share Peter with Mrs. Turle, who loved him. But—how about Major Monteith? She felt uncertain as to developments in that quarter.

Mrs. de Cray, it appeared, was shrewd enough to foresee and forestall them, under the guise of worldly advice to a green girl. Subsiding on the sofa berth, she spoke in a lower, more confidential tone.

“If I were you, my dear, I’d go carefully with Major Monteith. Don’t let him monopolise you just as he pleases. I hoped you had taken a fancy to that nice American, who probably has money, and seems to be smitten.”

“He’s not smitten,” Eve countered sharply. “That’s why I like him. But Major Monteith’s more interesting.”

“Don’t let him get too interesting!” Mrs. de Cray wagged a playful finger. “I know he’s attractive—in his way. But he’s double your age. He’s only Police; and as I said, he’s patently a flirt. First he makes a dead set at me. Now he’s trying it on with you. I don’t suppose you believe me, under your Sphinx-like mask. The younger we are, the more we know! But in worldly matters, you’re an infant. And if I’m not a Methuselah, ten years of India, on and off, give one a fair working knowledge of men, and their various ways very various; but as a rule, only one end in view—their own pleasure of the moment. And if you let that man prowl the decks with you till all hours, as I hear you did the other night, you’re simply asking for it.”

“We—I——” Eve stammered in bewilderment. Then recalling the Button, she subsided, hating that harmless little man; and Mrs. de Cray went glibly on.

“Oh, we were only talking politics, of course! But a man of forty—if he’s that sort—will take liberties with a girl sooner than any larky boy in the twenties.”

Eve drew herself up with what John called her ‘can’t be touched’ air.

“I should think it depends on the kind of girl,” she began; but a sudden memory of Basil’s liberties covered her with confusion.

“Of course it does,” Mrs. de Cray mockingly commended her. “And it’s for you to let him see you aren’t that kind. I suppose he hasn’t told you that he is—or was—a married man? I believe there’s a son at home.”

Eve’s blank surprise at that announcement could not be hid; but collecting herself, she asked in a contained voice, “How d’you mean—was?”

“I mean he had a wife, but she went off with a flying man, about four years ago. He divorced her. So it’s a clean cut. But I can believe that all the faults weren’t on her side. He has a beast of a temper; and he strikes me as a queer sort of man underneath—uncomfortable, embittered. Fascinating to flirt with; deadly to marry.”

Eve’s bewildered irritation bubbled over at last.

“I—really I don’t know why you’re talking like this. I don’t want to marry Major Monteith—or anyone. I’ve got too many other things to do.”

And the wretched woman only laughed in her face.

“Lots of us talk like that at nineteen. You wait! You’re no hard-boiled spinster, my dear! Anyhow, I’ve talked, or rather listened, a good deal to Major Monteith—he likes talking about himself. And I give you my impression, for what it is worth. I admit he attracted me rather—at first.” (The subtle suggestion of having discarded him, tickled Eve.) “And of course, if he fascinates you, you’ll go your own way—to whatever destination.”

“He doesn’t fascinate me,” Eve insisted, neatly folding up the mended garment, meditating flight. Besides, he’s almost a middle-aged man.”

Mrs. de Cray laughed softly, because of Peter.

“Tell him so. See how he likes it! He could . . . just be your father.” A pause. Then she asked casually: “Have you noticed now and then—a curious likeness?”

“Yes.” Eve shot out the monosyllable, picked up her garment, murmuring, “There’s another one to mend,”—and fled.

She could not, would not, talk of that to anyone, least of all to Mrs. de Cray, whose back-handed slap at Major Monteith had overshot the mark, and quickened her young human interest in the man. More than ever she was curious as to future developments in that quarter.

Chapter Six

She will not slay the siege of loving terms, Nor bide the encounter of assailing eyes. — Shakespeare

They were at anchor again for a few hours—a blissful sensation. The sun gone down over the desert, the hungry ship devouring tons of coal, they were free to escape and wander among the tawdry colonnades, the unreal looking houses of Port Said.

Again, as at Marseilles, they were a quartet; but no Peter this time—and no Mrs. de Cray. In her stead came Mrs. Turle, at Major Monteith’s express invitation. Mrs. de Cray, in her own phrase, had no use for Port Said; but Eve knew she had discovered metal more attractive—a fresh passenger, one of Simla’s notables, the Hon. Edward Radleigh. They had heard all about him from the Captain at lunch. On his way back to India, he had spent a couple of months in Egypt, studying the problems of that unsettled country; and Eve already foresaw how deftly and promptly he would be ensnared under the eyes of a discarded Major Monteith, who was only Police. If his undiscerning taste preferred crude nineteen to ripe thirty-four, the loss would not be hers.

That was how Eve interpreted the coming situation. And the loss would not be hers either, she decided, while wandering with Major Monteith among the open shops, and garish lights, sniffing bazaar smells, drinking coffee at a dirty little marble table, feeling exceptionally happy and unconstrained.

Everything about them seemed unreal as a cinema; odd-looking foreigners at other tables, a boneless acrobat in gold tinsel walking on his hands up and down the colonnade, a woman shrieking in the dark of a side alley, queer looking houses that could not possibly be homes. And the prevailing air of unreality wrought in Eve an excited, unfettered feeling, as if life had no meaning and acts no consequences. It seemed even to affect Major Monteith, under his dry exterior; or perhaps it was the extra glass of brandy in his coffee? He was certainly more talkative, more amusing than his wont.

“It’s a vile plague spot,” he remarked as they rose to leave the little café. “But it grips you in its own fashion—the hidden evil magic of Port Said.”

Mrs. Turle looked about her and shivered. A naked child, pursued by a threatening shadow, fled across the street—screaming.

“I can feel the evil—but not the magic.”

“No,” he said, “you wouldn’t.” And he glanced at Eve, who had not the courage to admit that some uncivilised part of her understood.

She had been instinctively trying to express the bizarre scene in terms of music—a clever ugly Tone Poem, in the modern manner, with oddly effective discords that made your teeth ache. Her youth and intelligence were fully alive to the appeal of modern music, Russian music in particular. There was a fascination in its clash of violence and fatalism; but her own saner element distrusted the tendency of most modern art to make beauty and simplicity seem insipid, as over-spiced food spoils the palate. Modern music, at its worst, was disintegrating; it left one tired and unbraced: but oh, it could perfectly express the cinema quality of Port Said.

As they went skimming back across the harbour to the ship, their prison-house, it appeared, by contrast, a thing of beauty, dignity and reality; brooding on the quiet water, darkly resplendent, illumined by wandering rays from the lighthouse—an angel of many flaming swords that circled ceaselessly from dusk to dawn, as though they were reaping the meadows of heaven.

Very soon they were moving on again through the charmed stillness of the Suez Canal, moving so leisurely that the engines sounded faint and far like a pulse beating somewhere in the depths. For that one night, bed was truly a place of rest, yet perversely sleep eluded Eve. The very deliciousness of feeling that there was almost nothing to feel, positively kept her awake; and the hidden evil magic of Port Said haunted her mind. When at last she did fall asleep, it confusedly haunted her dreams. She was the child who fled screaming from some unknown peril: and she awoke feeling chilled, in spite of the heat, by an uncomfortable sense of something known to her dream-self, lost to her waking brain.

It was early morning. Her port-hole framed a disc of aquamarine sky. They would be reaching Suez before dawn. With the utmost precaution, she hurried into her few garments and crept out into a world half awake.

Lascars were already swabbing the decks. Indigo garments fluttered, and bare legs scurried over glistening boards. The sea, clear green, lay quietly asleep beside the pale endless stretch of sand. Suez, seen from afar, was nothing but an uneven line of buildings; dust-coloured, with lilac shadows. They were nearing it, as Eve picked her way through the wetness to the vessel’s prow, where she could revel undisturbed in the beauty and the quietness—all the busy wheels of life at a standstill. No sound of engines now. The ship’s heart had ceased to beat.

Slim green sailing boats, piled with silvery fish and dates and fruit, went drifting about like gay tropical seabirds. The empty blue sky showed a greenish tinge, brightening to rosy orange, where the sun would presently emerge in the dramatic fashion of the East. The whole scene, clear and shadowless—bathed in light that was barely light—had the limpid effect of a half-finished water-colour. It was one of those exquisite fragments of time that come seldom and unsought, dropped like a jewel from a careless hand.

Here was the beginning of India. After to-day she would be East of Suez, magical phrase; and she herself—the hidden Eve, whom no one knew—was like this dream scene, waiting for the sun to rise—on what?

Innate dread of the next turning—so oddly inconsistent with her free-faring spirit—gave her a tremulous sense of pause; a longing to hold her lovely moment, like a brimming cup, that not one drop be spilled. But by no magic yet discovered, can beauty be caught and held. An instant it was hers—in every detail—that waiting stillness of desert and sea and sky. Again an instant, and it was gone—its secret unrevealed.

The rosy orange flamed. A ripple of cloud caught fire—and there was the sun. His message flashed unhindered, from horizon to horizon. The dream scene had vanished. All values were altered. The world was awake.

With the coming of sunlight came the shadows: lilac and purple on shore; and on the water a bluish wavering shadow of the great ship; slim shadows of boats that same bobbing round, of the brown men in them who stood up and shouted in guttural Arabic, crying their wares. The sea, stirred by a light breeze, was lazily lapping the ship; and near its side the water was stained a delicate misty mauve by thousands of jelly fish, their fine filaments swaying and drifting with the gentle motion, as if a bed of sea flowers had blossomed down there.

From the main deck behind Eve came sounds of life and movement, but here at the prow all was empty and quiet. No risk of disturbance yet awhile.

And suddenly a voice behind her said, “Good morning. May I intrude?”

Major Monteith, of course. For a second she almost hated him. Could people never understand that occasionally one must be alone? No hint of that, she hoped, in her welcoming smile.

“I was prowling early,” he said. “Couldn’t sleep. And I caught sight of you scurrying away to escape from prowlers. So I refrained—up to a point. I’ve been standing behind you, not daring to speak. You were miles away.”

“Yes—miles away,” she admitted, repenting her unkind thought. “Wasn’t it wonderful?”

He nodded.

“It’s a queer thing—just the sun coming up every day on this everyday world; yet sometimes it gives you a catch in the throat, as if it had never happened before. Even in Mespot, where the dawn became a hateful iteration—one damned day after another—it would make a magic, now and then, like this morning . . . as if a miracle had happened.”

“This morning—a miracle did happen,” she said softly.

“It did,” he agreed in another tone. “And now—look at the difference. All those Arabs yelling and bargaining, dusty old Suez the same yesterday, today and for ever. The desert stripped of mystery—a deadly region, a valley of dry bones.”

“I don’t feel it so. It fascinates me rather.”

“That’s because you’ve no valley of dry bones hidden inside you. Desert answering to desert isn’t a cheerful sensation.”

He said it in his gruff way, not making a bid for sympathy, like Basil. This was real disillusion. The other was only sham. And the real thing quickened her sympathy.

“I think we all have our dry bones,” she ventured. “Life was a desert to me for a long time. Even now——”

“You poor child,” he said on so deep a note of feeling that she could only respond by shifting to more impersonal ground.

“A child is supposed to forget things easily. But it doesn’t—always. And its unhappiness has the dreadful ‘now-and-ever-shall-be’ feeling. It can’t see daylight beyond, or believe that the misery can pass away.”

He nodded. “One forgets that. And later on, one suffers in quite another fashion, from the knowledge that whatever it is, it will pass. I suppose——” He hesitated. “Perhaps Mrs. de Cray told you—I had a wife once?”

“Yes,” Eve answered baldly, uncertain how much she was supposed to know.

“Thought so,” Major Monteith’s smile had a cynical twist. “Well, she—my wife—took a fancy to another fellow, while I was fighting in Mespot. He was a decent sort. But finally—they went off together. I don’t blame them. Not much havering now, about that sort of thing. And my nerves were pretty rotten after the War. That hurt a good deal, naturally; but—it passed. I had my boy—a fine fellow, full of brains and pluck; a better specimen than his father. I hadn’t seen him for five years, till this last summer, when we had a great time together. He took to me, though I was virtually a stranger. He was thirteen in July, just going to Rugby. We were on the Isle of Wight in early September; and he went out sailing one afternoon with an older boy. He was very keen, quite clever at it. But the wind and the currents are treacherous in those waters——”

The long pause smote Eve with a personal pang. That which one has intimately suffered, one can least endure for others.

“Those two boys,” he added in a toneless voice, “never came back. That—hurts still. But some day, I suppose—it will pass.”

Eve could say nothing. There were tears in her eyes. He saw them, and pulled himself together.

“Selfish of me—upsetting you like that. It does no good to talk of such things.”

“Sometimes—it does do good,” Eve said with a gleam of her hard-bought wisdom. “I’m glad you told me.”

“That’s charming of you. But I didn’t mean to talk like this. I meant to inquire after the fiddle and that ’Derry Air. I’ve not forgotten, you see. It struck me—here was a chance.”

“Here?” She lifted her kinked eyebrows at him. “But I haven’t got the creature. And it’s such an odd time of day.”

“What matter?”

She couldn’t say it mattered with any conviction. Her taste for doing the right thing at the wrong time had been one of her besetting troubles in ‘hot-water days.’

“It’s a chance,” he insisted. “You can’t say—too many people. And you can’t say it’s too rough!” He cheered up, and shot a wicked glance at her. “Your precious Peter sound asleep.”

“Is he? I’d forgotten him. I must go and make sure.”

“No, you don’t. Unless you promise to bring back the fiddle. It would charm away ghosts. Please———”

Her instinct was to refuse; but he had awakened her sympathy; and, if they were really safe, music would add the last touch of magic to this unfamiliar scene. She glanced at him—and wavered. There was something about him that fascinated her. His inner sadness appealed to her own streak of melancholy; and she liked the whole look of him: his lean tanned face, his thin line of dark moustache, and dry sunburnt lips. And behind all that, the real man, seen to-day for the first time.

“Well, I just might unearth it without waking the imp. If I don’t come back, you’ll know who’s responsible.”

“You must come back,” he said, an imperative note in his voice.

Because of it, she could not bear to disappoint him; yet she found herself hoping that Peter would wake up. But he was dead asleep, his nose pressed into the pillow. Creeping about like a mouse, she unearthed her treasure, and fled back to the quiet end of the ship, where Major Monteith sat on a coil of rope, a plume of cigarette smoke drifting in the still air.

He stood up to welcome her. “Good,” he said in his brief way, opening the case for her.

But it was she who took out the treasure with a small catch in her breath. Tightening her bow, she began softly tuning up, trying not to be aware of anything but herself—and it. She was glad now that she had yielded to persuasion. There was a peculiar thrill in playing, at this unusual hour, to the desert and the Gulf and the risen sun.

Standing half turned away she glanced round at him. “I’m going to play on muted strings, not to attract attention. If I hear people coming, I shall curl up inside—and stop dead.”

“And I shall curse them to their faces. So look out!”

Almost inaudibly, she drew her bow across the strings, her eyes on the water that shimmered like shot silk, green dissolving into blue. Then, on impulse, she glanced round without turning her head, caught that profile glimpse, and slid into the opening bars with an inside shiver of joy. She was playing now, not to Major Monteith, but to her father.

The lovely melody glowed all through her like a draught of wine. No disturbing presence invaded their quiet corner. Oblivious of all but the music, she played it twice over. Then, reluctantly, she turned——

And the man who sat there, gazing at her, was not the ironical Major Monteith, who had dallied with Mrs. de Cray. She felt, rather than saw, the change in him with a tremor of apprehension.

“You can play,” he said in a low tone. “A gift like yours is more than a pleasure—it’s a power.”

Unable to answer that, she came forward to put away her violin; and as he stood up close beside her, apprehension quickened to certainty. Something was coming—something she could not bear him to say.

He said it—slowly as if it were wrung from him. “I can’t keep it up. I must speak. I love you—I’m crazed about you. Have you perhaps guessed?”

“Oh, no—no!”

Her cry was involuntary, as her step away from him, fearing he might touch her.

He did not touch her; but he went on speaking in the same low urgent voice.

“Does that mean—there isn’t the remotest chance?”

“How can there be?” she gazed at him in bewilderment; a man she hardly knew, to be talking so, looking at her so. “How can you—? Only two weeks——”

“Two weeks—two days—what matter?” His flash of impatience was the measure of his pain. “It comes like a thunderclap, often as not—the real thing.” He seemed to find relief in speaking, and went on more rapidly: “I was done for when I first saw your face at dinner; though I didn’t actually know it till that night on deck, after the gale, when you stood there singing to yourself, ‘And my deep love for thee shall Time outlast.’ I’ve not forgotten the words, you see. They struck home. A mad impulse seized me to go straight up and tell you so. But I had just enough sanity to refrain.”

Startled, she drew a sharp breath. “Oh—and I——”

“You—? What?”

“Nothing of that sort,” she hastily retrieved her slip. For her those words, so applied, came near to blasphemy.

“You saw me?”

“I saw some one, something . . . I can’t explain. But I thought all this time . . . Mrs. de Cray——”

“Mrs. de Cray!” His abrupt laugh would have astonished that complaisant lady. “Don’t worry your lovely head about, her. She’s of the let-em-all-come variety. I merely suffered her to annex me, because I wanted to join up with your party. And I got let in. I ought to have known that, with her sort, easy come is not always easy go. I could see you were shy, that a man would have to be circumspect, or you’d curl up inside, as you said just now. And I felt I’d no right to pester you—years too old, and a battered specimen at that. Not even my service to recommend me. In fact, I’d made up my mind not to speak——”

“Oh, I wish you hadn’t!” Her cry was instinctive, repented the moment it was out.

“I call that brutal,” he said in a dull voice, deeply wounded.

Her lips quivered. “I didn’t mean—I can’t bear hurting you——”

“I believe it,” he said more gently. “You’re the sort that could care. Haven’t you a grain of feeling for me—that way?”

She shook her head. “How could I? You’re so much older. And I hardly know you.”

“My best chance, perhaps!” The ironical note came as a relief from the oppressive effect of an emotion she could not share. “Knowing, or not knowing, has precious little to do with it. Have you never been in love? Not even learnt the A B C of that exquisite torment?”

“I suppose it’s inhuman of me—but I haven’t,” said truthful Eve. “And I don’t think I want to be. At least—not for ages yet.”

He groaned. “God! What a girl! And what a chance for some lucky devil! All I ask is—don’t turn me down out of hand.” Tone and manner changed abruptly from the hardness of repressed passion to gentleness and pleading more difficult to resist. “Try at least to see me in a fresh light between here and Karachi. Having spoken, I can’t knock under all at once. I’m a persistent beggar. And now you know how madly I care, it may make a difference—Eve?”

Impossible, in the face of that, to fling him the refusal direct. And there was the dear remembered note in his voice tugging at her heart.

She ruefully shook her head. “It wouldn’t be any use—for heaps of reasons. Please believe that. And please, you must let me go now, because of Peter.”

“Damn Peter,” he flung out.

“No, I can’t have Peter damned. I’m getting rather fond of him. Besides—he is my job!” she wickedly reminded him, aware of two people coming towards them. Ashamed of her acute relief, she picked up her fiddle-case, giving him no time to answer—and fled.

Hurrying into the cabin, she had a vision of Peter half dressed, standing on her bolster. Two pink hands, clutching the ledge of the port-hole, lifted him just high enough to peer out at the bobbing boats and chattering Nubians. Released from the strain of the last ten minutes, she positively loved the creature.

“Hullo, monkey!” she greeted him. “Did you think I’d wriggled through there while you were asleep?”

Startled, he dropped from the port-hole, and stood among the tumbled sheets grinning guiltily, though the guilt was hers.

“You ranned away. I was comin’ very quick ter find joo. So I dressed mineself. Is it prop’ly?”

“Well——” Eve surveyed the quaint little figure with a critical air. “Not quite; but we’ll soon make it so.”

He had pulled on his stockings inside out, his trousers the wrong way round, and was suddenly very much intrigued as to what had become of the important buttons? Eve watching his perplexed face, laughed and caught him in her arms. Hugging him fiercely, she kissed his ruffled hair that, for all her brushwork, looked more like the mop of an Irish terrier than the head of a little gentleman.

“Oh, Peterkin, I love you!” she surprisingly informed him. “Thank goodness, you can’t want to marry me!”

It was a cry from her heart; and he wouldn’t understand. Wouldn’t he? Wriggling free of her embrace, he stood regarding her, an imp of mischief in his round blue eyes.

“I do wanter mavvy you—an’ Miffis Turle. Not Mummy,” he stated—a bigamous proposal much more to her taste than the serious affair on deck. She laughed and kissed him again.

“Let’s go and tell Mrs. Turle! You shall be married to us both, from here to Karachi. So that settles it.”

Devoutly she wished it did.

Chapter Seven

Ere you follow Nature’s lead
Of her powers in you have heed.
— Meredith

The man who sat opposite to her at breakfast, and who greeted her as though they had not met since last night, was the Major Monteith she had known and liked before that shock of revelation; and by the end of the meal the difficulty was to believe in their brief unreal scene at the ship’s prow.

Only once, later in the morning, as she and Peter scampered past the chair where he sat with a book on his knee, something impelled her to look round; and she caught unawares that new, disturbing look in his eyes. It roused no answering sensation—except alarm. She wanted to run away from it; and thankfully she fled after Peter, her shield and buckler. She was to be Mrs. Peter, bigamously, till they reached Karachi; and she had no intention at all of being Mrs. Monteith. She did not even know his other name. His A. might stand for Arthur. How awful! There was something so Victorian and sentimental about Arthur; but Albert would be worse. What matter? She had no desire to know: and yet—he could look at her like that; he was hoping it might make a difference, now that she realised. It did make an uncomfortable difference. It shackled her, just as she had begun to feel at home with him: for now, between dread of hurting and dread of encouraging him, she would be walking like a cat on hot bricks. She would try to avoid being alone with him; and if he suspected that, it would hurt him most of all.

Impatiently she brushed aside the tiresome, intruding thought of marriage. She was not looking that way. At nineteen she thought of it almost as simply as at fifteen. On that, as on all vital matters, her mother had preserved a decorous silence. And she herself had seldom listened to the talk at school, or risen to Beryl’s mysterious air of knowing all about everything. In her hidden heart she dreaded rather than desired the ‘exquisite torment’ of falling in love. That was one of the many truths you could never tell: and no one would believe it if you did. Yet, sanely regarded, it seemed rather alarming to be so enslaved by another human being. If love were going to happen to her—it would happen. Time enough then to think of consequences. She found it far better fun, at present, to play at being Mrs. Peter, Number One—a sufficiently arduous role in the damp, disintegrating heat of the Red Sea.

As the sun gained power, one seemed to be melting inside and out. Not a breath stirred between shadeless desert and vacant sky; and by noon all the gleaming brass-work was hot to the touch. A few energetic spirits continued to play quoits; and the sub with the confluent freckles—an irrepressible Irishman, ‘name of Blake’—hopefully suggested a mild gymkhana. But none of the prostrate raised a finger. They all lay about fanning themselves with anything that came handy: calling, and calling again for iced drinks that brought relief only while they slid down the throat.

Major Monteith—Eve noticed—had not troubled to open the book on his knee; and he talked little to his neighbour, Mr. Meldrum. Lost in thought, he lay staring out to sea. The whole look of him seen from a distance, so startlingly recalled her father in one of his tired, stray moods that constraint was dissolved in compassion. Recalling the light in his eyes that morning, she felt painfully responsible for the change in him. It was a positive relief when he rose and wandered away into the smoking-room.

At tea-time he joined their table as usual, looking more like himself again. After tea he raced motorcars with Peter, talked Mooltan with Mrs. Turle (who was ‘Elsa’ by now) and joked with Eve as if he had never told her he was crazy about her—till she began insanely to hope he might recover his senses.

Sunset—a cloudless blaze of glory—brought a measure of relief; but no stir in the air, no ripple on the oil-smooth sea; and on either side the bare ridged coast, gliding past, had a flattened effect as if it had been carved out of the sky. Talk of dancing ended in talk; but the tireless subalterns were bitten with the conviction of modern youth that rational human beings could not possibly enjoy themselves without some form of movement or noise.

So young Blake, skidding from group to group, announced a sing-song on the hurricane deck—with gramophone interludes. He himself was famous on the banjo. His friend Twyneham and Lena Elkin would also oblige. Would any others, who had talents hidden under bushels, be sporting and hold up their hands?

The show of hands was negligible; and Eve’s was not among them.

Major Monteith, sitting beside her, said in her ear: “Be sporting. Hold up your hand.”

She frowned. “No, I can’t play real music here—without any piano; and I’m too shy of all these people.”

“Well, you might give us some sort of stuff. I’m longing to hear you again.”

“I don’t play ‘some sort of stuff.’”

But the note of pleading softened her; and a happy idea flashed.

“I can imitate bagpipes fairly well, if you’d like that?”

“The skirl of the pipes? Rather. But I refuse to believe a fiddle can produce it—even in your hands.”

That was clever of him, putting her on her mettle.

“Very well, you wait! Don’t say anything. It’ll be a surprise.”

“It will! Hold up your hand.”

That brought Freckles skirmishing towards her.

“I didn’t suspect it of you. What’s yours?”

Major Monteith answered for her. “She’s A.1 on the violin.”

“Good egg! Lifts us to the status of a slap-up concert. Can I send for the instrument?”

“No. I must get it myself.”

As she rose Major Monteith’s hand closed on her skirt.

“Why can’t you let him send? Sit down.”

His tone was abrupt and challenging.

“I won’t sit down. I want to have it handy.”

With a sharp little tug she released her skirt and sped away—not at all inclined to hurry back. His change of manner disconcerted her. If he wanted her to like him better, he was going the wrong way to work.

When she returned to the upper deck, chairs were already grouped about an open space, and Mr. Blake had just contributed, “Why did I kiss that girl?”

Eve caught the tail end of the chorus as she mounted the steps, and stood hesitating—daunted always by people in a crowd. A hand beckoned. Major Monteith, at the outer edge of the circle, was guarding her chair. As she slid into it, the applause petered out, and the willing gramophone blared out an old Harry Lauder refrain.

Grateful to the creature, she hoped Mr. Blake had not noticed her arrival.

Of course he had; and he promptly commandeered her for the next turn.

She felt ridiculously nervous standing up to that mixed uncritical audience—she who had played at the Royal Academy of Music, where they knew what violin playing should be. But this was not to be the violin.

Steadying herself, she said in a clear voice: “This looks like a fiddle—but when you hear it, you can decide for yourselves! I am going to give you a Highland Lament.”

Feeling none too cheerful, she chose the ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ skirling out the poignant melody, keeping up the continuous drone on the lower strings, her fingers plucking out the shrill brave over-tone, her audience forgotten. . . .

It was over. They were greeting her achievement with cries of ‘Encore!’ But she only bowed and smiled and hurried back to her seat. Someone started the gramophone. There were shouts of protest; but the robot performer played brazenly on.

As Major Monteith rose to greet her, she saw at once that her music had moved him deeply—and she was glad.

Dr. McNaughten, close by, turned to thank her, but Freckles was at her elbow.

“I say, don’t run away. We want another. You might give us something a wee bit more cheerful than the ‘tune the old cow died of.’ And I bar bagpipes. They give me tummy-ache.”

Before she could speak. Major Monteith cut in, low and furiously, “M’shalloner shall play what she chooses. ‘Cow died of——!’ Dunno real music when you hear it—you damned Irishman!”

His rapid utterance was blurred a trifle; and Freckles himself was just sufficiently elated to apologise in the wrong tone of voice.

“Sorry, Major,” he chirped. “Forgot you hailed from Auld Reekie. But I don’t take ‘damned Irishman’ lying down from anyone.”

“You’ll b—— well take it from me—or look out for yourself.”

Major Monteith’s deep voice was almost a growl; and the threat of his clenched fist moved McNaughten to secure his forearm in a friendly, purposeful grip.

“Cry quits, Major,” he said amicably. “The heat’s sent your temperature up. Better turn in.”

“Not yet, thanks very mush. I’m going t’hear s’more.”

His tone was combative, but he dropped his arm—and Freckles faded away.

“Sit quiet then, and let Miss Challoner get on with her playing.”

One or two people looked round. Only those nearest had heard what was said. At Eve’s name, Monteith raised his hand in a gesture that was a signal; and she, half pitiful, half repelled, came closer. There were repeated shouts of ‘Encore.’

“Some real stuff—please,” he begged urgently. And she thought: “It’s selfish of me—when I’ve upset him like this. I can play to him—not worry about the others.”

“Very well, I will,” she said under her breath; and returned to her position, feeling troubled yet elated, no tremor of nervousness in her fingers or her heart.

To cheer him, in his blurred mood, she played, unaccompanied, the ‘Lark Ascending.’ The swift clear notes of the opening phrase sent a spray of beauty across the darkness; and closing her eyes, she again forgot her audience; saw only the one man in his shadowed mood, that she longed to dispel—as David dispelled the dark mood of Saul—with music the most mysterious and ineluctable of all the arts. That she could reach his tormented spirit she did not doubt; and the conviction gave to her playing a quality of which she was entirely unaware.

Again it was ‘Encore! Encore!’ and by way of simple refreshment, she played Rubinstein’s Melody in F. When at last she sat down again, Major Monteith put out a hand in the darkness and crushed her fingers in his.

“Thank you,” he said. “You’re a marvel. I couldn’t sit through any more—after that. Good night.”

Rising abruptly, he walked away with deliberate carefulness—or so she fancied; and it stirred the trouble ache again.

During the pause for refreshment, she found herself treated like a minor celebrity, even Mrs. de Cray purring compliments, and Sir Edward obviously impressed. But when the pause was over, she escaped, glad to be alone at last with her confusion of thought and feeling.

Down in the stifling cabin, the electric fan merely agitated lukewarm air, and a wind-scoop fixed to the port-hole drew in any semblance of a breeze that passed that way. All the men slept up aloft; and there was talk of the ladies following suit after to-night.

Vainly she tossed and turned; shifting her pillow every few moments to find a cool patch; haunted by a troubled sense of responsibility for Major Monteith’s extra drinks, though no doubt it was partly this awful heat. Freckles had been overdoing it also.

She slept at last, heavily—and woke unrefreshed, recalling with very mixed sensations the events of last night. The fault, she decided, was mainly hers; and some men were unsteadied by very mild potations. She would not allow herself to feel unduly repelled. When they met this morning she would be as nice to him as she dared.

Sitting down to breakfast, full of good resolutions, she was confronted by an empty chair, and felt ashamed of her own relief. It remained empty all through the meal; mutely reminding her how far she had travelled since she speculated about it in the Bay—she who had felt so uprooted and detached, so entirely a bird of passage that she could not, spiritually, alight anywhere between Tilbury Docks and Kashmir.

As the morning wore on—and still no sign of him—relief gave place to a growing restlessness. Yet she felt shy of asking questions about him—especially shy of Dr. McNaughten, the one person who could enlighten her. Perhaps he would appear at tiffin. It was tiffin now that they were east of Suez.

He did not appear; and she would not admit, even to herself, that because of his absence the restless idle board-ship life had, in a measure, lost its savour. She allowed herself to be monopolised till tea-time by Pete, whose innings of late had been few and brief. They sat together gorging luscious Arabian dates—while he talked and talked. Neither the heat, nor the fact that he must have almost talked himself out by now, seemed to abate his amazing capacity for conversation, or to affect its quality. And if she felt a trifle bored this afternoon, it was simply that her tiresome thoughts kept straying elsewhere.

After that, she had no appetite for tea—only a quenchless thirst; and again there was the lurking hope, the vague disappointment. To make matters worse, Mrs. de Cray began chaffing her, a form of jocularity to which she could never rise.

“By the way, Evelina,” she remarked airily, “how’s your sick friend? I suppose you’ve had the latest bulletins from the Doctor Sahib?”

“I haven’t spoken to Dr. McNaughten to-day,” Eve answered, very distant and detached.

“Didn’t you know the poor man was down with fever?” her tormentor persisted—and was forgiven because of the relief unwittingly administered.

“How should I know? It isn’t my affair.”

“Delighted to hear it!” (Significance lurked in the light tone.) “I confess I’m more human than you are. I’d be glad to know how he is.”

Dr. McNaughten was hailed—and came, in hopes; but, questioned in his medical capacity, he answered brusquely, “Yes, yes—a touch of fever. Not surprising in this heat. He’s restive a bit. If I can keep him in hand, he’ll soon be about again.”

Though answering Mrs. de Cray, the Doctor looked straightly at Eve; a look that dispelled her lurking doubt, and left her altogether reassured.

*  *  *

No sign of Major Monteith next morning, either at breakfast or afterwards; and as the day dragged on, Eve discovered that, under her surface concern for a sick man, lurked a personal need to see him again—not entirely on his own account. With sudden clearness, she perceived that an under-current of happiness within her of late had been mainly due to those occasional glimpses of her father, and the feel of him that this little-known man could give her at times. Deprived of them, the day seemed strangely empty and pointless. Desultory games failed to enliven her; and poor Peter was tormented by a heat rash that he called ‘my pricky and tickly.’ It made him very sorry for himself, but at least it distracted her attention from her own sensations.

Elsa was a dear; so was Peter the Great. There were others, also, to whom she talked from ‘the top of her head.’ But only with one man, so many years her elder, was there any sense of mental kinship; and for Eve, that was the chief necessity of life.

Isolation of spirit had always been her trouble at home: a form of loneliness hard to bear at any time, hardest of all for the young. No one guessed, or ever would guess, how scared and lonely she sometimes felt, for all her detachment, her air of independence. Like many genuine artists, she was compounded of contradictions and inconsistencies: volcanic in temperament, yet outwardly aloof and contained; loving and sympathetic to an uncomfortable degree, yet rarely demonstrative; fearful and fatalistic in spirit, yet bold in action. Increasingly aware of that jumble, she found herself, in despondent moods, almost envying people like John and Beryl and her mother, planted solidly on both feet; content with their own make of mind, knowing (or supposing they knew) every inch of their inner regions—and above all knowing precisely what they intended to get out of life. Often, watching them, she had wondered were they really as cool and set, and self-content as they seemed? She herself could assume that air of coolness, but within she would always be a volcano, liable to eruption; her mind soaring and seeking, her heart a fiery furnace, her spirit athirst for far-away things, pursuing the jack o’ lantern of beauty and happiness round the next corner—and the next——

Did one pursuer in a thousand manage to catch them up, or really find them, ever?

It was a dangerous mood in which to be beset by the swift ardent love of a mature man, who could give her sensations that she had never dreamed of experiencing again. If he reappeared looking ill and unhappy, if—in spite of her definite refusal—he pressed her once more, would she have the courage to hurt him so again, to banish from her life the face, the voice that were more to her than all the world?

Chapter Eight

Is love a tender thing? . . . It pricks like thorn.
— Shakespeare

As Eve slid into her seat at dinner, there was Major Monteith sitting opposite, talking intensively to Mr. Meldrum. So her first view of him was in profile; and the leap of her heart so startled her that she plunged into a Peter-talk with Elsa to steady her nerves. By the time she ventured another glance at him, she was herself again.

He greeted her with a smile and an abrupt nod, as if there had been no unusual gap between their parting after the concert and now. As regards Eve, a good deal had happened in that gap; but if he wished it ignored, she would ignore it.

Afterwards, when they were all on deck, Eve settled down with her book not far from Elsa—who played Patience untiringly when there was no chance of Bridge. Sometimes of late, it was double Patience—with Eve, who turned that quiet game into a wild scramble, and was mad to win. But to-night, she felt reluctant to tie herself down, even for Elsa’s benefit. After two stagnant evenings it was quite a pleasant form of discomfort to feel restless and fluttery, uncertain what might happen.

It began to seem as if nothing would happen, as if she had been selfish to no purpose. She had just decided to play double Patience and not be a fool, when she felt aware of Major Monteith coming towards them. Naturally she looked round; and at once he sat down by her, drawing up a chair on the side away from Elsa.

Without any trivial preamble he said in a low tone “I owe you an apology for my behaviour on Tuesday night.”

“Oh no—please,” she protested in a flutter of distress. “It was Mr. Blake’s fault. And—you weren’t well. It must have been awful down below.”

“I wasn’t down below. McNaughton put me into a deck cabin. He’s a stunner. The heat knocked me up—often does. Just like my luck having to return at this unholy time of year.” A pause; then he added on a deeper note: “Anyhow—I met you. I don’t know how to thank you for your music. That ’Derry thing kept singing in my head, even while it buzzed with quinine.”

Mr. Meldrum strolling by with Pete, halted to contribute a polite remark: and when they passed on, Major Monteith made a move. “Good night,” he said, in the same low tone and strolled away to the smoking-room.

It was idiotic to feel disappointed; equally idiotic to wonder: “Is he hoping to make me want him, through missing him?” One could not associate him with so trivial a manoeuvre. There was a desperate driven air about him, as if he were in the grip of something stronger than himself; and the sense of it increased her unwilling fascination. But it was a lame conclusion to her evening. Precisely when you were most expectant, Life had this mean way of letting you down.

That night they all slept aloft in cooler regions; and an under sense of strange surroundings woke Eve next morning earlier than usual, with a feeling of having returned reluctantly from very far away.

Where was she? Of course—the deck saloon. And all about her lay eight other women in various attitudes fast asleep. All windows were open, but the curtains were partially drawn. With the utmost caution she drew back the little curtain nearest her, and peered out at a clean wash of daffodil sky, thin drifts of dove-grey cloud and a pensive silver sea.

The near view included prostrate forms of men, looking helpless and pathetic, a mouth dropped open here, an arm flung out there. Gazing absently at one of the prostrate forms, she recognized Major Monteith. He stretched, yawned, opened his eyes and sat up, with his back towards her. Leaning forward, his head in his hands, he began thrusting his fingers through his hair. Of course she ought to draw the curtain, and lie down again; and of course she stayed there watching him, moved to a new interest in the man by that glimpse of his natural solitary self.

With an impatient gesture, he rose and strolled over to the taffrail. There he remained, apparently absorbed in the sunrise; his rumpled hair, and the flap of his thin dressing-gown stirred by the breeze of the vessel’s going. And Eve, otherwise absorbed, was trying to believe that she mattered to him more than anything on earth. It was the kind of statement one could not grasp all in a moment. If she could but feel the same, how it would simplify matters! But she could only see him as a rather pathetic oldish man in a dressing-gown; more likeable, for some reason, in that simple attire, than in his correct everyday clothes. Perhaps it was his tousled hair? Why did it make men look so attractive, so pathetic? It used to be one of her special treats, being allowed to rumple Daddy’s hair, because she felt sure that he couldn’t look at her sternly with his hair all anyhow.

A small sound and a tug at her gown informed her that Peter was awake; and she returned to her duties with an odd sense that something more important had happened to her than a glimpse of Major Monteith in undress. The trifling incident, the chance vision of him lingered in her mind, subtly modifying her whole attitude towards him.

*  *  *

During the day clouds gathered and dissolved in fine rain that brought a measure of coolness; that passed, leaving the sky washed and gleaming like the inside of a wet shell, the Indian Ocean steel grey and still, with the sheen of liquid metal. Flying fishes, in their thousands, made a silvery shimmer over the stillness. Sea and sky, where they united, seemed all one fabric; no visible contact at all; no visible movement save the great ship’s scroll of smoke adrift in the windless air. To Eve, in her sensitised mood, the dream-like day made everything feel unreal, as though this shipload of very ordinary human beings were a cargo of lost souls afloat in infinite space. It was a day to set music stirring in her brain; but as for putting it on paper—between perpetual people and perpetual meals, music had never a chance.

Towards the middle of the morning Major Monteith strolled up and joined their group, but after lunch he vanished into the smoking-room. He skipped tea, and she did not see him again. Naturally she thought about him the more. He was unhappy, and she could make him happy; that was the troublesome fragment of knowledge nagging at her heart. But she wanted—naturally enough—to be happy herself. Did happiness lie that way for her?

The unreal day faded into a dream-like evening; and at dinner, there he was again, certainly looking ill, but more cross than unhappy. Afterwards there was talk of a dance; and Eve caught herself thinking: “Will he dance with me? Or, because I won’t marry him, am I clean discarded?”

When the voice of the gramophone lured couples out of their chairs, it was Pete who claimed her and pulled it off with tolerable success, talking assiduously the whole time. And as the record ran out—there stood Major Monteith at her elbow.

“Do we dance the next?” he asked, smiling sidelong in his old quizzical fashion.

And she answered in the same vein, “I believe we do!”

Pete looked dejected. “I thought the next was mine.”

“Sorry, m’ lad.” (He sounded overjoyed.) “Not safe taking girls for granted—if you’re keen.”

Then the music began; and they moved off together, Eve feeling aware of his arm as never before, aware of his hand closing deliberately on her own.

“I bespoke a tango on the chance,” he said in her ear.

“I spec’ you were taking me for granted!” she rallied him, afraid of his seriousness, and her own response.

“Wish to God I could!”

The passionate note in his voice warned her not to attempt a reply. Lightly though he held her, she could feel in every nerve the emotion he was keeping in check—an emotion that stirred in her own veins a real, if reluctant, response.

When it was over, he said abruptly, “The best we’ve had yet. But I’m still rather a crock. Come on aloft. It’s cooler up there.”

It was cooler up there, though scarcely a breath stirred. Dew fell softly on the exposed deck. The taffrail was damp to the touch. A film of cloud had drifted over the Southern Cross; but there was her favourite Orion flung enormously across the velvet curtain of sky; and Sirius, like a corpse-candle, very pale and clear. Down on the main deck the gramophone was grinding out more trivial dance music, just far enough away to give its triviality a wistful note, to enhance the quiet of the night, the waveless whisper of water falling away from the ship’s side far below them. Again there was the dream-quality pervading it all; again they were ghosts on a ghost ship that scarcely troubled the still.

Longing not to talk, she dared not keep silence. Whenever there fell a pause, she sought feverishly for some innocuous remark, tried not to be aware that it was upon her again.

Presently her attentive ear caught the syncopated refrain of another Charleston, one that she had danced at Villars with Basil and Clive—ages ago and leagues away.

“Oh, there’s my special one,” she cried briskly. “I simply must dance it. Come along.”

But as she turned, he caught her hands.

“Wait a bit. I can’t go on like this. Tell me true, has it made the slightest difference—knowing that I care?”

“In a way—it has,” she fatally admitted. “But I’m afraid—not in the way you want. I’ve been so terribly sorry——”

“That’s not what I want,” he gruffly dismissed her sympathy and dropped her hands. “It was only that young ass Blake—and I lost my temper. Thought I’d done for myself. Not quite?” His glance was eloquent.

“Not quite.”

“Then give me more of a chance to make you care. The thing’s not impossible, is it?”

She let out a desperate sigh, feeling herself hemmed in as always between regard for other people’s feelings and regard for the truth, troubled out of all proportion by that common dilemma of the sensitive, who are also sincere.

“Honestly I don’t know. But I—I don’t really want you to make me care. I don’t want that sort of complication just now. I’m going out to have a long lone time in the wilds. with my—with Mrs. Vane.”

“Vanessa Vane? Wife of Bob Vane—that was?”

“I didn’t know his name was Bob. I only know he was a perfect beast.”

“Well—a pretty fair beast,” he admitted with a short laugh. “But you’ve only heard her story.”

“I haven’t; and I don’t want to. I’ve got her.”

“Got her? What on earth’s the link between you?”

His tone put her on the defensive.

“It’s a very special link. She’s been like a wonderful older sister to me for seven years. She was a great friend of my father’s.”

For some obscure reason, Eve hesitated over that simple statement; but it might prevent him from making critical remarks. It did. He gave an odd sort of grunt.

“You’re going out to live with her?”

“Yes. We’re both mad on the same things. And between us, we’re going to finish a book about trees that my father began long ago. She’s been waiting till I could do my share. So you see, I’m rather full up, one way and another. Marriage doesn’t come into the programme——”

“It never does come into programmes. It didn’t come into mine. It has a way of butting in. Eve, don’t turn me down. Promise I won’t snatch or upset your plans. I’d wait a reasonable time . . . if I could feel you were coming my way. You do like me a good bit already?”

“Yes—I do,” she truthfully answered, unable to explain why—in his case—refusal gave her so sharp a pang. “If you’d only be friends. Couldn’t you be a very special one, without—all that?”

“No—I could not.”

Her sigh seemed as unpromising for him as his blunt negative was for her.

“How troublesome men are!” she murmured, dejected utterly.

“If they weren’t a bit troublesome in this line, what would become of the race?”

She smiled ruefully at that.

“I’m an idiot. And the troublesome one isn’t really you. It’s me. But you’ve known me such a little time. Surely when you get right away, you’ll recover from me? You’ll fall in love with a more real, on-the-ground sort of girl.”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort.” He sounded almost angry. “I’m no inflammable youngster. And I find you distractingly real enough for all purposes. I know marriage, remember. And you can take my word I wouldn’t be venturing again, unless my heart was pretty seriously involved. Look deep into your own heart, Eve, and ask yourself if you can’t care enough just to take me on from to-night—and see how it feels?”

Instinctively she drew back a step.

“But then—you’d want to kiss me.”

It came out in a rush under her breath; and it sounded so childish that she discounted it with a nervous laugh. But the terror was real.

He smiled at her with softened eyes.

“That’s just possible. I’ve known it done!”

At the satirical note her heart warmed to him, partly from relief, partly because it recalled her father. But she could say nothing; and he asked in the same vein:

“Have you a peculiar aversion to being kissed? Ever tried it?”

His amused glance set her tingling, but she told him the truth.

“A man did—once; a man I rather liked. But after that I hated him. So you see——”

“Poor beggar! Perhaps I might have better luck? I wouldn’t scare you. I’d be careful. Try me?”

“Oh, no—no.” Involuntarily she warded him off. “I couldn’t settle such a big thing all in a hurry.”

His sigh bordered on exasperation. “Then, give me a fair chance. Let me be about with you constantly. Never mind if people notice. They’ve done it already. Let me do that much—Eve.”

“I—I don’t see how I can prevent you,” she said very low. An awful under-sense of Fate driving her, made her feel the futility of saying ‘No’ to so humble, so reasonable a request. Besides, she honestly wanted him to be with her, talking to her, dancing with her. She had missed it, these two days, more than she dared let him know. Still less could she tell him why. To her relief he said nothing. He simply took the hand that hung nearest him, and pressed it against his cheek, his lips, that felt hot and dry.

The sharp tin-tin of the ship’s bells startled her. They were striking ten; the sound veering dizzily down to the dark water. And in the distance the gramophone began again.

“Let’s dance a little more,” she said softly. “It’s a tango.”

As she moved away, he walked beside her with never a word.

Chapter Nine

Thyself thou gav’st thine own worth then not knowing.
— Shakespeare

It was the prelude to surrender—that permission tacitly given, and the lingering pressure of his lips; though the thrill that shot through her had nothing to do with Major Monteith. Now, lying on her strip of sofa in the deck saloon, safe from his disturbing presence, she remembered. . . .

That pressure of hot dry lips on her hand had recalled the only time she had been allowed to see her father during the illness that had snatched him from her. Because it was typhoid, they could not properly kiss one another; and at parting, his hot dry lips had seemed to burn into her hand.

It was that deathless memory which had stirred in her an illusion of response. What would Major Monteith think if she could bring herself to tell him? But she could never speak of it; so conjecture was vain. And thinking ahead was fatal. It was the lure of the little dark imp, when he wanted to make your flesh creep.

So she tried not to think ahead—and thought all the harder, lying obstinately awake, long after the others had fallen asleep, torn between sincere reluctance to hurt this little-known man, who held her in spite of herself, and a deeper-seated reluctance to surrender her girl-hood, its stringencies and felicities, its fits of undisciplined fervour and its illusion of freedom, in exchange—for what?

She opened her eyes and looked round at those sleeping women. Four out of the eight were married, yet to none of them could she speak of her dilemma, nor get any real help from their hidden knowledge. Even in these days, when people talked freely of anything and everything, marriage, in its many aspects, remained a mystery. Only at first hand could you discover all it involved for your own personality. You must, in fact, cut your throat in order to find out whether it was a good or bad business to be dead! And Eve was in no hurry to cut her throat on demand.

Very well then; why could she not harden her heart—like a sensible Jane Austen young woman—say ‘No’ again, and have done with it? Perhaps it was because she increasingly liked him, in spite of his temper, and a suspicion of his being a difficult person. There was something secret about him, which at once alarmed and attracted her; something inwardly mysterious and aloof. Besides, besides . . . Life had hurt him so cruelly, little more than six months ago. Having lost her own dearest on earth, she knew all about that. How could one deal him a fresh blow, and see him suffering under it from here to Karachi?

A reason here and a reason there: none of them indisputable, yet giving her, between them, a sense of the Inevitable closing in upon her to which she was fatally susceptible.

And suddenly she recalled the horrid dream that had so shaken her that night in the New Forest; the strange arms that held her; the impending kiss; the man himself, who was neither Basil nor Daddy; the mocking likeness . . . Major Monteith!

The clear recognition so startled her that she shivered there in her warm corner among those comfortably sleeping women. Here was the very man. What did it all mean—the creepy faculty some people had of dreaming true? Was the future—that unknown region—there all the while lying in wait for helpless human beings, who fondly imagined they were blazing their own trail, carving out their own lives? And did some faculty of the spirit, released in sleep, catch glimpses in advance of things to be? There was that later dream also—the night after the gale; and her sudden belated dread of the voyage. Some part of her clearly had foreknown; yet no eerie prescience, it seemed, could shift the Inevitable a hair’s-breadth from its deep designs.

What did that mean? Was the Mohammedan, with his ‘Kismet,’ nearer to the inner truth of things than the Christian with his ‘Work out your own salvation?’ And even the Christian was constrained to add, ‘It is God that worketh in you, to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ Was all one’s cherished sense of freedom an illusion? Was there no real choice—no pathless sky? Her adventuring spirit, at odds with the fatalistic streak she had from her father, made discordant music in her soul. Daddy had saved her from the dream danger; could he not put out a protecting hand and save her now? Would he but come to her again, as in that last lovely dream, she might speak to him, ask him . . .

What inner magic controlled that kind of thing? If one only knew! Anne had told her that some few people did achieve dream-control up to a point. Only dreams of the dead—none could summon at will; a fact as significant as strange. But Daddy had said he was always near her. He must be aware of her longing, her need.

“Daddy, my very dearest,” she whispered as simply as a child, “do come to-night. Do help me about this.”

But no dream came to bring her counsel or comfort. Tired with the stress of thought and emotion, she slept soundly till Peter waked her soon after dawn.

During the next few days, in the enchanted calm of the Indian Ocean, with its miraculous dawns and sunsets, Major Monteith made the most of the negative permission he had wrested from her. Delicately, deliberately he wooed her, as he had not done hitherto. Without a word, or a touch, and with only an occasional long look that told her fully as much as either, he made her increasingly aware of his love and his hope. There were times when she found the man himself more attractive than she could have believed possible a few days ago. It was as if hope renewed had made him magically younger. His manner was less dry and ironical. She had not thought he could be so charming, so considerate. And all the while, under that contained manner, she could feel a repressed intensity that troubled and stirred her as no man had stirred her yet.

On the surface, his irresistible approach was so unobtrusive that none of them appeared to notice anything, except perhaps Peter the Great; and the more he noticed, the less he would be likely to say. For although he could talk world-without-end on intellectual themes, in all personal matters he had the natural tact and delicacy that go with true kindness of heart. And he probably did not guess how those qualities endeared him to Eve Challoner; how it refreshed her to be with a man who so seldom reminded her that she was a woman. Not that she had any desire to be mannish, or to deny her sex; she simply wanted to ignore it, because she was shy of it, with the shyness peculiar to Northern races.

Elsa, who surely must notice, said not a word. She and Mrs. de Cray, like the rest, seemed to accept the affair as nothing more than a semi-serious flirtation, to enliven the voyage. So indeed it had seemed to Eve herself not so very long ago.

Those few days remained with her afterwards as time of hovering in a twilight region between two lives; as if her soul, released from one incarnation, trembled on the verge of another—not too anxious to be born. Each morning she awoke to the instinctive thought “Will I get safely through to-day?” Each evening, because he had let her get safely through, she felt drawn a little nearer to him, especially if a glimpse of the man he was not happened to tug at her heart.

Only once during that time he spoke as her lover confessed. It was during her quiet hour before dinner; Peter in bed, card-players glued to baize tables, others wandering on deck, that he persuaded her to play to him again.

“The music-room’s empty,” he told her, “and I’ve a black devil on me to-night—only you can charm the beast away.”

The subtle flattery of that was not lost upon her; but he did look tired and strained, and she could put into her music so much that she could never say.

So she remarked with an impersonal touch of sympathy, “My fiddle can sometimes cast out devils. It would do its best.”

Then she fetched the violin, carefully closed the doors, and for half an hour she played and played, simple noble music, no clever discordant modern stuff; passing from one thing to another almost without a break, while he leaned back in a corner seat, pipe between his teeth, paying to her music the supreme tribute of silence.

By the end of that half-hour, she did almost love him, in her own fashion, because her music meant much to him—even if he could not understand it all as music—and because he listened like that.

At the sound of people outside she skimmed to a finish, and returned her treasure to its case, refreshed by that passing escape from the actual, which music alone can bring.

“It’s late—I didn’t realise,” she said quickly, not daring to look at him. “I must fly and dress. I hope—I hope I have charmed the black devil away?”

“You have,” he stated, without emphasis or embroidery.

As he rose and came close to her she had, for the first time, a slightly pleasant tremor of fear. Did that mean she was beginning to care?

But he did not touch her; he only said in his normal voice, “When you get that thing into your hands, you’re a magician. Almost another creature.”

“That’s how I feel—another creature. And that creature is the real Me.”

He sighed. “She’s miles away from the lot of us. She oughtn’t to marry any trumpery man.”

Eve, still not looking at him, stooped to test the catch of her case.

“She doesn’t take herself so seriously as all that. And she probably will marry—some sort of man.”

“I’m afraid I hope she will,” he said in a contained voice. And as if to spare her the embarrassment of answering, be picked up her fiddle-case and opened the door for her.

Though no look passed between them when he gave up her case, she left him with a feeling that her fate was virtually sealed. He seemed to understand too well the kind of attitude her sensitiveness would find it almost impossible to resist.

*  *  *

It was on the evening they were due at Aden, after sundown, that she realised, with mingled excitement and dread, there was to be no getting safely through this time.

It had been a day of oppressive heat, and languid fitful breezes that dropped as the sun declined. The only active particles on board had been the lascars and the Goanese waiters, skidding about with long tumblers and cocktails, at all hours, correct and otherwise. Peter, tormented by his rash, had been in a tiresome spoilt mood. At bedtime he refused to come out of his bath, resented being packed away in the stuffy cabin, and when she scolded him he wept, which was worse than naughtiness. For she had grown quite fond of him; and in her own troubled state of heart, she was incapable of sternly leaving him to cry without an audience. Also, to a certainty, Major Monteith would be waiting for her return. But her duty, she virtuously reminded herself, was to the weeping Peter.

So she stayed, spinning tales for him longer than his mother would have approved; elicited a vain promise not to scratch, and left him comforted, half asleep.

As she stepped out of the lift, there of course stood Major Monteith, patiently impatient for her coming.

“Thought you’d never be through with that little devil,” he brusquely greeted her; but his look said other things.

“He’s not a little devil with me,” she lied stoutly. “He’s very unhappy because of his rash.”

“Bet he makes the most of it. And with you women a child has all the pull. Others may be really unhappy. You don’t bother.”

“I do bother. You’re being unfair.”

“Sorry. But you kept me waiting an endless time. Come along and be decent to me for a change! We can get a breath of air for’ard, if only from the vessel’s motion, and Aden’s in sight.”

She came along with a quivery lamb-to-the-slaughter sensation. Bracing herself with a flicker of humour she thought, “He’s determined I shall say ‘Yes’ in the very same place where I said ‘No.’ He thinks I can’t do it again. Perhaps I will!”

But she said not a word; and he, it seemed, had nothing to say, except the one thing that she could feel in the air, when at last they stood silent near the prow, isolated from all the others—the very spot where she played to him when the sun had just risen over Suez.

It had just set, now, over Aden, leaving a rosy stain on a space of lilac sky and a banner of cloud all broken up into dove-grey feathers flicked here and there with flame-colour like scattered jewels. The sea below and around them was a restless mystery of darkest sapphire. A wing of coast against that lilac sky looked almost violet. Little unreal black boats came gliding out into the dusk, while the jewelled cloud, lighting up, gave the whole western reach of sky and sea a lambent quality. . . And just beyond range of that perishing glow, delicately detached, hung a silver slip of a moon.

Eve caught her breath at that familiar loveliness; and surreptitiously she turned her father’s signet ring three times round her middle finger to propitiate the goddess of luck on the brink of her perilous venture.

The man beside her stood there so quiet, so apparently absorbed in the scene, that she began to hope her trepidation had been premature. In turning her ring for the third time, she became aware that he was watching her, no doubt thinking her very young and foolish. But she was not going to be weak-minded and pretend. .;

“Yes, I am turning Daddy’s ring,” she said casually, as if he had spoken, glad of a chance to break the enveloping silence. “Part of me knows it’s idiotic; simply—what do they call it?—atavistic impulse; part of me—the atavistic part—wouldn’t dare not to do it, just in case——”

She was embroidering her theme, holding the Inevitable at arm’s length; and he surprised her by saying gravely, “I was turning my money in my pocket. The whole of me wouldn’t dare not to—especially at this moment. We moderns, having pretty well lost religion, snatch at these old superstitions. And it’s not pure foolishness. Human beings have a fundamental need of something mysterious, greater than themselves; some form of deity, in fact. Personally I lost all I could ever believe in or worship after the War. But now”—his voice dropped to a deeper note—“I seem to have found it again . . . in you.”

Not heeding her murmured protest, he quietly captured her hands, drawing her close.

“Eve—you precious thing—am I deluded? Are you a shade nearer to me than you were that other evening?”

It was upon her—the demand, the inner recoil, the instant thought, “Only one word—and how happy he would be. But oh, how terrified I would be!”

She drew a long breath, nerving herself. The word would not come. Something inside seemed to pull her back; but the living man pulled her nearer, pressing her hands against him in mute entreaty. Through his thin flannel coat and silk shirt she could feel the slow hammer-strokes of his heart.

Unable and half unwilling to release her hands, she had a sense of slipping, slipping into fathomless depths. His eyes gazing into hers, did set a thrill stirring in her veins, and she did not know it was the communicated thrill of his emotion rather than her own.

“Darling one,” he said, his deep voice not quite steady, “don’t keep me havering any longer. Will you take me—and try to care? It’s not a great life I have to offer you; but it’s all I have and am—for what I’m worth. Eve . . .?”

Almost without her own volition, she heard herself saying in a small shaken voice, “If—if it’s as desperate as that—I’ll try. In a way—I do care.”

She could say no more. He had released her hands. It was herself he was holding now; not roughly, as she had feared, but carefully as though she might break if he held her too hard. In the same restrained fashion he was kissing her hair, her eyes and at last her lips, with a deep, gentle pressure—nothing fierce or startling to recall that earlier kiss, which had angered and excited her in almost equal measure.

In his manner of holding her, there was so little of the lover’s possessive ardour, so much of the love she welcomed and understood, that her fears were lulled. Closing her eyes, she yielded to him, without resistance or response.

Suddenly a wave of genuine emotion submerged her; the feel of his flannel coat, the smell of tobacco, the tenderly enfolding arms—it was almost as if her father held her so again.

And he, misinterpreting her shiver of joy, believed that he had won her after all.

Chapter Ten

If one could only tell true love from false love as one can tell mushrooms from toadstools . . . It takes a dreadful number of toadstools to make you realise that life is not one long mushroom.
— Katherine Mansfield

After dinner—afraid of herself, still more afraid of him—she basely evaded his manoeuvre to detach her from the others; hoping he would set it down to shyness, which was a large part of the truth. He must, in mercy, give her time to take things in. Her airy defiance of the Inevitable had availed her nothing. She had walked tamely down its throat after all. To crown her ill behaviour, she vanished early, vouchsafing him only a demure “Good night.”

*  *  *

She woke early—refreshed in body and mind. Stretching out her arms in the mere luxury of being alive—she went suddenly limp and let them fall at her side. She had remembered—last night.

Good heavens! What craziness had she committed now—that incalculable other Eve, whose sensibility was so apt to run away with her sense? She, who had so much to make life fine and desirable, had surrendered on demand the precious years to be. She had given herself, her life, into the hands of a virtual stranger without staying to consider all that the gift involved of encroachments, limitations and subtle adjustments to a decisive personality entirely other than her own. That was the crux of marriage. You could not give piecemeal. And she was not prepared to give herself body and soul to any man. Because certain lines of his face, certain tones of his voice, too sharply caught at her heart, it did not mean that she could endure to have him in her pocket for the rest of her life, to repeat and honour the vows required of her in that terribly explicit marriage service. Lovers were so demanding. Probably a husband would be worse, and she wanted to keep inviolate her secret world, in which the real Eve, whom no one knew, lived an exciting life of her own. Not that she was an egoist, or cold-hearted. She could love deeply and abundantly. The volcanic element was there. At any moment it might erupt over the wrong man—too late. And what then? Well, one knew from the papers what then. Nothing wild or romantic; merely some sort of mutual arrangement, and the cold decree of the law courts.

For his sake, no less than her own, she ought to hesitate, to ask herself honestly—Did his nearness quicken her pulses, her heart? Yes: but not for the right reason. His manner of holding her and kissing her had moved her profoundly, but instinct told her it could not always be like that. And the other kind of kisses would fatally recall Basil. Her lively imagination raced ahead, taking it in—and sudden terror seized her. How could she have done it? She must tell him this morning that it was useless; she could never carry it through.

Instinctively she sat up, as if she would go to him at once—and relapsed on to her pillow, feeling like a trapped animal, while the little black imp whispered, with accustomed malice, that she would never have the heart to unsay her foolish ‘Yes’ when it came to the point.

She felt thankful when Peter woke up and claimed her whole attention. Hurrying him down to the cabin, she washed and dressed him, dumped him on the sofa berth with a picture-book, and hurried away to her own bath.

Refreshed by the plunge into cold salt water, visualising—while she rubbed herself down—the scene there would be, Eve told Eve severely that her terror was pure funk, that she could not hurt him that way because—she did care in her own fashion, if not in his. Her fears sprang from the fatal habit of seeing and feeling things too clearly in advance.

She did not realise that, in this matter of marriage, a clearer knowing and seeing in advance might have saved her from accepting a man, however attractive, with whom she was not verily in love. If her knowledge still remained hazy, it was no fault of the dear Vanessa, who had tried to talk to her like a mother, as Mummy had never done. It was the fault of her own fastidiousness that would rather not look a spade in the face unless needs must. Now and again, at school and later, something seen or overheard—something furtive and frightening—had glinted at her like an evil eye; but she would not look that way. Idiotic, no doubt; yet there was more to it than that. From her father she had the make of mind that could say ‘No’ in certain directions; that could accept a mystery, even prefer it, to attempts at explaining things—spiritual or physical—that must be experienced to be rightly understood.

So the idiot must summon all her courage and good sense, must shut her eyes and forge ahead, hoping for the luck that too seldom favoured her.

For her who craved adventure—here was a tremendous adventure into an unknown region—the way of a man as lover and husband, the inner geography of his mind and character. What was her precious soul worth, if she flinched at the first onset of Life—the potential friend, the incalculable enemy? One must, at all hazards, challenge the unknown; engage it boldly, accept the risk involved. And marriage, even if justified by love, seemed to her the riskiest affair imaginable. Consider all the eager, romantic war weddings, and the crowded divorce courts that followed after. The love that justified them, clearly could not save the adventurous pair from shipwreck. For that they had need of a faith in something greater than themselves: a faith no longer robust, even where it could be said to exist at all.

Eve’s faith—except in illumined moments—was a rather misty affair; a case of keeping a steady helm by the star one could not see. But, she believed in the star. She would always hitch her wagon to it—in hopes. Because of it, she would do her best not to fail this man whom she did sincerely care for—in the wrong way. In a year’s time (it could not be less than a year) she might have travelled nearer to caring in the right way.

“Anyhow—here’s hoping!” She encouraged herself, while powdering her nose and bracing her nerves for a breakfast-table encounter.

It was one thing to be valiant in imagination; it was very much otherwise face to face. There he sat in his usual chair, looking as usual as you please: and she alone knew he was no longer Major Monteith, but something beginning with A: though even now she did not know whether it was Arthur or Albert—or even Archibald, which Heaven forbid!

At sight of him, fear returned: and the way he nodded ‘Good morning,’ with eyes that were shamelessly glad to see her. If he looked at her often like that, everyone would know: and she could not bear it. All this generalising about forward modern girls clearly didn’t apply to Eve Challoner—to her secret shyness with friends, her secret panic with strangers. Either she was not a modern girl (though purely ‘post-war’) or people talked a good deal of nonsense, which seemed more probable. And in this case, shyness was intensified because the engagement was not, on her side, the rapturous affair they would all take for granted. Only Elsa and Mrs. de Cray need know: and that would be difficult enough.

Meantime, she must attend to Peter in his why-and-what mood. To-day he was pursuing the origin of foods—what they were ‘in real’ before they arrived on Peter-boy’s plate. Their talk was a private affair between themselves; but Eve suspected that Major Monteith was listening; so she wickedly lowered her voice in answering Peter’s brisk catechism. They had worked through coffee and bread and jam. Now it was meat.

“And what’s beef, Misshanner—when it’s alive?”

“Cows and bullocks.”

He made very round eyes at that. Cows and bullocks seemed enormous things for a small boy to eat.

“An’ oh—what’s bacon?” he asked hopefully, as eager for sensational disclosures as any devourer of cheap newspapers.

“I’ve told you the others. Can’t you guess?” Eve encouraged him to think for himself.

“No—you tell.”

“No—you guess.”

He knew by now when she meant it; and screwing up his funny little nose, he considered the strip of cold tinned bacon lying on his plate. Then he guessed, triumphantly: “People——”

There was a shout of laughter. Several potential rashers of bacon had been listening.

He looked up at them, pink and perplexed. For him it was a serious voyage of discovery.

“You little horror!” Eve carefully refrained from smiling. “D’you really think it’s people when you eat that?”

“I don’t fink,” he modestly admitted. “It’s pink and white—like people.”

“Well, it’s—pigs!”

“Pigs?” he echoed in a voice of awe. Then he made a bright discovery on his own account. “Some peoples are pigs.”

More inappropriate laughter. But Eve, keeping it up, said gravely: “Yes—they are; but we don’t turn them into bacon. It wouldn’t be kind.”

He glanced up at her sidelong. “Are I sometimes a pig?”

“No. You’re only a monkey. And as we don’t eat monkeys, you’re quite safe.”

His sigh of relief so tickled Eve, that she glanced across at Major Monteith, simply wanting to share the joke—and it was as if she had touched a live wire. He was looking unspeakable things—in front of everyone. She would have to tell him after breakfast. But oh dear, how difficult it would be!

After breakfast she clung to Peter, deferring the unescapable moment when that other would contrive to get away alone with her; and then?

His eyes at breakfast had given her fair warning what to expect.

Very soon he was at her elbow. Peter crawling round and round her, with the eternal brick train, might help to keep him in check.

“Eve,” he said in a low tone, “are you disowning me by daylight? It was a bit brutal—the way you sneaked off.”

“I’m awfully sorry. I couldn’t help it,” she answered, without looking round at him.

“So I supposed. You aren’t the cat and mouse kind of girl. But this morning . . . Eve, I want you.”

She suppressed a sigh.

“I’ll manage it—later on, if you’ll be patient.”

“God! I’ve been waiting since yesterday evening. Lay awake half the night. And you say ‘be patient.’”

Because there was no self-pity, no hint of the sentimental, his blunt statement moved Eve to reply gently, “What else can I say? I’m not a free agent. I will soon. But please——” She frowned significantly at Peter, and nerved herself for the difficult request. “You really mustn’t look at me . . . the way you did across the table. They’ll all see. They’ll guess.”

“Well, I’m damned. Why shouldn’t they? I’m not ashamed of the fact. Are you?”

“Of course not. Only I’m excruciatingly shy. And I don’t want them all to know. Elsa and Mrs. de Cray—but not the others. I’d want to run away and hide!”

“Poor darling!” he said in a changed tone; Peter, ignored, had crawled away. “I understand all right. I’m not keen myself on being food for masculine chaff and feminine chatter. Seems only right to let young Van Doran know; but that’s as you please. It won’t be ‘as you please’ with Mrs. de Cray. She’ll try to put you off me under cover of the guardian angel touch.”

Eve grimaced at the prospect.

“She’s tried already, so you needn’t be alarmed! Of course your worst fault is that you veered off on to me when she wanted you to be smitten with her. It’s unsporting—that kind of game, when a woman has a husband.”

“Quite. I’m glad you see it so. Stick to that view—afterwards, Eve, and there’ll be no ructions between us.”

She lifted her. chin and looked him straight in the eyes.

“Of course if—if I marry you, I’ll play fair always.”

“If——? Am I to be kept dangling on ‘If’?”

(That fatal little word had spoilt everything.) “And you don’t want people to know, so that you can let me down becomingly if you change your mind the day after to-morrow. Is that it?”

He was hitting out because she had hurt him at a moment when he craved fuller assurance; but the implication infuriated Eve.

“When you talk like that I’ve no more to say to you.”

Her manner was icy; and she saw his lips tighten as she turned away, and flopped on to the deck beside Peter.

“Tired of your old train, Peterkin? Let’s smash him up and build a monster hotel.”

She could feel Major Monteith still standing behind her, lighting his pipe. Then, with strangely conflicting sensations, she heard him walk away. It was a cruel moment to have hurt him; but it might be as well to let him see that, although she was shy and sensitive and barely nineteen, she had a temper and a will of her own. It was vexatious, because she had meant to be so nice to him this morning; and he would never believe it now.

And all the while she was briskly laying foundations with no assistance from Peter.

“Help, lazy bones!” she exhorted him. “We’re a building company; Eve, Peter and Co. You must do your share.”

“Eve-Peter-ran-Co.,” he echoed with the guiltily mischievous look that meant he was after something he ought not to have: and to her utter surprise, he said solemnly: “I want ter call yoo—Eve, like Major Mineteef.”

“You monkey!” she shook her head at him.

He took it for refusal; and his eyes went very round. “I want to,” he repeated—and she rumpled his hair.

“Of course you may call me Weve!”

“I did-dunt say Weve!”

He was pink and reproachful: another offended male!

“Eve or Weve, or whatever you pleve!” she rhymed nonsensically. The more she ached or gloomed inside, the more she felt driven to play the fool.

Footsteps behind her—feminine, not masculine; and she looked up to find it was Mrs. de Cray, actually alone. Here was a chance to give Arthur-Albert-Archibald practical proof that her intentions were as honourable as her shyness was genuine. And here was Mrs. de Cray demanding to be told.

“Eve—you Sphinx, what’s in the wind? His Very Serene Highness went by just now looking as black as a thunder-cloud.”

“Did he?” the Sphinx queried innocently.

“Of course he did! Quarrelled—have you? Definitely turned him down? I hope so.”

“No, I haven’t,” Eve stated briefly, and glanced at Peter. His mother might have more sense.

She proved it by whisking her small astonished son to his feet. “Scoot, my treasure, and find Mrs. Turle. Ask her to take you for a run. Say Mummy’s coming soon.”

But Peter, the model infant, merely wriggled his shoulders.

“Don’t want no run. Want to play wif Eve.”

It came out so pat that his mother opened her eyes.

“What a boy!”

“He did ask. I said he might,” Eve explained, and Mrs. de Cray looked still more amused.

“What a girl! You’ll rope them all in before we make Karachi!”

Since their lively encounter in the cabin, she had dropped what Eve privately called her thirty-pound-manner. And having ‘shooed’ away her reluctant son, she returned to the charge; Eve on her feet now, braced for disapproval.

“If you’ve not refused him, what’s your lay?”

“I’m engaged to marry him.”

This statement sounded as crazy to herself as it clearly did to the other.

“Heavens, what madness! Since when?”

“Since last night.”

“He didn’t look much like it just now.”

“Oh—we had a little clash.”

“You’ll have many little clashes—with that sort of temper. You’ve not known him three weeks. He’s no catch at all. And only the other day you were spurning the idea of marriage.”

“Well, I’ve changed my mind.”

This was worse than she had anticipated—having to lie about it.

“A very slick volte face! You were genuine when you said all that.” The shrewd retort fired Eve’s cheeks, and made her feel tightened up inside. “In any case, it’s rottenly unsuitable. A man of his age; and a thoroughpaced flirt. I shall certainly write to your Mrs. Vane and tell her I’ve had no hand in the affair.”

Eve’s inner tightness snapped at that.

“Please don’t,” she said in a repressed voice. “Vanessa would be furious. I know you mean it kindly, but after all it—it isn’t your affair.”

“Snub direct! But you’re not of age, and you’re in my charge. And I happen to like you, Eve. You’re an uncommon girl; miles too good for that man—a mere Policeman; no particular record; no prospects. If you want my frank opinion (which you don’t!) it’s damnable. Of course marriage isn’t the death-us-do part affair that it used to be. Only till divorce-us-do-part. Say what you please, I don’t believe you’re in love with Monteith. You’re just fascinated—and he’s managed to get round you. Didn’t I say, if you were fascinated, you’d go your own way, to whatever destination?”

Eve’s chill knowledge that she was not going her own way brought the ache of tears to her throat. She could only stave them off by ignoring all that.

“Don’t talk about it, please—to anybody,” she said emphatically. “I’m only telling Elsa and you. I couldn’t stand everyone watching and making remarks.”

Mrs. de Cray’s smile held a hint of understanding. “Hukm hai!⁴ Congrats are a nuisance. And I’m afraid I can’t offer mine.”

“I don’t want yours—or anyone’s,” Eve flung out, ashamed of the quiver in her tone. It was a case in which the truth was not bracing. It would be hateful telling Elsa, who would probably feel much the same about it, even if she refrained from saying so.

That she did feel much the same was plain from the look in her eyes when Eve found her and reluctantly handed out her unadorned announcement. Nor did she not altogether refrain. And her protest was the more disturbing, since she had not Mrs. de Cray’s private reason for disparagement.

“Oh, my dear! What a headlong plunge!” was her disconcerting form of congratulation. “Are you quite sure——?”

“I think I am,” Eve answered, more honestly than she had intended, because Elsa cared. “Anyhow, he is.”

“That’s been obvious for some time. But he ought not——”

“He feels that himself,” Eve interrupted, unable to stand it all over again. “That’s why he—held back at first.”

“I wish he’d held back altogether. And I wish I felt more certain of you. Marriage is a big thing, Eve. Far bigger for the woman than for the man. You enlightened young girls fancy you know all about it in advance—but no one can. It’s a great joy, with the right man. But it’s a great strain, body and soul—even with the right man. And you’re so young—so individual. You may grow right away from him in ten years’ time. Do consider that, Eve, before you do anything irrevocable.”

Eve listened in amazement; not having supposed that her gentle Elsa could speak with so much force and feeling.

“It—it isn’t exactly irrevocable yet,” she ventured, wondering how—for Elsa’s peace of mind—she could explain, yet not quite explain, her tangled dilemma. “I’m not really keen on marrying. And . . . well, he understands that I won’t feel able to go that length, unless I come to care more than I do now. I know that sounds terribly lame. But oh, Elsa dear, I can’t make things clearer. So I’d rather not talk about it—if you don’t mind.”

And Elsa said, in a strange tone, for her: “If I can’t make you understand the risk, I’d rather not speak of it either.”

But speaking or not speaking was a minor matter for Eve compared with having to confront and accept all that loomed behind that small significant word ‘Yes.’

There fell an awkward silence; then Elsa remarked in her usual voice: “D’you realise it’s just on church-time. Are you coming?”

And Eve had entirely forgotten it was Sunday. That accounted for no Peter. He had been reclaimed by his mother, who took him over on Sunday mornings—as she did not favour Church—that Eve might be free to attend the simple service, if she had a taste that way. Eve—a fitful worshipper—had been an absentee last Sunday; but this morning she welcomed the chance of a quiet hour detached from personal problems and demands. It would be a comfort to feel Elsa kneeling beside her praying for strength rather than for things desired.

“Yes,” she said, “I’m coming.”

So they went on to the end of the deck where chairs, sparsely occupied, were set in a row, and the ship’s chaplain had just announced the opening hymn: “Through all the changing scenes of life——”

To Eve the absence of stained glass and ritual, the handful of worshippers isolated in space, made these simple, brief board-ship services more impressive than all the paraphernalia of worship on land. But to-day she found herself kneeling, sitting, standing, murmuring automatically, without sensation or conviction of anything but unreality. There stood she—a speck among millions of fellow-specks that troubled the earth; what matter their transient yearnings and bewilderments, to the ‘Maker of all things, the Judge of all men’? What matter, whether a mere Eve Challoner married or did not marry this particular man; whether she could ever achieve true vision—‘have sight beyond the smoke’? Now and then, for an illumined moment, you think you know, you believe you can see: but always the moment slips past with its secret unrevealed. There can be neither sight, nor knowledge; there can be only hope. . . .

The chaplain was giving out his text: “‘I am come that they might have life and have it more abundantly.’”

Those momentous words smote Eve with sudden force and freshness, as words will at heightened moments, because they have life; and the words of Christ have it more abundantly. They were telling her now, with authority, that hope was not all; there was faith, if one could compass it, in that Supreme Personality—sharing and uniting the life of God and man. And Eve, listening to the chaplain’s simple exhortation, forgot all about herself, and the lover she had bitterly hurt. For a short ten minutes her whole interest and attention were shifted into another world, on to another plane.

When she knelt to receive the peace of God that passeth understanding, the familiar phrases fell like dew on her troubled spirit, lifting it high above daily trifles, above nagging doubts and fears.

Though the exalted moment would pass when she tumbled back to earth, the secret impress, as always, would remain.

Chapter Eleven

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

It was near lunch-time; the worshippers scattered; Eve, back on earth again, lying listless in her canvas chair: Elsa a little way off, reading Hans Andersen to Peter, who sprawled on the deck in a cool corner with a cushion under his head. Most of the men were in the bar whetting jaded appetites with their eternal cocktails, symbols of peace in our time.

Still not a sign of Arthur-Albert-Archibald; and she was beginning to wonder whether she had unwittingly turned him down, when she felt in her bones that he had come quietly up behind and was standing near her chair, so that she must turn her head to see him.

She did not turn her head: and he remarked, in an undertone, “Come and have a cocktail.”

She answered in the same tone: “No, thanks. I’m not keen. But don’t let me prevent you.”

“Very considerate! I’ve had one already.”

“Then you’d better not have another.”

“That’s my affair.”

He sounded annoyed: and his voice, when he spoke again, was low and imperative.

“You know what I really want. So don’t pretend. Come to the music-room. I must know where I stand.”

Eve said in her heart, “I’m for it.” Then she rose and walked away beside him, unable to say a word.

He said nothing either. It was the kind of explosive silence that made her want to scream; and of course she looked all the more self-possessed.

With formal politeness, he ushered her into the music-room, quietly pushed the door to, and stood with his back against it. That made her feel like a trapped young woman in a cheap serial, which was worse than ever. Standing near the sofa, she faced him, erect and unapproachable. She saw him moisten his lips before he spoke.

“Now, Eve, let’s have it straight. Are we—or aren’t we—engaged to be married?”

His voice was hard. His eyes were hard. He did not look the least like a lover craving assurance of his luck; and there quivered in Eve a wild impulse to tell him outright that the position was impossible. But her brief hesitation unnerved him.

“Eve—which is it?” he asked—eyes and tone beseeching the right answer.

It was as if she heard the click of a ghostly door somewhere in her brain. For those few seconds it had seemed ajar. Now it was shut fast, like the door behind him.

“Well,” she said in a small voice, staring at the carpet, “as I’ve told Elsa and Mrs. de Cray, I suppose . . .?”

“You’ve told them? I thought . . . I understood you had no more to say to me.”

“I meant—at the moment, when you talked like that,” she gently reminded him. “I was angry.”

“You had the right to be. That’s why——”

“Have you really been believing . . . all this morning?”

“On and off. I couldn’t quite take it in.”

Again that vision of the door thrust ajar; and she, in utter ignorance, carefully closing it by her own act.

He came forward now, his hands held out.

“You didn’t mean it—that way?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“More fool I to suppose so. Wonder what those two had to say about it? They couldn’t say worse of me than I could say of myself. I’m no catch. I’m years too old for your freshness and sweetness. I’ve a beast of a temper when I’m roused. And, as I’ve told you, the War played old Harry with my nerves. But if I really win all of you, it’ll make another man of me. I’m dead sure—else I wouldn’t dare . . .”

He stopped with a jerk; and she felt aware, not for the first time, of something tragic behind, other than his loss. It was there; It was gone. He came closer still.

“But if, in spite of failings, you can care enough to accept this rotten bargain . . .”

“Oh don’t, please—put it that way.”

That he should say of himself very much what Mrs. de Cray had said, what Elsa’s manner had inferred, seemed to snap something inside.

Tears started. Her hands went up to hide them. And then—she was in his arms, her cheek against his coat, sobbing like a child. All the strain of the last few days found release in her abandonment, which he would mercifully misread altogether. He was holding her in the tender fashion that recalled her father, murmuring endearments.

“My precious—my sweet, don’t break your heart over it. I’ll do all I can to be worthy of you—to make you happy.”

The endearments comforted her, but the last words had a curiously hollow sound.

And he, knowing nothing of the high explosive he held in his arms, drew her down beside him on the sofa, kissed her wet cheeks and eyes, mopped her tears with his handkerchief, as if she were indeed a child, and he the very man she would have him be. Only when his fingers strayed in her hair she instinctively shifted her head away from the unfamiliar touch.

“What is it now?” he asked, puzzled and hurt.

“My hair . . . I don’t like people touching it. I can’t explain. Only Daddy . . .”

He muttered something inarticulate, but his fingers slipped down and caressed the back of her neck.

“Because of him, even I mustn’t . . .?”

“Please—not just yet,” she toned it down: then smitten by the look in his eyes, shyly brushed his cheek with her lips.

He caught her to him, harder than he had held her yet; and his controlled kiss waked the first real stir of response.

A sound of voices and footsteps startled her almost out of his arms.

As they passed on, he laughed and clutched her again.

“No fear! They’re all after food and drink. You jumped like a shot rabbit.”

“Well, I am a shot rabbit—more or less!” She wriggled free of him, glad of a swing back to the normal; dabbed at her eyes and smoothed her ruffled hair. “And after all that,” she slanted a mischievous look at him, “I don’t even know your name!”

He smiled rather ruefully.

“That ‘dates’ me. If I’d been five and twenty, it would have been Christian names within a week.”

She nodded. “Yes—we do rush things rather. It isn’t always the best policy. I’ve been having shots at your name, calling you Arthur-Albert-Archibald inside, because Major Monteith seemed rather unfriendly considering. . . . But I’m hoping you aren’t any of those!”

“Unfriendly!” He chuckled at the inadequate word. “You’re the sweetest, quaintest creature. I have the pleasure to inform you I’m not any of those. I am Donald Angus Monteith, commonly called Angus.”

“Angus,” she repeated softly, and he snatched the hand nearest him. “What a relief!—Now perhaps you’ll give me a chance to feed? Even a shot rabbit wants its tiffin; and Sunday’s always a good menu. It must be awfully late.”

He gravely consulted his watch.

“It’s just ten minutes since I closed that door. The best ten minutes of my life.”

He lifted the hand he had snatched, turned it palm upward and kissed it twice. Then he opened the door, and they went down to the saloon—not together, because Eve would not have it, and because she must remove all trace of tears. Peter would notice, if no one else did; and he would want to know.

*  *  *

After that, Eve had a sense of gliding into calmer water. She had accepted the position; and acceptance, that is no part of any modern creed, brings its own reward. It involves faith in a larger wisdom, a Life beyond life—not conspicuously present in the generation that has grown up since the Great War. It also demands a less obvious form of courage than the courage of self-assertion. Instinctively Eve girded at it; but it was Anne’s word: and there was nothing poor-spirited in Anne’s philosophy.

“Whatever you genuinely accept undergoes a subtle change,” she had said once, when Eve was tugging against circumstance, like a valiant puppy at a steel chain. It was exhausting work. This time she would test Anne’s hard-bought wisdom; and see if that subtle change came along by way of reward.

Very soon, now, the voyage would be over. In two days’ time, Bombay: then Karachi. Then Vanessa and Kashmir and freedom—physical freedom at least—from all she had brought upon herself by her latest Impromptu:—Op: 3. High time she essayed an Andante or a Fugue! Vanessa, who knew all there was to know about men and love and marriage, would surely understand and help? Meantime she must accept, with a good grace, this difficult affair of being engaged—if only between themselves.

That stipulation saved her, in a measure, from the strain of his constant need to touch her, to keep his eyes on her in the manner she had vainly forbidden—as though he feared she might ‘softly and suddenly vanish away,’ like the Boojum, if he relaxed his vigilance. That look in his eyes, even when it thrilled her, said too plainly, “You are mine”; and at heart she was still entirely her own. She could not—would not—be pinned down like a butterfly in a case, by any man on earth. Partly, of course, he knew all that; knew that the hidden, unseizable Eve was still to win. So, in this more privileged fashion, he was wooing her again, with a charm and consideration, a controlled fervour that could not altogether fail of effect.

They had their specified hours together: a stroll in the morning to some unfrequented part of the deck; the quiet spell between Peter’s bed-time and dressing for dinner, which he called ‘cocktail time,’ though he could rarely persuade her to join him in that vicious indulgence; and again in the long calm evenings, when dancing and a shadowy deck rewarded him—Eve permitting—for the constraint he put upon himself all day.

It was at these times that he gave her, now and then, that slightly pleasant sense of fear; but there were other occasions when his voice and manner recalled the night of the concert. Then she felt frightened, simply; frightened and repelled. Though he apologised next morning for having spoilt her evening with his temper and his rotten nerves, the after effect did not readily subside. Then, in between, he would be so understanding, so devoted that it seemed unkind to exaggerate those dark moods. Everyone had faults. He would find plenty in her, when he wasn’t so busy trying to get her into his arms.

It was one evening, after several dances together—he in a demanding mood, and she trying vainly to keep his ardour in check—that she told him, half in joke, her thought about the Boojum and the pinned-down butterfly; and instead of laughing at her nonsense he was so angry that she could scarcely calm him down. While her own alert sense of humour was helping to make things possible, his, these days, seemed almost in eclipse. At times, when they were alone—and he all on fire inside—she hardly knew him for the dry-mannered, ironic Major Monteith of Mediterranean days, the man who had recalled her father, and had attracted her far more than this urgent lover, too rarely rising to her nonsense, troubled by spasms of self-scorn because he had failed in his stoical resolve to let her alone.

“You never really told me what Mrs. D. C. had to say about it,” he pressed her obliquely, in one of these tormenting and tormented moods. But Eve had no intention of telling him. “Of course that means she said unrepeatable things; and of course I know I’m burgling a jewel I’ve no right to steal. But I’ve done it—and I’m damned if I’ll go back on it.”

And Eve, puzzled at his contrition, said gently: “So far—I haven’t asked you to!”

“No. You haven’t. You don’t realise . . .” Again he stopped with the painful jerk that made her want to comfort him. “Give me time, darling; and some day I’ll become a real man to you. Am I anywhere near it yet?”

She made pathetic eyes at him. “Why will you—when you know I can’t pretend. Sometimes you’re quite real to me. Sometimes you seem just a shape that walks about the deck. And sometimes . . . you’re a ghost. I can’t explain why; but that’s when I nearly . . . love you.”

“Well, of all the living conundrums!” He gazed at her, half amused, half dismayed. “You sound like one of those impossible girls in a Russian play.”

“Oh, please, I’m not in a Russian play.”

“That’s a mercy! But if I have to become a ghost before you can ‘nearly’ love me?”

“No. I said you sometimes are one. Don’t worry. It’s only my nonsense. You’re being very patient with this idiot, Eve; and she’s trying to love you, as you deserve.”

The change wrought in him by those few words so moved her that she leaned to him, and shyly kissed his cheek. He did not seize her, as she dreaded; only his fingers closed sharply on hers.

“You angel-girl,” he said. “That’s good enough to work upon. When we get to Karachi—if there’s time—I shall buzz round and buy you a ring—the best I can run to.” (He was his normal self again.) “What’s your special weakness in that line?”

And she answered promptly, ignorant of his resources: “One perfect opal, with a lot of very small sparkles round it.”

“Opal? I thought you were superstitious?”

“Not about stones. And if you haven’t the fear, it doesn’t harm you.” She loved few adornments better than a beautiful ring. But when he spoke of that one, and looked at her in that way, she felt as if he were putting handcuffs on her.

In saner moods, he talked freely again about his work—its difficulties and dangers, and the fascination it had for him, in spite of modern anomalies and the racial friction that was squeezing Englishmen out of all the vital services.

When he revealed that side of himself, when he told her amazing tales of the country he was trying to serve with the disinterested integrity of his kind, she listened with the eagerness of a child, the intelligence of a woman. It was then that she came nearer to loving him, in her own way, than when he was assiduously wooing her—in his way.

“As Superintendent of Police,” he told her, “the life’s less of a racket than it was in early days; but the tribes round Peshawar keep things pretty lively; and a Police Officer, like a doctor, can never count on a holiday. He lives at the end of a telegraph wire. Camp from November to May. Scouring big tracts of country, inspecting outposts and stations. No knowing, in the interval, what your subordinates may be up to in the way of bribery and coercion. We’re responsible for the lot, and we haven’t a dog’s chance to control them. We need to double the number of British officers; and Government’s busy cutting us down beyond the margin of safety. The damn clever journalists, who dogmatise about us in the Home papers, simply don’t know what we’re up against out there.”

“No. They don’t!” Eve twinkled at him. “My stepfather’s one. He’s Hensley-Harrison—‘The Coming Era.’”

“Gad! Is he? Quite an authority on darkest Anglo-India! Full of fatherly concern for the moral effect on the white man of feeling superior to his brown brother. I chuckled over a sentence in one of his latest articles, just before I sailed. ‘For the Englishman in the East the very conditions of life are a kind of intoxicant.’ As if we all peacocked around, in Government House circles, feeling superior! Nearer the truth if he’d said that present conditions in the East are a fine incentive to intoxicants!—Nice harmless sort of cove, your stepfather. Barley water and all that?”

Eve laughed. “Not unadulterated barley water! But quite harmless; and quite clever, when it isn’t India. I’d love to hear you telling him the real thing.”

“Perhaps you will one day.”

His glance, and the allusion to the future, startled Eve, who had been enjoying the refreshment of impersonal talk. Perhaps he divined her thought; for he smiled quizzically at her silence, and lured her into telling him about Compton Court. Without damage to loyalty—especially as regards Mummy—she gave him so lively a picture of them all that she kept him amused and interested till Peter’s bed-time—when she contrived to escape without a kiss or even a touch of hands.

*  *  *

During the last few days of that brief, eventful voyage, Angus Monteith was heartened by an appreciable change in Eve’s attitude to himself. He owed much, though he did not guess it, to her innate love of contact with a man’s mind, to the new and keen pleasure it gave her—this daily intimacy with masculine interests, with a man’s point of view. And for her, also, the situation began to feel easier. Elsa never mentioned the subject, Mrs. de Cray . . . hardly ever: and Peter the Great was given no chance to air his views till the evening before they reached Bombay, where he was to disembark and join his indefatigable sister.

That evening he secured three dances with Eve; and he danced the third in a “silence that could be felt,” as she wickedly expressed it to herself.

Then he led her away from all the others—still not saying a word; and as they leaned over the taffrail, in the moon-splashed darkness, a vivid memory assailed her of that first time when they had stood there together, while he talked and talked about “the ree-naissance of the Orient.”

He was not talking ree-naissance now. He was saying in an odd, shy voice, “Kashmir feels a longish way off. But it won’t be ‘good-bye’ to-morrow morning. The magnet will be drawing us up there some time in May. I want to have you meet my sister. And I . . . I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again”—— He awkwardly cleared his throat. “I’ll be living on that hope, Eve.”

And Eve, smitten with dismay, saw that Angus was right. He should have been told.

“Please—you mustn’t hope,” she said swift and low, hating the whole thing. “I—I’m engaged to be married. I ought to have said it sooner. Only . . .”

“What . . .? All this time?” He gazed at her blankly through his port-holes.

“No. This last week. It’s—it’s Major Monteith.”

“That fellow . . . You?” He exclaimed aghast. She had felt, in speaking, the impact of her announcement, but the smothered anger in his voice startled her. “A girl of your quality! I’ve not been daring—and he’s had the nerve. . . . Of course I saw he’d fallen for you; but . . . well, I oughtn’t to say it, though I know it . . . he’s a good one to keep away from. . . .”

“No, you oughtn’t to. And you mustn’t,” she checked him with decision.

“I mustn’t,” he agreed in an odd voice, his face white and strange in’ the moonlight. “But honest-to-God, I can’t say otherwise. So after all . . . it’s got to be ‘good-bye’—and God protect you, Eve. If there is one—and I’ve been reared to believe it—He surely will. You’re so young. You’ve the gift of trusting people. But you don’t half understand.

A catch in his voice betrayed him; and she said gently, “You’re a good man. I can’t bear upsetting you so. But I couldn’t, anyhow, marry the very nicest man . . . not of my own country. And we truly are friends. I would love to see you in Kashmir. Do please write if you feel you can?”

“Yes . . . if . . .?” he echoed in a numb voice. “I won’t be feeling that way at present. So it’s goodbye—in the real old meaning.”

“It’s good-night,” she answered, trying to smile—and he crushed her fingers so hard that they tingled for some minutes afterwards.

She did not see him alone again; nor did she mention her bad quarter of an hour to Angus Monteith.

Chapter Twelve

You can never quite get back. Life goes on, and little bits of us get lost.
— Margaret Kennedy

Bombay harbour, at last, in the cool of early, early morning; its incomparable coast-line, far-seen, a blend of cobalt and lilac carved upon a saffron sky; the sea milkily smooth, colourless almost, except where lazy undulations wrought a sheen of opal and pearl.

At Bombay they must tranship for Karachi. Everything had been packed overnight. They were ready to the last button.

So Eve was able to be up and out, watching it all from the vessel’s prow, hoping that by some kind chance Angus might not be so early astir. He had an uncanny knack of finding her wherever she might be; and at this particular moment she could hardly bear him near her. She must be alone with her sensations, with the stupendous actuality of India, looming beyond that gracious coast-line, beyond those massed buildings—vast and terrible and splendid; the country indelibly impressed upon her mind and heart by extremes of joy and grief, by the fact that she was peculiarly her father’s daughter. Little of Bombay could she consciously recall; but the Eve who had rejoiced and suffered there, who was alive in her for ever, kept whispering now, “Do you remember? Do you remember?” Too poignantly she remembered. For her tenacious Northern nature there seemed no getting free of it ever; no fundamental wish to get free of it, perhaps.

The thought of Peter brought her back to the immediate moment and its demands. Hurrying away from wraiths of the past, she ran straight into Angus, who had been resenting her supposed laziness, and was eager to take her for a brief run ashore, while the transfer was in progress.

Her flat refusal almost angered him.

“What the devil——? I thought you’d be so keen. I was going to charter a car. Why not?”

He would think her unreasonable, but her disability went too deep.

“I’m so sorry, Angus,” she lightly touched his sleeve. “But I can’t. There’d be a ghost between us all the time; the ghost of a poor little Eve, who was so mad happy when she first saw Bombay and so mad miserable, when she left it. Do please go. Never mind me.”

Of course nothing would induce him to go. But he did seem to understand; and he didn’t worry her about it, which raised him several degrees in her esteem. Had she said so, his disappointment would have been softened; but it simply did not occur to her. She was still away in spirit with that other Eve, who had suffered as only the young can suffer, before niggling worries have blunted the sensibilities of the soul.

Once they were on the move again, her spirits lifted at the prospect of journey’s end. Beneath her assumed calm, all her wildest excitements—in which Angus had no part—fluttered in and out of her mind like uncaged birds. It was a disagreeable run up the coast in a small steamer; and to Eve it seemed interminable, with Mrs. de Cray in a state of collapse; not heartbreak for her cavalier, who had disembarked at Bombay, but a troublesome, feverish throat. For she was genuinely not strong, and she wilted in the heat.

So did Peter; and Eve herself succumbed again with sickness and headache. Elsa, of course, was a sainted angel, even to Mrs. de Cray; and the ship’s doctor—almost as attentive as the vanished McNaughten—insisted on a night’s rest at Karachi, which would give the patient two quiet days in comparative coolness before the long northward journey. Eve, girding at the prospect, could not desert her invalid; though she longed to travel on with Elsa, for whom there could be no comfortable halt by the way. Angus, of course, decided to risk arriving a day late sooner than desert Eve, who was feeling rather sorry for herself all round. So the last state of that voyage was nearly as bad as the first; except that it was the last state—thanks to all the Powers that be!

*  *  *

It was soon after midnight on Saturday that the ship’s engines ceased to throb. The heavenly sensation—or lack of sensation—seemed to reach Eve’s consciousness even in her sleep. She woke with a faint start, a sleepy sense of “what’s happened?” Then she realised: not a stir, not a sound. Profoundly content, she turned over and fell fast asleep.

She woke late; but there was no hurry. Only the few Quetta people had to bustle off early. Packing in a band-box, ably hindered by Peter, reduced her to a moist rag; and by way of respite, she snatched a cold bath. In ten minutes she was hotter and stickier than ever; up on deck, Peter chattering beside her; all about them the bustle of disembarkation; and she feeling more glad of Angus than ever yet—the safe and protected feeling, especially in India, of a man in charge.

No matter what changes befell, the Sahib still had a way with him; an effortless mastery, perhaps because he never seemed to be mastering anything or anyone. In much the same fashion as Daddy, Angus was dealing with the locust-swarm of brown beings who scampered on deck like monkeys—yelling, gesticulating, snatching at any morsel of luggage that might yield baksheesh.

Neither Mrs. de Cray nor Elsa had a cavalier; but Angus, with the help of his eagle-faced bearer, was coolly and efficiently looking after them all, while Eve stood by the taffrail, Peter’s little boneless hand secure in her own.

Karachi, in the blaze of an April morning, was no dream vision like Bombay. Drab and flat and ugly, it had the solitary virtue of looking rather more like India. Its unlovely individuality had not yet succumbed to the disease of sameness that is fast robbing travel of half its virtue, and more than half its charm. It was still Karachi: and it lay there in the stark Eastern sunshine, waiting for Eve.

Here was no ache of things remembered; only the exciting fact of India: the blazing sun and blinding sky, the brown faces and scurrying bare legs, the naked children with distended stomachs, the dear humped bullocks and the endless birds. More birds in an average Indian street than in an English woodland—and all astonishingly unafraid.

Peter kept chattering about them, and she answered him at random hardly hearing what he said. Already, in spirit, she was transported to Kashmir, to the welcome awaiting her. The brief voyage and all connected with it—even Angus—seemed suddenly unsubstantial as a dream. What right had that temporary Eve so to entangle the true Eve, whose destiny might be awaiting her up there?

Here she stood among all these virtual strangers, and where was her letter of welcome telling her how she was to accomplish the journey on from Murree alone. If only Vanessa could meet her there, she would really believe she had not done wrong to come.

“A-ha! Here she is!” It was the voice of the Purser. “Miss Challoner, you’re wanted by a swell Government-House-looking person, in scarlet.”

Miss Challoner’s heart jerked as the splendid scarlet person swept her a profound salaam. A moment she gazed at him—wondering; then she knew. It was Shere Ali—her father’s most devoted peon; the man who had met them all at Bombay seven years ago.

“Shere Ali . . . oh, Shere Ali!” she cried, and impulsively laid a hand on his scarlet sleeve. Such a special friend he had been in those days.

With the tips of his brown fingers he touched first the back of her hand, then his own forehead.

“My Missie-baba . . . Eve Missie, with the very face of Chull’nor Sahib.”

Tears ached in her throat, rushed to her eyes. She could only smile at him, as she opened her letter with shaking fingers. Impatiently she whisked away the tears that started—and read:

“You darling blessed Bombshell—bursting before you were timed to burst!

“What, I wonder, is the inner meaning of this sudden move? You aren’t very lucid about it, but I gather—some masculine complication. If so, I’m glad you fled from it. I can’t allow any of those just yet. You’re my Eve now; and the men can jolly well wait.”

At that, it was all she could do not to disgrace herself in public. Swiftly she read on:

“Don’t be downhearted, darling, because I can’t say ‘Come up here instanter.’ Remember that a very welcome bombshell wasn’t included in my summer programme. But it shall be presently. Just now we are in the thick of a Vice-regal visitation; and your Vanessa (strictly behind the scenes) doing the endless little things that need a woman’s hand. I’m loving it all—pro tem. You wouldn’t, one bit. But I wish you could have seen our floral triumph at the Residency dinner to welcome Their Very Excellencies! The dining-room was a spring dream of almond and peach blossom. The other big rooms decked in thousands of daffodils and forsytia, among Havelock’s Tibetan trophies.

“The festive atmosphere is calming down now; but I’m engaged two deep for a week or more. And when the Viceregal party moves on, I’m booked for a fishing expedition with Havelock and two others up the Datchigam Valley. A long-standing promise. I can’t back out. And as we don’t pretend to one another, Eve—I’m very keen. I’m snatching a week first, to complete a rather fascinating Caprice for two violins and piano, which we’ll play together—when you and Aunt Thea come along this way. You know what I’m like when the demon really gets hold of me.”

Yes, Eve knew what she was like at those times: how little anything or anyone counted then, even herself. For the first time in her life, she was comparing Vanessa with Anne, who would have managed to have her in the teeth of every obstacle—and never a word as to how it had been done. But why Aunt Thea? She ran her eye swiftly over the final page.

“By this time you’ll be asking, ‘Where do I come in?’ Well, my lamb, if you were likely to be stranded, you know I’d throw everything to the winds. But you’ll simply have to curb your impatience and make a bee line for Government House, Peshawar, instead of Chenar Bagh, Kashmir. Aunt Thea will love to have you and she’ll bring you along when they move up to Nathia Gully about the middle of May. Up here the spring’s very late. We’ve had April days as cold as Charity, the snow lying thick all round Gulmarg.

“You’ll find a very attractive household at Peshawar. Thea’s Mary is quite a beautiful person, with the Meredith hair like autumn beech leaves—not shingled, not even bobbed! Vinx, I’m told, put his foot down—for once in his natural life! A nephew, Lance Desmond, is his Secretary. And you may be aware that your Clive’s brother, Tony Arden, is his Personal Assistant. So be a good child, and enjoy yourself there, and write the sweetest letter you can achieve to

“Your devoted Vanessa—who will give you an extra special welcome when the day comes.

“V. V.”

By that time, Eve felt disheartened utterly. Not the least use telling herself that, considering her impromptu behaviour, she was in luck. Body and spirit were longing for the hills; sinfully longing to be beyond the reach of Angus; and she had set her heart on seeing Kashmir again in April, as she had first seen it with her father. Instead she was coolly told to wait a whole month, perhaps longer: and waiting had always been, for Eve, one of the major trials of life. At the back of all was the nightmare sensation of being checked at every turn. From the moment inspiration flashed, on that Villars balcony, the restless urge had begun to work—inside. Checked by Anne, she had snatched at the Basil excuse—and had run headlong into Angus. Now that she had actually reached India, it was check again: like a ghostly game of chess.

Of course Peshawar would be thrilling; and she recalled ‘Aunt Thea’—who was no Aunt at alias a charming person. But she would be a Burra Mem-sahib, and very grand. Dear Uncle Vinx, at any rate, could never be formidable, even if he had been translated into Sir Vincent Leigh, K.C.S.I., Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province. What a mouthful! That was probably what Daddy would have been by now; and she, his right-hand daughter, saving his face whenever he was tripped up by one of his delicious absent-minded muddles.

That did not bear thinking of—especially at this disheartened moment. It was more comforting to think of Tony Arden, whom she had encountered once or twice in her chrysalis stage. She knew of his appointment, and had hoped to meet him later on. Just now, she had no wish to meet any of them.

So completely had her spirit deserted the blazing deck, that she jumped when a man’s hand closed on her upper arm. It was Angus, of course, bidding her move on.

“Got your precious letter?” he asked, as they went towards the gangway. “Have they made a proper bando-bast? You can’t do that motor journey alone.”

“Oh, I’ve got Shere Ali,” she casually dismissed his concern. “I’ll tell you afterwards.”

Of course he would be fearfully pleased, and not a little hurt if she failed to conceal her bitter disappointment over the delay. Were she properly in love, or even a right-minded paragon of unselfishness, the thought of his pleasure should be helping to cheer her up. It was not helping her in the least.

Chapter Thirteen

This love that thou hast shown
Doth add more grief to too much of mine own.
— Shakespeare

They were having dinner by themselves at a little table in the long lofty dining-room of the Carlton Hotel. Elsa, after a scratch meal, had caught the night train for Mooltan. Mrs. de Cray had gone straight to bed. “Major Monteith can be trusted to see after you!” she had remarked when Eve came in to say good night. “But don’t let him souse you with champagne—or himself either!”

The implication had annoyed Eve, the more so because her annoyance was tinged with alarm. And here he actually was trying to souse her with iced champagne, to celebrate the fact that he had officially claimed her at last. And as she kept refusing to have her glass refilled, of course he kept on re-filling his own.

She had come down late; and many of the tables near them were already empty. Angus had chosen theirs in a corner, near one of the tall doors that stood open to a back verandah and the cool night air.

She had told him about Peshawar—and he was immensely pleased. His unexpected luck seemed to have gone to his head; and his queer unmanageable mood set her wondering—with a private qualm—how many cocktails he had allowed himself before dinner? More excited, in a troublesome way, than she had seen him yet, and palpably loving her to distraction, he seemed in a mood so perilously balanced that a wrong word or look might cause a sudden flare up. She had put on her lily of the valley frock, because he liked her in it; and already she was wishing she had refrained. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her: and the more unrestrained his manner, the more she tightened up inside, trying vainly to keep him in check; too young and inexperienced to realise that a measure of discreet response to his mood might have eased matters for them both.

They were sitting, not opposite, but as it were at right angles of the little round table. He kept leaning closer than need be; and once, reaching for the salt-cellar, he caressed, in passing, the soft under-side of her arm.

Instinctively she jerked it away; saw, too late, the pain and anger in his eyes; realised too late that she had given him every right to touch her so. It was unkind. It looked as if she shrank from him, whereas she was only shrinking from his strangeness, fearful that a brown waiter might have seen.

“I’m awfully sorry—I didn’t mean——” she murmured, moved by a futile impulse to atone.

“That doesn’t quite meet the case,” he retorted in a sheathed voice. “If you can’t stand being touched by me, it’s a poor look-out all round. You sit there—apparently human—driving me daft. And inside you’re an Ice-Maiden.”

“I’m not. I’m a nice maiden!” she shamelessly punned, seeking refuge from his intensity in the lighter note.

He flashed her a smile, more like himself. “The nicest I ever struck. Hence these complications. It’s the real Eve I want, darling——” he spoke lower still . . . “And I’m not ass enough to suppose I can get at her by holding her lovely image in my arms. That’s the curse of the situation. There’s always something unseizable that slips away. Ice-Maiden you’re not. I spoke in bitterness. You’re a creature of earth—but not quite human.”

“Oh, I am! I’m fearfully human—underneath.”

No lightness now in her disclaimer; nor in his tone, as he answered, “Well, you ought to know best. I’m banking on that—against odds.” He looked at her hard and long. “Yes, you have the capacity, my Eve. But it hasn’t been waked up yet. And there’ll be no peace for either of us till I manage to wake it.”

She looked away from him tingling.

“It’s a very shy thing,” she said in a small voice. “And it’s more likely to wake if you pay no attention to it than if you keep hustling it to see how it’s getting on.”

“Hustling! I like that” he was half annoyed again—“when I’m so afraid of making you curl up inside, that I’ve been as gentle with you as if you were a child.”

Swift compunction smote her.

“Oh, Angus dear, I’m a graceless beast. But truly . . . I couldn’t stand it any other way—yet.”

Had they been alone together she would have leaned to him and kissed him in spite of his dangerous mood: and there he was, growling to himself, unaware of the impulse that would have softened her confession.

“The ghastly truth is you aren’t anywhere near loving me yet—or even realising what that sort of love means. But you will—if we can only be together a bit. I must believe that—or I’d go mad. Some girls are easy to wake up, because they’re mainly after marriage—though they don’t always know it! You aren’t cut out like that.”

“No—I’m not.”

“All the better luck for the man who really gets you. It s a thorny state of life—marriage. But its queer after all these centuries—nothing seems to put men and women off it, in spite of the wreckage strewn around. Maybe the biologists are heading that way; stealing a march on Nature, detaching love from its service to the race with their unholy incubators.”

“Incubators?” she echoed in complete bewilderment. He really must be half drunk. But he was smiling at her in his dry quizzical fashion.

“Never heard of all that? Just as well. I thought you modern girls knew all about everything—and a little over!”

It was the kind of remark that made her tighten up again.

“People who judge modern girls as if they were turned out by mass-production make all kinds of idiotic mistakes about them.”

He took it better than she had dared to hope.

“I beg their pardon! I’ve certainly never detected the remotest signs of mass-production in you. Or I wouldn’t be having such a hell of a time with you—my Eve.”

“If it’s a hell of a time—and if I’m not quite human, why do you?”

“Because I can’t do otherwise—even to please you. I’m pixie-led.”

She caught the note of bitterness, rarer of late. He was filling his glass again. Not much more in that big bottle she observed with relief. But when dessert came, he ordered port with his walnuts; emptied the glass—and ordered another.

“Not fair measure,” he muttered, as if by way of excuse. Then he raised the glass and looked her uncomfortably straight in the eyes. “Here’s hoping!”

She noticed with dismay that his hand was not quite steady; and he began to talk again more rapidly, more at random, his utterance a trifle blurred, recalling that night of the concert.

When the coffee came he ordered old brandy.

In spite of herself, she murmured, “I wish you wouldn’t——” and changed it hurriedly to “How can you—? Such a horrid mixture.”

His laugh had a thick note in it.

“Not s’bad. You try’t an’ see. ‘Just a wee drap, that’s a’.’”

He made a clumsy move to tilt a little into her cup; and in her confusion, she pushed his hand away, spilling half the precious stuff.

He swore under his breath, as she had never heard him swear; swallowed the rest and ordered another.

That was more than Eve felt called upon to stand. Disgust, and a sudden stab of fear, gave her courage to make a move.

“I don’t want this coffee. I’m going to bed,” she announced firmly.

“No, you aren’t. Not yet.”

His hand, under the table, closed firmly on one of her petals, and she did not dare to stir. In his present state he was capable of making a scene. So she sat rigid, staring at a jaded pink rose in the vase, and not saying a word.

He shot a glance at her, still holding her dress.

“You wanted to stop me from drinking that stuff?” he asked very low. His voice sounded different now. “You don’t want me to have the other glass?”

The truth might be dangerous: but she risked it.

“No—I don’t.”

“That’s why you were bolting?”

“Yes.”

“Very well—you needn’t bolt. I apologise.”

He released her frock. And when the fresh glass arrived he amazed her by saying gruffly: “Not wanted. I made a mistake. The lady isn’t having any.”

Then he sat staring at that wet mark on the tablecloth.

Eve, not daring to speak, stole a cautious glance at him, wondering——? By a simple threat to leave him had she pulled him together—almost, if not quite? Perhaps he wasn’t so drunk as he seemed.

Without looking at her, he pushed back his chair.

“Come out of this,” he said. “There’s a verandah and compound at the back. Cooler out there. And we’ll have it to ourselves.”

He spoke in an odd careful voice; she could almost feel his effort of will, as he stood there a moment to steady himself. Then he went forward and held aside the lace curtain for her to pass out. On the threshold she hesitated—suddenly afraid, as she used to be, of the mysterious Indian dark; still more afraid of him. And he promptly dropped the curtain, screening them from the few diners that remained.

“Come on, Eve. What’s the fuss?” His hand closed lightly on her bare arm. “I won’t harm you. Don’t be a little fool.”

That stiffened her, and she tried unsuccessfully to free her arm.

“I’m not a little fool. And truly, Angus, I’d rather go to bed. I’m afraid——”

“Afraid—of what?” he asked in a strange voice.

And again she told him the truth.

“I’m afraid of you, when . . . you’re like this.”

“Darling one, you mustn’t be afraid of me.” His arm went swiftly around her. No escape now. But he sounded more normal; and she felt steadied by the new surprising sense of power over him—this man years older than herself.

“Eve, you don’t understand——” He drew her, unresisting, towards two shadowy chairs. “It’s you that are making me like this. It’s hell for a man who loves you madly—this state of things. I was looking forward no end to our first little dinner alone. And I find you all in a wrong mood. I drink too much——”

“Oh, why do you?” she reproached him foolishly, desperately.

“God! Why do I? Listen to the child.” There was the harshness of genuine tragedy in his tone, that had hovered on maudlin self pity before she flung him that unexpected challenge. “Why does a man ever do the devil’s bidding with his eyes open? It would be different, all round, if I could once feel sure you cared.”

“But I can’t care to order——” Her case was equally distracting; but he could not see beyond his own pain—“And I can’t marry you, if you’re going to be often—like that.”

It was out now. What would he do?

He pulled her to him, as if he were pulling her from some hidden danger; held her so hard that she felt the buttons on his coat through her thin dress. But mercifully he did not kiss her. He was breathing hard. “Eve, I swear to God I won’t be—like that if you’ll only marry me and try to love me. It’s when I’m worried or on strain, as I am to-night: the disappointment—this infernal heat, and the knowledge, poisoning everything, that you wouldn’t really care a damn if I walked off the end of the jetty instead of going to bed——”

“Oh, don’t say cruel things like that,” she pleaded. “You know quite well it would make me very unhappy.”

Yet instinctively she was straining away from him, all the time, her actions belying her words.

“Yes, I suppose it would, because you’re young and pitiful”; he ruthlessly demolished her attempt to soothe him. “But I don’t intend to kick the bucket yet. I care too much. And I’m going to make you care. You’re not a child any more; and I’m a man—passionately needing you. Unless you can love me like a woman, it’s no earthly use keeping up this damn farce of an engagement.”

His appeal had stirred her; but his last words spoilt the whole effect. Besides his voice sounded queer again: and she said angrily, “If it’s a damn farce—it’s over. Let me go.”

He held her closer than ever. “Not likely. Darling—you don’t understand.”

“I don’t want to understand.”

“Well, you’re going to. I haven’t shown you yet one-tenth of what I feel——”

He had both arms round her now; he was kissing her in the vehement fashion she dreaded—her eyes, her throat, her mouth, that quivered and submitted, but could not respond. It hurt her to feel the strained hardness of him, the hammering of his heart that she could so disturb, yet fail to satisfy. This was no onslaught of the merely masculine; and his intensity might have genuinely stirred her, had he not been ‘like that.’

And he, savagely aware that he had lost control, knew at last that he was not rousing but repelling her. Stung by the knowledge his thoughts were blasphemous; but he had the decency not to utter them.

“Oh please—please——” She pressed her hands against him with all her force. And suddenly he released her: not in anger, like Basil, but in mute despair.

She stumbled a few steps away from him, her limbs shaking, dark waves surging through her brain. Then she steadied herself—and faced him.

He was leaning against a pillar, one hand in his pocket, the other clenched to hide its tremor. It was all her doing; and it hurt her to see him so.

“Angus—it’s no use,” she breathed; “And if you feel like that, you’d never wait a whole year.”

“A whole year——?”

She knew by his tone that he had never meant to do so.

“Yes. That’s what I said. And it would have to be. Vanessa——”

“Devil take your Vanessa,” he flung out in sudden fury. “You value her little finger more than my whole body.”

“Well—she’s everything to me.”

“That’s obvious. You’re addled about her. Can’t understand: a woman like that. Husband was a crook—or’s near as no matter. She was in with him—cards and racing. One heard tales. Not the sort of woman I should wish——”

“And you’re not the sort of man she would wish——” Eve retorted, enraged at his aspersions on the woman her father had loved. “She’s my very dearest. If you can think of her—and talk of her so . . . it’s all finished between us.”

“Eve—Eve!” He was beside her again. He had snatched at her hands. “I’m mad jealous. I was angry—I didn’t mean——”

“Oh, I can’t stand any more,” she cried, unmoved by his appeal; and wrenching herself free she stumbled through the doorway into the empty half-lit dining-room: on through the lounge to the lift: up, at last, to the sanctuary of her barren bedroom.

There lay Peter sleeping peacefully—Peter, who would one day be a man, who might even behave like that to some other hapless Eve, now in her cradle, or perhaps unborn. So it went on—eternally on—

In the twilight created by one hooded burner, she discarded the green sheath. Tears were stealing down her cheeks; but she paid no heed. Slipping under the blanketless sheet, she lay still as a dead thing, thrilled to the point of pain by the feel of India, looming and spreading away outside this might-be-anywhere hotel bedroom; trying not to be aware of a vague disturbance wrought in her by Angus and his urgent love-making, that so vividly recalled Basil. The comparison was unfair, because Angus cared for her. There was genuine feeling behind all that. There was also too much champagne and port; too many cocktails. That, for her, was the evening’s outstanding revelation. He said it was she who had made him like that; but it must also mean some inherent weakness in him; and no pang of self-reproach could mitigate her fastidious shrinking, her disgust that bordered on contempt.

And the things he said about Vanessa, the horrid implications—was it only mad jealousy, or because he was still half drunk? In any case, she would not have it; she would not have him. And she had told him so.

At the back of her emotional stress that one thought kept repeating itself, like a clear bell sounding in her brain. She was free. She had told him it was finished.—She was free to spread her wings again.

Yet, deeper still, lurked more than a suspicion that she was not yet free. He had probably not believed her for a moment. To-morrow he would be sorry, he would be pathetic; hoping to be forgiven. She would have to go through it all again. She would fall captive to that fatal likeness; and the fanciful, pitiful part of her might not be able to let him go. Pity, kindliness, friendly feeling—at his nicest, all were there. But not love. And even profound pity did not point the whole way to self-giving. In that belief she fell asleep at last.

*  *  *

But while her body rested, her spirit dreamed.

She was wandering in the New Forest; yet it seemed unlike the New Forest—that narrow path too densely enclosed; no lovely open spaces and lordly trees. In search of an opening somewhere, she hurried on—faster and faster (it was the voice of the Red Queen) her feet skimming along in delicious dream fashion. She tried willing herself to fly. It worked quite often; but not this time.

At last—a clear space; light and freedom, blue of the sky between lofty branches. At last—escape! And now, with scarcely an effort, came the exhilaration of flight. Up and up—.

“Bird, oh my bird, do not close your wings”

Then, gentle yet persistent, something, some one pulling her down—down—down——

No escape after all. Back to the narrow path; and the forest thicker than ever. Thrusting her way through dense undergrowth, she discovered a wider track and ran—ran straight into the arms of Angus Monteith.

Silently she wrestled with his greater strength; silently he resisted her; till at last she wrenched away his hands and fled. No footsteps followed: but the wretched path narrowed steadily. And at the narrowest point—though she was running in the opposite direction—there he stood, awaiting her: not aggressive this time, but expectant, pathetic.

“I can’t . . . I can’t!” she wailed—and fled again. Paths in all directions offered a mockery of escape.

Vainly she ran along this one and that. Each time she thought, “Now I’ve done it!” Each time there he stood, blocking her way.

Seized with nightmare terror she tried to will herself out of that hideous maze. She said over and over, “It’s dream nonsense. I won’t run.” And still she ran.

At the fifth encounter, Angus greeted her with a secret smile of triumph.

“Convinced now?” he said. “You can’t get away from me. You’ve promised—and I won’t let you go.”

“I didn’t promise,” she insisted, though fear knocked at her heart. “And I’m not married yet. I am free.”

“How free—my child?”

With a sudden, exquisite shock, she heard a changed note in his voice, his eyes, no longer mocking, smiled on her with her father’s “special smile”; and all in a moment she knew it was her father’s arms that held her.

Locked in his embrace, she seemed to be falling, falling into some bottomless abyss of light; caring nothing, fearing nothing, so that they fell together. . . .

“But the goblins had been there—and they would return——” Who said that about the Fifth Symphony? They were returning now, in the stealthy terror clutching at her heart, in the struggle to speak his name that waked her shivering, with a low cry—‘Angus!

She heard it as she awoke.

So did Peter, who had crept into her bed, and whose intrusion had possibly caused her dream, though the inmost Eve did not believe that for a moment. It was not permitted, but she hugged and loved him: Peter, the Reluctant, who had almost scared her off the voyage: Peter the little devil of those awful days in the Bay. In the end, she would mind leaving him more than any of them: and how she would have laughed had any inspired clairvoyant told her as much three weeks ago. You could never know, you could never tell. It was that quality of surprise, of ceaseless moving on, that kept Life always top-dog, insidiously changing under your hand; always something or some one lurking round the corner, waiting to pounce and alter everything—as Angus had lurked when she went on board that ship.

“Not Angrus. It’s Peter,” said a small voice somewhere under her chin.

“Yes—Peter, my monkey!” she agreed—and hugged him again.

Chapter Fourteen

I, in this house so rifted, marred,
So ill to live in, hard to leave,
I so star-weary, over-warred . . .
— Francis Thompson

Angus Monteith, left alone in the dim verandah, stood gazing for a full minute at the empty space where she had confronted him, shaken yet resolute—the desire of his heart, the delight of his eyes, the distraction of his senses. Was there ever such a girl? He had met scores, had made love to a few; but he had not known her like in twenty years of adult manhood. It was not the surface snare of beauty, it was the charm of her essential self; the direct simplicity of her mind and spirit, grafted on to a character far from simple or pliable, as he had just discovered to his cost. All the more reason why, in common decency, he should have kept his hands off her—he with his marred life, his forty years, and this fatal aftermath of war strain, more damaging to his manhood than any bodily wound.

But to find an immortal draught within his reach—and he a poor hand at resisting mortal ones—how was it humanly possible to refrain? By all the minor failures to resist, a man is betrayed in the day of great issues; and after a brief sharp struggle with himself, he had succumbed. He had gone half-way to winning her; and now, in a single evening, through his accursed weakness, he had lost everything. She couldn’t stand any more. And who was he to wonder at it? The shock of her repudiation had sobered him, had left him dejected utterly.

With a futile oath he subsided into one of the long cane-chairs and fumbled for his pipe. Tobacco would settle his nerves, if nothing else. He was not drunk, in his own view of that ignominious condition. He could have stood another bottle of champagne; and the clever little devil had defrauded him of his old brandy. It was the whisky and the cocktails beforehand that did the damage; and he knew, if she did not, all that lay behind: the genuine fight he had put up at home; the deadliness of weakening his power to resist the fatal craving.

Too clearly, in that disheartened moment, he saw himself as he was, not as he would fain believe himself to be. No evil liver, not altogether ignoble, he kept carefully hidden under his dry manner a capacity for worship, which he found scant opportunity to exercise in a world full of fallible human beings. Battered, disillusioned, shadowed—in spite of recent conquest—by this curse of chronic drinking, he had no earthly right to take any girl’s life into his hands, let alone one of her quality. Yet for the last ten days he had been virtually hammering her into acceptance of his worthless self. Over and over, with the deadly iteration of the conscience smitten, he had justified, in his own eyes, his wholesale surrender to this late blossoming passion—the one great emotional adventure of his life.

The conquest of Gina had been a swift, smooth-running affair. In a moderate measure she had satisfied him—as wife, as the rather inadequate mother of Donald; and, husband-like, he had taken it for granted that he also satisfied her. The discovery of her defection had been a painful shock; but there remained the boy—admittedly first in his heart.

It was the determination never to let Donald suspect his secret weakness that had induced him—while on leave—to undergo the discomforts and ignominy of definite treatment—with definite success. They had told him it might have to be repeated. But he did not see himself going through it all again; the gradual weaning from stimulants; the paraldehyde—viscous, fumous beastliness—the tonics and mental distractions; the whole dreary business of fighting the devil inside you, while the devil kept whispering that he would have you in the end.

During weeks and even months of temperate drinking, there was no true sense of inner mastery. Never the same mood for long together, always the secret fear of the two men inside him—an unholy conjunction of Faust and Mephistopheles. If one aspired, the other sneered; if one grieved, the other laughed. That kind of thing, passing beyond control, amounted to madness. And sooner than madness—suicide. He had reached that decision long ago. For ultimately the man was capable of facing himself, was prepared to deal the last stroke of fate with his own hand.

Meanwhile, there had been good results from the detested treatment. When the time came to take Donald over for the summer holidays, he had felt better in health, more sure of himself than at any time in the past few years. Out there the devil had been abetted by fever and worry and constant lonely camping. by the knowledge that no one cared a tinker’s curse if he overdid the whiskies and cocktails, so long as he could keep his legs steady, and his wits clear; a state of affairs little realised by those who knew only the sociable side of Anglo-Indian life.

For that one while he had scotched the trouble; had succeeded beyond hope in making friends with his own son, had bathed once more in the limpid stream of youth. Donald had suspected nothing. He had loved his new-found father with a boy’s shy engaging love. He had died—leaving behind him an unshadowed memory: and he had not known.

Then, for a time, Monteith had fallen back into the depths—but not fatally, because a great grief could not be so drugged. Life, bereft of purpose and value, was a black tide flowing aimlessly toward shrouded horizons. More than once he had been tempted to use the veronal that dulled his anguish to make an end of everything. He did not know now, why he had not done himself that service, when the means were ready to hand. Only when his eyes encountered Eve Challoner’s face across the dinner table he knew he had been fated not to die before he met this girl, who could—if she would—make him whole again. For all his havering, the sheer fatality of the thing had mastered him—to what end?

The young Angus Monteith, who could boldly have adventured to win her, no longer existed: and he grieved over him as over one dead. But his dogged will remained, and the craving of more than his senses for this difficult beguiling girl, who never seemed more remote than when he held her closest. Do what he would, she remained aloof in herself, armoured in delicate reserves, refusing to be lured from the bright, wild retreat where she dwelt alone with her music and her fancies and the memory of her dead father. Cold she was not. Her intensity of feeling, the emotional element in her lips, her eyes, sprang from a passionate vitality. She was more alive than the common run of mortals, and she could flash fire. Yet—he jabbed himself with the truth—she remained cold to him. And even lawful husbandly possession would never satisfy him unless the gift of her whole sweet self went with it. He was no mere bodily man. He would want the deeper things. He would be constantly seeking an inner dominion that could never be his; and that vain torment would topple him back into the abyss out of which he was trying to climb, would spell disaster for them both.

Why the devil couldn’t he be decent about it, and let her go? He would only make her unhappy; and then—what pleasure for him? The honest answer to that was his own urgent need—the eternal excuse, and the strongest after all, for the many misdeeds of man.

Very well—he would try once more to reinstate himself. He would tell her—with important reservations—of the trouble that threatened him, of its origin in the War. He would win her back. Failing that, he would walk ‘accidentally’ off the jetty—and there an end; or perhaps a finer beginning? Not a living soul really knew how it would be.

He yawned copiously, stretching his arms above his head. God! He felt tired all through: and mad thirsty again. Why not? Who cared? Certainly not Eve. Passing through the dining-room he shouted for the waiter, and ordered—not a stiff whisky, but a bottle of iced Pilsener; thin stuff, yet it tingled and cooled him for the moment.

Up in his desolate bedroom he encountered the ghost of his own sensations, while dressing for dinner; and he wasted no pity on the deluded man who had been fool enough to hope for better luck. Stripping off his dinner jacket, he discarded his shoes and flung himself on the bed. If he fell asleep, and Afzul found him so in the morning, the faithful scoundrel would not turn a hair. They had ‘moidered up and down a bit’ for a matter of five years; and he knew that the ways of his Sahib, like the ways of God, were past finding out.

Hands clasped behind his head, he lay staring at the circle of light flung by his bedside lamp on the high dim ceiling, tormented afresh by visions of Eve: the clear wide forehead, the adorable kink in her long eyebrows, the nose with its decided bridge and the imp of humour that danced in her grey-green eyes—the flash of scorn in them, when she flung him that crushing rejoinder to his crowning folly, and left him with the cruel conviction that he had lost her for good.

Slowly, stealthily, the familiar black mood crept, as it were, from dim corners of the room, till it brooded over him, dense and oppressive as a thunder-cloud—the mood in which he saw himself as a despicable coward, clinging to that plucky girl in the delusive belief that she might save him from the worst—if she cared: only if she cared!

And all the while, at the back of his brain, lurked the knowledge that his flask still contained more than enough whisky to lift the thunder-cloud and make him feel a different man. One deep draught of spirit, and nightmare convictions would vanish as if by magic, for a time. Dragging himself up, he extracted the precious flask from a locked bag and half filled the tumbler over his carafe, and charily diluted it; cursing his unsteady hand; cursing the mortal enemy, who would gain upon him, insidiously, during the hot weather months—unless . . .?

The average man who went blotto on a guest night and boasted of the mixed liquor he could carry, hadn’t a notion what it meant—this consuming desire that was no true desire; no craving for pleasure, only for relief. He emptied the tumbler in two draughts; and almost at once the potent spirit eased his taut nerves; the world looked brighter, his chances more hopeful. He would win Eve round in the morning, tell her just so much of the truth, as would stir pity without stirring contempt; and, quite unwarrantably, he now felt certain that all would be well. Amazing, ignominious, to be played upon in this fashion—all his qualms, his fatalistic forebodings drowned in half a tumbler of fermented barley. In due course they would rise from the dead, demanding to be bought off with more whisky—the devil’s form of blackmail.

Meantime, having secured relief at a price, he undressed briskly, flung himself into bed; and in five minutes he was sound asleep.

*  *  *

He woke early with a headache, by way of pleasant reminder; and deeper down an unpleasant sense of shame. If he intended to approach Eve, he must first prove to himself that in normal mood he was master of the other fellow, who had dished him last night. And proof of that kind called for action. Afzul had not yet appeared. So much the better.

He rose and took the whisky flask from his drawer; carried it into the bathroom; and after a vigorous cold plunge, deliberately emptied its contents into the water running down the drain.

For a first move—a gesture—that was all very well. How about the other flask hidden under the papers of his despatch case? To treat good Scots whisky like bath water went badly against every racial instinct. But while his baser self protested, his fingers were unlocking the despatch box, unearthing the flask. He hesitated less than half a minute with the gleaming thing in his hand. Then the magic fluid went the way of the rest, and the empty shell was returned to its place. He did not intend to refill either—if he succeeded in placating Eve. If not—God or the devil knew what would be the end of him. Possibly it mattered to them? It certainly mattered not at all to Angus Monteith.

That done, he would write a note and send it by the hand of Afzul Khan. See her he must before breakfast and alone. Impossible to meet her in the coffee-room, with that everlasting infant; and she, as like as not, refusing to look at him.

Securing pen and paper, he sat down to write at the dressing-table, anxious to be through with it before Afzul appeared.

“Dearest and Best,—

“I haven’t the arrogance to write My Dearest, till I know whether you can forgive my unspeakable behaviour last night, and have mercy on an overwrought man. Eve, can you, will you take back what you said—‘It’s all finished between us’? That would mean it’s all finished for me—in every sense.

“I’m not indulging in an idle threat, to frighten or soften you. I’m telling you precisely what your answer involves.

“I don’t want to come whining to you, but I do want you to try and realise (so far as a girl of your age and temperament can) what it felt like for a man in my state to be parting from you, while still unsure of you. The prospect of running round the district, while you were dancing and riding with half young Peshawar, made me feel pretty desperate: and I hoped a good deal from that one evening to ourselves. No luck. So I snatched—and got a rap over the knuckles.

“I’m honestly sorry. A man can’t say more. And if you’ll give me a fresh chance, I swear I won’t be ‘like that’ again—in either sense. I’ll tell you all I can about myself and my difficulties. The War wounded more than my body. I’m one of the disabled with no scars to show for it. You alone can salvage me, if you care to try.

“Afzul Khan will bring this note. And if you have the graciousness to give me ten minutes alone, just send a verbal answer and come straight to room No. 72, next to mine. It’s empty; and I’ll see that we’re safe from interruption.

“Eve, I beg of you—say ‘Yes.’ If it’s ‘No’ well, I won’t be returning to Peshawar. Failing you, it’s the jetty—or something equally effective. But I don’t see you driving me to that. Life’s a deadly process of destroying one’s faith in everything, but it’ll take a lot to destroy my faith in you.

“Don’t be afraid, darling—if you do come—that you’ll see the man you saw last night. He was an aberration. That’s how I want you to think of him. Promise I’ll be gentle with you, if you can’t stand it any other way—so long as you’ll consent to have it some way from

“Your undeserving but adoring

“ Angus Monteith.”

He let out a great breath, realising suddenly how taut he had been in every nerve. He could not remember having ever spread himself so unreservedly on paper. God knew he meant every word of it; and the Devil knew whether he could stick to it, when all this romantic commotion calmed down into the sober contentment of marriage. At least he would do his utmost, in defiance of the Devil, who could be trusted to find every chink in the battered armour of his self-control.

The faithful scoundrel accepted, without show of surprise, a Sahib up and dressed. Also without surprise he received a chit for the Miss Sahib, of whom he had felt suspicious yesterday on the boat. Suspicion deepened to certainty when he was despatched with the note to Room 63, and told to bring back an answer “ek dum.”⁵

Chapter Fifteen

Do we move ourselves, or are moved by an Unseen Hand at a game?
— Tennyson

Eve was still hugging Peter, telling him a favourite nonsense story—her own invention—of “The Cat that had Nine Lives,” when some one knocked at her door, and an unfamiliar voice said: “Chitti hai,⁶ Miss Sahib.”

Angus, of course. She had known how it would be. Whisking into dressing-gown and slippers, she gingerly opened the door. The eagle-faced bearer, whom she had seen on the boat, salaamed and handed her an envelope.

“From Monteith Sahib. He desires an answer.”

“Does he?” she thought. “Pretty cool of him, considering——”

“Wait a minute,” she said, and closed the door.

Then she sat down on the bed, her pulses beating a tattoo, Peter tugging at her gown from behind—to read her first love-letter.

Though her heart was still hardened, the letter moved her more deeply than she had expected, while it revived the sensation of her dream encounters.

This, however, was no dream. She need only refuse to see him—and he would disappear out of her life. But—in banishing him, she must also banish those cherished glimpses of the dear dead father, who was more to her than any living lover. Perhaps, she reflected, with a flash of sagacity, it was the feel of Daddy that caused her instinctive recoil from Angus in urgent moods. If so, it was very hard on him. It might pass, if she came to care more for him: but it might not. She was no Ice-Maiden, and she shirked the risk.

There remained the fact that the breaking of their engagement was the lesser part of her dilemma. At a word from her—so he said—he would vanish out of life altogether. To her ingrained courage, it savoured of cowardice, putting on the screw like that—laying on her young shoulders an undue weight of responsibility. If she could only believe it an empty threat? But something told her he meant it. He was that kind of man. Pressed too hard, he might do desperate things. For all his look of her father, he lacked the still strength that was her father’s supreme quality. What did he mean about his difficulties? Did he mean that this repellent weakness of his might become permanent? He had said, “It’s you who are making me like this.” And she could not bear, even now, to hurt him, to harm him. But except by truly loving him, how could she help? It was all so vague—so alarming to her active imagination. And on her little knowledge, she must decide forthwith, for good or ill—probably ill.

Life had no mercy. It said, “Choose! Decide!” while keeping all the cards up its sleeve. There was she, harassed and haunted—sitting on an hotel bed, Peter tugging at her gown, a strange bearer waiting outside—and in less than five minutes she must solve their mutual dilemma.

“Peter, my lamb, you must wait.” She gently detached the clinging hand. “Eve’s got to think about something—hard.”

“Oh—don’t fink,” he wailed; and dearly she wished it were as simple as that.

A second reading of her lover’s letter only increased the sense of being driven by something stronger than herself to do the very thing she least desired to do—if it were merely a question of her own happiness. But reluctantly she saw it as life’s first demand on her budding strength of character. This man, with his fatal strain of weakness, depended on her. He did not see her driving him to the last extremity: and he was right. She could not do it. For all his many years ahead of her he was like a repentant child. He had suffered an experience unknown to her—a sense of sin; and it gave him a curious new interest in her eyes. Of course he must feel horribly ashamed of himself—having behaved like that. At least she would see him; hear what he had to say. Afterwards—anything might happen.

And in spite of a natural shrinking, she did want to see him—perverse creature that she was—to see his gladness, to blur the memory of last night. He would look at her in that way of his that there was no resisting; and perhaps not being able to resist would ease her inner reluctance.

Springing up, she seized half a sheet of hotel notepaper and scribbled in pencil:

“Angus dear—

“As you so specially want to see me, I’ll come directly I’m dressed, in about twenty minutes. And whatever you tell me I will try to understand.

“Eve.”

Compared with his, it seemed terribly bald. But at least it was sincere; and there was the gift of gifts behind it, if——?

First Peter must be rushed into his clothes, protesting that the Cat had only six lives, and he wanted them all.

“Presently, you greedy monkey. The Cat was very lucky to have six of her lives,”—she soothed him down, reflecting with a twinge that she had only one life, and she was giving it away—probably to the wrong man.

When both were dressed, she must tackle Mrs. de Cray, who had been met by an assiduous ayah, and was lounging in a wrapper sipping early tea.

Eve, steeling herself to pointed comment, asked coolly, “May I leave Peter here for ten minutes? Angus wants to speak to me before breakfast. It—it’s rather important, so please?”

“Why of course, my dear. Wasn’t it all billing and cooing last night?”

She really was too clever to live. Eve could have smacked her: but would not condescend to lie about it.

“No—not quite. So he isn’t very happy. He’s asked me to come—just for ten minutes.”

“To his bedroom?” Mrs. de Cray arched innocent eyebrows; and Eve coloured furiously.

“Of course not.”

“I was only chaffing. What a sensitive creature you are! Run along and smooth him down. You’ll never pull it through with that man. But it’s your funeral. Not more than ten minutes, mind. A certain person is rather exhausting when I don’t feel fit.”

Peter, unaware of veiled allusions, was busy extracting all the glass-headed pins from her pincushion for some occult purpose of his own: and Eve lightly patted his head.

“Be a good monkey. Eve’s coming back soon.” He slanted a look at her—only half convinced.

“Major Mineteef won’t let you,” he said with one of those flashes of precocity that reveal the only child; and Mrs. de Cray chuckled. But Eve said in a practical voice:

“He’ll have to, because Mummy says I must.”

Apparently that satisfied him, and he returned to his coloured pins. Mummy was a being who had to be obeyed, chiefly because she had the power to make you uncomfortable.

Outside the door marked Seventy-two Eve paused, nerving herself to walk calmly in. Mrs. de Cray’s remark had waked a whisper of fear. While she hesitated, the door opened—and there he stood, tall and spare, outwardly all that she approved. This was not the man she had rejected last night in righteous anger and contempt. His tired face, his welcoming eyes, strangely troubled her heart.

“You precious thing. It’s more than I deserve.” He said it with conviction, yet without over-emphasis.

And when he had locked the door, he drew her into his arms, cherishing her in the way that moved her far more deeply than his passionate love-making of last night. He pressed her head against his shoulder; he kissed her forehead, her eyes. And Eve, released from strain, leaned her light weight against him, wishing he need not speak and tell her uncomfortable things.

“There!” he said at last, pressing her down into the one arm-chair. “That’s a mighty inadequate way of thanking you. But you do know—up to a point—what your coming means to me.”

He sat down, facing her, on a cane-bottomed chair beside the bare bedroom table.

“It means that you think my life worth saving, though you’re only half in love with me—as yet. If you hadn’t come, I’d have gone off up the line somewhere; and good old Afzul would have been left with my belongings, by way of legacy for faithful service”

“Oh, don’t talk like that,” she beseeched him. His cool manner was more dismaying, more impressive than any rhetoric. Contempt for advertisement of emotion was in the marrow of her bones. “You make me feel so terribly responsible.”

“You are terribly responsible, by the fact of being a woman. It’s an uncomfortable sensation; so women mostly try to wriggle out of it. But I knew you wouldn’t persuade yourself I was bluffing. In my opinion a badly battered man has a perfect right to cry ‘Hold, enough!’ I never have understood how people of no importance can imagine that their puny miseries are ordained by a God who weaves patterns for his own glorification, out of tangled human lives.”

He paused on a deep-drawn breath, looking hard at Eve; and Eve looked steadily back at him, pained by his bluntness, yet profoundly interested. For those few moments they confronted one another simply as human beings.

“I’m inflicting all this on you, Eve,” he continued, impressed by her silence and the absorbed look in her eyes, “because you’re no infant in brains and understanding, and I feel bound to tell you that I’m no saint in any sense of the word. I’ve shed pretty well all my illusions and comfortable convictions. Life’s a riddle to me—utterly. I can see no order, no plan, no certitude; and I’ve precious little faith left—except in you. That’s why, failing you, I should have no hesitation as regards my worthless self. People talk a lot of high-flown rot about the sin of suicide. An animal has to endure while life racks it. A man’s capacity to end life by an act of will, sets him above the animals. That’s how I see it.”

Eve saw it also—up to a point.

“And you wouldn’t think it wrong?” she ventured, drawn nearer to him by his shattering sincerity than by transports of love or self-reproach.

“What’s right? What’s wrong?” he challenged her with his straight look. “It’s only the hard-boiled Puritan who dares to make a clean cut between them. They’re dovetailed in every human character and impulse. A man who’s utterly broke or fatally diseased is a nuisance to himself and his fellows. It’s an act of common sanity to blot him out of the picture.”

“Is it so easy—that kind of thing?” Eve’s courage waxed as her interest deepened.

“No. It’s almighty difficult—or I wouldn’t be sitting here now.” He discounted that tragic statement with a short hard laugh. “A queer kind of love-scene we’re enacting! I didn’t plead for ten minutes of your sweet society in order to discuss the very stale ethics of suicide. I’m not looking that way now—thanks to your generosity in giving me back the hope by which I live. Without that hope, I couldn’t carry on the unequal struggle against the devil and all his works. It’s that I want to tell you about——”

He leaned an elbow on the table, lit a cigarette to steady himself and offered her one, which she refused. Then, in carefully careless phrases, he told her the truth—so far as a man, in his case, ever can or will. It was a gesture requiring courage, a sop to his conscience, that would not let him marry her without a measure of enlightenment, while his heart and his male selfishness insisted that he must and would marry her, in spite of all. Without deliberate intent to deceive, he conveyed an impression of intermittent trouble, mainly arising from his state of health and spirits, which was at least a measure of the truth. He emphasised his will to conquer, and her power to help, while suppressing his own slender hope of permanent mastery.

And Eve, listening in the same absorbed silence, could not altogether hide her dismay at realising dimly all that lay behind his reserves, his puzzling fits of strangeness. Painfully intent on him, she failed at the moment to grasp the full significance, for herself, of yielding to his plea for help and forgiveness. The shock of it all blunted her perceptions, as the brain is stunned by a blow. Here was Life again thrusting at her its imperative, “Choose! Decide!” Overwhelmingly at the moment, she pitied him, and felt drawn to him by his honesty; while more than ever she felt afraid—remembering last night. Which was the true Angus? What was one to make of such a man? Loving him in her own fashion, she could not add to the strain and pain of that difficult self-revealing. Again there seemed only one immediate obvious thing to be done.

And when at last he leaned forward, and proffered both hands, she silently gave him both her own.

He clung to them rather than held them; as if he were sinking in quicksands and she pulling him out. Perhaps that was how he felt.

Speech was difficult. There were tears in her eyes: but she forced herself to say: “You did promise, in your letter, that you wouldn’t be . . . like that again? But if it’s nerves—if it amounts to an illness, how can you be sure?”

It was a straight thrust, and he met it straightly.

“No human being can be utterly sure of living up to his resolves. But I know I can fight the cursed thing. I know the conditions that help. If I can only marry you—win all of you—I’ll get it under. So you see, in more than a sentimental sense—my life is in your hands.”

“And my life is in your hands,” she reminded him, her voice low and steady, her heart shaken with a strange sense of foreboding.

She had done it now—and her time was up. She had to remind him of that trivial detail. Her thoughts returned to it as from another world.

He frowned at the reminder; and as they stood facing each other he put an arm round her, drawing her close.

“Darling, kiss me yourself—to prove I’m forgiven. A proper kiss.”

She kissed him herself—a proper kiss: and the voluntary act stilled her inner qualms, for the moment at least. Perhaps he had known it would. He was rather uncanny that way.

“Now I must go,” she gently insisted. “Peter said you wouldn’t let me come back soon!”

“Shrewd little devil. You’ve bowled him over too.”

“Yes, long ago. He proposed to me that morning—at Suez. And I’ve been Mrs. Peter ever since!”

“Well, I’m damned! You’ll have a scene with him at Pindi. He won’t play the strong, silent man.”

“No, poor lamb. He’s a troublesome monkey, but he’s twisted himself round my heart. When I first set eyes on him, I was so terrified that I nearly backed out. And I’m glad I didn’t—after all.”

“So am I.” He slanted a curious glance at her. “Are you terrified now—of your much more formidable charge?”

“Yes I am—rather.”

“Yet you’re not backing out? That’s the pukka brand of courage. Whether you’ll be glad of it or not—God knows. I’m glad to the bottom of my soul.”

This time it was he who kissed her—a slow, controlled kiss that made her feel strangely comforted and safe, though still oppressed by her sense of responsibility for the destiny of this man, so many years older than herself.

*  *  *

Directly after breakfast, they wired to Lady Leigh; then she and Peter were carried off in a hired carriage to ‘shikar,’ the perfect opal with very small sparkles round it.

“And please remember,” Eve insisted, “you’re buying it for a friend, and I’m helping you to choose. Promise—or I won’t come.”

“Promise anything you please, my angel.” His spirits had gone up sky-high. “But the jeweller, being a guileless Hindu, will see clean through you and out the other side.”

“He won’t. And I don’t care two hoots if he does!” she retorted with feminine logic. “It’s my game. You must play it my way.”

In sheer lightness of heart he pandered to her weakness for being nonsensical at serious moments. Their private joke of the friend who was terribly hard to please may or may not have thrown dust in the eyes of Hari Lal, jeweller. He himself was mainly concerned in trying to palm off an inferior opal on an awkwardly shrewd Sahib, who secured one of his finest stones at only a third more than its true value.

Eve was deaf to their haggling, blind to all but the ring—the colour, the sparkle, the knowledge that it was hers. When at last they snatched a few minutes alone, and Angus solemnly set it on to her finger, he was rewarded by another voluntary kiss that told him he had been accepted at last: while his forty years told him he had bought that brief elation at a very long price—a sum he could ill afford on the top of a costly year at home.

“Anyway, I’ve got her.” He hugged the thought that still made him feel a trifle dizzy—after last night.

“Have you got her?” echoed the inner Mephistopheles, who was his baser self. “You’ve been fool enough to pay too much for a ring. That’s all it amounts to so far.”

But with Eve’s cool lips telling him other things, his baser self slunk away ashamed.

Eve, unaware of all that, almost lost sight of the giver in the gift. She appeared at lunch—excitement veiled in shyness—wearing the lovely thing. And Mrs. de Cray, if she could not congratulate her on the man himself, approved of his taste in gems.

“I wonder what on earth he paid for it?” was her characteristic comment—being one of those people for whom price is the main criterion of worth.

Naturally Eve did not know; nor had she the least desire to know. For her the ring was a crystallised fragment of the world’s beauty—and it was her very own.

Chapter Sixteen

She lifts her courage like a shield,
Lifts up her laughter like a sword.
— Humbert Wolfe

All that night, and all the next day, the mail train went thundering north-westward to Lahore, a name that held no significance for Eve. They had a ladies’ compartment to themselves; and they turned in early, hoping—not too hopefully—for a few hours of sleep.

The heat subsided slowly, and a breeze drifted in through the shutters that replaced their windows; but for all Eve’s coaxing, sleep merely hovered, confusing her thoughts, withholding the boon of oblivion. Too actively her brain was beset by sensations within, by noises without: the engines hooting, the wheels clanking under her; lights flashing when they sped through a station, or halted infrequently at the larger ones, where native passengers ran screaming, and bhistis⁷ went wailing “pani—pani⁸,” tilting water from their mussaks into lotahs or curved brown hands thrust out beseechingly at all hours of the night.

So she gave up the vain hope of sleep; and raised her shutter to watch the dim scene, rushing past like a cinema, lit by a three-quarter moon. Now, indeed, she felt herself back in India, that magnetic country which so potently attracts or repels: India, with its splendours and hideousness, its mystical detachment and its cruelties unnameable: India, saturated with memories of her father—and he no longer there. What would he think of her perilous undertaking to marry Angus in the face of what she now knew—he that was so largely responsible for her hardihood? The almost certainty of his disapproval sapped her courage as the others had no power to do; made her feel woefully adrift and misguided, till she reached Vanessa—who, even in the depths of disapproval, could be trusted to understand.

Alone in spirit, rushing through this vastness of night and of India, the whole of life—its basic monotony of getting up and going to bed, taking things out and putting them away, of loving and not loving, living and dying—seemed to flood her consciousness, while the cranks beat upon her brain with maddening iteration, “ You’ve-done-it-now, you’ve-done-it-now. You’re-for-it—You’re-for-it.” Useless to muffle up her ears. No effort of will could check her mind from repeating the hateful words over and over—till at last, in mercy, they lulled her to sleep.

*  *  *

Morning, as usual, brought sunlight and sanity and immediate practical demands. It also brought increasing heat, no longer tempered by sea breezes, that sent Mrs. de Cray’s temperature up, and made Peter querulous. The way Angus looked after them all, when feasible, moved Mrs. de Cray to gratitude and Eve to a new tenderness, a more hopeful view of the future. Nothing was ever quite so bad, in the actual event, as in anticipation. And those profile glimpses, that had ensnared her, hinted at some finer quality than his everyday self revealed, some hidden strain of nobility, distorted and repressed; some deeper likeness to her father, by which he might in time win the real Eve—this strange, yet compelling man. For an exalted, sentimental moment she saw herself as his refuge and help—as apparently he expected her to be; but her essential sanity knew that, in truth, only himself could conquer himself. She would neither sentimentalise nor exaggerate her own influence. She would run her big risk with open eyes. Restraint and a taste for danger lived together in her nature; each of them intensified by her difficult position.

And Angus Monteith—who could scarce get a word alone with her, even when admitted to their carriage—consoled himself with studying her face, learning it by heart. A photograph would be of little use to him. No lens could capture its peculiar vitality and charm. He had seen many faces more beautiful, more alluring: but in hers there was promise of those hidden things that would make the vision of it trouble his thoughts when it no longer gladdened his eyes, that would awaken tenderness when passion had subsided. Passion—the word mocked him. Could he ever rouse her to genuine response? Always that reiterate query, which none could answer—least of all Eve herself.

A halt between tea and dinner fired him to a bold move. He lured her into his coupé; and gave himself up, for an hour, to the delight and distraction of making love to her. By that time they were nearing Lahore; and at half-past seven they thundered into the bastioned loop-holed railway-station. Here they must change for Peshawar; and it was a relief to ‘dine on shore,’ though the station breathed out at them all the garnered heat of the day.

They were due to reach Rawal Pindi at the unholy hour of four in the morning. Of course Angus popped out of his coupé, hustled up Afzul Khan, and made himself so useful that Mrs. de Cray became almost as gracious as in the days before his defection.

But it was little he could do to help Eve through the ordeal of parting with a frantic Peter, who tactlessly wept and wriggled away from his mother, when she tried to detach him, not too gently, from Eve’s arms.

If it annoyed her, she gave no sign.

“He’ll be all right to-morrow,” she said philosophically (ignoring his wrathful protest, “I are not orright. I won’t be orright. I want Eve”), “and in a week’s time he’ll have almost forgotten you.”

Eve was not quite so sure of that. She comforted the shaken creature, and promised to come and see him at Murree. It was hurting her more than she had thought possible this affair of parting with her troublesome charge, who had given her the chance of getting to India.

He was removed, still weeping; and the train, like Life, went inexorably on.

Tired and sad, she returned to the empty ladies’ carriage, followed by Angus, who had no intention of allowing her to travel on alone; and she had the grace to be glad of his company, though she pleaded for a little more sleep till half-past five or six.

He smiled and kissed her very gently.

“I won’t disturb you, darling. If you object to a whiff of smoke, I can sit outside.”

But she would not condemn him to that.

Thankfully she subsided on to her pillow, turned her back on him, and tried to sleep. But she simply lay there, snoozing a little, weeping a little; thinking how lost she would feel at first without Peter to tend and run after, without the clutch of his small thin hand. Hitherto she had tacitly ranked children with husbands as obstacles to the personal freedom that was her breath of life. But this stranger child had aroused other sensations. Impossible not to love a creature that depended on you utterly; and once you loved your obstacles, you were done for. In every direction, it seemed, love was the stumbling-block to freedom—and there you were. . . .

She must have dropped asleep in the end, for she wakened with a start to find Angus beside her, stroking her hair.

“Daddy,” she murmured. To her blurred senses it was his very self.

“No—Angus,” said the other man, kissing her sleepy eyes and brushing her lips with his. “It’s half-past five. I can’t wait any longer; and I want my chota hazri—if you’ve got the wherewithal.”

She looked about her in a dazed way. No Peter. It seemed ages since Pindi. Angus might have let her rest; but like Peter he had no compunction. With his efficient help she unpacked her basket, her tin of solid ‘meth’; and very soon they were drinking tea and eating bananas in domestic isolation.

Eve, in a practical mood, discouraging superfluous kisses, seemed only the more dear and desirable in her lover’s eyes. He could scarcely be happy for ten minutes without an arm round her; and half the time—she would not. What was a man to make of such a girl? She was his: yet not genuinely his. She wore his ring; she would take his name: but she would flout his authority did he try to exercise it. Though he respected now the slight nervous shadow that clouded her eyes if he became too urgent, he could not, being man, respect it always—and what then? Could one, even in a surface sense, truly possess another human being?

And Eve, as if her sensitiveness divined his thought, suddenly leaned her head against him.

“Angus, love me. I’m feeling rather lone with my occupation gone.”

“Fond of children?” he asked hopefully.

“I didn’t think so—not very. But I did get fond of Peter. I’ll miss him.”

He wanted to say, “The sooner you marry, the sooner you’ll have a Peter of your own,” but he felt uncertain how this quaint Eve of his would take a harmless remark like that. It might make her curl up, and he was running no risks this morning. So he merely said, “I hope you’re going to miss me a little too?” and he ‘loved’ her—as naively requested gleaning what comfort he might from her genuine if not fervent response.

In less than no time, it seemed, the train was roaring over the bridge near Attock where the Kabul River joins the Indus; and the echoing nullah flung back thunder for thunder; a stirring sound that gave Eve a pain in her chest.

Beyond the Indus, they were among the wild hills and ravines of India’s North-West Frontier. Through one of those deep gashes, where night still lingered, the great river went coiling like a steel grey snake, working its way through that stony-hearted region, creating green life and destroying it with equal unconcern. Strong and beautiful, ‘ terrible as an army with banners,’ it dwarfed the gentle rivers of England, the impetuous rivers of Scotland to mere streams and burns. No wonder Hindus worshipped their greater rivers as incarnations of the Supreme Creator and Destroyer.

Now the train was rushing past Attock Fort—its massive walls and towers black against the unclouded glory of an April morning. Here were leagues of barbed wire protecting the railway line, a quickening sense of danger in the air. Here were the stony Mohammedan burial mounds, pale thorn trees and vivid patches of young corn. And away in the North, beyond the stark majesty of the frontier hills, gleamed the blue-white peaks of the Pir Panjal—peaks of Kashmir, of Himalaya, Home of the Gods.

Eve sat tense and upright by the window, unaware that her hands resting in her lap were clenched hard.

She could neither speak nor stir. She could only look and look—and remember. . . .

And Angus Monteith, his shoulder touching hers, knew himself forgotten; longed to cover those thin clenched hands with his own, to hide his ring that mockingly sparkled on her finger; but the terrible sensitiveness of unrequited love made him shrink from thrusting his undesired caresses between her and her sacred memories. His ghostly rival, whose seal was on her other finger, seemed more potent than any lover of flesh and blood.

So they sat silent—together, yet leagues apart, while the minutes and the miles sped past. Then, as they slackened to a station. Eve turned and clutched him, all tenderness and penitence.

“Oh, Angus dear—the wretch I am. And you sitting there so patiently—not interrupting my dreams.”

“Well, I did feel rather left out. And I’m jealous of your dreams,” he admitted, drawing her into his arms. “You might give me a fair innings, from now till we arrive.”

She laughed, and gave him a fair innings—as she gave everything—with both hands.

Peshawar was upon them all too soon: and it suddenly dawned on Eve that no one knew of her engagement. How was she to account for a man travelling in her ladies’ carriage?

“Angus, you villain!” She reproached him for his insistence. “This is perfectly awful. I can’t get rid of you. And some one’s sure to meet me. I can’t fire off an announcement as I alight.”

“And you don’t want to, eh?” Angus queried with a wry smile. “Come to that, I can nip out and be politely giving you a hand when he or she comes along.”

“Yes—that’ll be all right. But you mustn’t go looking at me—the way you do. You’re just a friendly man, who came out on the same ship.”

“A portrait of myself I don’t recognise”

“Which doesn’t matter a bent pin, so long as they do! I’ve got to spring my engagement on them gradually.”

“How does one spring a fact gradually? Might be handy to know!”

“Well, when I’ve discovered, I’ll send you the recipe.”

He could only gaze at her, loving her to madness; raging at his inability to snatch a licence and marry her out of hand. “Eve, you’re a madcap—and an angel of light.”

She laughed. “Wrong again! I’m ‘a devil, and ostrich and an orphan child in one.’”

Tone and glance were so lightly provocative that without more ado he seized her. “Whatever you are, I’m your abject slave,” he said in quite another voice.

No hope of avoiding the intensities. So she gave it up, and let him have his way. . . .

As the train slackened speed, he released her: and, invaded by sudden dread of strangeness, she clung to him, as a child clings to a familiar hand.

“Come and see me soon. I’ll be feeling rather lost.”

At that, he caught her close again, kissing her recklessly.

“Angus—why are you like this?” she breathed, startled at the effect of her simple request.

“Don’t you realise”—he stared at her, collecting his senses—“it’s the first time you’ve expressed a wish for my company. You couldn’t have given me a lovelier thing to take away with me.”

And she had not realised in the least. She had spoken on an impulse of tenderness, of shrinking from the next corner; and he had read into it—all that. Smitten by the pathos of their physical nearness, their actual apartness, she returned his kisses as she had never done yet. More false impressions: but the whole situation was slipping out of hand.

They had actually stopped, the babel of a big Indian station assailed their ears; and she thrust him from her, all her wits alert again.

“Oh, Angus, be quick!”

He was issuing casual orders to Afzul Khan, when Shere Ali hurried up; and from the other direction came a large, leisurely young man, fair and smiling, in a light flannel suit and sun helmet: unmistakably Captain Tony Arden.

“You must be Miss Challoner—not quite grown out of recognition!” he greeted her. “Don’t say you’ve forgotten me—even if you have!”

She had not forgotten him, and she said so; her shyness dissolved in a moment by that easy friendly air of his. Angus, introduced as Major Monteith, behaved fairly well till the last moment, when he shook hands too hard, and looked unspeakable things—as forbidden.

Then she rolled away with Tony Arden in a lordly car, leaving Monteith alone with Afzul Khan and a well-worn Morris that would survive the hot weather. It would carry him first to his Peshawar quarters, then out into the district to-morrow morning.

Before they reached the first bend in the road, he was thrust from Eve’s mind by crowding memories. So familiar the whole place looked that it might almost have been yesterday—that very first drive in Daddy’s car; he holding her fingers as if he feared they might slip away; Mummy bored and tired, leaning against a large cushion, and putting up a scented handkerchief when they passed the smelly camels, who hadn’t ‘a camelty tune of their own to help them lollop along.’ She had felt so proud of quoting Kipling: so deliriously happy. Had she ever been quite so happy again?

There was the Fort and the fascinating City and the slope down to the Zoo. There were the fierce hills and the snow peaks icy white against the blue; the tree-bordered Mall and the early bugle calls, and compounds all abloom in this month of roses. Even her onward-looking brain had not foreseen how upsetting it would be.

Tony Arden was tactful. He didn’t make talk, as a woman would have done in sheer kindness of heart; and she blessed Aunt Thea for sending a man.

So sharply scenes and sensations assailed her that tears ached in her throat. This was far worse than Bombay. Daddy himself had not been in that picture, But he was here, in this familiar world of Peshawar—beautifully, terribly here.

Book Three

Winged

Chapter One

        His heart
Involved his fate; and she who urged the start,
Abides the race.
— George Meredith

In March and April Peshawar enjoys her brief season of renewal, green of young corn in her arid valleys, and in her gardens a gay profusion of English flowers. Here is no shy, fickle season of mists and rainbows. The spring of India’s North-West Frontier is swift and passionate, flowering trees aflame, orchards flushed like the sky at dawn, with blossoms of almond and peach. Already, in April, the noonday sun was a fiery sword; but the cool of evening brought respite, even an illusion of England, in the spacious garden of Government House—well-watered lawns and stately trees, and everywhere roses in profusion.

Under a flowering magnolia, that drenched the air with its sweetness, Sir Vincent Leigh was taking his ease in a long malacca chair, stirred by that illusion of Home to memories of familiar landscapes, changing constantly under changing skies, the smell of lilac on dewy April mornings, the peculiar freshness and charm of England’s countryside. He had been at Home on furlough when he accepted his present appointment, not without secret qualms as to whether he was the right man for a position as interesting and difficult as any in India. It was a case of the nature student forced into the world of affairs by fate rather than desire. A quiet scholarly man, who would sooner write one genuine book than rule a city, he was not yet fully alive to the fact that he had come through his difficult first year—as Chief Commissioner of the North-West Frontier Province—not merely with credit but with distinction. His wife told him, of course, all manner of grossly flattering comments that she picked up here and there. He imagined most wives talked like that. But, in his view, if anyone had come through with distinction, it was the dear and brilliant woman who had married him, so to speak, in spite of himself, in spite of that amputation below the knee, which debarred him from further soldiering; and had consistently expected great things of him. To her credit, and to his own private amazement, great things had come his way—even to this last; and her natural gift for the role of great lady had eased much that was uncongenial to his incurable shyness, his dread of human beings in the mass.

This afternoon, for instance, at the Islamia College Sports, they had dutifully grilled for two hours, while Mohammedan boys under Mohammedan masters emulated the public school-boy of the despised West. In his official capacity, he was on friendly terms with several of the professors. When they paid him informal visits, and opened their hearts to him, the mute inglorious Chief Commissioner found his tongue and professors of philosophy no longer talked like gramophones. But sitting there, between two College Principals, under that stifling shamianar, the blight of the function had been over them all. Only Thea, in these dire circumstances, still seemed able to talk like a human being. She had given away the prizes with an air of bestowing personal presents; complimenting the sheepish winners as though they were her own sons. And probably, for the moment, she did feel like a mother towards those alien boys. They were doing what she understood and approved; and she found it perfectly natural to tell them so; though he could not have done it, in that vein, to save his life.

He had looked on, marvelling, as he so often marvelled at her, even after twenty-eight years of marriage; as he had marvelled long ago at the gallant girl who flatly refused to let him break her heart, because a Zakka Khel bullet had broken his leg. Her genius of the heart had known how to keep the bloom on the most difficult of all human relations. The love that clutches, that incessantly demands, would have thrust him back, long since, unto his prison without a wall; but Thea’s love, even for her husband and children, was a radiation—not a limitation. And when they were alone—too seldom nowadays—her mere presence eased his mind of trivial daily burdens, and the perplexity of living.

There she was, at last, coming to him across the lawn—a gracious figure, her golden-brown hair cunningly arranged, her delphinium blue frock as short as Mary’s. They two were more like sisters than mother and daughter; for maturity, in Thea’s case, seemed but a fuller flowering of youth. In that, as in many other ways, she resembled her distinguished father, now in his eighty-fifth year; alert as ever, more supple in brain and body than the average man of sixty, who sinks into slippered ease and meets senility half-way. Age, it seemed, was nothing: temperament was all. It had simply not occurred to Sir Theo to grow old: nor would it occur to his daughter. If her hair was less bright than it had been, it scarcely showed the lurking threads of grey; and her face expressed the harmony of her inner nature: the nose short and straight, the chin firmly moulded, the brow very fine and wide.

With her came their two dogs, Biddy and Plato; a brindled West Highland terrier, and a black Aberdeen—Vincent’s familiar spirit: Biddy, all eager intelligence and affection, wriggling in Thea’s arms; the Wise One, an undemonstrative person, trotting soberly to heel. Nothing short of a rat, or a rival, could ruffle his dignity; but at sight of his master, he sprang forward to receive caresses and respond in his furtive fashion. As Biddy executed a wild leap on to Vincent’s knee, Thea went up to the table, where a silver pail of ice and jugs of cider cup awaited the return of the young ones from the polo-ground. Having refreshed herself, she subsided into the chair nearest her husband.

“Pouf!” was her inelegant comment on the weather, as she put out a hand and thrust the intrusive Biddy off his knee. “You look cool and comfortable. The reward of merit. I did wish more Peshawar folk had turned up—especially the women.”

Vincent nodded. “They don’t realise how sensitive Indians are to our casual ways. And of course the Islamia people know perfectly well that, for military sports, the whole station would have turned out and loyally sweltered in a good cause——”

“I was doing my best to counteract the effect.”

“I guessed as much—Ah, here’s the dāk!”

A scarlet peon, approaching with a bulky post-bag, deposited it by his master, salaamed and withdrew.

Sir Vincent ferreted out a few personal letters for himself and his wife, set aside one for Eve, and gazed ruefully at the formidable residue—mainly official. His wife, aware of the look, swept them together and thrust them back into the bag.

“You’re tired, darling. Leave those for Lance to sort out. I chose him on purpose to save you from worry, knowing your distaste for strangers.”

“You chose him?”

“Well, practically I did—via Uncle Vernon! And he has been a success, hasn’t he?”

“An unqualified success. He has the Frontier in his bones, that boy. It surprises me sometimes the things he seems to know by instinct—things a good many men fail to learn after years of service up here. But of course I say nothing.”

“Of course you don’t! Nor do I—which is far more remarkable.”

They exchanged a smile of amused understanding, and fell into the restful silence of those who are entirely at ease with one another. Even when they sat apart—she reading letters, he thinking his own thoughts—some shared feeling seemed to pass from him to her. “And only the few who have that,” he said to himself, “are genuinely married.” She had chosen Lance! That was the latest. Of course she had; though the men concerned would have denied it, in perfect good faith. And the boy was the comfort of his life: a positive personality, more like Sir Theo than any of his own sons, except the youngest, after whom he was named.

In a year of work and daily contact, Sir Vincent had established a closer personal relation with him than with either of his full-grown sons. No fault of theirs, nor any lack on his side of fatherly affection; but he had no true gift for family life, no power to merge himself in the general interest or enjoyment; a disability that conspired with Anglo-Indian conditions to make him feel, in spirit, oddly aloof from them all. Theo, his eldest—a keen young Political Officer out at Malakand—had an engaging brotherly way with him; but he seldom talked of his personal affairs, as he did to his mother. With Mary—lovely and lovable—her father too often felt inadequate, almost shy; Her straight gaze made him feel that she judged him with the clear, critical judgment of modern youth and probably thought him not half good enough for her adored mother. Could she but guess how sincerely he agreed with her, it might have drawn them closer together.

Of the other four, only Margaret, who would be out next year, seemed intimately his own—Margaret, who was almost a replica of his dear dead mother.

But his thoughts, at present, were chiefly concerned with a threatened rising in Mohmand territory, said to be engineered from Moscow. That was the bee in young Lance’s bonnet—possibly a fake or a false alarm. But they were all on the qui vive, taking no risks.

A sound of hoofs on the drive announced the young ones from polo. It was Tony Arden, with Eve; and as they halted under the entrance porch, Sir Vincent watched with amusement the little pantomime between them: Tony, dismounted, putting up his arms to lift Eve from the saddle; Eve waving him off, springing lightly down; thrusting him aside, and fondling the Baluchi, while Tony attended to his lively pair of wire-haired terriers.

Leigh had lately bought the Baluchi, a mettlesome bay; and on impulse—he that rarely acted on impulse—had presented him to Eve. Her delight and shy gratitude had given him the keenest pleasure. She had called the pony Shahzada, after her father’s fine beast; and already it was more nearly her friend—Sir Vincent suspected—than any human member of the household. From the first, she had been more ‘coming on’ with him than with the others; a pleasant experience for this shyest of men.

Thea, also watching the pantomime, remarked casually, “Very dear of you, Vinx, giving her that beast. Why did you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps her amazing look of Challoner moved me to give an obvious pleasure to his daughter. When she gets his absent gaze in her eyes, I can almost feel his spirit behind them.”

Thea sighed. “No doubt poor Vanessa does too. I wish she’d have done with vain memories, and marry Havelock Thorne.”

“She won’t.”

“She will—presently, unless Eve has upset things by rushing out too soon. And she arrives engaged to a mere Policeman, with no special record. Annoying of her all round. What had John Lynch to say about him?”

John Lynch was a distinguished Police Officer in the Criminal Investigation Bureau.

“Lynch? Oh—the usual things.” Leigh was troubled by a masculine reluctance to repeat things other than usual that Lynch had implied.

“What usual things?” she pressed him; and he reminded himself that she was genuinely concerned for the child.

“Well, he’s clever at his work—very shrewd. Not so satisfactory the last few years. Lynch says—‘they call it nerves’; but he rather implied—drink.”

“My dear—how awful! Ian Challoner’s child.”

“Don’t go running away with yourself, my Lovely One! Lynch obviously doesn’t like the man. It may be some departmental jealousy. You never know——”

“Well, I want to know. I wish you’d find out.”

“I’d sooner leave that to you! No doubt Monteith will discover excuses for running in here. Then I shall see him—and judge for myself.”

“So will I.”

Leigh held up a warning finger. Those two were coming in search of iced drinks.

Tony Arden, mainly Thea’s right-hand man, was cut out for the duties required of him, as Personal Assistant. Tall, well-favoured, and unassailably good-tempered, he had all the social gifts, coupled with a deep personal regard for the great lady he served.

“What’s yours, Eve?” he asked. “Cider cup—lemonade?”

“Cider cup—when Biddy will let me!”

The girl, crouching on the rug, was beset by Biddy, who had soon discovered in her a willing victim to the game of the Vanishing Ball. But though the engaging creature hinted shamelessly, Eve had no intention of beginning it now. With a deft movement, she hurled Biddy out on to the lawn, and darted at the tumbler before her tormentor was ready for fresh overtures; Sir Vincent watching her with a twinge of sharper concern than he had allowed his wife to suspect.

In her thin habit and brown boots, her gallant air of character and distinction curiously recalled his dead friend, the one man whom he had recognised, at sight, as a kindred spirit. How he would have delighted in this very individual daughter whose charm was of the kind that defies Time—‘beauty of being, expressed in unconsidered acts.’ She looked hot and tired, but her eyes danced. She was clearly enjoying life. No signs of moping for her absent lover.

And suddenly he remembered that envelope.

“Here you are, Eve, a letter,” he said—and her face lit up; but at sight of the writing, she pocketed the envelope, went on fooling with Tony, and waved her tumbler to Mary, who had just cantered into the porch—alone.

She too wore a habit, and only rode astride when hunting. Before Tony could reach her, she had sprung to the ground and was strolling across the lawn.

Taller than Thea, she had her father’s build, her mother’s face and shining hair that drooped over her ears. The serious grey-blue eyes came from her grandmother, Lady Desmond; eyes that could light up with a slow amusement, rather than the swift humour that gave a quality of sparkle to Thea and Eve. Arresting always, she had her illumined moments—as now—that gave her father a queer catch of the heart; and it was an added grace that she seemed singularly unconscious of her beauty. As she accepted the tumbler proffered by Tony, her eyes were on her mother.

“Did you knock them all over, darling—looking younger than ever in that delphinium frock?”

“Oh, I did.” Thea was absently caressing Biddy, who had returned to the assault upon her knee. “They had to be carried away on stretchers! You should have been there to witness my triumph.”

Mary wrinkled her short straight nose. “I don’t like brown boys. And one of us had to witness Lance’s triumph. The Staff team ran away with the match.”

“Did they run away with him also? What have you done with him?”

“Handed him over to the C.I.D.⁹ Lynch had some fairy-tale about a haul of Communist leaflets, and of course Lance was mad keen to examine the find. Why don’t you tell him it’s all nonsense, Dad?”

“Because it’s not all nonsense, my child. It’s a case of sifting the truth from the chaff. And they’re very quick at it—those two.”

He rose in speaking, took up the bulky bag and sauntered off for a quiet hour in his study, followed by the Wise One, who also preferred a snooze in private to mixed society.

Light footsteps behind him, and a hand slipped through his arm—Eve, of course. That was not Mary’s way.

“Uncle Vinx,” she said in a soft, excited voice, I can’t ever thank you enough for Shahzada. He’s as understanding as a dog. Can’t we go out together one day? Then I’ll show you how perfect he is.”

“We can—and we will!” He pressed her hand against his side, ridiculously flattered by that spontaneous request. “Lance picked the pony; and he has the Desmond flair for horses.”

Eve skipped in her walk, a young trick she had not quite lost. “I won’t let you off that! We’ll elope, and run wild together. Doesn’t Government House, and all that therein is, sometimes sit upon your chest, and make you want to kick over the traces?”

“It does—though I don’t usually admit it! And I manage to resist the temptation.”

“Well, I’m sure it would do you good to succumb now and then—in a harmless way.”

“It would do me all the good in the world.”

“One up to me!” And she skipped again.

Surprising how this child, who scarcely knew him, understood that he was not so tame inside as he looked to his official and domestic world. She seemed to know him at once as a person; the only knowledge that quickens intimacy. It was the same shared weakness for escape from the actual that had drawn him to her father; but not often had he felt successful with anything so young.

As he settled down in his study with a pipe and Streeter’s “Reality,” he found himself wondering if she was truly in love with this Monteith fellow; wishing he could watch her face, unawares, while she read that letter.

Chapter Two

She is athirst, and drinking up her wonder.
— George Meredith

Sir Vincent Leigh’s observation had not been at fault. Eve was happily absorbing her first impressions of Peshawar, trying not to be aware that much of her content was due to freedom from Angus and love-making. In his long intimate letters, that revealed him at his best, she could enjoy contact with the man, untroubled by fear that a word or a look might wake the difficult demanding lover. But chiefly she was enjoying the daily contact with girls and men of her own age, the atmosphere of masculine work and interests; the unconsidered marvel of this armed camp in a wild country, circled by a barbed-wire hedge, six feet deep and four feet high; its many guarded gates closed from dusk to dawn; its daily round impregnated with the soldier spirit that played hard and worked hard, though it was not good form to admit the last. And Uncle Vinx—she felt convinced—worked harder than all the subalterns put together. With him she had soon made friends; and Aunt Thea was a jewel; but she still felt shy of the two cousins.

Lance, forthright and friendly, was obviously a man’s man, and devoted to his Chief. She liked the look of him—supple and alert, very much alive; one could almost see the swift play of thought behind his eyes: not a trace in him of the modern blasé young man. Though fundamentally reserved, he could talk by the yard when anything gave him a fillip. So far, however, he had not talked much to her; and unless the other person came more than half-way, Eve could make no move.

The charming Mary was also, for some reason, not very forthcoming; which was probably Eve’s own fault. Beside a creature so exquisitely finished, she felt muddled and rough, which put one at a surface disadvantage; though at heart she would rather be muddled and rough, in the strong, dangerous wind of life, than dwell securely indoors, as the serene Mary would doubtless do all her days.

It was Tony Arden who took her in hand; arranged sets of tennis, and introduced her to partners at the Club, where they all forgathered every evening, and scrunched potato chips and drank cocktails, or any iced drink available. It was Tony who squired her on early morning rides, if Mary and Aunt Thea were lazily inclined; though she perfectly remembered Peshawar, and would rather go alone. That, it seemed, was not ‘the plan.’ Everywhere and always, Eve was up against ‘the plan’; but Tony was excellent company; and she did enjoy talking of Clive and Molly and Henry Verity, irreverently alluded to as the kid.

When the others came also, Tony would ride with Mary, while Aunt Thea made affectionate overtures. She was the dearest person—if only she wouldn’t try to talk about Angus. Eve, scenting disapproval, would have no more of that. Vanessa’s letter had been bad enough. Naturally she hated the engagement, apart from the man; but why Aunt Thea seemed so concerned, in a tender and tactful fashion, Eve had no desire to find out. Because of their underlying disapproval, she was holding herself aloof with unrealised defiance. They saw her, no doubt, as a romantic girl, doing a foolish thing for love; and she could not explain that she was really a desperate one, fascinated by a fitful likeness that pained her now, yet could still perversely make her shrink from letting Angus go altogether—especially if it involved going to the devil. To lose faith and break away from him would feel like pushing him over a precipice. This demon of drink was an ugly hateful thing; but only the tough-fibred and unimaginative could flatly denounce him in his tragic case. So long as he kept his word and fought the devil squarely, she would keep her difficult promise, given at an exalted moment. “Whoever lets him down, it ought not to be me,” was her simple, courageous conclusion of the whole matter.

Meantime, Angus apart, there was Peshawar to be re-discovered; poignant memories discounted by the new happiness arising in her from contact with this wild India of the North-West that brought her father nearer to her waking sense. On the rare occasions when she escaped with Shahzada, she would deliberately conjure up his presence, till she could almost feel him riding with her along the dusty tree-bordered road, where pipul leaves quivered on their delicate stems, like captive butterflies, and nim trees shook out heavenly fragrance from acacia-like blossoms, and green parrots flashed among the branches, making love with strange cries.

As the heat increased, and the leave season opened, the station dwindled. Troops and officers, their wives and sisters, were already on the move. And about the middle of May, Government House would shift its little world of people and horses and dogs to the heights of Nathia Gully. Then Eve would look up Peter-boy, and Aunt Thea would take her on to Kashmir.

But the crumbling cantonment was still full enough for all social purposes. Eve had never seen so many young men gathered together; delightful young men, eager to lend you ponies, to dance with you, to kiss you—if permitted! In her case they were not permitted; but it was a clear advantage of her position that she could be on easy terms with them all. Like most intelligent girls and women, she wanted friendship with men. Even the least interesting were actively in touch with life, especially here in India. Tony Arden seemed a safe and promising subject; but already she was wondering about him and Mary. She had very soon said to herself, “Those two understand one another.” Now it looked as if they did nothing of the kind. These last few days, the serene and stately Mary almost appeared to avoid Tony; and he—not being a subtle person—retaliated by attaching himself to Eve, who was willing to ‘oblige,’ so long as it didn’t give a wrong impression or worry Aunt Thea. In her unsentimental opinion, they were both being too silly for words. If they wanted each other as badly as all that, why couldn’t they admit it, instead of making themselves and others uncomfortable? Poor old Tony sometimes reminded her of a dog in disgrace, uncertain whether to wag a tail or abase himself nose on paws.

Suddenly, between amusement and dismay, light dawned on her. It was Tony’s kindness to herself—and in particular those early morning rides—that had started this Government House storm in a teacup: and she all the while longing to go alone—if Mary only knew!

Almost at once she had felt at home again in the saddle. She could handle Shahzada in his liveliest mood, when he sidled like a crab, or picked up his feet as if he were stepping on hot bricks. Twice she had evaded the sociable morning canter, but had not dared to venture out of bounds. Presently she would dare—or she would not be Eve. The mere presence of that barbed-wire ring fence amounted to a challenge. She would snatch the first hopeful chance, and gallop out towards the twelve-mile circle of hills that girdle the valley of Peshawar. Their savage peaks, the hidden threat of lawless tribes and the ghosts of vanished armies thrilled her like some wild strain of Highland music. Her father had once driven her right through the Khyber to the very edge of Afghanistan, and she longed to see it all again. Next cold weather—perhaps? But instinctively her mind sheered off next cold weather. She was living intensely in the moment—living for her scamper out of bounds.

*  *  *

A hopeful chance arrived one morning, when she woke long before it was time for old Miriam to creep in and set down the tea-tray with her murmured ritual, “Open it eye, Missy Sahib. Time for git-up”—as if ‘git-up’ were some sort of meal.

It was not yet half-past five; but by the time she had hurriedly splashed and dressed, the sky was palpitating with colour. Little clouds, all on fire, sailed in the blaze of the coming sun. Tony and Mary were not true early morning people. She might successfully steal a march on them this time.

And she successfully did.

In the big verandah porch no living presence but the scarlet peons and the dogs, not the least delightful element in an Anglo-Indian household. There were five of them; and Eve loved them all, especially Lance’s Bijli—well-named Lightning—an Afghan greyhound, more strongly built than the Italian breed, with a rough curly mane round his shoulders—a splendid creature, who haunted his master like a shadow. Tony’s terriers were an effusive pair; Rags perky and aggressive, Tatters abjectly adoring. At sight of Eve, she rolled on her back, paws in the air, beseeching to have her chest tickled; but Eve, in a mortal hurry, could not stay to dally with dogs.

Having secured Shahzada, and told Gulab—her sais—he was not required, she could scarcely believe in her own luck when she trotted past the saluting sentry into the open road. Shahzada was sidling deliciously; and giving him his head, she cantered through the Civil Lines, greeting other riders—mainly men—without slackening speed, resolved not to be ensnared.

She was making for the gate on the Jamrud road. Though she must curb her venturesome spirit, she would be leaving the ordered station behind her, facing those fierce hills; riding on and on, as far as ever she dared. They didn’t understand her foolish craving, those ‘social canter’ people; the glory of riding alone through real open India, the illusion of freedom.

Leisurely she cantered on, past huddled villages and fields of young corn, past orchards still rosy with peach-blossoms, though the petals were falling now, past camels and transport carts and stray natives shuffling along in the dust. On and on, while the sun climbed higher, and the hills changed from dusky purple to the colourless tones of daylight. Here and there a snow-peak flashed; and at last, far off, she sighted the squat towers of Jamrud Fort, ready, night or day, to meet any sudden threat from those deceptively empty-looking hills.

Farther on even she dared not venture; and she had just reluctantly turned Shahzada’s head when she was startled by piercing cries from the near side of a mud and plaster building close to the road. Urging the pony to a smart trot, she discovered the cause. A big man, in the peaked cap and untidy turban of the Pathan, was savagely beating a girl of ten or twelve, a thin creature, thinly clad; clutching her shoulder with one powerful hand, while she writhed and yelled under the blows of a long flexible stick.

Her cries, and those dull blows, gave Eve a pain inside. Imperatively she shouted to the man in Hindustani, which he might not understand, being a Pathan; but he would understand her tone—the tone of a race accustomed to being obeyed.

At least she saved the child one blow; for he swung round, his stick in mid-air. Frankly amazed at sight of an Englishwoman alone, miles from Peshawar, he shouted some abusive reply. Then he struck the child again, harder than ever.

That roused Eve’s temper—the white-hot Northern temper that obliterated everything but the impulse to smite. She would not have quailed, at that moment, if the Pathan had threatened her with a naked sword.

His back was towards her. Could she possibly reach him with the long lash of her riding-crop—used only to crack at persistent pariahs?

In a cool fury, she urged Shahzada just near enough, the thick dust deadening the sound of their approach. But a Pathan has the hearing of an animal; and as he turned on her, she lashed out with a steady hand, catching him right across the face. His shout of rage and pain was horrible to hear; but in that flash of time she was aware of the child fleeing towards a low mud building, of the man lunging forward, and the swift cold clutch of fear——

Instinctively she had pulled the right rein. Shahzada whisked round; and the stick, aimed at her, came down on his haunches with a horrid whack that sent him off full gallop towards Peshawar.

He was bolting—simply; and Eve could only sit well back, reins firmly held, the country skimming past on either side; no room in her for any sensation but the excitement of speed, of triumph at her own well-aimed blow.

As her brain cooled she realised that, in the fury of the moment, she had done a foolhardy and dangerous thing. Angus would rage—if he ever knew; and for the sin of riding out so far she would be up against all the sacred official don’ts, not to be lightly disregarded by a trivial Eve. She could only pray that Shahzada’s terror might subside before they reached Peshawar.

But of course—no luck.

There was the gate and the wire fence with its high posts at intervals, each bearing an electric light. There was the aerodrome just outside the gate; and Shahzada—less terrified now—still out of hand. Worse: an officer was riding out of the enclosure straight on to the Jamrud road. It was Lance Desmond—Bijli with him as usual; and Bijli could never resist a galloping horse. If he went for Shahzada, she would be ‘done finish——’

But at sight of her headlong approach, Lance dismounted. He seemed to give horse and dog a word of command; for they both stood still as he sprang forward, intercepting Shahzada, catching at the rein and checking the pace by his own added weight.

It was splendidly done; and as he brought the pony to a standstill, he looked up at Eve.

“You! I knew Shahzada, of course, but I couldn’t believe——” He was really angry, and anger lit up two little gold flecks in his eyes. “What were you doing out Jamrud way, on your own?”

“I was riding,” she informed him with dignity; and he threw back his head and laughed. Thank goodness, he had a sense of humour, the unfailing solvent of wrath.

“Well, you ought not to be riding out there by yourself. How far did you go?”

“Haven’t an idea. I wanted to see Jamrud—and I did.”

That would tell him the extent of her sin.

“Well, Tony or I would have taken you. Thought you knew that women don’t go riding out of bounds alone. It’s risky, and the Politicals are responsible. What scared the poor beast?” He was looking at Shahzada’s coat, stroking his moist neck, far more concerned about the pony than about her troublesome self.

“A man rushed at him with a stick.”

“What man? Why?”

This time he looked very straight at her.

“If you don’t mind,” he urged, perceiving her reluctance, “I’d like to know just what did happen.”

“I do mind,” she frankly admitted. “But I’ll tell you, if—if it’s quite between ourselves.”

His smile had a friendlier quality.

“All right. Between ourselves!”

That made the telling easier; and briefly, inadequately, she gave him the facts.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, but she detected a note of approval. “It’s madness interfering with a Pathan. They’re devils if you rouse them, and nearly always armed.”

“Well, I was mounted. And I couldn’t stop to think. I was in such a rage . . . and the wretched little girl did get away.”

“If she’s his property, she’ll have paid for it afterwards.”

Eve shivered at the thought.

“I hoped—she wasn’t. But it was hard luck on Shahzada—that awful whack.”

“Poor beast. May make him jumpy for a bit.”

With a light hand he soothed the injured quarters, speaking to the creature in a voice Eve had never heard him use to human beings. She rather liked him for that.

“I’d better take you in charge—you’re evidently not to be trusted alone! We’ll go quietly, round by the Mall. Give Shahzada time to cool down—if you don’t want to excite comment and tell your story?”

“No, I don’t.”

She was definite about that, and she would be thankful to saunter home. But she did hate being a nuisance to a man who seemed to like doing everything at top speed; and she had heard Tony’s mild sarcasms about his ‘little weakness for squiring pretty women.’ At any rate she wasn’t pretty; and according to Angus she was only half a woman. If Lance thought her incapable of riding home alone—that was his affair.

Having settled matters, he mounted; and they rode on, past the Gunner stables, with rows of buckets outside and clouds of dust beyond, where men were drilling, before the day stoked up; down the flowering Mall, laid out almost like a garden; past the Church and the Club, Messes and Army Mansions and Flagstaff House—the core of military Peshawar.

They did not trouble to make talk; and Eve was thinking of Uncle Vinx, whose good opinion she coveted. Dread of vexing him prompted a bold suggestion: “Look here,—if we don’t tell about the Pathan, need we tell any of it? I would hate to worry Uncle Vinx.”

“So would I.” She had evidently pulled the right stop. “If you’d rather say you went outside a bit on the Jamrud road, that I met you—and explained, I’ll back you up. It’s the truth—with reservations! But you mustn’t go careering off like that again.”

“Well, I won’t . . . if I mustn’t,” she murmured, dejected utterly. “But I do get tired of tittupping tamely round cantonments. I like riding on and on. Would they really harm one, these people, if one didn’t interfere with their odd way of amusing themselves?”

“They wouldn’t attack you. But they’re quite alive to the profits of the kidnapping game. Ten or twenty years ago they had a holy fear of touching an Englishwoman. But now—you know about the Kohat affair, of course?”

“Yes. And there was another—when we were here before. But horrors like that only happen once in a blue moon. And if you’re going to be bogey-ridden by blue moons, you might as well be dead.”

He laughed again in his sudden explosive way. She enjoyed making him laugh.

“My philosophy, in a nutshell! I got it from my wise—and not wary—grandfather, Sir Theo. But for women it’s different, especially out here.”

“That’s what I won’t admit.”

His amused glance, that seemed to take stock of her in a new light, emboldened her to add: “Can’t I sometimes break loose on the city side?”

“Yes, it’s safer out that way. But, generally speaking, it’s not the thing for a woman or girl to ride outside the station without a Sahib. If you could put up with my company, I’d go with you sometimes.” Before she quite knew how to take that generous offer, he capped it with another: “Would you care to ride through the city one morning?”

“Care to?” Her face lit up. “I’ve been through it twice—with my father: I’d give anything to see it again.”

“Then I’m your man—if you want to see it properly. No messing about after trinkets and such.”

Eve—more and more liking him—disowned all desire for ‘messing about.’

“I haven’t got any money for trinkets and such,” she added, the better to disarm his smiling scepticism.

“Leave that to the Major?” he said in an odd shy voice. It was the sort of remark for which she had no reply, and he did not seem to expect one. He was consulting his watch. “We must be pushing on. Shahzada looks normal enough now to back up the truth—with reservations!”

They broke into a brisk trot, and Eve, ably supported by Lance, achieved a plausible account of her ride. On the whole she felt sinfully glad she had broken loose—risks and terror and all. By her breakfast plate lay a letter from Anne, forwarded from Kashmir, Beneath it was another from Angus: and she had been a wretch about writing. This was the fifth day.

She reserved her dāk for the quiet hour after breakfast in her own room; a delicious room, distempered in spring green, its verandah doors framed in long silk curtains of palest primrose. There were Maréchal Niel roses on her writing-table that was fitted with every inducement to make her a faithful correspondent—as she actually was, in the case of Vanessa and Anne. No disapproval yet, from that quarter; but unfailingly it would arrive. It would be wise and tender and tactful; and the more disturbing for that.

To escape from the prospect, she opened her lover’s letter. It was shorter than usual; fervent, yet dispirited. He had been bothered with fever; too much tearing round in the heat, too few breathers, too few letters from Eve to chase the blue devils away. He was craving to see her. Why could she not be decently responsive and crave also?

Hitherto his work had carried him far afield. “But this next week-end,” he wrote—and her heart gave the wrong kind of jump—“I’ll be near enough to run in on Sunday and snatch a few hours of bliss with my Eve. I must get sight and touch of you again, you precious thing. And do be a bit more ‘coming on.’ Not an Ice-Maiden or a wood nymph. But Eve the first woman, and my promised wife.

“Take all care of yourself, darling.” (Could he have seen that Pathan’s face, and the swinging stroke that only just missed her!) “Don’t rush round too much in the heat. Don’t forget you’re not altogether your own property now. And for God’s sake don’t overdo that eternal dancing. Selfish beast I am! But you haven’t an idea how I torment myself, in evil moods, with the thought of all those young jackanapes . . .”

Impatiently she thrust the letter back into its envelope. It was natural enough; but he had no idea how it tormented her, that array of ‘don’ts,’ the bane of her younger days. It was one of Vanessa’s many virtues that she so rarely said ‘Don’t.’ She had not even said it about Angus; though between the lines of her guarded letter Eve could read a disapproval more pained, more decisive, than any she had encountered yet. But increasingly it was himself who convinced her that indeed he ought not to have spoken.

Something in the more possessive tone of his letter, the near prospect of seeing him, roused one of her sudden impulses to free herself by one drastic letter, by refusing to see him again. Breaking loose in one direction tempted her to break loose in another. But if rebellion and temptation were sharp, they were sharply checked. She found it easier, always, to be stern with herself than with others. And now she bade her troublesome heart be still. Angus was depending on her; and, in her wood-nymph fashion, she did love him. If she failed him, and he went to the devil, she would be haunted and clawed by remorse, because she was of those who are made that way. So, to prove her sincere penitence, she squandered half her morning (which should have been devoted to violin practice) on an extra long letter, telling him everything that could interest or cheer him; but not a word of her wild ride, or of Lance Desmond to the rescue.

Those instinctive reservations sprang from something in him rather than in herself; partly from the fatal reminder that she was not altogether her own property. People who were jealous and jerked strings cut themselves off unwittingly from the full confidence one bestowed on larger natures; and Eve was no more prepared now than she had been on board ship to be a butterfly neatly pinned in a case for the satisfaction of any man.

Chapter Three

There is no dream that mustn’t be dared.
— George Leigh Mallory

After that, Eve lived for the promised ride through the city; but Lance Desmond, absorbed in political affairs, said no more about it till the following Tuesday.

She was putting away her violin after a musical interlude with Aunt Thea, who played deliciously, though she had little time now to keep up either violin or piano. Lance and his uncle—surfeited with reams of political correspondence and streams of oriental verbiage—had scarcely spoken, except to ask for more. Lance had the family feeling for music. He could play most of his favourites in a simplified form, by ear; but that, as he said, was only a little conversation between himself and the piano. Eve had chanced to overhear one or two of those little conversations. His unpractised fingers had the incommunicable gift of touch, and she wanted to hear more. When he came to know her better—perhaps?

On Tuesday evening, when the interlude was over and good nights were being said, he thanked her for “making a magic and inspiring Aunt Thea.” Then he remarked by the way, “How about that ride through the city? To-morrow morning happen to suit you?”

Of course it happened to suit her; and she was not sorry he had deferred the suggestion till after Sunday. For Angus had an unfortunate knack of taking even harmless things the wrong way, and at present she was feeling quiescent, almost content. The sight of him again, after brief separation, had revived the earlier fascination: her pleasure in the mere look of him; the lines of his lean face, and those profile glimpses that stirred her in quite another fashion. By that ghost of a likeness, she was linked with him in some queer manner that had nothing in it of the love he craved; and as yet she had no idea how many shocks it might survive, or how far it might carry her to her triumph or undoing.

Happily he had been at his best, talking chiefly to the men, in his clever satirical fashion, making them laugh over the details of a skilfully faked murder case. And after tea, when the rest faded away, his tiredness, and the refreshment he seemed to find in simply being with her, had caught at her heart. He had told her that ‘the Bad Penny’ might be turning up again soon. Owing to those lively Mohmands, he would be round about Shabkadr Fort, only thirty miles from Peshawar. So he hoped to run in one afternoon, dine and sleep, and dash out again next morning.

Having enjoyed her glimpse of him, she encouraged the idea. And she was eager to know about the Mohmands; to hear all he would tell her of this amazing Border country, where the strangest things went on: husbands bit off their wives’ noses, if the poor creatures looked at another man; and tribesmen lurking in watch-towers played a murderous game of ninepins, picking off their enemies in cold blood. One more ninepin knocked over. One more corpse added to the family credit!

Pleased at her keen interest, he had been quite forthcoming. He had told her how all the Frontier tribes, including the Mohmands, were more or less kept in order nowadays by their own leaders, who received subsidies from the Government of India for that purpose. But behind the leaders lurked the all powerful holy men; and behind these again lurked Soviet influences, possibly Soviet gold—though Angus was sceptical on this point. In this case, a noted Haji¹⁰ had bidden the Mohmand leaders give up their subsidies from an Infidel Government. But money was money; and the power of the British Raj, though waning, was not extinct. The leaders had also heard of new flying devils that rained fire from heaven. So they had refused to obey, and fled from holy wrath into British territory. Their homes had promptly been destroyed, and Frontier posts were all on the qui vive. It was rumoured that some seven thousand Mohmands were massed not far from the Border for a big plan of attack, once cantonments had been depleted by the removal of British detachments to Murree. Hence the prevailing atmosphere of alertness: officers unsure of their leave, a couple of regiments standing to; and within the hangars of the R.A.F. aeroplanes, brooding on vast wings, awaited the signal. They, in any case, would do most of the work. They were completely changing the character of Border warfare.

Outside Government House no one seemed much concerned. They were all too cheerfully preoccupied with tennis and polo, or packing for the Hills. How many of them, Eve sometimes wondered, ever felt aware—as she did—of the wild alien life surrounding their armed camp on the edge of Northern India? That kind of awareness, she gathered, was regarded as the mark of the new-comer or the tourist, which did not worry her at all. And it didn’t seem to worry Lance either. He was immensely keen on India’s link with England, but he could be interested in India herself, apart from all that. He was, in fact, the aptest person, failing Daddy, to ride with through the city.

They were up and out very early, followed by two saises and an armed orderly. At this delicious hour of a low sun and sprawling shadows the air was pleasantly cool; blossoming trees and shrubs lent a charm even to station roads. Other riders trotted past. Lesser fry took the air on bicycles, and ayahs were out with their charges. On every parade ground little khaki figures ran and stopped and ran again, in response to short sharp words of command. From some distant lines—a bugle call. The simple stirring pattern of sound sent a thrill along one’s nerves. Here, in British Peshawar, all was ordered, purposeful control; work and play imbued with the soldier-spirit of discipline, duty and good-fellowship: a man’s world, in which women—officially speaking—were the only free agents; and even they unofficially constrained so to live, among ‘a cloud of witnesses,’ that they cause no damage to England’s honour. Seen through the clarifying lens of an imaginative brain, that world seemed an impressive achievement. Seen from the angle of those who shouldered its responsibilities and played its games, it seemed no such matter. Though Eve still felt more or less outside it, the unofficial constraint was laid upon her also—because she, too, was England.

Riding along the tree-bordered road towards the city, she was taking things in, not saying very much; and Lance, for a wonder, was saying a good deal, telling her about Soviet intrigues in Afghanistan and on the Border. That was what Tony called the bee in his bonnet. Bee or no, he seemed very well informed, very much concerned about dangers of the insidious sort, invariably belittled by official sagacity till an imminent explosion startles it into action. Lured out of his reserve by Eve’s intelligent interest, and her link with the Superintendent of Police, he was handing out several startling facts.

He told her of the Soviet University at Tashkhent, where oriental students were trained as propagandists, and sent forth to make Communists of their own people; of a School for Reds in Samarkhand, still flourishing, in the face of Trade Agreements and political eye-wash. A thousand Indian students trained in six months; branches opened at Delhi and Benares under the nose of an unprotesting British Government, very careful to respect the liberty of the individual.

“Won’t be much individual liberty left, if ever those gentlemen get down to brass tacks,” he concluded with sudden heat. “That’s what baffles a plain man who hasn’t learnt to think politically! Up here, it’s gold trickling down from Central Asia to the Border tribes, seditious leaflets cunningly worded, native ‘missionaries’ with faked papers—the whole devilish bag of tricks. Of course it’s all hugely interesting—behind the scenes; maddening sometimes, for these C.I.D. fellows, primed with information, and unable to act on it—officially——” He checked himself and said in another tone, “Lord, how I’m gassing! Don’t talk about it all—to your lady friends! Of course the Major’s different. Say what you please to him.”

Eve made no comment on that. They had reached the city—a separate mysterious world where the ends of the earth were met together, where righteousness and peace never kissed each other. Within those walls and formidable gates its mixed population bargained and swaggered and sinned cheek by jowl with the British Fort—a crouched monster that could spit fire and bullets on provocation. They were riding now through the Edwardes Gate, an imposing archway between slender minarets. The heavy doors, closed at sunset, had been opened at dawn, when the muezzins, in the minarets, roused the city with their long-drawn call to prayer. By this time it was wide awake, pouring forth a confused stream of men and animals through its four main gates.

Here was veritable India—aimless, timeless, unceasingly vocal—where bullock carts squeaked and ekkas jingled and tongas clattered: not only another world, but another century. Here men still squatted, in open shops, engraving silver, hammering out designs on copper or brass. Here was the potter’s wheel of the Old Testament, and hard by the potter; on one side, a Hindu from quite another India presided over bales of cotton and muslin printed in Manchester. On the other side, a clerkly person, in horn-rimmed glasses, kept a very mixed bookshop; odd volumes bought at Cantonment auctions, cheap reprints from Germany, England and America. And above the shops carved balconies jutted from houses tossed up, tier on tier, to the flat roof-terraces, where ladies of quality basked and gossiped unseen.

Between the shops and houses, a wide dusty road and a drifting human medley through which they passed at a foot’s pace: sepoys and students; Rajputs in scarlet turbans, stalwart tribesmen in peaked caps and billowing trousers; human monstrosities that made Eve shut her eyes—too late, for the horrid impression would remain; quick-glancing women and fair-skinned boys with roses behind their ears, and in their hearts knowledge of all evil. No vestige of ordered purposeful control in this restless, unbridled city of Peshawar; a city without a wedding garment, without imposing palaces and mosques; a hotbed of secret vice, the Paris of the Pathans—men of strong limbs and strong desires, lustful and treacherous, yet loyal up to their lights, and unafraid: an alarmingly virile world.

Eve, gone silent again, was recognising, remembering—the queer smells and noises, the barbaric splashes of colour, the distant shudder of tom-toms, quavering strains of music through windows of fretted woodwork; and everywhere, under the surface, that sense of lurking evil as at Port Said. As then, so now, she was seeing and feeling the whole strange scene in terms of music. What a fine barbaric symphony some inspired composer might evolve from it, in the Wagner manner. If only she could come one day by herself and get a vision of it all from some high place, things might happen in her brain . . .

They had left the broad Street of the Story-tellers, and were ascending a slope towards an archway that seemed familiar.

Of course it was. For there above the arch rose the famous tower, the old Gaur Kutri, reminding her of that last ride with her father, when they had climbed the twisting stairs and spent an unforgettable hour up there; she watching the women and babies on their roof-tops, he bidding good-bye to the Border country he was never to see again.

Now, here came she—and where was he? And there stood the old tower, enshrining memories of many stranger, sadder things. If she could but climb those steps once more, she might feel her father’s spirit nearer to her than ever yet. And perhaps from that nearness—from the larger view of wild and wayward Peshawar, the valley and the hills beyond—her second fragment of music might be born? Here was the high place of her desire: and she knew that, from to-day, the twofold craving would give her no peace. Of course she ought not to dream of going alone; but it was a case of alone, or not at all. Lance would take her on demand; but how could ghosts approach, or music be born, while a tactful young man sat and smoked on a parapet, within talking range?

Instinctively she glanced at him, as if half afraid that he might overhear her very private thoughts. But he too was looking up at the tower, not offering information, or seeming to notice her abstraction. He had spoken very little since they entered the city; and his silence made her more intimately aware of him. Since he was neither a dreamy nor a stolid person, it had the intriguing effect of closed shutters. Behind them lurked the real Lance, intent on his deep designs; and because she too lived intently in a world of her own, she felt a few inches nearer to knowing him this morning.

Though his finely cut face bore the stamp of brains and character, she had seen him at first as little more than a keen sportsman and good fellow—the typical man’s man. She knew now that he was a good deal more than that. Talking or silent, he gave an impression of big reserves very intriguing to her explorative temperament. There was clearly more in him, behind those shutters, than he chose to reveal; something hinted at in the line between his brows and a thinking look in his eyes. Distinctly she was more aware of him this morning as a personality; a man made for friendship—if he cared to take the trouble.

When he looked away from the tower, their eyes met, and he smiled.

“Awfully fine view up there. But I can’t show you half to-day. Liking it?”

“Oh, I am. It’s fascinating and terrifying—and fearsomely alive.”

He smiled at that. “It’s alive all right! It’s been called the City of a Thousand and One Sins. And I fancy it lives up to the name.”

“What a name!” Eve mused, watching the crowd that leaped and yelled in the wake of a huge bear shuffling and swaying on his hind legs, controlled by a string through slit nostrils. “D’you always have to come with an orderly?”

“Well, one ought; but as a rule—I don’t.”

“Is it fairly safe, then? Or might they shoot at you any time?”

“I suppose they might. Nothing to prevent ’em.” He seemed amused. “Not the townspeople, but some fanatical Border ruffian, keen to win Paradise and a few extra houris by killing an infidel!”

She looked at him a moment, pondering.

“Would they just as readily shoot a woman?”

“An Englishwoman? I think not. At one time—certainly not. But Uncle Vinx says there’s a more inimical spirit now. We never touched their women in the old punitive days. Of course our airmen wouldn’t either, if they could help it; but it must sometimes happen. And naturally—the fellows don’t like that. They’re proper ruffians—cruel past believing; but they have their crude notions of honour. And they’re a race of men. Perhaps that’s why we understand them—up to a point; and—barring fanatics—I think they like us. They’d love to have their whack at Hindu India, but I doubt if they really want to see us fade away.”

“Do you believe we ever shall fade away, and leave this wonderful India to Russians or Germans or Japs?”

His glance seemed to take the measure of her before he spoke.

“Uncle Vinx doesn’t. My opinion isn’t worth a rap as yet. Hope it may be worth something—one of these days. Hope I have the luck to rule this Province.”

She smiled. “You’re very ambitious?”

“Rather. Nothing short of Viceroy—between ourselves!” His quick look reminded her of the runaway escapade.

“Will there be Viceroys, then?”

“I fancy there will—or some sort of equivalent. If I didn’t believe in our permanent link with India, I’d chuck my job and leave the country to-morrow. Hullo, here comes one of my pals.”

He was greeted, in the bluff hearty manner of an equal, by a tall, stout Peshawari in untidy turban and long open coat; the full cheeks, above a dense black beard, pitted with smallpox, the eyes boldly glancing under shaggy brows.

Lance returned his greeting.

“Well met, Yusuf Ali. May you never be tired! This lady is the daughter of Colonel Challoner Sahib”—he gravely presented Eve to his unprepossessing ‘pal,’ who acknowledged the introduction with a soldierly salute.

“All men, from Peshawar to Dera, knew Chull’nor Sahib. And we of the Border remember.”

He spoke as if he meant it, but his main concern was with Lance. They talked in Pushtu, and were evidently enjoying some joke, the big Mohammedan shaking with laughter; Eve wishing she could follow their talk, wondering what drew them together—that incongruous pair, who seemed so well to understand one another.

When Yusuf Ali passed on, Lance merely said: “Looks a proper scoundrel, doesn’t he?”

“One of the sort that might shoot?” Eve ventured—and he simply laughed.

“Old Yusuf would never shoot a Sahib. That’s not his little weakness. He and I are very good friends; and he has a genius for worming out information—the sort we’re after. Just as well, perhaps, not to inquire how it’s done!” He glanced at his watch. “We must hurry—or we’ll be late.”

They left the street at a trot; and Eve—turning to look back at the old tower—said in her heart, “Au revoir.”

Outside the city, they trotted more briskly, till they reached the main turning to Government House, and down the long straight road came a woman riding astride—a certain Mrs. Playfair, a smart and lively lady, her incipient plumpness cunningly toned down by well-tailored coat and breeches. She rode a grey pony as smart as herself; and she rode alone—an unusual event. For she was what men call a charmer: reddish fair hair, limpid green eyes, and a skin like eggshell china. Eve knew her by sight, on the polo ground and at the Club. Lance—but that was his affair.

At sight of her, he jerked the Banshee’s head round.

“View halloo! Follow me,” he said briskly, and set off at a canter down the opposite road that sloped to the railway bridge and the Zoo, Eve and three mystified attendants at his heels.

Round the blind turning, above the bridge, he executed a lightning swerve, just in time to avoid a small car coming up the hill, driven by Colonel McLean of the 9th Sikhs, one of Sir Vincent’s oldest friends.

Recognising Lance, he shouted a good-humoured protest. “Steady: on, you headlong young devil! Courting suicide, are you?”

Lance only laughed and called back, “Look out! There’s a lady coming.”

Eve heard the warning shout as she rounded the bend, and was greeted by the genial Colonel, one of the plainest and kindliest men in all Peshawar.

Lance had halted near the bridge, where the usual city crowd came straggling out of another great gate. He was talking to a couple of policemen with an urgent air, as if they were the object of his right-about turn.

“That,” thought Eve, “is for the orderly’s benefit. Does he fancy I’m taken in?”

His look, when she joined him, told her he fancied nothing of the sort.

“Awfully sorry, rushing you like that,” he apologised with just a suspicion of shyness. “Rather smart work, though—what?”

“Very smart work! Took my breath away.”

“Well, it was neck or nothing. I suppose you saw——? D’you think she guessed?”

“If she’s quick-witted, I’m sure she did——!”

The smile they exchanged brought them into very friendly contact.

“Oh, Lord!” he groaned in mock dismay. “Then I’m for it next time we meet!” He glanced again at Eve. “You must think me a proper fool—bolting at sight. But I—well, we’ve all got a screw loose over something. Look at the plucky girls who jump on chairs and scream if mice or beetles are about.”

Eve laughed.

“Mice and beetles! She wouldn’t feel flattered if she heard you.”

“Pity she can’t. It might choke her off. Women are God’s darkest conundrums—that sort, I mean,” he hastily retrieved his slip. “Now we shall be late past forgiveness. And I’ll have to tell Aunt Thea it’s not to be blamed on you.”

He flung another few words at the policemen, who grinned and saluted. Then they set off at a smart canter up the slope and on to Government House—its official dignity indicated by the tall white flagstaff and the Union Jack that hung limp in the still air.

At the gate an armed sentry brought his rifle to the salute; and Eve still enjoyed the dramatic air of importance it gave to one’s unimportant exits and entrances. They were late enough to find Tony and Mary already in the verandah, discussing garden-party arrangements, for which they were jointly responsible.

As Lance waved his crop at them and swerved off towards the stables, it remained for Eve to give them her version of the balked encounter—toned down out of sympathy for him. But of course Tony shouted with laughter.

“The most dare-devil sportsman in Peshawar bolting at sight from the China Shepherdess! Won’t I rag old Lance for conduct unbecoming of a soldier.”

“No—you won’t,” Eve commanded with decision “He does hate it so.”

“Wasn’t aware he hated her to that extent,” Tony turned it off, clearly not to be thwarted of his rag.

“Oh, she runs a rapture for him,” Mary said in her slow, delicious voice. “And it frightens him out of his life. If he goes on like this, she’ll break her china heart in public and scatter the pieces about Peshawar. It’s tactless of him to be so good-looking, and seem so promising that those women won’t leave him alone. I tell him it’s all the fault of his aristocratic nose. Have you observed it, Eve? Or are you blind, now, to other men’s noses?”

It was the kind of remark that made Eve feel an utter fraud.

“Of course, I can see that he hasn’t got one of those ready-made noses—if that’s what you mean,” she answered in a practical voice; and again Tony’s laugh rang out. He seemed in very good spirits over something.

“I’ll tell him so.”

Eve was furious. “If you dare!”

“I daren’t—when you look at me like that. But I might advise him, in a fatherly way, to try a beauty specialist when he goes home, get it roughened up a bit.”

Eve disregarded him. He was being simply idiotic. It was Mary who remarked with a demure smile, “You forget they’re mostly women. They’d fall in love with his elegant nose, and refuse to spoil God’s handiwork.”

“Poor old Lance! Always a snag somewhere. You’re quite smart this morning, Mary.”

They were interrupted by a salaaming peon, who wanted to know the Sahib’s pleasure about re-marking the tennis courts; and the Tony who was pleased about something was promptly translated into Captain Anthony Arden, Personal Assistant, with a garden-party on his shoulders and a small al fresco dinner to follow on.

Dismissing the man with an order, he turned to Eve.

“You’ll be a sport and help Mary with the flowers? I must go and put the fear of God again into that old māli,¹¹ or he’ll spend half the morning squatting on his hunkers, raising a small dust storm with his twig broom. Simply an obsession. Smothering the world for miles around. Yesterday I broke loose over those lawns. Leapt on him and his merry men—a real good strafe. And you should have seen him, simply scampering behind the mower—handled of course by the other three—shouting at ’em lustily, to prove how hard he was working, in case I happened along. Come on, Mary. We’ll creep up behind. Catch him at it unawares.”

As they went off together, Eve darted into the hall, and pounced on a letter—Angus, of course. He had succeeded in his plan. He would turn up some time in the late afternoon, and would she thank Lady Leigh for asking him to dine and sleep?

His news seemed to rub the bloom off her ride and the vivid impressions it had left upon her brain. What would he say if he suspected her designs on the Gaur Kutri?

Angus or no, that old tower and its memories would draw her like a magnet. Would she ever dare——?

For her, the word was a challenge. She would never be satisfied till she had dared—till she had seen it all again.

Chapter Four

Deals she an unkindness, ’tis but her rapid measure,
Even as in a dance; and her smile can heal no less.
— George Meredith

In spite of a depleted station, the Government House party was a brilliant affair of its kind: all that remained of British Peshawar, with a sprinkling of Indians from the College and the Law Courts; the men sweltering in long dark coats and pale turbans; the women in gay saris over pleated skirts, graceful and aloof, smiling more than they talked—except when Lady Leigh came their way. For it was her special concern that her Indian guests should feel at ease and enjoy themselves—so far as the non-social East ever can enjoy a mixed social function.

Like her mother, Lady Desmond, Thea Leigh was a born hostess. Crowds of people neither bored nor depressed her, as they so often depressed her husband. She did genuinely want them all to enjoy themselves in their own way, not in her way. And at these big parties—excellently aided though she was—her eyes and mind must be over the little tea tables, the tennis players, and the worthy ‘stuck’ groups (neither military, nor pukka Civil) who would sit boring one another endlessly, and never break away without assistance. Yet all the while one’s attention must apparently be centred on the person of the moment.

No help, on these occasions, from the dear Vincent, woefully astray in the wrong element. After shaking hands with all Peshawar, and probably saying the right things to the wrong people, he was apt to vanish inconspicuously as soon as his troublesome sense of duty would permit.

No help either from Lance. But his social defections were forgiven because of his unremitting work for Vincent and her own deep affection for the boy, who bore the stamp of her father more clearly than any son of hers. Whenever a party loomed, he had a knack of discovering ‘urgent private affairs’ at the other end of the station. It had been more flagrant this last month or two; and she knew the reason why. He was not afflicted with shyness, like Vincent. He simply fled, on instinct, from a garden full of women; rebelled, on instinct, against ‘the increasing dominion of the petticoat,’ as he had once put it to her at an outspoken moment. It was as if he kept a conscious hold of his lordship over himself, lest they steal it from him unawares. And of course he attracted them all the more. Often she had watched him, with amused approval, skilfully using his wits and his alert humour to discourage encroaching intimacy—especially when beset by Mrs. Playfair.

Thea herself, least critical and captious of women, detested the Playfair and the Playfair type—the predatory married woman, by no means peculiar to Anglo-India. Moreover, she happened to know that the boy’s genuine funk had its roots in a more serious episode, from which he had been rescued unawares by this secretarial appointment, a first step towards Political service. For on Border Political Service he had set his soldierly heart, that should have remained faithful to her father’s old regiment. Since Mutiny days, when the Piffers were created, that particular cavalry regiment had never lacked a Desmond among its officers; but in Lance’s case brains and ambition were backed by an ingrained belief that the Political Officer can do more for modern India than the soldier. Perhaps he was right. He had a good deal of sagacity for his age; he had also, carefully tucked away, a feeling for India akin to the old personal allegiance of an earlier day; and Thea was bent on helping him towards achievement by any means in her power.

Even to her, Lance had said very little about the other episode; but she had divined in him a certain unwilling fascination; and knew how it must hurt his pride to desire the thing his mind despised. Heartily she hated the practised coquette who had laid irreverent hands on his clean young susceptibilities, his fierce restraints and reserves. He had started straight. He was one of those who would keep straight. Thea Leigh, mother of three sons, probably knew rather more than did her shy and remote Vincent about the difficulties of the average man in the East—the dark passions, the mental isolation, the lure of the unattached wife, in both senses of the word. She knew, also, that a fair percentage of her countrymen did maintain a personal standard of life in which the sex-ridden East and the passionate South flatly refused to believe; men in the wilds of Gilgit, in Frontier posts and passes, cut off for months at a time from civilisation, from mental stimulus, and all the softer side of life.

A man of that kind she had wanted for her Mary. In fact she had wished for Lance, first cousins or no. But to her, at least, it was now quite clear that Mary wanted Tony—an attractive person of quite another quality; and Thea was prepared any day to be told their open secret.

They were behaving very well this afternoon; not vanishing together, but cheerfully doing their duty——the only ones, beside herself, on whom she could rely to save her party from the fatal stagnation of too many unemployed.

Vincent had already disappeared. So had that villain Eve. She had been playing tennis half an hour ago: now—not a sign of her. No excuse for her defection. Major Monteith had not yet arrived; and Eve was Government House, for the time being. A fraction of the party rested on her shoulders. She ought not to drift away the minute she felt bored. To Thea, with her soldierly heritage and upbringing, her ingrained sense of duty, Eve seemed at times a bit of a scaramouch. A lovable creature, but singularly impatient of constraint in any form. That man—if ever he married her—would have his hands full.

*  *  *

Eve had, in fact, absconded. Big parties were, for her, a weariness of the spirit; and the blazing heat made this one also a weariness of the flesh.

After two brilliant sets of tennis with Dick Molony—Peshawar’s liveliest young man—she had demanded iced coffee, heavenly stuff with whipped cream stirred into it, while Dick drank cocktails, and talked unlimited nonsense, till he was snatched away for a man’s four; and Eve—aware of a hovering sub, whom she could not abide—had fled to the haven of her cool green and yellow room. Weary but exultant, she subsided into her arm-chair. Why be an owl and rush about in the heat, boring oneself and others? So she picked up a critical study of Beethoven, lately received from Anne—and soon became oblivious of place and time. . . .

She was recalled to both by the sound of men’s voices outside her open curtained door, that led into the main verandah—Uncle Vinx and nice Colonel McLean with the ‘job lot of features’ and the deep rumbling laugh. Were they also deserters? If she could only feel sure! Best of all the household she loved Uncle Vinx. Irresistibly she had been drawn to him by his shyness, his bookishness, his gentleness, that was never effeminate, and by many mutual shrinkings and distastes—a bond only second to mutual enthusiasms.

The two men sat down so near her open door that she could not fail to hear what they said; but she soon realised that it was no serious matter. They were not talking personalities, as two women would be. Colonel McLean was lamenting the threatened shortage of British officers in the Indian Army.

“It’s the same tale all round. Too much work, too little chance of leave. Englishmen won’t stick foreign service unless conditions are attractive. And this Indianisation experiment scares off a good many.”

“I wonder?” Uncle Vinx mused in his quiet voice. “You don’t think it’ll work?”

“God knows! Most of these Indian subs are quite decent fellows. Some of ’em will stick it for a few years. Then they’ll drift away to the Native States, or elsewhere. They don’t expect a grind when they join the Army; and it is a grind now, with all the telephone work and the special jobs and too few officers. I’ve got a pretty good lot at present; but they don’t take the same interest in their men. Think of old Howard. We were in luck, my good Vinx, to happen when we did. Those were great days!”

And that big, cheerful man let out a windy sigh.

“Keep smiling, Roddy!” Uncle Vinx mildly chaffed him. “It seems to me the present young officer compares very favourably with our lot. The work’s harder, the standard’s higher, and most of them are keener than they’ll admit. Take them all round, England’s youngsters have seldom been a cleaner, straighter lot than they are now—girls included!”

“Oh, quite. But the deuce of it is that Sandhurst youngsters are beginning to look askance at India. Not good enough. They’ve been seduced by motor-bicycles and silk stockings!”

Uncle Vinx laughed at that; and Eve chuckled softly deep in her chair.

“Oh yes, it’s awfully funny—but I’m not perpetrating a joke,” Colonel McLean protested. “In my Sandhurst days, we were all budding field-marshals, death on games and sport. Now it’s the Iron Horse and that eternal dancing. Right and left, the girls call the tune. Short skirts and silk stockings are woman’s real declaration of independence—the stockings longer and longer, the skirts ‘Half an inch, half an inch shorter!’ Given ’em more power over men than they’ll ever get by the vote. You can shake your head, you old innocent. Ask Thea.”

This was becoming personal; and as Eve discarded Beethoven, sounds outside told her the men had risen. Crushing on her soft hat, she appeared between the curtains, smiling at the astonished pair.

“Eve—I thought you were at my party!” Uncle Vinx reproved her without severity. “What are you up to in there?”

“I’m shirking,” she told him shamelessly. She preferred telling the truth when she happened to know what it was, and when she felt sure of the other person. “I heard you outside; and I hoped you were shirking too.”

“As a matter of fact”—Colonel McLean eyed her with approval—“I’m going to execute a bolt!”

“So am I—if I can demoralise Uncle Vinx!” She sprang to him and clutched his arm, her eyes dancing. “Oh, Uncle Vinx, dear—

‘I am the most wise Bavian, saying in the most wise tones
Let us melt into the landscape, just by our two lones——’

“Does that make my meaning clear?”

“Reprehensibly clear.” He sounded stern, but his smile spoilt the effect.

“Well then—please, couldn’t you . . . wouldn’t you order our horses, and elope with me—anywhere away from your grand party? They’d barely notice. And Aunt Thea would forgive you, if you said, ‘The woman

tempted me!’ I know you will!” she triumphed reading assent in his eyes.

Colonel McLean muttered something about the magnetism of the silk stocking—not a suspicion that she understood. It was huge fun leading dear virtuous Uncle Vinx into temptation; and he was looking so quaintly pleased over it that she gave his arm an affectionate squeeze.

“I’ll be ready in five minutes—pukka. Then we can creep round to the stables, and elope unseen.”

She was almost as good as her word. In fifteen minutes, they were mounted and sneaking out of a back gate, just as she used to elope with Daddy because he couldn’t abide tennis parties.

As the Zoo had most often been their City of Refuge then, she suggested it now. “Let’s go and be wild, with the wild things, and forget that we’re Government House! Riding’s so restful. I slew myself over the tennis. I’m always too mad to win. It’s a most exhausting obsession!”

She was aware of his eyes dwelling on her face; and she wondered “What now?”

But he only said, “You’re looking rather white and tired, child. That’s partly why I said ‘Yes.’ This heat’s very trying to new-comers. If you’d like to go sooner——?”

“Oh no, please. I’m so happy with you all. And this place seems full of Daddy. It’s as if part of him still lived here.”

“Part of him will live here for many more years—in the hearts of these people. It’s one of their most attractive qualities. And in this curious country, where the veil seems thinner between the seen and the Unseen, it’s not easy to say precisely ‘Lo here’ or ‘Lo there’! It’s not easy to be precise about India in any way. That’s one reason why this country suits my anything-but-precise temperament.”

Eve nodded her full comprehension. “That’s why it seems to suit mine. It’s precise people and things that I can’t do with.”

“Then you’ve a hundred to one chance of getting to know India; and the more you know, the less you’ll think you know! You’ll find lots to puzzle over in Kashmir; and Vanessa will be glad to have you.”

He paused and she half guessed what was coming. It came.

“Of course you won’t think of getting married just yet.”

He said it with such unusual decision that she suspected he had been leading up to it.

“I want to wait a year,” she cautiously confessed. “On account of Vanessa and—other things. But I’m not sure if he will.”

“He must wait.” Again that rare note of decision. “You’re so young; and—you can hardly know one another at all.”

“I suppose—we don’t,” she said, wishing she could open her heart to this most understanding man. “Of course on board we were a great deal together. And he has told me a lot about himself,” she added vaguely, in case he had suspicions. “But after all, can two people really get to know each other—in ways that count—until they’re married?”

“No, they can’t. But—there are degrees of ignorance.”

“Oh, you do put things in the nicest way!” she exclaimed on impulse, forgetting that he was decades older than herself.

He seemed inclined to forget it also: and she deftly used her spontaneous tribute as a stepping-stone to escape from difficult and dangerous personalities.

Then they cantered on to the Zoo: and for one blissful hour they went wild with the wild things—as planned. Uncle Vinx—slipping out of his Chief Commissioner shell—revealed himself in a new aspect so simple and engaging that there seemed no formidable decades between. From animal to animal they wandered happily on—time forgotten; till Uncle Vinx glanced at his watch and jerked up one eyebrow—a quaint trick of his.

“Didn’t I hear that your very young man was coming in this evening?”

Her face of dismay was more revealing than she knew.

“Heavens! I’ve done it! He’ll be there now. And of course he’ll be fearfully annoyed.”

“Lucky you didn’t take a fancy to elope with one of the youngsters!” Uncle Vinx rallied her, as if he guessed that she needed a fillip.

“Terribly lucky,” she agreed, pulling herself together.

They cantered home at a smart pace, to find the party dissolved, and Aunt Thea being perfectly sweet to Angus under the big magnolia on the lawn. The way he looked at her as they approached made her acutely glad that she had not eloped with a young man. It was the kind of foolish thing she might easily have done in a thoughtless moment.

Of course Aunt Thea’s scolding was a very mild, amused affair. Then they melted away, leaving her to face the music. “You haven’t got very long, Eve,” was Aunt Thea’s parting word. “Don’t cap your desertion by being late for dinner!”

No doubt, being a practised person, she knew the signs.

They were alone. Angus said nothing, but his eyes were hard and strange; and because she felt quivery inside she assumed a coolness that belied her real penitence.

“Angus, I didn’t mean it, I’m terribly sorry. Please don’t spoil the whole evening by getting angry over a little thing like that.”

“You call it a little thing?” he flared; and suddenly she was aware that he had not kissed her.

“It is a little thing,” she gently insisted. “Where I’m concerned, you lose all your sense of proportion. It’s the sort of stupid headlong thing I do. And you must take me the way I’m made—or let me go!”

“I won’t let you go,” he said in a queer stifled voice.

“Very, well then——”

Pricked with remorse, she laid both hands on him and deliberately she kissed him—a proper kiss; deftly escaping before he could get firm hold of her.

From the verandah she turned and waved a hand to him. He was walking slowly across the lawn; and his answering gesture left her uncertain whether, even now, she had salvaged her evening. He was a most exhausting person to deal with in this heat, which did make one feel tired and all on edge.

Chapter Five

Like a bird losing its way, I am caught.
— Rabindranath Tagore

At dinner, Eve found herself between Angus and Lance. Next to Angus sat Aunt Thea with her partner, Colonel McLean. There were fourteen of them round the oval table. Branching candelabra and silver candlesticks, with orange-yellow shades, distilled a soft rich light over cut glass and silver, over fruit and yellow roses. The risen moon was creeping up behind a belt of trees. Now and then, between two boughs, she flashed like a torch. In the outer dimness kitmutgars moved, handing dishes; others waved queer-shaped fans to ward off night insects. Above the table and beneath it mosquitoes were busy, discouraged from attacking human ankles by little cones of incense, one under each chair.

They were only six women to eight men. Captain Cullum of the Hussars with a wife and sister, not long out from home; and a charming Indian woman, whom they called Aruna—a friend of Aunt Thea’s since Jaipur days. She had had an Oxford education and was working in the Islamia College. Her partner, Captain Fawkes, the Khyber Political Officer, sat next to Lance and absorbed a good deal of his attention. Tony had Miss Cullum, with Mary and Dick Molony on his left. So they were almost opposite Eve: and her knack of getting inside others made her dimly aware of rising emotions astir in those two—emotions that strangely troubled her, and threw an unbecoming light on her own lop-sided engagement.

But that was no dinner-table frame of mind; so she riveted her attention on Lance and Angus—who had apparently recovered from his injured wrath. He seemed quite taken with Aunt Thea, very much in his social mood, joking with her and Colonel McLean, whose rumbling laugh could set everyone else laughing at nothing at all. He and Angus were capping stories; and when men started on a story competition, there was no end to it. So Eve felt free to enjoy a spell of Lance, whom she had not seen since breakfast. He was disposed to be lively, and talkative, full of his ‘urgent private affair’—a big gathering of Boy Scouts.

“Several of us awfully keen; and we’re putting some ‘pep’ into the youngsters. We’ve good material to work on up here. I get quite a lot of fun out of it all, one way and another.”

That was his modest attitude; and Eve liked him for it. She knew from Uncle Vinx that he had been putting ‘pep’ into the whole movement, locally, since they came to Peshawar. After the gathering, he had spent an hour in the air with Dick’s Flight Captain. Next to riding he loved flying, and sometimes acted as observer for the fun of the thing. One felt he would always be learning something for the fun of the thing, and tackling it in earnest.

Dick, hearing scraps of their talk across the table, promptly joined in. Of course he must needs rally Eve about her vanishing trick—the one subject that she desired to avoid; and in his irrepressible Irish way he might talk any brand of nonsense.

“After that old set, I escaped from three irate men, hoping to snatch you from young Simpson”—he reproached her with eloquent eyes—“but I found him ministering to the China Shepherdess—also bereft. And I went wandering round like a lost soul, wailing ‘Has anyone seen an entrancing maiden in a yellow gown and a yellow rose?’ But there was none to enlighten me!”

Hand on heart he chanted his lament; and Eve could only hope that Angus was too intent on Aunt Thea to notice his foolishness.

Colonel McLean noticed it—and promptly cut in “I know a thing or two about that. The maiden of the yellow rose eloped—with my connivance!”

“Lance, was it?” queried the tactless youth. “Has my bosom friend become my mortal enemy?”

But Lance, who had a shade more sense, waved him away. “Shut up, you ass, and attend to your partner. We’re settling the affairs of the Empire!”

In proof of his impromptu statement, he began talking of his friend Yusuf Ali, whom he had happened to meet that afternoon.

“The vigilant scoundrel’s on to one of those faked missionaries I told you about—fellows who worm their way through the passes, preaching the gospel of salvation via Soviet Russia, distributing poisonous leaflets in the vernacular——”

He was interrupted by the voice of Angus, who probably had heard everything.

“Draw it mild, Desmond. Don’t go feeding her up with fairy tales about the Soviet spider.”

It was lightly spoken, but the note of authority and the implied aspersion annoyed Eve. She hoped Lance would hold his own.

“I’ve too much respect for her intelligence to feed her on fairy tales,” he retorted, keeping up the light note. “I was mentioning facts—that I happen to know of.”

“Oh, I’m not impugning your veracity.” (His manner did impugn it, none the less.) “But it takes a good many years in this country to discover that the most concrete facts have a way of vanishing at close quarters, like the Cheshire Cat. Nothing left but the smile. I know what I’m talking about. You see you’ve not been out here quite so long as I have.”

There was no mistaking the veiled antagonism in his tone; and Lance’s pleasant manner stiffened a trifle.

“Not quite! But I’m hardly an outsider in Frontier politics. After all, Major”—his good temper or good breeding prevailed—“you’ve been at home a year; and things move quicker out here now. It’s common knowledge that Communism is getting more openly rampant all over India. Not much doubt where the impetus comes from.”

“Oh, of course. That’s an old story,” Angus agreed, with a smothered irritability that made Eve feel suddenly nervous as to what he might have been drinking before dinner. “I was talking of the scare up here.”

“So was I. And when you’ve looked round a bit more, I don’t think you’ll so readily dismiss it as a scare.” Lance grew still more polite and formal. Luckily the rest were very busy with one another. “You’ll find there’s a lot of dangerous underground work going on along the Border. This Mohmand trouble is more than mere local restlessness.”

“Oh—is it?”

The note of scepticism, the hint of the sapient elder, so exasperating to modern youth, ranged Eve definitely on the side of Lance.

“Yes—it is,” he retorted with a straight look. “We’ve reliable information. If you fancy I’m dabbling in scares, you can ask Lynch.”

Angus jerked his knife with undisguised impatience.

“Don’t quote Lynch to me. The fellow’s an appendage to a point of view. Strains at a gnat and swallows a camel—if the camel happens to fit his theory.”

Eve could almost feel Lance bristling at that cool indictment of his friend.

“Lynch is a pal of mine, Major,” he stated in a contained tone. “I don’t recognise that description of him. I know the Chief considers him one of the cleverest men on the Border; but he’s not the sort to belittle a real danger for fear of making nervous people uncomfortable. Say what you please to him—if you fancy he’s a scaremonger—but not to me.”

Those direct words made Eve long to put a warning hand on his arm. But she dared not so much as glance at Angus to see how he took that tone from a junior.

“I’ll say what I please about Lynch,” he answered brusquely. “I’ve always thought him overrated; and I’ll keep my own opinion of him, without any assistance from you. So we can leave it at that; and quit boring Eve with our personal differences.”

“I’m not bored,” Eve said with perfect truth. She was feeling nervous and strung up, almost antagonistic to Angus, because of his manner to Lance, who was so clever and modest and keen. “But I don’t like two people snapping at each other across me. So you tell Aunt Thea all the things you don’t believe, Angus, and Lance can tell me when I’m to go up in the aeroplane with him and Dick.”

“Dick—who?” His tone told her she had only made things worse. “Can’t have you larking about in aeroplanes.”

“I’d be quite safe with Dick Molony,” she unwisely protested. “It’s a promise. And I’m fearfully keen.”

“Well, we can settle that afterwards.”

He said it quietly, but his look awakened her ‘don’t-care-devil.’ She turned deliberately to Lance, and talked to him for the rest of dinner.

She rose feeling refreshed; nerves and temper subdued. But she noticed, with a qualm, that Lance moved into her vacant chair and at once began talking to Angus, who would probably respond by snapping his nose off. Annoyed with him all round, she felt in no mood for the moonlight stroll that would be expected of her later on.

During the brief feminine interlude, she mentally dismissed him, and quite enjoyed a domestic talk with little Mrs. Cullum, who had brains and humour and was openly in love with her large plain husband; while Aunt Thea ministered to the charming Aruna, and Mary wandered off with Janet Cullum, large and plain like her brother.

And all about them loomed the dusky garden; Chinese lanterns hanging like strange fruit on out-flung branches; the moon, high enough now to make a magic among the tree-tops; and beyond the trees the big electric lamps set at intervals along the barbed wire, lighting it up from end to end.

Too soon—for Eve—the men came strolling across the lawn, their cigar-ends burning holes in the dark. She was promptly beset by Dick Molony, who wanted to know about her mysterious elopement, and didn’t appreciate the intrusion of Colonel McLean—very important, piling on the mystery.

While they were in the thick of it, Angus escaped from Mrs. Cullum and planted himself at Eve’s shoulder—quenching the fun, as only a silent presence can do. When Colonel McLean tried to draw him into the harmless joke, his “Don’t ask me! I’m the last person who would know,” had a tinge of sarcasm, though lightly spoken.

Eve left Colonel McLean to deal with him. She was watching Tony and Mary as they strolled away into darker depths of the garden, wondering—what must it feel like to know for certain that the man you truthfully loved was shyly edging nearer and nearer to the exciting moment of avowal? It hurt her suddenly to feel that she was missing the ‘exquisite torment,’ the rapture of giving that is every woman’s right—though the poor things missed it by the score in quite a different fashion. She had not desired that particular thrill: she had not wanted to marry. But if it must happen, she knew now (was it from watching those two?) that she did secretly desire all the dark and beautiful wonder she believed love to be.

Drifting away, in her absent-minded fashion, she scarcely heard what the three men were saying.

She was recalled by a light touch on the back of her arm. It was Angus, telling her to come away with him; and go she must, in spite of a quivering uncertainty as to what he might say or do when they were alone.

She managed it without seeming to do so: and at first Angus neither said nor did anything, which was oddly discomposing in her strung-up mood. He so seldom did what you expected him to do.

As they moved down a side path dappled with moonlight, he simply walked very close beside her, his hand through her arm, his fingers caressing its inner softness, saying nothing. Did he know by now that silence drew her, melted her, more surely than any words?

If she could but turn and give him an impulsive, genuine kiss, it would dispel the vague cloud that hung between them. But it was the curse of the situation that she must be sincere—or nothing.

While she sought vainly for some harmless remark, he said in a significant tone: “You aren’t feeling quite so lone here, my Eve, as you thought you would—eh?”

She divined, and ignored, the implication. “No. They’re all such dears, especially Uncle Vinx. It’s more home-like than my own home.”

But he was not to be put off that way.

“You’re great friends with young Desmond?”

“Yes. I like him awfully. He’s so keen about India and horses. He’s more interesting than most of the others.”

She said it airily; but she said it on purpose, because he had tried to snub Lance.

“Oh yes, he’s one of their bright specimens—and he knows it a shade too well. A dash of conceit in a clever young fellow rather spoils the effect.”

That was too much for Eve. “Conceit! Lance is just the reverse,” she flashed, resentment blinding her to her own unwisdom. “How can you be so unfair because you happen to disagree with him?”

“I happen to know a lot more about this bit of Frontier than he does. I should have had Lynch’s job if they’d been fair to me. I’m better qualified; but Lynch knows how to put all his goods in the window. He’s primed young Desmond with his alarmist theories; and because the boy’s cocksure and good looking, I suppose you take all the stuff he talks for gospel truth.”

“I can’t judge about that.” Instinctively she shifted her arm away from his touch. “But I suppose Uncle Vinx can. Lance doesn’t say very much. He’s told me a few facts; and of course I’m interested.”

“That’s obvious. Been out riding with him much?” He harked back to the main issue.

“Not often. He doesn’t bother about girls. He’s a man’s man.”

That ought to soothe him down. It did nothing of the kind.

“Not likely, with those looks. Bet the married women are after him.”

“Yes—some are. And he hates it.”

“Oh—does he?”

The sceptical tone angered her; and she flashed out, “You’re in a horrid mood to-night; spoiling everything.”

“I didn’t arrive in a horrid mood,” he reminded her, looking straight into her eyes—the look that could still draw her in spite of herself. “I arrived in good spirits, counting on a peaceful time with you before dinner. I found you’d vanished—no one knew where—and left me stranded. Lady Leigh’s a charming woman, but I knew she was taking stock of me all the time. And it put my nerves on edge.”

Naturally—it would. He was making her feel the veriest sinner: he had a talent that way. In bad moods, he might use it without mercy. But to-night he was more hurt than angry; and that look of his had dissolved her vexation.

“Angus, dear—it was bad of me.” She slipped a hand through his arm. “But I wish you wouldn’t take it as a personal affront. It’s just one of the drawbacks of being Eve. When I’m really absorbed, I forget everything—every one. I’m afraid you won’t find me a domestic paragon. If I’m practising or writing music, I shall forget all about dinner—make you wild. I don’t believe I’ll ever be conjured into a sensible lard-and-dusters wife, who keeps correct accounts and hunts for bargains in the bazaar.”

She felt, in speaking, how pathetically useless it was—trying to make him see ahead, when he was so blinded by loving her that he couldn’t truly see her at all. Of course he simply stood still and caught her to him so hard that she could scarcely breathe.

“Dearest darling,” he said, his lips against her hair. “I don’t want one of your lard-and-duster wives. I want you—adorable and distracting as you are. We’ll wipe out the personal affront. It’s not going to spoil our evening.”

He kissed her again; and irresistibly her heart went out to him. In love or no, his dominion over her, in certain moods, was a stronger thing than she dared let him guess. Still keeping hold of her, he drew her away into a more remote part of the garden. Where the shrubbery thickened, they became aware of low voices; and a turn in the path gave them a clear view of Tony and Mary, a little way off, under a big tree.

His arms were round her, she smiling up at him, her face—lit by a moon-gleam between the branches—alight and alive in a way that made Eve’s heart stand still. It was the vision of an instant, stamped vividly on her brain.

Angus jerked her round with a muttered, “Come on. They haven’t heard us.”

And Eve, in turning, was aware of Tony bending to kiss the wonderful new Mary of his creating.

When they were safe out of hearing, Angus said in a stifled voice: “Lucky beggar, young Arden. He’s got that girl.”

The implied contrast smote Eve, who had been thinking, with a pang of envy, “That’s how it feels, how it looks—like a lamp lighted inside.”

At a loss for an answer, she glanced at him sidelong: and the profile glimpse in the moonlight, his clenched hand, the proud carriage of his head, let loose a flood of complex emotion.

To his amazement, and her own, she turned and flung her arms round him.

“Oh Angus, my dear, my dear—” she said in a shaken voice, hiding her face against him, tears stealing down her cheeks; tears for her own loss, for his unsatisfied longing and her vain desire to give the one thing that could not be given—because it was not yet born. Her tears and their mutual uprush of feeling, from very different sources, brushed away petty discords and entirely changed his mood—variable creature that he was, under his contained exterior.

Not till the last moment was there any further clash to mar their evening. In the dark verandah, he kissed her good night. Then he held her from him, looking into her eyes.

“See here, darling, I don’t want you to go whisking about in that young Molony’s aeroplane. I don’t like it. That ought to be enough.”

But for Eve it was not enough, nor ever would be. Her face clouded.

“Oh, Angus, do be sensible. It’s quite safe with an Air Force man. And Lance would be there. Not a tête-à-tête.”

He frowned.

“What a troublesome treasure you are! Seems girls are top-dog since the war. No holding them.”

She made a small moue at him, half rebellious, half beseeching.

“It’s you that are troublesome really. I’m behaving like a sainted cherub! You said—not too much dancing——”

“Oh, it’s all these confounded young men,” he muttered.

“Yes, of course it is!” She turned it off lightly. “But they’re stark harmless. And I can’t be purdah-nashin just because I’m engaged and you’re jealous beyond reason.”

“Not beyond reason,” he countered vehemently. “Make allowance, child, for my twenty years ahead of you. Naturally youth attracts youth. If I knew you really loved me, I’d feel more secure.”

The hint of appeal, the word child and that deep note in his voice dissolved rebellion. With the tips of two fingers she shyly stroked his cheek.

“Dear furious man, if I don’t always make that allowance it’s because I forget; and your infant Eve is apt to like older men best. I love Uncle Vinx better than any of the nice juveniles I play with in Peshawar. Is that any comfort to your wicked jealous heart?”

Apparently it was, from the manner in which he rewarded her. And so they left it. She was not explicitly forbidden to go in Dick’s ’plane; but if she ever did, it would not now be the same unalloyed pleasure, at all, at all.

*  *  *

She had escaped early, in spite of Angus—longing for sleep after her strenuous day. But the night was breathless. Both doors stood wide open, the curtains not stirring. Vainly she turned this way and that, discarding her sheet and shifting her pillow. Her body felt over-tired, her brain over-active, her mind haunted—not by Angus, but by the look on Mary’s face. That look told her, as no words could have done, that she was missing wonderful things by her virtual consent to marry where she did not passionately love.

Already she began to perceive how her attitude to that mysterious yet most practical relation was being insensibly enlarged by contact with these genuine lovers, with a husband and wife who still seemed to care so deeply and truly, after twenty-eight years of it. Probably not one marriage in fifty had that enduring quality; but there was always the chance—given the right man. Instinctively she switched her mind away from that disturbing thought. She was doing her best to play the woman in this difficult adventure, which Eve, the artist, had not desired. Sooner than devastate Angus, she would go through with it, if she possibly could. . . .

*  *  *

And while she tossed sleeplessly, Thea Leigh—tired though she was—sat alone and wide awake in her boudoir-dressing-room, on the other side of Eve’s wall, writing a long, outspoken letter to her friend Vanessa Vane; recording her not-too-favourable impressions of the injured lover she had soothed that afternoon, of the entirely different being who had sat next to her at dinner.

Her natural concern for Ian Challoner’s attractive and gifted child was quickened to-night by the happiness, of her own Mary—who had come, at bedtime, to tell her the wonderful news that was no news at all. The painful contrast moved her, for Eve’s sake, to write more openly than she had done on that first Sunday. To-day she had seen below the surface, had caught a glimpse of the curious, unstable being under the man’s misleading exterior. And Vanessa ought to know about that look in his eyes, which seemed to confirm the implications of John Lynch. Vanessa, whose own father had been a victim to the same distressing weakness, would never let Eve run that risk.

“There is something attractive about the man, something magnetic,” she wrote, while Eve tossed on her pillow, more securely held by that peculiar magnetism than she was capable of realising. “There’s an air of repressed trouble—there’s a good deal, in fact, that would be liable to attract a young sensitive creature like your Eve, mentally ahead of her years, emotionally the reverse. And, my dear—I’ve discovered a strange look, now and then, of your Ian; something in the eyes, and the profile. When he turns and speaks—it’s gone. Eve would be bound to see and feel it; and it might account for a good deal. Of course he isn’t really the least like Ian Challoner. If he were, we would feel less worried. Vinx quite takes it to heart. He’s so smitten with Eve. She’s the sort of gifted, complex creature who is likely to muddle her emotional life at the start, and suffer terribly afterwards. Vinx feels it’s unaccountable how she ever came to accept him. I don’t; because of that likeness; also because—when certain emotions are stirred—we all do unaccountable things.

“And I haven’t yet said the worst. I didn’t like to, till I knew more. Lynch tells me there’s been some trouble about drink; that he went home for treatment. He seems quite normal now—except for the look in the eyes. But it frightens one—for the child. How much she knows, or guesses, we haven’t an idea. I can’t lure her into any sort of intimate talk about her engagement. She hasn’t got that strong look of her father for nothing! Only you, my dear, can get at her; but it can’t be done through the post. I wish she had gone straight up to you. The more she sees of Monteith, the stronger hold he’ll get on her. That’s my fear. He’s madly in love: and I should say he’s experienced with women. Perhaps I’m being unfair. But you ought to know everything. So I’m telling you all that she certainly won’t!

“I think you’re right about a streak of genius in her: and she’s singularly unaware of her own quality—thanks, perhaps, to an uncomprehending mother! It’s a sort of beautiful blindness, at once admirable and aggravating. She’ll throw herself away without an idea she’s doing it; unless her independent spirit suddenly asserts itself—or we few conspire to wake it.

“There! I’ve opened my heart to you. I felt I positively must. And you won’t call me a busybody, as some of them do here.

“Don’t let Eve marry that man.

“Always I am
“Your loving
“ Thea Leigh.”

Before returning to her bedroom, she sealed and stamped the letter, lest the inevitable morning-after mood should induce her to tone things down. It was a delicate business, thrusting a finger into that kind of pie; and, on principle, she disapproved of fingers in pies. But in the resolving of urgent human dilemmas, principles do not always meet the case. The impulse to help was the strongest impulse of Thea’s generous nature: and she would not have been her mother’s daughter, could she have stood aside, fearful of the issue, yet withholding the word in season that might, or might not, be of any avail.

Chapter Six

The secret trembles in me,
Waiting its hour.
— Humbert Wolfe

Eve was up early next morning, in spite of her wakeful night, to bid Angus good-bye—not for long. He had every hope of completing his work in the district ten days or so before she would be shifted out of reach for months to come, and during his absence she must, by some means, achieve her lone hour on the Gaur Kutri. No easy matter even to dodge the friendly Lance, who would be furious if he suspected her designs on the city. It was a case of flat rebellion; but a conviction that something vital would happen up there to the real Eve emboldened her to run any risk within reason. That it might be a case of courting serious danger, she simply did not believe. The Politicals, being responsible, felt nervous about women on the Border; so they exaggerated risks, just to keep one within bounds. The city was not like a lonely road: plenty of people about; policemen, shopkeepers, sepoys—nice, safe people like that. So she speciously argued with herself; and the argument prevailed. Not the least use making pie-crust plans in advance. She must keep her eyes open, and snatch the first opportunity.

Meantime, she found herself interested, to an uncomfortable degree, in the Tony-Mary engagement, that was creating quite a little end-of-season stir in Peshawar. Obviously Mary was feeling all the right sensations; and Eve, longing for enlightenment, could say no word, because she was supposed to be in the same case. Here were two ordinary pleasant people, mysteriously translated, living in a world of their own creation; a world slightly out of focus, and none the less real for that. Why did the immune think it necessary to treat this enviable state of being as a furtive joke? Eve’s genuine but fastidious sense of humour failed to see the point; and it pleased her that Lance did not treat it so. He had, in fact, a quaintly amused air of hardly noticing the event.

Only once he spoke of it to her, when they were strolling on the lawn after dinner: Aunt Thea and Uncle Vinx busy in the study: Tony and Mary strolling also, in more obscure regions.

They talked now with increasing ease and naturalness: a friendly contact of minds different in essence, yet deeply in accord. This was what she wanted, the genuine comradeship of a young man near her own age. But Angus would never see it so, because of his attitude to all that. It was one of her chief vexations in life—the way one’s simple pleasures were thwarted, one’s natural impulses checked by somebody’s attitude to something. One was constantly springing up, so to speak, fired by a brilliant idea, and being forced to sit down again with a bump—on hard fact. Angus would see Lance as one of those ‘confounded young men.’ That would annoy her; and there would be friction. But, for the moment, she had got what she wanted. She was happy.

They had fallen into a companionable silence; and while he walked beside her, smoking, she had drifted away on her own tide of thought. Suddenly, in the dark of the trees, a white wraith glimmered—and was gone. She caught her breath, with a startled sensation, before she realised—only Mary.

The sound drew Lance out of his reverie.

“What’s it? Frightened?” he asked, in his quick way.

“Startled—for a second,” she admitted. “My wits had gone wandering. I thought I saw a ghost! The Indian dark has such a creepsome quality. But it was only Mary.”

He was silent a moment; then he said in a different voice: “Perhaps you did see a ghost of the Mary—that was. Tony’s wakened a new one. It’s a queer state of being . . .” He checked himself. “Mustn’t say that—to you.”

“Why not? You can say what you like to me. It is a queer state of being.”

She felt his amused glance, without meeting it.

“Not many engaged girls would admit that. You aren’t like the ordinary sort. You’ve eyes for other things.”

“If I hadn’t—I couldn’t live,” she said simply. They were on thin ice, but she rather liked the sensation. “I think I’m a little afraid of letting that sort of thing run away with me.”

He nodded. “I know what you mean. You’re keen on the whole of life. So am I—though it’s the fashion to pretend one isn’t. I like all of it, in the most obvious way: hunting and polo, playing the piano, ‘books and my food and summer rain’—specially the good old monsoon!”

“And girls and women—just for a change?” Eve asked innocently.

“Oh, rather—the right sort; in their proper place!”

“They haven’t got one now. They’re all over the place.”

“Not all over India. One can get right away from them out here. And I confess I like to—now and then. Can’t understand a man tying himself up at twenty-seven. Of course Mary’s a charmer. Tony couldn’t do better, if he can’t help himself—if he feels he must——”

Eve, who loved an apt phrase, smiled to herself. “What a quaint way of putting it!”

“Well, I suppose . . . if they didn’t, more men would have the sense to keep clear——”

Again he stopped short.

“Of hanging millstones round their necks?” Eve wickedly prompted him; and he was covered with confusion.

“Comes of telling me to say what I like! But I didn’t mean——”

“You did. ‘Tell truth and shame the devil!’ This millstone understands—terribly well. And if you can’t say what you think, where’s the use of being friends?”

“Oh, with a man it’s simple enough. But with a girl—it’s different.”

“Let’s discard the difference!” She faced him smiling, and he frankly returned her smile. “If you find I’m a fraud, you can drop me—gently, but firmly. If I’m not a fraud—when you mean millstones, you must say millstones.”

He laughed in his sudden way.

“I declare I wasn’t thinking of them. I was thinking of ambition.”

“‘Which should be made of sterner stuff?’” Eve quoted softly.

“Oh, it should—if it’s nothing short of Viceroy! You remember?”

Behind his lightness she divined a reserve force of determination that set no bounds to the possibility of achievement.

“Of course I remember. And you’d feel afraid—that she might be a millstone, in fact?”

“I’d feel horribly afraid of the whole transaction. Women scare me almost more than anything. I can say that to you——”

“Yes. Because I know it’s only a case of mice and beetles! But I truly do understand what you mean. It’s not so much the other person—it’s marriage.”

“Yes—it’s marriage. You do understand. Tony’s quite another make. He’s got money. He’ll go comfortably along the tram-lines, and put Mary first all the time—which will suit Mary to a T. He’s got what he wants; and he’s not scared a mite. But I hope I won’t feel I must for a good many years to come.”

“So did I,” Eve inadvertently agreed. “But Life doesn’t ask if you’re ready. And when one wants to do big things——”

She became suddenly aware that the ice was getting too thin.

“You want to——” he said without looking round. “You will, too, with your music—if the Major gives you a chance. Have you written any yet?”

“Scraps,” she admitted. That mention of the Major affected her like a brake applied to a wheel.

“Wouldn’t you let me hear some of it?”

“When it’s more than scraps—in the strictest confidence! I’m wanting to hear some more native music. Could you manage that for me?”

“Of course I could. Delighted. Now, please, let’s have some lone violin—a little private concert till bedtime.”

So they went in and had their little private concert, beginning with the ’Derry Air.

Lance, in a big chair, lit a cigarette, while Eve was very much occupied, tightening her bow and softly tuning up. With the fiddle under her chin and the bow in her hands, everything fell away from her—everything except music, that flowed over the miseries of life and intensified its happiness almost beyond bearing.

She took her stand at the open door, so that she could see beyond the pale pillars of the verandah into the shadowy garden; trees darkly massed against a sky all spangled with dew of light. Looking out into the night, playing the simple noble melody with a profound fervour, the twofold association of sight and sound brought the New Forest and its lordly beeches crowding into her mind. . . .

Closing her eyes, she let the magic work; heard her own music as if it were another’s, soaring and swelling to the last triumphant notes. Then—the repetition that she loved, faint as an echo; softer and softer, dying into silence—the vast encompassing silence of the Indian night.

And Lance in his chair was silent also. Even when the last note lingered and died he neither turned nor stirred: and she was thankful. She could not bear him to speak just then. The best that he could say would seem inadequate; and if he merely praised her playing—after that, she would want to throw the fiddle at him.

One deep steady breath—then she let herself go.

First—a Hungarian rhapsody, arranged for herself alone, clearing away the poignant emotion awakened by music at its simplest and loveliest. Then a wild Russian fragment picked out from one of Moussorgski’s pieces, and brilliantly scored for her by Anne. Even on a solitary fiddle the swift chromatic passages gave a sense of the elements let loose; released some tension in herself of which she was subconsciously aware. Faster and faster she played, her fingers running away with her—as on that afternoon at Villars, when she was in a temper about Basil.

What a fool she had been and still was—one way and another. Could one outgrow one’s own foolishness ever? Only in music was there any sense of escape from the actual. . . .

Faster and faster flew her fingers, hurrying on to the strange inconsequent climax—till her bow smote the strings in a last discordant wail that left everything in mid-air.

Then her arm dropped to her side—and she stood there breathing unevenly, her hair all damp at the roots, her fingers shaking.

And as her escaped self dropped back into its cage, she heard the study door open; saw that Lance had risen and was looking at her in a new way—puzzled but impressed.

Her music had opened more than a chink of the shutters.

But he only said, “ Eve, you’re the most astonishing person. I won’t soon forget all that.”

As the elders entered, he vanished through the other door into the verandah.

“My dear child, what was that amazing performance?” Aunt Thea also seemed puzzled and impressed.

“Oh, it was some exciting modern Russian stuff,” Eve answered lightly, all the wildness gone out of her. “I rather like going mad on the fiddle sometimes. More fun for me than for my audience! I’ve frightened poor Lance away.”

Uncle Vinx, not believing that, smiled at her in a thrilling way; while Aunt Thea, very sweet and concerned, took fiddle and bow from her unresisting hand. “Sit down, darling; you’re all shaky. Virtue went out of you.”

“Something went out of me,” Eve said in a small voice. “I thought it was the Devil!”

She flopped on the deep chesterfield beside Uncle Vinx, who patted her hand. She felt almost as shaken by their kindness and dearness as by her wild Russian music; so, on the plea of writing a letter, she departed before the others reappeared.

*  *  *

Whether or no something had gone out of her, she felt unmistakably eased of some inner tension, as one’s nerves were eased by a thunder-storm. There had been several lately; short and sharp with torrents of rain: And, in between, the heat grew steadily more oppressive. It did not suit her at all; and even the untiring young men were a shade less energetic. Morning rides and parades were earlier than ever; the day’s work, in office and orderly room, over by eleven: then the long quiet hours indoors—the high cool rooms of Government House fitted with every amelioration: the compound strangely silent, a city of sleep. Now and then a wandering breeze would set the pipul leaves quivering; but most days there was a breathless hush in the air, as if dusty earth and languid trees consciously waited for the cleansing fury of the Rains.

Eve longed for those savage battles in the sky, that left earth and man refreshed—for a time. She loved all the strange birds that called and flitted in the garden; the green parrots like winged emeralds; the kites hovering entranced in the motionless air; the crooning doves; even the wicked coppersmith with his metallic note. And in the evening magnolia and oleander saturated the air with sweetness. It was all a new experience; and to Eve no new experience came amiss.

She was still keeping an eye out for the tower; but her deep designs were hampered by increasing heat and increasing friendliness with Lance, who had presumably agreed to ‘discard the difference.’ They rode out most days, morning or evening. He took her again to the city and arranged for an orgy of Indian music. In addition, the Tony-Mary engagement threw them a good deal together; and if he had no objection, neither had she. Unawakened, sceptical, careless of risk, she would continue to pursue any and every high adventure—hoping against hope that harm would not befall. And it was such a short time; only the inside of a week: yet, in spite of waning social activities, it seemed to her the most vital and exciting week she had lived through since she came to Peshawar. It gave her a sense of developing, of reaching out and drawing deep breaths of a larger air.

Her only jar was a letter from Vanessa, to which she had not the clue. Like the earlier one, it was guarded and tactful, but it was more frankly concerned—almost as if she suspected the truth.

“My darling,” she wrote—after a pleasant preamble about the fishing expedition—“I don’t want to worry you over this affair of yours. We shall soon meet, and I shall see for myself a good deal that I can’t see now. I shall also be able to say a good deal that I don’t feel able to write.

“I think you’re aware that I’m not happy about it. The man’s too old for you; and War nerves may be a very serious matter, especially as regards marriage. If there’s any doubt in your own mind, remember it’s far better to break an engagement than to marry the wrong man. I did it myself—so I know. You’re an independent monkey; but the feeling that I ought to have let you come straight up here sits heavy on my chest. For Daddy’s sake, darling, don’t go naming the day (or any such drastic measure!) before I’ve seen you and told you things I would rather not put on paper.”

That letter—while it moved Eve profoundly—revived the stiffened inner feeling that had subsided of late. If Vanessa had let her come at once, if she had seen no more of Angus, the backing-out process might have been easier; though at best it seemed to her rather despicable, apart from the pain it would inflict on him. And here was Vanessa—for Daddy’s sake—virtually tempting her to do it. No doubt that was what they were all expecting of her; and for that reason she had been holding them at bay. But she could neither defy nor hurt Vanessa. So, between that letter and the last one from Angus, “counting the days,” she felt like a corn of wheat between two grindstones.

Meantime, she answered, briefly and fervently, that Vanessa must not let bogeys sit upon her chest, that her Eve was doing nothing drastic. She would tell all and hear all—when they met. And, on a sudden after-thought, she added: “I think you’d be better able to understand how this came to happen if you could see Angus. There’s a look of Daddy—sometimes quite startling. And you know how that would clutch at my heart. I’ve got a snap that I’ll show you—presently. Your Eve.”

Perhaps that would pacify her, if she had been feeling antagonistic towards the poor troublesome man.

And now—only two days of freedom remained; and she had not yet climbed the Gaur Kutri. She was as bad as poor weak-kneed Macbeth, ‘letting I dare not wait upon I would.’ Dare or no, she could not create chances; and even in lesser things, Life seemed at odds with her always. They were like two antagonists warily manoeuvring for position. And it gave a spice of excitement, even to minor hopes and plans, that sense of trying to get the better of Fate; in spite of a lurking conviction that the dice were loaded, that Life was bound to happen, however boldly or warily you skirmished to defeat it.

But there was always the chance of a minor victory. How about this afternoon? She had not seen Lance since breakfast. There had been no talk of plans, but she knew the two elders were off somewhere together. It really did look as if her moment had come. A short, sharp thunder-storm had cooled the air; so it would be possible to start out a little earlier than usual. Tony and Mary vanished after lunch—and did not reappear. She actually found herself alone for tea. When chance so patently favoured her she was apt to grow suspicious. But before tea she had given the order for her pony; and shortly after she was trotting out of the back gate; Gulab, faint yet pursuing, anxious to keep within a reasonable distance of this unreasonably active English Miss.

Though the storm had partly laid the dust, the sun had still too much power. But what matter? She was well on her way now; the corner turned, the Fort in view, the city walls looming beyond. This was more exciting than the Jamrud affair.

“Go on, my Beauty. Go on!” she urged Shahzada, patting his moist neck, ignoring even his discomfort in her determination to get there—at last.

A couple, whom she knew, passed her in a small car, and she waved her whip at them, more in triumph than in greeting—though they would never suspect. Not far behind the car, from the direction of the Mall, came a rider who waved his whip at her—and her heart stopped dead.

Lance—of all people! She might have known.

Shaken for a moment, she swiftly righted herself. Why not assert her independence? He might be on some business of his own.

But his straight look, as they both pulled up, was distinctly discomposing.

“Where are you rushing to, helter-skelter, in this heat?” he asked.

And she, bracing herself to resist him, answered coolly, “I’m just rushing off—on my own. I s’pose that’s permitted now and then? You said I could—on this side.”

“Well, yes—you can.” He seemed puzzled, half annoyed. “Of course, if you think I’m interfering?”

“No, I don’t,” she declared, swiftly penitent; but she could not tell him the truth, and she would not lie to him. “I only felt . . . jerked a bit. You men are rather aggressive up here.”

His mouth took a firm line, that she had noticed when his temper was rising. “We’re still top-dog on the Border, thank goodness. I wish you wouldn’t ride that game little beast so hard in this heat. And I apologise for infringing on your ladyship’s independence. Thought you might feel inclined to break loose—under escort!—out along the Michni road. But as I’m clearly de trop, the offer’s off—for the present. I’m going the day after to-morrow—to the Malakand.”

“The Malakand? That’s very sudden.”

She spoke lightly because of the small shock his cool statement had given her.

“This is a sudden country.”

“Anything happening out there?”

“Not just now. Only some tricky political business that Uncle Vinx would rather not put on paper. So I suggested going there myself to talk it all over with Theo.”

“When—when are you coming back?” Eve asked, feeling very meek all of a sudden.

“It might be three or four days. Rather a nice little jaunt. Getting away into the wilds for a bit.”

“Terribly nice.” Eve sighed from the depths. “I do envy you men. You have all the luck.”

“Oh, we have!” he agreed in an odd voice. “I’ve just had the amazing luck to escape from that Shepherdess woman. She caught me for tea and talky-talky. Fancied she’d caught me for a ride—to follow on. But I discovered an urgent engagement——!” He paused and glanced at her.

“Am I the urgent engagement?”

“Oh, I was very discreet. I named no names. And as you’re so specially on your own. I’ll find another.”

“No, you won’t,” she said in her softest voice. “You’ll please forgive my snap—and repeat the offer! I fearfully want to break loose, under escort, along the Michni road.”

It was the truth. In her altered mood, the tower mattered less than the chance of a ride in the real India with the right companion. It wouldn’t go whisking off to Malakand; and it would be easier to achieve when Lance was gone.

“That’s nice of you,” he said—and she knew he meant it.

Riding back with him, she fell to wondering—was that suggestion of his partly a more drastic form of bolting from the Shepherdess, who would no doubt be off to Simla before he returned? Women of that sort were beyond her comprehension: and she tingled with fury at the bare possibility that the creature was depriving her of his company just these last two precious days.

But the creature was not going to spoil her ride—her consolation prize for being cheated of the city. They took it easily. They talked of all manner of things: and it would have been an unclouded hour, but for the lurking thought that to-morrow he would be gone. When he returned, Angus would be in possession. Perhaps they might never go riding in the same delightful way again. . . .

As they neared Government House gate, a car swung out into the road. Its occupant, a large, bearded Mohammedan, greeted Lance—and looked hard at Eve. As he checked his chauffeur, Lance drew rein.

“Good evening, Vakil Sahib,” he said. “Didn’t know you were back from Kohat. Have you forgotten something?”

The man looked again at Eve. He seemed agitated.

“No. It is something—I have remembered. I am most anxious to know—is the Miss Sahib a daughter of Colonel Challoner, Revenue Commissioner here some years ago?”

It was Eve who answered that. “Yes, I am Miss Challoner,” she said, proud of being recognised.

With surprising alacrity the Vakil sprang out of his car. He was standing by her stirrup—a stout man, in a long dark coat, and a gold watch-chain—gazing up at her with moist brown eyes.

“My heart knew,” he said; and impulsively she held out her hand, wishing she could truthfully say that she too remembered. But there used to be so many of them, and they all looked so very much alike.

He held her hand in a hot close grasp, then, bowing his head over it, ceremoniously restored it, as it were, to its owner.

“Allah is merciful—letting me see your face that brings to memory the face of my friend. I am called Mahomed Hussein—now eminent Vakil, through the services of your noble father, with whom there was no distinction of black man or white, if there was the good heart and the straight purpose. In sore trouble I went to him; and through his kindness I secured the Government appointment. From that good act came a turning of the tide. Indians have many failings, but where kindness is shown they do not forget.”

And Eve—stirred by his tribute, his genuine emotion—could only say, “I am so glad to meet anyone who knew my father—who cared . . .”

“And I am honoured for the privilege,” he told her, his eyes swimming in tears that overflowed and ran down into his beard: an embarrassing moment for Eve, acutely aware of Lance and the native chauffeur looking on.

There in the open road, in all the dignity of frock-coat and gold watch-chain, a stout bearded Mohammedan stood weeping, unashamed, for her lost father; and he did not guess that she—who could neither speak nor weep—was almost loving him for it.

Heedless of his tears, he took leave of her, his dignity unimpaired by that right and natural tribute to the dead. With Sir Vincent Leigh’s permission, he would come to pay his formal respects; and if in any way he could serve her—she need only send him word.

He rolled away in a cloud of dust, and Eve, riding through the gateway, felt as if a cubit had been added to her stature. Then sudden shyness troubled her lest Lance might be spurning all that as sloppy sentiment.

When he came alongside, she could only say in a detached voice, “It’s the best part of being here—to meet men who worked with my father and loved him.”

And Lance, as if guessing her doubt, answered promptly, “No mistake about Mahomed Hussein. He’s no sycophant. It was genuine. They’re wonderful people, if you get a hold on their hearts. A lot of them go on like that still about my grandfather.”

There was no shyness now in Eve’s smile.

“We’ve both got magic names! You’re lucky. You won’t have to change yours.”

He laughed.

“Wouldn’t change it for a fortune. There’s more magic in a name, out here, than in any other country.”

He was silent a moment, caressing the Banshee’s neck with his riding-crop. Then he said in another tone: “That’s the sort of immortality worth working for. Even the pundits can’t cheat us of it, though they’re very busy trying to cheat us of the other sort.”

And Eve, who eschewed personalities, could not resist the direct question: “Do you believe in—the other sort?”

He looked at her intently for perhaps thirty seconds.

“Of course I do.”

There was something in the way he said it, in the atmosphere of his whole personality, that seemed to settle the matter; as if the positive force of his belief in a thing made it more likely to be true.

Being Lance, he did not retaliate by asking if it was ‘Of course’ for her also. He was, obviously, not thinking of her or of himself. He was thinking of her implied doubt and his own clear faith. That was one of the reasons why she felt they could be friends. They were both more interested in various things than in themselves or each other. It was also an outstanding difference between him and Angus. When Lance talked, he talked simply and with clear concentration of the thing itself. With Angus, there was always the restless ego inside, making a bid for attention. But after all, urged her sensitive loyalty, it was not fair to draw comparisons between them. Poor Angus had everything against him—his temperament included; and he was desperately in love: a most uncomfortable state of being, so far as she could judge.

When they dismounted, she thanked Lance demurely for his escort; and she forgave him for cheating her of the tower—not only because of their ride. She would not, for a kingdom, have missed her encounter with that fearsome and adoring Vakil.

Chapter Seven

What is this power you have On the heart and the brain and the life of me? — Gerald Gould

Five days later, Eve was riding with Angus Monteith along the very same Michni road, that led out into wild country, east of the Khyber, to the nearest curve of the impetuous Kabul River—swirling down from the hill country of Afghanistan, to lose itself in the Indus near Attock.

In Government House drawing-room there hung a vigorous water-colour sketch of it, by Captain Kaye Lenox, that had captured Eve’s imagination; rocks and desolate sand-banks under a sky of tumbled cloud, the swirling waters smitten by a wide shaft of light; and dark across the left corner, blunt ends of pontoons that formed the bridge. The whole picture had a threatening aspect that fearsomely attracted Eve, who longed to see the actual river in spate, as it would be now, fed by melting snows from the hills. They had thought of riding out there this afternoon, a matter of twenty-two miles there and back. But they had not started early enough; and Angus, with Peshawar fever lurking in his bones, had felt disinclined for a strenuous outing.

So, shortly after the fifth milestone, they had turned back; Eve making light of her disappointment because of his evident relief; realising acutely how often, in these minor ways, she would be made aware of the twenty years between them. The very look of him to-day emphasised them afresh—dissatisfied, ironic, defiant, yet with no real strength under the defiance.

And, for her, there was now no longer the glamour, as on board ship, the appealing sense of some mysterious tragedy. No mystery about it now. She knew, with horrid certainty, that if he over-tired himself in this heat, it would mean too many cocktails or whiskies before dinner. Always that deadly knowledge at the back of everything—deadlier than any disparity of years.

His delight in being with her again, his constant demand on her time, had helped her to be less aware of a blank in the house: and for the first day, Angus had been at his best; loving her ardently, his tenderness spiced with humour. Then trouble had cropped up in the city, over a gang of dacoits. His Indian inspector was a worthy muddler: and abruptly the sky had changed. He had been moody, irritable, exacting, apt to lose his temper about nothing, even with her. And her heart had contracted with foreknowledge of how it would be—afterwards: always that uncertainty of mood; always a haunting fear lest the secret enemy might be gaining ground.

To-day he seemed better again; only tired and pathetic; trying to make amends. And she liked riding with him better than anything. He understood horses. He admired her in the saddle; and riding kept them apart without the kind of manoeuvring she detested. Only once or twice, in the dusk, he had edged Bonnie Dundee close enough to get an arm round her; and Shahzada, like herself, had submitted—under protest.

Taking her silence for disappointment, he rode close alongside and patted her knee.

“Don’t fret about it, darling. You shan’t be cheated of your thrill. I’ll run you out in the car to-morrow—— No: to-morrow’s choked up with a lot of beastly report work. Nothing to touch our Police reports for futile elaboration. And there’s that fool of an inspector muddling the dacoity affair. But Tuesday, without fail, you shall see the famous Kabul River in a rage.”

“Yes, I’d enjoy the drive,” she encouraged him. “I wasn’t fretting. It’s rather far—and deadly hot this evening. Feels like thunder.”

“Looks like it.” He indicated a sullen cloud brooding in the south-west.

“I wish it would come. I love battles in the sky and buckets of rain. But this breathless heat makes me pine for the hills.”

“You ought to have been awa’ two weeks ago. But I can’t pretend I’m sorry for the delay. The bad day will be here too soon. How about a parting present for your Highness?”

“Besides my birthday one?”

(She would be striking nineteen on the twenty-fourth.)

“Yes. Something I can have the pleasure of giving you in person. Is there any secret yearning this slave can fulfil? Not jewellery, this time. I’ll give you something superlative in that line on the day you honour me by becoming—my wife.”

Those two words terrified her; and involuntarily her hand tightened on the reins.

“A good bit of fur for your neck? That suit you?” he suggested in an altered tone, tactfully ignoring her silence.

“Oh, I would love a fur.” She smiled at him now, letting her gaze linger in his, trying to atone. “You’re too kind to your troublesome Eve.”

“Kind isn’t the word—when a man’s hopelessly in love with his troublesome Eve. I know a good dealer in the city. He shall bring samples to my bungalow, where you can take your time choosing one. Look here”,—he glanced at his wrist—“come along home for a bit, and bless my ramshackle abode with your presence. It’s early. We can have a quiet time together.”

He said it lightly; but she could hear how he wanted it. He would be deeply hurt if she refused. So, conquering her reluctance, she said, “Very well, I’ll come—for a little while. Would Peshawar be scandalised if any of it saw me riding out of your gate?”

“A fraction of it might, perhaps; the sort that love tittle-tattling about sins they haven’t the spunk to commit. But I’d be pleased to throttle any man or woman who could speak ill of you. I want you for an hour in my bungalow before you vanish. So don’t haver about it, darling.”

He was edging near again, but a hint to Shahzada frustrated his intent.

“Dear, I’m not havering,” she soothed him down. “I’ll come. But please . . . you mustn’t try to kiss me in the open road. Shahzada doesn’t like it. And I . . . can’t bear it. I’m a very private person!”

He chuckled at that, half-amused, half-annoyed.

“Oh, you are! Also a very tantalising person. However, if that’s your pleasure—I’ll wait. Let’s canter on. It’ll be a shade cooler inside.”

It was cooler inside. It was also vaguely disturbing. Her sensitiveness to atmosphere became a positive nuisance at times. The first whiff of mingled leather and cigars carried her back to her father’s study; but in no other sense was he present. This was the atmosphere of Angus, the unknown man; a being subtly distinct from Angus, the half-known lover. She felt herself invaded by his strong personality, enveloped by his life of work and sport, of fever and lonely camping; and behind it all a dim sense of his dark troubled inner life, of which she knew virtually nothing.

There were some good pictures, a lot of shabby books, a large desk table, and in one corner a jumble of fishing tackle, gun-case and golf-clubs. There were a few good bits of furniture; a Persian carpet—all mellow reds and blues; and over one door a dull green curtain, gold-embroidered, struck a regal note out of keeping with the rest. On the mantelpiece stood one photograph; a boy of ten or twelve; not very like Angus, except for the lines of head and brow, and a look in the young eyes like the spirit of Daddy in her own—the mystery of transmitted being; one’s very self passed on to another. The face held her, reminded her of the tragic story Angus had told her so simply that morning off Suez; of her own unwilling fascination, tinged with alarm, that had brought her to this strange pass: still so strange to her inmost self that she dared not look an inch beyond their present semi-detached relation.

And there was he, confidently expecting her to live in this very bungalow, to order his meals and weather his bad moods; to face, in fact, ‘the rigid arithmetic of daily life.’ Standing here, on his beautiful old prayer-rug, she foresaw it all with a startling clearness that made casual talk impossible.

And Angus Monteith, only a few feet away from her, was thinking along quite other lines; dreaming of the day when she would stand on that hearthrug as mistress of his home, as beloved wife and potential mother of the son he craved only second to herself. So young she looked, so aloof and impervious to passion, that it seemed a kind of desecration to be thinking along those lines at all. Suddenly she turned and smiled at him—not as a woman smiles at the man she has won, but in the shy appealing fashion that roused all the finer elements in his love. Promptly he came close to her, took off her hat and flung it on the table; but because of that young look in her eyes, he held her in the gentle fashion of earlier days. And he had his reward in the confiding way she let her head rest against his shoulder. If she would so yield to him always——

But there is no ‘always’ in any human relation; no constancy but the constant variant that is at once the delight and the distraction of all true marriage.

Monteith knew that well enough. But lovers have God’s licence to be foolish; and her mute response, the feel of her resting against him, sent a flock of wild hopes winging through his brain.

“Tired, my precious?” he asked, kissing a damp lock of hair on her temple. “Just as well you didn’t hustle out to see that old river. It won’t run away before we get there.”

“It’s running away hard all the time!” she murmured. “But I do feel slack. Tweaks of neuralgia.”

“It’s all this thunder hanging about. Sit you down—and I’ll doctor the neuralgia.”

Having installed her in his roomy leather chair, that smelt faintly of tobacco, he unlocked a tall cupboard, took out a cocktail shaker and shouted for ice. It was produced by Afzul Khan, who accepted without surprise this invasion of ‘the Miss,’ so obviously destined to become ‘the Mem.’

Eve drank one cocktail and demanded a lime squash. Angus drank three in succession; and she longed to put a restraining hand on his arm. But it would only annoy him, and spoil this peaceful interlude.

He produced his pipe, and she gave her royal assent.

“Like that fine curtain?” he asked when the filling was over. “My latest extravagance. It’s exactly the green of that dress you so often wore on board”

“You didn’t buy it because of my dress?”

“I did.” He smiled at the tone of dismay, not guessing its significance. “That’s the sort of fool I am about you. And I justified the splash with the reminder that I’d have to be furbishing the place up a bit. If it pleases you?”

“It’s a gorgeous thing.”

She ignored his remark about furbishing up; but he was not to be lightly turned from his chance of consulting her on the spot.

“Thought you’d like it,” he said in his more practical manner. “I was determined to have it at any price. But I didn’t let the old robber suspect that. The carpet’s a beauty—straight from Bokhara. The walls might be distempered some neutral tint, eh? Show up the colours.”

“Yes—they might,” she agreed absently, still gazing at the curtain—wishing with all her heart that she had not come.

“When you’ve finished your drink, I want you to take a look round the place,” he went on, speaking rather rapidly as if afraid of interruption. “I’m sure you’ve got definite ideas about your surroundings. I want you to choose one room for a sort of sanctum. Tell me how you’d like it done up, and I can be getting on with it.”

She found her voice at that. “But, Angus—there’s heaps of time ahead. Are they so slow out here?”

“Rather leisurely beggars. And I’ll be on the spot to make sure they don’t distemper the doors and smear paint on the walls! It’ll help to keep me going through these deadly hot weather months. And I’m keen to get married before Christmas. Say November?”

“But I told you—a year,” she protested in a small voice, clenching her hands on the chair to steady them.

“And I’ve no intention of waiting a year. I’m not nineteen, and the uncertainty’s wearing my nerves to fiddle-strings. I can hardly wait till next cold weather. I wanted you here . . . to tell you——” Again he spoke rapidly, holding her gaze. “It’s quite possible I can snatch fifteen days’ leave in June or July urgent private affairs! Then—if you only will, we can marry up there and take a ten days’ honeymoon on account. Of course I’d leave you with your precious Vanessa. But once you’re mine, I’d feel secure. For God’s sake, darling, don’t refuse me. I can’t take ‘No.’”

He had risen; he was kneeling by her chair; his arms flung round her, his face close to hers.

Refusal had never been harder. Yet never had the inmost Eve more definitely felt that she could not—she could not. . . .

“Angus dear, don’t think me heartless,” she pleaded, laying both hands on him, warding him off. “But it must be ‘No’—to that. You did agree to a year; and I’ve told Vanessa. It’s not fair or kind—rushing me so. I’m not nineteen—yet!”—she steadied herself with a flick of humour—“and I promised her that, till I’d seen her, I wouldn’t do anything irrevocable——”

“Irrevocable?” (She had perceived her slip too late.) “Wants to wheedle you out of it, eh? Isn’t it irrevocable now? It is—for me.”

He was angry and deeply hurt.

“Oh, don’t ask me things like that,” she implored unsteadily.

“Well, I’ve got to know where I stand. And I’m damned if I do, even now. If you can talk so—keep me dangling, on account of your Vanessa, you aren’t within miles of loving me . . . in the only way that counts between a man and woman. Look at me with your truthful eyes, and tell me . . . what does it all amount to—Eve?”

She looked at him, as bidden—not fearing him now; and him the truth.

“Dear desperate one, I’ve partly loved you all along, or we wouldn’t be in this tangle. And I’m trying to love you—that way. But until I do—I daren’t marry you, or even fix dates.”

The naive honesty of that purged him of anger, tempered his passion with tenderness. And she, seeing the change in his face—feeling it in every nerve—suffered him to gather her close, to kiss her and hold her in the protecting way that drew her more irresistibly than any lover’s ardour. And he knew it.

“Well, I suppose I shall pull through this cursed waiting,” he said at last, his face against hers. “Am I so deadly difficult to love?”

“No—it isn’t you. It’s something—that happens inside.”

“You’ve hit it!” he said with a strange laugh. “When it does happen, you’ll begin to understand what waiting means. Sometimes it comes over me in the night—a cold wave of terror”—his arms tightened sharply—“lest any evil fate should snatch you from me before the time’s up. But I’ll stick anything sooner than lose you.”

Her sigh trembled into a shiver; and again he tightened his hold. Only while he held her, she was his. When she sat beside him the gulf between them was wide as the ocean.

And her voice said in his ear: “Would it matter so terribly losing this unimportant Eve? She’s doing her best to make it come right.” Turning, she kissed him with soft cool lips. “But truly, you must let me go now. It’s getting queerly dark.”

He rose briskly drawing her up with him. “I forgot the storm. I forgot everything—but you. Wish I could see you home, but that damn fool inspector is cooling his heels in the back verandah, awaiting my pleasure.”

He hurried her out, lifted her into the saddle, caught her left hand in his and kissed it vehemently. “Those beastly reports may snare me to-morrow. I’ll ring up and let you know if I can get round before the evening. Now—canter all the way; and let me have a message to say you’ve got there safe.”

He brought his hand down with a whack on pony’s hind-quarters, sending him off at a canter, lest Eve should be too careless of risk to obey orders. Then he returned to his empty room, where the sense of her presence still lingered—disappointed hope brooding like a physical oppression on his chest.

She had coolly condemned him to wait, without a glimmering idea of the nerve strain, the mental isolation of a man madly in love. She had not even looked round the bungalow or given him any ideas to work upon in her absence. She was trying to love him—bless her perverse heart. But he knew from experience that love is not born of much seeking. It is ‘something that happens inside.’ Human hearts and lives eternally at the mercy of the strongest, most unreasoning urge known to man. This girl who had captured the whole of him, as Gina had never done, could lie in his arms, loving and responsive, yet never profoundly stirred. She could dismiss him, he suspected, with no more than a passing pang; yet he could not let her go. Nor would his_ sensitive pride allow him to force himself upon her undesired. So—wait he must. Meantime . . .

Again he unlocked the tall cupboard, took out a bottle, filled half a tumbler with whisky and drank it—neat. Then he sent for the ‘damn fool inspector’ who had deprived him of seeing Eve home.

The oppressive stillness told him that the storm would be a big thing. He hoped to goodness she would send him that message. She was an angel of light, but her obduracy—no fault of hers—had given the Prince of Darkness fresh power to undermine his high resolve. Once she was gone from Peshawar, leaving him uncertain as ever, what immediate inducement to resist—what hope of ultimate victory?

Chapter Eight

He it is the innermost one, who awakes my being with his deep hidden touches.
— Rabindranath Tagore

Eve cantered out of the Police Superintendent’s compound unobserved by any fraction of Peshawar that might make idiotic remarks; and when Shahzada slackened to a trot, jerking his head down, telling her he was tired, she had no heart to urge him on. She also, felt tired—in spirit as in body; troubled by an increasing conviction that she could not face the near prospect of living only and always with Angus, as she had seen it too vividly, when he consulted her about details, as though she were already mistress of his house. His very solicitude, his attempt to awaken her home-loving instinct, had defeated its own ends; had shown her too clearly that they could not bring it off—he and she. Apart from the years between, they were a tempestuous pair. When they were not quarrelling they would be persistently giving each other the wrong things. To her secret self she would cling with desperate tenacity. He would guess it. He would persecute her in the sacred name of Love: and the end would be disaster—not only for themselves. Shrinking she admitted the thought—if children came, would it be fair to the poor little unborn things giving them a father, like that? And suppose she had a son—like that? A son would be a wonderful possession. And to feel you had done him a wrong before he was born would seem a kind of spiritual murder. One tried to be loyal and decent all round; but life was so complicated, so many loyalties pulling one this way and that. To the far-off loyalty to unborn children, she had not yet given a thought.

To-day. for the first time, she saw their mutual dilemma with a measure of detachment. The very tiredness of her body seemed to make her brain terribly clear; but it could not yet help her to see how she was going to say all—or any—of that to Angus, who had clutched her in mortal fear lest any evil fate should cheat him of possession.

Suddenly a puff of hot air blew against her cheek. It passed, leaving her strangely oppressed by the breathless quiet, by that pall of cloud brooding over the pale bills, by the nervous cheeping of birds and insects, and high overhead the unearthly keening of a kite becalmed in the upper air. Low clouds darkened and spread with an eerie creeping movement, as though the sky trembled at its own fury; lower still the distant curtain of blown dust seemed to keep pace with the clouds, as if earth and sky moved in unison. It was the queerest sensation, at once fearsome and fascinating. The road lay empty ahead of her. The trees on either hand, their leaves dead still, were printed on the slowly moving sky, that was smeared in the west with a sulphurous glow where the sun burned through.

Another gust of air, cooler this time; and Gulab trotting up alongside, counselled speed.

“Better make pony go quick, Miss-Sahib—big tamasha coming.”

Eve smiled down at his ugly dark face. “I like big tamasha.”

But instinctively she glanced over her shoulder. A gathering ground swell seemed to be driving waves of darkness over the earth. And out of the darkness came the first faint roll of thunder.

She leaned forward now, encouraging Shahzada with voice and hand; while Gulab, smothered in dust and sweat, trotted manfully after. The back gate was nearest; and, well ahead of the following fury, she reached the stables. As she sprang from the saddle several saises ran out. To one of them she delivered Shahzada and fled towards the house.

In passing along the main verandah to her own room sounds of music arrested her—the ’Derry Air: some one in the drawing-room playing it tentatively; ‘a little private conversation with the piano.’

Lance? It could, be no one else. But he was not due back till to-morrow. He must have come home a day earlier. The leap of her heart startled her—only for a second. Not heeding it, she approached the open door. She would creep in and take him by surprise.

But on the threshold she paused, lest he should stop playing. He seemed to be thinking out the melody in an undertone, his left hand feeling for the lovely harmonies that enriched it. Though he found them imperfectly, there was no effect of stumbling, no losing the essential rhythm; he had the whole thing clear in his head; and the delicate certainty of his touch sent little shivers of joy down her spine—joy that sprang from other sources than the music. But again she would not heed; could not, in fact, detach her thinking self from the moment’s ecstasy. She only knew that she must see him. And the weird twilight was darkening every moment.

Cautiously she pulled aside the light curtain—and there he was, sitting at the piano, in the familiar greenish suit of thin flannel, his head bowed, the whole of him intent on those elusive harmonies. She could just see the bronze-brown of his hair—that tried to wave on the top, but he would not give it a chance—the vigorous slope of his forehead and his nose in profile with its fineness of line and detail—not one of those ready-made noses! The light firm build of him had so often satisfied her eye, especially in the saddle. Now, between wonder and alarm, she knew that it satisfied more than her eye.

And she simply stood there, her lips just parted, so lost in the mere fact of him, that life itself seemed almost suspended. In her stilled breathing, in her rapt look—so unconscious of itself—there was all the mysterious sweetness and terror of first love. . . .

A fierce gust of air, snatching the curtain from her fingers, startled her out of her trance, and awoke the natural instinct of flight. She could not face him. She dared not——

But during that timeless pause, waves of darkness had enveloped Peshawar. With the roar of an express train, the garden was blotted out. Only the near trees tossed shadowy boughs; leaves and torn branches whisked along the verandah: blown dust stung the back of her neck; the long curtains, wind-driven, flapped ghostly arms in the dusk. And she—helpless as any other whirling fragment—was blown bodily into the room; dust in her eyes, dust between her teeth, and in her heart sheer panic—that had no relation to the fury of the storm.

For there was Lance—a shadowy Lance—slamming down the piano, rushing to slam the door, and stopping dead at sight of another shadow clinging to the handle.

“Who’s that—Eve?”

His voice, startled yet eager, sent her heart about her ears.

“Yes—Eve,” she answered, catching her breath and coughing, because the very air was dust.

“Where did you spring from?”

“I was blown in—like the leaves,” she feebly explained, glad of the darkness that dimmed their faces. Glad also of the need for action, she began wrestling with the double glass door. All over the house, doors were banging, servants running.

Lance had sprung to the other one, closed and bolted it. Now he was behind her, coming to help.

“Can’t manage it?”

His voice was deliciously, alarmingly close; and as he spoke, a blinding flash leaped at her from the garden—followed in two seconds by a detonation so terrific that she started.

“Frightened?” he asked, his voice closer still.

“No—excited,” she answered briefly; and could not tell him that his low voice, the note of concern in it, frightened her far more than the fury of the heavens.

Her hands were still pressed against the woodwork of the door that threatened to blow in again. But his hands shot swiftly out, slamming it to. One of them in the darkness came down on hers, crushing it with all his force; and the leap of her pulses under that chance pressure was the most thrilling sensation she had yet experienced. No touch, no kiss from Angus had ever produced that swift tingling like an electric shock.

Before she moved it, he was aware.

“Your hand? I’m awfully sorry. I let out pretty hard. Did I hurt it?”

His concern was genuine, but the brief contact had clearly not disturbed him at all.

“Crushed it rather; but it didn’t mind!” she answered lightly; and her foolish heart was telling him quite other things.

Doors were still banging and servants running. A peon tested the two they had closed; found them secure and ran on—or rather was hurled on, head down, one arm across his eyes; an animated shadow, shot out of the darkness and swallowed up again. It was stranger than any dream; yet that outer whirling of dust and wind seemed a little thing beside the unreality of her own whirling senses and sensations.

Again lightning leaped and thunder shouted; not yet overhead. The ghostly dazzle left the room darker than ever. Close as they stood, they were no more than shadowy shapes to one another. But the shadowy shape was Lance; and the sense of his nearness made her feel queerly, pleasantly ill at ease.

He spoke again. “Stay here, and I’ll fumble for the switches.”

“No, don’t. It’s magnificent. Let’s watch.”

She hoped he did not catch the note of fear in her low voice—fear of the light, lest it reveal her secret before she had time to get a firm hold on herself.

“I’d rather watch,” he agreed promptly. “It’s a mighty storm. Quite like the big Monsoon. You don’t mind the dark——?”

“I love it.”

A mocking flash laughed in her face, vividly revealing buffeted trees, bushes ruffled and whitened by the fury of the wind, long arms of creepers waving wildly, and the still figure at her side: every line of his intent profile, the curves of ear and nostril, the little goldy brown hairs beyond his clipped moustache, the lips, that smiled so readily, intent—absorbed. One blinding moment of vision—then darkness poured down upon them, obliterating all but the comforting fact that they still stood there together, no matter how many fanciful miles apart.

The flash had shown her a chair near the door. So she laid the curtain over it to clear their view, and her hand remained clutching the carved back. She needed something hard to steady her, lest she spoil the most beautiful and terrifying moment she had ever lived through. There must be no intrusion of before or after. There must be only Now—the centre of all life and experience—

And Lance, incredibly unaware of her violent inner disturbance, stood there close to her—simply watching the storm.

Outside, darkness increased; and the seething sky opened its artillery. Blue light spurted this way and that, striking at the dishevelled garden, painting their faces with its ghastly glare. Thunder warred among the hills; rain pelted; sheets and rods of water lashed the dust into liquid mud. The fearful cannonade seemed to let loose something that had been chained up inside her. While it lasted, sensation crowded out thought.

It culminated in a flash, like splintered glass, and a crackling roar, as if the sky had split from end to end. Again Eve started, in spite of herself; and felt the light steadying pressure of his fingers on her arm—a moment, no more.

“That struck something,” he said, “not the house. The worst’s over.”

Eve’s heart was not putting it that way. She wanted it to go on and on, to keep them standing there.

Too swiftly, now, the outer dark was thinning from black to dense grey. On themselves and on all round them fine particles of dust were settling softly. In a few seconds their faces were just visible to one another.

“Where’ve you been?” Lance asked suddenly, as Eve was meditating flight.

She drew a difficult breath.

“We’ve been riding on the Michni road,” she said—and her voice sounded as if nothing at all had happened inside.

“Wonder I didn’t pass you. I came along there in Theo’s car.”

Preferring not to account for that, she merely remarked, “I thought you were coming to-morrow.”

“I was—if necessary. But I knew Uncle Vinx wanted me back. And, being Sunday, it seemed a good chance not to waste a working day.” After a brief pause, he added, “The river was a fine sight.”

“It must be grand. We wanted to get out there, but I felt too slack. We’ll go perhaps on Tuesday, in the car.”

“I’m running out to Michni Fort on Tuesday. Dick’s lot are prowling round that region. It’ll be a deal cooler after this.—Any notable departures during my absence?”

“Yes. They’re leaving in shoals. The Shepherdess went yesterday.”

“Rotten luck!”

“I thought you’d feel it!” she managed to twit him. She was acting desperately, since act she must, if she were not to give her idiot self away. “Didn’t she tell you?”

“Honour bright, she didn’t.—Look, it’s pea soup now. And the wind’s dropped dead. We might let in a little air.”

As he stooped, some one at the inner door switched on a light. It was the bearer coming to clear away the dust in time for dinner.

When the light smote her eyes, reality smote her brain: and before Lance had finished with the bolts, she had fled across the hall to her own room.

Chapter Nine

He did not catch conditions from his kind. Nor try his tread, to find if earth would bear. The noon-day dazzle, that makes others blind, Led his straight visions up the dancing stair. — Gerald Gould

She had small chance to deal with herself before dinner, which perhaps was just as well. She found her dust-sprinkled room invaded by a couple of sweepers, very busy—with old Miriam’s assistance—raising a little dust storm of their own. As fast as they whisked it all from the carpet on to the furniture, Miriam’s jharron¹² flicked it back again on to the floor. When they had repeated that futile process a certain number of times, the room would be considered swept and garnished—and they would pass on to the next.

Eve paused in the doorway, watching the quaint creatures absorbed in their serious game of dust casting out dust; encouraging herself to see the humour of it, by way of corrective to other sensations. When the game was over, she concentrated on the practical affair of changing for dinner; trying to ignore the new tremulous Eve, who must not be allowed to get out of hand. She let Miriam remain in the room, and dress her like a doll—attentions she could not abide; arranged her wave and powdered her face with particular care. Then she let in Biddy—who was gently scratching at the door—worked the dear foolish thing into a state of frantic excitement, hunting for a non-existent ball, caught her up and carried her into the drawing-room; using her, as she had used Peter, for entirely other reasons.

She found Tony playing at circus tricks with Rags and Tatters; making them jump this way and that, through the hoop of his joined hands; while the Wise One, seated crookedly near the fire-screen, observed their undignified antics with a scornful eye. His own dignity was slightly disarranged when Biddy leaped clean on to his head; and they were involved in a lively jumble of dogs and laughter when the rest appeared. At the heels of Lance came a sedate Bijli; but seeing there was fun on foot, he promptly pounced on the wretched Biddy, chasing her like a rabbit round and round the big room, in the wicked way that he chased sheep and galloping horses. Her squeaks of terror, when he snapped at her tail, were probably pure affectation; but Aunt Thea was soft-hearted, and concerned for china treasures on small tables.

“I won’t have my Biddy frightened. Call him off, Lance,” she commanded.

And Lance, doubled up with laughter, obediently put on a stern voice, that brought Bijli back to him, apologising with eyes and tail, smiling his doggy smile—visibly enjoying the joke.

When the musical Burmese gong announced dinner, all the dear dogs were excluded, except the Wise One, who had earned his privilege by keeping religiously under the table, close to his master’s foot, not asking for a crumb: a pitch of self-control to which the rest could never attain.

They were alone—a home party, which didn’t spell dullness, as at Compton Court. Aunt Thea was bubbling over—having got her Lance back again; and Lance himself, fresh from the wilds, was ‘full of buck,’ in Tony’s elegant phrase. He brought back a sparkle to their talk, which had been definitely missing the last few days. He was so alert and eager so patently in love with being alive, that he transmitted the feeling to others—certainly to Eve. Perhaps it was that inner radiance which made ordinary half-alive people seem a trifle dim beside him, like stars reflected in water. And with all his impatience, his masterful quick ways, he was utterly kind.

Though she attended chiefly to Uncle Vinx, she seemed able to hear all the time what Lance was saying to Aunt Thea about Malakand. Presently he turned to her; and her heart dissolved when he looked at her with his friendly understanding air, because she—who had insisted on discarding the difference—could never give him friendliness for friendliness again. And oh, the relief it was not to have Angus there, not to feel him watching, probably guessing. . . . He was terribly shrewd. He had not been jealous without reason; and what on earth was she to do about it now? But talking and listening to Lance absorbed all her faculties. Angus must wait.

When dinner was over, the lovers disappeared; Uncle Vinx and Lance retired to talk Malakand in the study; and Aunt Thea sat down at her table to write letters that had fallen into arrears while Lance was away.

Eve, left to herself, subsided into a soft arm-chair, ungraciously glad of a respite from all these dear nice people, longing to be alone with her intensely private sensations, of which she still felt half afraid. It was a mercy to feel that no one was looking at her, perhaps noticing some difference. Invaded by sudden weariness, she wanted neither to move nor speak nor even to think. Her limbs were like dead weights. If some one had screamed that the house was on fire she could have scarcely bothered to lift a finger. It seemed the nearest thing to a fainting, without losing consciousness. Lying there with closed eyes, she felt as far removed from them all as though she were lying at the bottom of the sea. No sound disturbed the stillness except the ceaseless whisper of Aunt Thea’s pen running over the paper.

How long that queer condition lasted she had no idea. She came out of it with a start, when Biddy—after a disregarded overture—sprang on to her knee. Absently caressing the dear dumb thing, she picked up a stray book—Love in Idleness. No, thank you. The last thing she wanted was a novel. She preferred to lie quiet and watch Aunt Thea.

Merely as a picture, how she satisfied the eye, in that soft simple frock, blue shot with gold, and her wonderful crown of hair so closely and cleverly moulded to her head. But Eve was seeing beyond the picture; seeing the real woman, with new eyes, as she saw many things to-night. She was remembering how Anne once said that people could be roughly divided into those who were lovers and those who were not lovers—using the words in their widest sense. Definitely Aunt Thea was a lover—in every sense. She put some kind of spell on them all by wishing and doing the best for them so abundantly. In her effortless way she could resolve complexities, dispel petty angers and irritations. She had a natural gift for beautifying daily life—mainly through her belief in this terrifying yet exquisite emotion, so full of lurking friction and tragic possibilities. If only one could go and kneel beside her, bury a burning face in that soft dress, and tell her all. It seemed so simple; yet it was the hardest thing on earth to reveal one’s hidden self to the hidden self of another human being. Aunt Thea would hold her close and comfort her with kisses; but—would she understand?

She was not given the chance. Eve’s quick ear caught the sound of voices and footsteps, for which she had been listening subconsciously the whole time.

When the door opened, her heart tumbled all over the place. So she elaborately attended to Biddy, who lowered her ears and bared her teeth when Bijli appeared

He snubbed her properly by taking no notice. It was Lance who took notice.

“Asking for it—and she won’t get it!” he said stooping to ruffle Biddy’s ears.

The disturbing sense of his hand, so close to her, was too much for Eve. She whisked the astonished Biddy on to the floor, saying hurriedly, “She’s as bad as a hot bottle on one’s knee.”

“Hard lines! Poor little Biddykins.”

He promptly picked her up and began making love to her in the most endearing way—which was worse than ever, but not so close by. And as Aunt Thea put aside letters, he said, “Do we have any music? I’ve been over-dosed with Theo’s gramophone.”

Eve knew the oblique request was meant for her, but to-night she could not—even to please him.

“I’m afraid this gramophone isn’t in very good working order,” she said briskly. “I can still feel that storm going on inside. And I really couldn’t produce the squeak of a lone fiddle after the Flying Dutchman and the Valkyries’ Ride with augmented orchestra! Didn’t you hear them, Aunt Thea, shouting ‘Ho-jo-to-ho! Hei-aha!’ I saw Wotan in that splintered flash, hurling the thunderbolt that crashed right overhead.”

Aunt Thea laughed. “I heard, him and his Valkyries battering my precious garden. He killed that splendid mulberry near the stables.”

She dropped on to the arm of her husband’s chair and leaned against his shoulder, scanning the book he had opened.

Eve held her breath. She guessed what was coming: dreaded it and wanted it more than anything in life.

“Nice and cool in the verandah,” Lance said conversationally. “Shall we prowl—if you aren’t feeling fagged?”

She couldn’t, in reason, refuse everything.

“Yes, let’s prowl,” she said in her most ordinary voice; and Lance, depositing Biddy on her favourite sofa-cushion, offered Eve a cigarette. She had no desire to smoke, but it might be soothing.

When they reached the far end of the verandah, well beyond the drawing-room doors, Lance said in a guarded tone, “Eve—are you any good at keeping a secret?”

It was so utterly unexpected that a crazy fear seized her. Was he going to tell her that he loved some other girl, and was privately engaged? In a second she righted herself.

“I’m pretty good,” she modestly admitted. “Secrets are troublesome things. One has a feeling they may jump out unawares. But if I promised, you could rely——”

“Bet I could.”

She hugged the implied compliment.

“Is it desperately serious?” she ventured—and he laughed.

“Oh, desperately! It’s—an inspiration, as to how I’ll spend my first long leave.”

“Oh, how?” She turned on him, eagerly, proud that he should confide in her. “Does it have to be a dead secret?”

“A-dead secret. Swear!”

“Swear!” she echoed in the underground voice of Hamlet’s ghost; and added quickly, “Do tell me. I’m pining for details.”

“Well, I want to disguise myself as a Mohammedan of these parts; to prowl around the Northern Punjab, and the Border—specially the Border—and try to get a closer squint at the doings of Soviet agents (mostly Indian) than it’s possible for a white man to do.

“O-oh!” Eve let out a great breath. “That’s a fearfully bold idea!”

He laughed in his sudden way. “Nice of you to put it so politely! A mad idea, most people would call it. Sounds a bit mediaeval; but three-fourths of India is mediaeval. It’s a queer mêlée—the Middle Ages and motor-cars! And the Soviet devils are alive to the peculiar advantages of both. I’d rejoice to be even a tin-tack that might puncture one of their tyres! I don’t believe it’s impossible. Anyway—it needs doing. And if one of us can do it, I’d love it to be me. I’m not even telling Lynch—yet. But I thought I might dare to tell you, knowing you’d take it as a spree.”

“It was lovely of you,” she said, with low-toned fervour. “I suppose . . . it wouldn’t be soon?”

“No. I’m tied up with this job. But it’s something to work for; a lantern to button inside my coat! It was going out to Malakand, bucking with Theo’s tribesmen, that set me thinking a good lot might be discovered, here and there, if a man could slip out of his skin, pro tem. I don’t believe we’re countering all this underground work in the only way it can be countered. Of course we’ve a fine Intelligence Department; but stray men behind the scenes can often achieve more, because they’re independent, and taking all the risks, where a Department isn’t taking any. It ’ud be worth any risk, within reason, to chance getting hold of something important——”

“If the Soviet devils don’t get hold of you.”

He laughed. “I’d have to keep my eyes skinned. But I didn’t expect you to offer that form of encouragement!”

Eve had no answer ready; for she knew that, ten days ago, she would have seen only the thrill of his great adventure. Now—she was afraid; though her knowledge of him told her that he would never be more capable, never more cool-headed than when he was running a big risk for a big purpose. Did love, like conscience, make cowards of us all?

“I can’t ever shut my eyes to uncomfortable things,” she implicitly excused herself. “What would you be?”

“A wandering holy man’s the safest lay; or a harmless lunatic, regarded as holy.”

“But where would you pick up the knowledge?”

“I’m picking it up daily in all sorts of ways. You can do a lot with Asiatics on precious little knowledge, if you’ve a steady nerve. Look at Eldred Pottinger. He knew practically nothing. My two pals in the city are learning me quite a lot unbeknownst. In fact, the minute my inspiration flashed I began to see how everything had been working to that end since I came up here. The way Lynch caught on to me, though he’s ten years older, and might have taken me for an uppish youngster, same as your Major does!” It was said so entirely without rancour that Eve did not trouble to protest. “And the individual way Uncle Vinx handles these people is a liberal education. Whether it’s Khans or little zemindars, if they’ve anything to say—let ’em come and say it by the yard. That’s how he wins their confidence—feels the pulse of the Border, as he says. The Chiefs around here swear by him; call him the Wise One. He’s that, all right. But how he stands those endless interviews and keeps ’em all clear in his memory is a puzzle to me. It’s part of my job to take on some of the lesser fry. And it’s taught me a good bit that wouldn’t normally come my way. So it was like a light switched on when I suddenly saw what I’d been after, without guessing I was after anything. Exciting—isn’t it?—when you suddenly catch a glimpse of the pattern that’s weaving itself from chance bits and scraps of life.”

“Do you believe—there’s always a pattern?” Eve asked, fearsomely interested.

“There must be, or life would be the most unholy joke ever perpetrated. Don’t you feel sure about that?”

His quick concern gave her a stab of pain.

“My mind does—in a detached way. But the bothersome questioning Me, deep down, is painfully—not sure about the biggest things.”

He was silent a moment, seeming to ponder her honest admission. Then he said in a grave voice: “You’re pluckier than I am. I couldn’t carry on if I didn’t feel sure there must be Something behind it all. . . . Though you can’t understand, you can believe it’s there—Something that won’t give way, even if you lean on it hard.”

“Yes,” she said, “ there should be Something—‘And the winds blew and beat upon that house . . .’”

Along those lines she dared say no more. To-night she had got what she wanted. The Lance who lived behind shutters had opened them wide—to her. And it was but a tithe of her insatiable desire, after all. This volcanic eruption had upset everything. For her there seemed no pattern, unless it were the criss-cross of cat’s-cradle. The thought drew her back to his intriguing idea.

“When you say there’s a pattern weaving itself, you don’t mean—we’re only shuttles moved by in visible machinery?”

“No, I don’t mean that. We’re live things. Perhaps we’re living notes of music in a symphony we’ll one day hear and understand. Anyhow”—his voice suddenly took its shy tone—“I don’t believe it’s only a mess—this mighty fine world with life crawling all over it. And you don’t believe so either.”

“No—I don’t,” Eve said softly. Why had he never talked like this till to-night when her whole being was in turmoil, and she hopelessly at a disadvantage? With a kind of anguished relief she heard steps coming from the other verandah—Tony and Mary; favoured beings, who could enjoy their turmoil in unison.

Tony, coming close up, clapped a hand on Lance’s shoulder. “What are you conspiring about in the dark, you two? Stand and deliver!”

“‘There’s a porpoise just behind me, and he’s treading on my tail,’” Lance remarked in the extra level voice that he kept for outrageous remarks: and had his hair severely tweaked behind the ear.

A week ago Eve would have applauded him for that unassailable rejoinder; but there were occasions when even she could not talk nonsense.

They all sauntered back into the revealing brightness of the drawing-room, where they found Aunt Thea crooning to her fiddle, ‘And ye shall walk in silk attire,’ with soft double-stopping accompaniment. It was one of her special talents—and Uncle Vinx loved it.

She had just begun the second verse:

‘His mind and manners, won my heart . . .’

That was too much for Eve. When the song was over, she slipped unobtrusively out of the room.

Chapter Ten

All that in me wanders and is wild Gathers into one wave—and breaks on thee. — Stephen Phillips

Alone at last, she undressed quickly and lay very still under her single sheet—thinking, thinking of Lance; calling up that vision of him at the piano, feeling again the swift uprush of emotion, so different from anything she had ever felt for Angus that, in the dazzle of it, the depths of her earlier ignorance stood revealed. Though her puzzled brain kept asking: “How could this happen to me without warning? Why didn’t I know sooner?” for her heart it was enough that now she did know. And she lay there lost in simple amazement, touched with awe, at this new wonder—her own inner dawn of life.

As for Lance, he neither knew nor cared—that way. Besides, he would naturally imagine that she loved Angus; so, even if he felt like caring, he would nip it in the bud. He was that kind of man. He was her kind of man. She had known it almost at once, in the wrong way—born muddler that she was! Now she knew it in the right way—to no purpose at all; except perhaps that she should be saved from walking blindfold into the snare of marriage.

Without a significant look or touch he had entered in and taken possession of her—as poor Angus, with all his passionate loving and demanding, never would. In the shyest recesses of her thoughts—permeating, colouring them all—he was there: something that was herself, yet not herself. It was the strangest thing in life; and, stranger still, it did not hurt her sensitive pride that she had given away her heart unasked, undesired—to this man. In some vital way—she knew it, lying there in the dark—they belonged to one another. They would always belong, even if she married Angus, and he married six wives!

From the first her complexity had been attracted by his shining single-mindedness, his sureness and fire. And to-night she had been enriched by fuller knowledge of the unshakable element in him, that made him secure in the fastness of his hidden personality. So many people now were like ships without chart or compass; and if Lance had not a chart, he had an inner compass. His thoughts were genuinely a part of himself. He possessed his own soul. Anne would say he had standards—the word of her generation. Deeply she would approve of Lance; deeply she would disapprove of Angus.

Dazzled by the wonder of her new sensations, Eve had not yet faced the thought of Angus and tomorrow—the whole army of to-morrows that mopped and mowed at her like veiled ghosts. They were telling her that she must trample on her love for Lance, refuse to marry Angus, and devote her entire faculties to her music, to the mountains and Vanessa—which was all she had asked leave to do when she set sail from Tilbury Docks. Craving movement, adventure, vision, she had been snared at the outset by the most demanding of human emotions. Now, against her will and desire, she had fallen into it herself—and behold the half was not told her. Girls, who fancied they knew everything, had given her an impression that falling in love was rather a ‘soppy’ affair; but Eve’s ardent spirit found it a sensation more vehement and frightening than she had ever imagined.

By the light of her discovery she saw why Angus and his love-making had become an increasing strain. And now—if it became intolerable, what was she going to say? Tell him she had fallen in love with a man who neither knew nor cared? Not she! In any case it was a statement he would flatly disbelieve. The other two obstacles had already been overridden: and when a man got a certain look in his eyes, how steel oneself to deal him a mortal blow?

She must—she could not: her distracted brain swung like a pendulum between the imperative and the deadly disability of the temperament that too readily slips inside another’s skin. How convenient to be one of those right-minded poker-backed people who would decide unshrinkingly, “I ought not to marry that man”—and unshrinkingly act on it, blind to the wretched man’s view of the matter. So beautifully simple to go straight ahead, like a donkey after a bunch of carrots; determined to have your carrots, even if it meant an occasional scrunch of bones underfoot.

There were plenty of people made like that; and she childishly pictured herself so striding—blinkered and poker-backed—scorning an invertebrate Eve, hampered by old-fashioned ideas about paying debts of honour and sticking to her word. That had been Daddy s main injunction from very early days: “If you’ve given your word, stand by it—even to your own hindrance.” But—would he be quite so positive about it, in this tragic case, with his only Eve’s happiness at stake?

Smitten by sudden longing for his counsel and help, the fact of his death struck at her heart so wildly that it might have been but a month ago. Sense and spin ached for the comfort of his inexpressive but unfailing love. Here, in Peshawar, where she had hoped to feel him nearer, he had not yet come to her livingly in sleep; only in dreams that escaped her on waking. Had he deserted her utterly? Was this his ghostly method of adding to the dead weight of disapproval?

“Daddy, I want you—I want you, more than anyone,” she murmured—not heeding the shy thought of Lance, who did not care; calling up a vision of her father’s face while she hovered on the brink of sleep. . . .

The next instant, so it seemed, she was in the Residency summer-house, lying back among the cushions of a long chair. And there, by the green camp table, sat Daddy, leaning forward and looking at her; looking so intently that his eyes seemed to ask her some tremendous question: yet he said never a word.

“Darling Daddy—what is* it?” she breathed; but he only shook his head at her with a smile that sent a happy little shiver down her spine.

“Can’t you tell me?” she urged.

“No, my child—I can’t,” he said in a stifled voice that recalled the way Angus had spoken of Tony in the garden. “I—don’t know. But be careful, darling. Be careful. Don’t slip over the edge.”

Even as he said it, she felt herself slipping—slipping, with such terrible actuality, that her hands clutched the arms of her chair. It was not moving; but the sense of danger—of something that threatened her physically—was real to the point of terror.

“Daddy—oh, Daddy, help me!” her heart cried out to him. “I am slipping over the edge.”

Whether or no her dream-self spoke the words, she could not tell; but suddenly she was shaken with cold fear. It was Angus looking at her out of her father’s eyes, with the look that made her feel unable to withstand him.

“I won’t—I won’t!” she desperately asserted herself, without an idea what her refusal signified.

For answer he leaned nearer; and so electrical was the premonition of danger, that with all her force willed herself to wake.

“It’s only a dream. You can’t——”

She woke with the unfinished sentence on her lips her forehead damp with terror. For no assignable reason she lay there feeling horribly frightened—about nothing at all.

As in younger days, so now, she dared not let herself drop back to sleep. For as often as not the dream would start afresh, and she would have to wrestle with the horror all over again. So she switched on the light and picked up her volume of Middleton Murry, thankful to escape from her own tangled emotions into the mind of a writer so stimulating, so sincere. Beguiled, refreshed, she read on and on, till sleep lulled her brain and the book dropped from her fingers.

*  *  *

Daylight, intruding through curtains already drawn, killed the yellow gleam that had burned all night above her bed. Directly she opened her eyes she extinguished it—remembering. . . .

Life, held at bay for a few hours, came stealing back into her brain. If she did not see Angus till this evening, it would give her a chance to subdue these troublesome new sensations. She didn’t ‘hold with’ giving in to herself. That was one of the many things Daddy had taught her. To keep one’s head erect with despair in one’s heart seemed to her, as to him, an achievement very well worth while.

Since it was fatal to lie thinking, she called for her bath and dressed briskly, keeping thought at bay. And before venturing out into the new world, so full of pitfalls, she knelt down by her bed and put up a wordless prayer for strength of spirit not to hurt poor Angus more than she must; not to let him guess about Lance. Then, upheld by her valiant resolve, she went straight to the dining-room.

The curtained door was open; and there, across the room, stood Lance, on the threshold of the verandah, his back towards her, having a field day with the five dogs; and there was her very valiant heart all over the place again at sight of him.

Fearing it might betray her, she halted, mutely adoring him, watching his antics of the moment: Biddy held high between his hands, Bijli woof-ing half playful, half jealous; Lance working him up by a dramatic feint, and catching Biddy back just in time to greet Aunt Thea, who had come along the verandah from her room.

Eve, slipping half behind the curtain, saw him fling an arm round her shoulder and kiss her close to her hair. Times and times she had seen him kiss Aunt Thea, whom he dearly loved—and it hadn’t troubled her in the least. Now she could hardly bear it.

As she entered the room, Tony came up behind and put both hands on her shoulders.

“She’s actually up to time—ahead of me!” he teased her; and she felt grateful to him for taking her attention from the other two, still fooling with the dogs.

Then they sat down to breakfast; Aunt Thea behind the Burmese silver urn, Lance on her right, Tony on her left. Eve, absent-mindedly on purpose, sat down by Tony. She wanted Lance opposite her; then she could watch, undetected, the play of his face, that seemed many degrees more good-looking since the lotion had been dropped into her eyes.

When Mary appeared and lifted one eyebrow, in the manner of Uncle Vinx, Eve made a face at her, intimating that she had stolen the wrong chair for a joke; and Mary, being a sweet-tempered person, took it smiling, without comment, for which Eve blessed her.

While the others talked she ate industriously, saying little, yet insistently aware of Lance sitting opposite; listening for his level voice, that had a way of saying light or serious things in much the same tone, so that if you were a stray person you might miss the real point. But if you were his friend—who knew him equally keen to be Viceroy, or a tin-tack that might puncture a Soviet tyre—you caught the veiled point with a glow of pride in yourself, of delight in him. It was beyond belief the exciting effect that one person (not caring at all) could have upon another, simply by being in the same room.

Throughout the meal she scarcely dared speak to him. Once their eyes met, and she fancied his smile held a lurking question, to which hers could not respond. It was spoiling everything between them: and yet—it was glorifying everything, this exquisite sensibility to the fact of his presence.

He was the first to finish breakfast; and, rising, he strolled back to the verandah door, followed by his shadow. Both dog and man had the same air of grace and strength, of perfect physical poise. Simply standing there, saying nothing in particular, he permeated her, imposed himself on her thoughts and troubled her all through with an aching tenderness, a sweet vague unrest. ‘Exquisite torment’—poor Angus was right. If this was what he felt about her, she had indeed been giving him stones for bread.

While peeling her second orange, she was called to the telephone; and she hurried out, her nerves in a flutter—suddenly remembering that message which she had never sent. Of course he would be hurt and angry; and she could not possibly explain that in a few hours her whole inner world had been turned upside-down.

But the unseen who greeted her was not Angus.

“That Miss Challoner?” he asked.

“Yes—what is it?”

“Major Monteith regrets he can’t come round this evening in time for dinner.”

Her heart said: “Thank goodness”; but she heard her voice saying all the correct things. Then she flew back to her orange, cheered by the prospect of a whole free day.

She returned to an empty room—though it still contained Aunt Thea, a pair of lovers and three lively dogs. Lance and Uncle Vinx had gone off to their morning’s work. She would not see the dear disturbing person again till tiffin time—nearly four hours away: hours empty of the desire to be doing that was the measure of their worth. Normally she would spend half the morning practising in her own room; but today she felt half afraid of music and its effect on her emotions. A letter to Anne—or Vanessa? Impossible, till the unauthorised Eve had sufficiently calmed down to be ignored.

And this afternoon, if Lance rushed off to polo—emptiness again till dinner-time. The prospect alarmed her. The tiresome old D.C. and his new Assistant-Commissioner were giving a bachelor tennis party, which she was supposed to attend. But she did not feel like enduring that infliction.

And abruptly, with a shock of pleasure, she saw what was staring her in the face, her chance of getting to the city—the last that might come her way—actually flung at her, while she was looking blankly in another direction. That was life’s playful fashion of fulfilling one’s desires. Obstructive at every turn while you plotted and planned; the moment you ceased from striving, the desired thing dropped from the sky at your feet. And she would not let it slip through her fingers this time. Action was the very tonic she needed to quiet her inner turmoil. She had never felt more thoroughly in the mood to break loose, more reckless of the issue. Of course, if Angus found out there would be ‘a hell of a row.’ But that risk also she was ready to run. If she had to break with him, it would be less difficult, for both, were it done more in anger than in sorrow, in hot blood rather than in cold.

Conviction grew upon her that her bold, bad plan would come off this time. And when Lance, at tiffin, innocently announced his afternoon’s programme, she knew——

Chapter Eleven

One is flung up out of life—one is held; and then—down, down, bright, broken, and tossed back, part of the ebb and flow. — Katherine Mansfield

The comparative cool of late afternoon found Eve threading her way at a gentle trot through the aimless traffic of Peshawar City, praying that her luck might hold throughout this one adventurous afternoon.

Gulab, keeping closer than usual to his pony’s tail, had not concealed his nervous reluctance when he discovered that their destination was the city. Like many Hindus, he had a holy horror of Pathans; and to-day there was no Captain Sahib, not even an orderly. The bold and tireless Miss Sahib, devoid of fear, had silenced his mild protests; but her boldness did not ease his qualms.

The Miss Sahib, had he known it, was far from devoid of fear as she trotted ahead of him through the now familiar Street of the Story Tellers—hot and dusty; terrified, but triumphant.

Here she actually was, in Peshawar City, unattended by the inevitable Sahib; forgetful of its thousand and one sins, intent on its thousand and one living odds and ends. As she slackened her pace to watch a performing monkey, in red silk petticoat and rakish yellow cap, a camel swung by—the dromedary Border camel, with a rough mane and a necklace of bells that tinkled at every step. On a saddle wedged between the humps sat a tribesman in gala coat and baggy trousers, viciously jerking the string that served as bridle. Shahzada sniffed and edged away; but Eve reasoned with him, telling him how lucky he was not to be such an ugly gurgling brute; luckier still not to be one of the little grey donkeys that a small boy, armed with a long stick, was whacking in a callous mechanical fashion. The way these people treated animals set all her bristles on end.

She had reproved Gulab, because nervousness is the most infectious of mental states; and, in spite of all the nice safe people, it was a trifle daunting to see brown faces everywhere, brown eyes glancing at her in frank curiosity, or with a flash of bold masculine interest, if their owners happened to be Pathans. They all seemed in high good humour, laughing and shouting coarse jests at one another. The whole street wore a gayer aspect than usual; boys carrying big kites—green and blood-red and flaming yellow; more women abroad; those of the better class in bhurkas, those of ‘no class’ challenging the men with laughing eyes and betel-stained lips.

“Why all these gay clothes?” she asked Gulab, who happened to be at her stirrup.

“Mussulman ke méla,¹³ Miss Sahib,” he told her, which meant there was a fair on, so they were all in holiday mood. Fascinating to see the city in its coat of many colours. Decidedly her luck was in.

Swerving to the right, she eased her pace on the upward slope, where the Gaur Kutri towered, awaiting her royal pleasure.

At the archway she dismounted, and told Gula that he must wait there with the pony while she went up to the top.

His dismay at once annoyed and distressed her. They were like children, these people. One could not reason with their unreasoning fears. Too actively she remembered her own, that not even Daddy could argue away. So, in spite of impatience, she was gentle with Gulab.

“Not stopping long, Miss Sahib,” he pleaded. “Too many badmashis in this city.”

Vainly she tried to reassure him. He would see a potential badmash in every harmless passer-by.

It was a creepy sensation, climbing those dark twisted stairs alone; but when at last she emerged into full sunlight on the summit, foolish fears were dissolved in the glow of achievement.

Seven years since she had stood upon these stones, had looked down upon that wilderness of roof-tops, that painted map of roads and villages and cornfields, unrolling southward to the Punjab, northward to Jamrud and the Khyber Pass, where the hills rose abruptly from the Great Plain of Northern India.

Already they had their withdrawn aspect of early evening. As they had looked then, so they looked now. It was almost the same season. The same crooning and whirring of pigeons; the gleam of their wings, in turning, like flaked mother-of-pearl against the storm-washed blue. The same eternal clang-clanging from the Street of the Coppersmiths, and the ceaseless clamour of crows. But for her changed self, it might have been only half an hour ago instead of seven years.

And there, not far below her, was the very roof-top where a woman, crooning to her zither, had led to Daddy’s first suggestion that she should learn the violin from Mrs. Vane. To-day no soft twanging of strings. The sounds nearest her—shrilling above the confused murmur of the streets—were women’s unmusical voices and laughter. No doubt they were the same women, living their cooped-up lives year after year, while she had been seeing and learning endless things, wandering over half the earth. There is a strangeness, always, in that sense of other lives going on and on, round and round, when the brief contact is over, and in the world of one’s own mind they have virtually ceased to exist.

They seemed happy enough, those cooped-up women—votaries of religion and sex, not knowing what they missed, undisturbed by the two-edged gift of imagination. To-day they wore bright saris and many glass bangles. They were tossing yellow flower balls and eating the sticky curly sweets that Eve used to beg from the ayah. A plump manikin, in a tinsel vest and coral beads, was tottering between the girl-mother and an older woman, who shook her brown arms to set the bangles clinking and make the godling laugh. A boy of ten or twelve, not heeding them, was at odds with an immense green and yellow kite that refused to fly.

Everywhere now, from roof and street, kites of many colours and shapes were wavering upward like flowers on long delicate stalks. Bright flecks of colour, green and blue and fiery yellow, they swayed and dipped, or sailed aloft. Symbols of her captive spirit, they seemed to Eve; soaring, and straining into the blue—yet held fast to earth, to the demands of earth.

And as the actual scene beguiled her eyes, the remembered scene stole into her heart. She was sitting now on the sun-warmed parapet, on the very slab of stone where Daddy had sat smoking while she leaned over and watched the women, her body resting against his knee; Larry close to him always, nose on paws.

She was living over again that blissful hour, snatched from the dreary, half-packed bungalow: recalling every look, every word. Her childish delight in sharing his thought: “It is funny—how we think the same.” And his smiling answer: “It’s very funny my daughter.” His unexpected suggestion that she should learn the violin up in Kashmir; the cry from her heart “I am having luck in India—aren’t I?”

And in less than four months—he was gone.

Tears started under her closed lids as she leaned her head back against a corner of masonry—her spirit drowned in the flooding onslaught of the past, her mind still hovering in the present, with the mysterious multiple awareness that comes only to the imaginative at heightened moments. There was still comfort in the warm sun on her eyelids, while inwardly she was intent on the vision of her father sitting on the battlement—tired and a little sad; thinking—of what?

By slow and thrilling degrees her awareness of him intensified. She could not only see him, she could feel him livingly there, could surely touch him—if she ventured? But she dared not, by the motion of a finger, break the spell of her tranced stillness. Almost she seemed out of her body, with him in the same element, intimately near him, untroubled by need of speech or touch. For that brief while she—who was so painfully not sure about the big things—felt no shadow of doubt that he was there with her, that he knew . . .

A wild scream of pain startled her out of her waking vision.

Clutching the warm stones, she looked down and round, shaken with nameless fear. The scream had sounded scarcely human; but then—her mind was astray. Some hideous deed, no doubt, in one of those dark houses, where men, unhindered by law, had leave to kill or torture their own. Down there, on the walled-in roof-top, the women still laughed, unheeding; the tinsel baby still wavered to and fro; the boy had persuaded his green and yellow kite to flutter a yard or so above his head.

If hideous things happened—they happened. Who cared? Bodies were tortured; hearts flared up, like her own, to no purpose, and life flowed on over the ruins. A thousand years were as yesterday; yet how excruciatingly it all. mattered while it lasted—to herself and poor Angus, to the tinsel baby’s mother to the tortured woman in the dark house.

But no good came of thinking along those lines. She was here to concentrate all her faculties on immediate impressions of sound and colour; to re-create them as music; capture; in a magical net of her own weaving, ‘a moment’s life of things that live.’

Could one ever cease to wonder at the mysterious inner processes of art? The first nebulous impressions, only a hint of their lurking significance; then, emerging from mere coloured confusion, the austere beauty of line and form. Anne held very strong opinions on that head. To lose the austerity of line and form was to sacrifice significance to a welter of sensation; Against that modern failing she had striven to fortify Eve; against the increasing fusion of colour and sound; all the arts merging together, seeking some sort of ‘mystical synthetic sense’ that would rob each art of its individual dignity and repose. As the modern mind was in flux, so modern art was in flux; too often an intoxicating brew of sense and spirit, undisciplined by the masculine Greek insistence on form.

But Eve’s immediate concern was precisely with that welter of impression and sensation—the chaos that must precede the birth of a dancing star. Out of all that her ears heard and her eyes beheld real music would be born; orchestral music, beautiful yet barbaric; the crowds and colour, the restless spirit of wayward, savage Peshawar, expressed in terms of violins and ’cellos, trumpets and drums. Already she was hearing it in her brain——

If she could but firmly grasp the general idea and jot down the main themes, Vanessa would help her with detailed parts of all the thrilling instruments, each contributing its individual voice to that living wonder an orchestra. She was missing orchestral music badly in India; the sense of exultant liberation, of launching out upon a sea of sound, controlled by forces outside itself even in its semblance of wildest confusion. Today, for the first time, she was hearing it in her head, weaving patterns of music, as those soaring kites wove patterns of colour on the sky——

The difficulty was to keep hold of it all till she got safe home and could transmit fragments of it to paper.

It was the thought of getting home that recalled her sharply to the fact that the sun was lower in the heavens than he ought to be if she were to reach the gate into cantonments before it was closed for the night. Time had slipped away unnoticed while she had been lifted out of her everyday self on the wings of memory, vision, inspiration; and poor Gulab waiting down there, probably frightened out of his life.

Hurriedly she sped down those twisting stairs; no creeps now; only the normal fear of not getting back in time. Stumbling and breathless, she reached the archway. No sign of Shahzada. And there sat Gulab crumpled up, moaning and hugging his head, a bright patch of blood on the end of his puggree.

“Oh, poor Gulab!” she cried in an anguish of fear.

“What happened? Where’s the pony?”

At that, he began ostentatiously dabbing a cut on his forehead in a manner that told her he was not badly hurt. All her concern was for Shahzada.

“There came two badmashis. Hazúr—they have taken the pony.”

The words jerked her heart. “Stolen him? Why did you let them?”

“Protector of the Poor, they were devils. What could this slave do? The pony tried to kick when they snatched his rein. Me they knocked down, cutting my forehead, as your Honour sees. Then they hurt the pony that he might go quietly—

At that Eve heard again the lacerating scream, not quite human. “Do—do horses scream?” she asked in a shaken voice.

“Only if much hurt, Miss Sahib. This slave warned the Presence——”

But Eve was not listening. She was realising, raging helplessly. It was all her own fault. She ought not to have trusted her treasure to this poor-spirited creature, alone in a city of Pathans, who had a mania for horseflesh. And Shahzada was a pony of price. Every one who mattered would have to know, now. Angus would be furious; Lance would never really forgive her or trust her again. The thought hurt like a knife jabbed at a fresh wound.

“We must find a policeman. We must give a description and send word to the Police thana,” she said rapidly; rage and distress over her pony blinding her to her own precarious position—alone and on foot in an Indian city full of young Mohammedans in daring holiday mood; and she with no idea how to set about finding a tonga.

As they hurried down from the archway to the main street she began to see it all—too vividly. But even so, it was Shahzada who mattered most. In the Street of the Story Tellers she was bound to find a policeman, who could spread the news, of her loss, the offer of a reward. Time was of the first importance; and dismay sharpened to distraction as she looked hither and thither—in vain.

She was arrested by Gulab at her elbow saying eagerly: “See, Hazúr, there sits a Sahib.”

It was almost as if he had said, “There sits an angel from heaven.” A Sahib involved confession and amazement—possible anger. But he spelled safety; and she was a good deal more frightened than she had been willing to admit.

There across the street, between the passers-by, she saw the white helmet, the back and shoulders of an Englishman sitting on a Windsor chair, just inside one of the open shops, bargaining with a fur-dealer who knelt on a rug before him, extolling his wares.

Instantly she recognised Angus—the Sahib she least desired to encounter—choosing the fur to which she had now no right. To be scolded, in her acute state of misery, would be the last straw: but his car would carry her safely home. And if anyone could rescue Shahzada, it would be he—the head of all the yellow-trousered policemen in Peshawar.

Pausing to let a bullock-cart joggle by, she caught sight of him again—and was checked by something unusual in his manner, in his whole aspect.

He was leaning forward, gesticulating in a vague angry fashion; and there beside him, bending down, speaking urgently, was the tall figure of his servant, Afzul Khan, whom she had not noticed before.

In a fury of shame and disgust, she saw what was amiss. Angus was drunk—degradingly drunk, as she had never yet seen him. He—a gentleman and a British official—was openly disgracing himself and her and that dear distant England they all stood for out here. Afzul Khan, a Mohammedan, must be despising him. The bearded, truculent dealer was making significant grimaces at the boy who had just brought more beautiful skins from the inner shop. Loiterers stared in passing, and a couple of spectacled students were obviously making ribald jokes at his expense. That made her so angry that for a few seconds she forgot her lost Shahzada, her own plight. Then, with a sinking sensation it came over her—she was not saved. Nothing would induce her to go near him in that degraded condition. She could just catch his voice raised in anger—thick and unnatural. It extinguished even the pale flame of pity. She simply hated him. And Gulab, at her side, was murmuring something she did not trouble to understand.

As she turned with an imperative “Chup-raho,”¹⁴: Afzul Khan stood up and looked across the street. He had seen her—recognised her. He would tell Angus—and she couldn’t bear it.

He did nothing of the kind. He came straight over to her, leaving Angus in wrathful argument with the dealer. And she promptly decided not to account for herself. These Indian servants had a wonderful knack of taking things for granted—perhaps because there was so much in the nature of Sahibs they could never understand. She would tell him of her loss, give orders about the Police thāna and the reward. Ignoring the presence of Angus, she would demand a tonga.

But it was he who spoke first. “Your Honour is alone?”

His glance seemed to seek the pony; and when she hurriedly told him all, he exclaimed in dismay:

“Wah! Wah! No time to lose. On account of the méla there be many thieves from the Khyber who will escape with their loot at sundown. And, by an ill chance, the Sahib, who could do all, is stricken with the sun-fever that makes pagal” (She knew he meant delirious, counting on her ignorance to any extent.) “He is talking without sense to that rascally fur-dealer, who thinks to defraud him. I came to the city for the méla; so by God’s mercy I saw him—and understood——”

Eve also understood, as the faithful one clearly did not intend her to do.

“I must take my Sahib home to bed,” he was saying. “I will send word to your Honour in the morning. I will also make known about the pony.” (He hailed a passing policeman.) “But—the Presence——?

The Presence demanded a tonga, adding briskly, “It late. I must return without waiting for the Sahib——”

By that he saw that she knew; but they loyally kept up the pretence of illness—even when Angus, shouting to Afzul Khan, saw the girl, and staggered so clumsily to his feet that he overturned the chair. That gave fresh food for unseemly mirth; but he merely shouted again, something angry and incoherent, as Eve hurried away in the opposite direction, followed by a completely bemused Gulab. And Afzul Khan, walking by her, continued to enlarge on the very bad fever that often troubled the Sahib.

Thank Heaven, here was a tonga; and as it clattered up they almost ran into a bulky, bearded Mohammedan, who hailed Eve as “Chull’nor Miss Sahib!”

Startled and amazed, she stared straight into the face of Lance’s very special friend, Yusuf Ali. Here was one who could more surely save Shahzada than any fuddled Superintendent of Police.

With shy friendliness she returned his greeting; and while the tonga driver awaited her pleasure, she told him of the theft, of the reward she was prepared to pay—even if it meant going without a new frock or two.

At mention of that, he laughed in his bluff manner, “Yusuf Ali takes no reward for service to a friend. Through me Desmond Sahib found that pony, who is worth many rupees. Give him word that the Baluch will not pass through any gate of the city to-night. Yusuf Ali will catch the horse-stealers.”

As Eve thanked him and sprang into the tonga, she was suddenly enlightened—by his message, by his respectful manner. Of course he took it for granted that both girl and pony were the property of Desmond Sahib. All the better luck for Shahzada’s chances. For herself it was punishment enough that, on arrival, she must go straight to Uncle Vinx—and confess everything.

As for Angus, he would surely not dream of coming to dine at Government House—even if he could pull himself together in time. She wished it were possible not to see him or speak to him again; but no letter would convince him of his final rejection; nor would any look of her adored father soften her now. If he could face her to-morrow, after all that, she would have to tell him plainly that nothing would induce her to marry him.

And what of the new-born music that she was to hold so carefully in her head? How much of it would come back to her—when her mind was free to try and recapture it again?

Chapter Twelve

What of the fingers that grope
When the blindness of sorrow stings?
What of the heart empty of hope
And the sky empty of wings?
— Gerald Gould

If Eve had suffered a shock at sight of Angus Monteith, the counter-shock she had unwittingly administered was the sharper of the two. To see her, whom he loved with all the mingled violence and tenacity of his nature, standing there—unmounted, yet in riding gear—alone in Peshawar City, had so startled and angered him that almost at once the fog lifted from his brain. But not so soon could he regain his lost control of speech and limbs.

Mentally, he had run to her and demanded with contained fury what the devil she was doing there alone? Actually, he shouted something incoherent and stumbled a few steps forward; felt the ground rise under his feet, made a grab at the vanished chair, and clutched instead the hard muscles of a human arm. It was Afzul Khan, who had returned, while Eve coolly disowned him.

Glad of the sustaining arm, he was aware of stumbling back to the car, followed by the fur-dealer, aware of Afzul Khan in heated argument with the robber: then—the relief of subsiding into a corner of his car, the renewed urgent desire to know what craziness Eve had been committing now.

The muttered words, “Miss Sahib” and “ghora,”¹⁵ sufficed for the intelligent Afzul, who related the little he knew; adding for the benefit of the chauffeur “I told the Miss your Honour was taken ill with sun-fever; but she was in great haste, desiring a tonga. Word has been sent about the pony to the Police thāna.”

Monteith nodded, and bade the man get in beside the chauffeur. Then, as the purring began, he collapsed sideways against the leather padding and closed his eyes. Since he was officially ill, no harm if he looked like it. Loyal beggar, Afzul Khan. But—would Eve swallow the tale of sun-fever, in face of the dam-fool exhibition he had made of himself? His head felt stupefied again. Useless trying to think clearly till he got home and could pull himself together.

At last—the bungalow, the privacy of his own room; and he lying fiat on his back, in shirt and trousers, his hair damp from the cold sponge administered by that faithful scoundrel, who understood this particular illness too well.

Monteith continued to lie there, gazing blankly at the network of cracks in the plaster overhead, trying to force his thoughts along coherent lines, to ignore the strange sensation as if some part of him had slipped away from the helpless husk on the bed. It stirred that secret fear of the two men inside him; amounted almost to a dissociation of personality; his degraded self dissolving under the glare of his own inner eye. If one could only stop the wheels going round and round in one’s brain; stop seeing that young erect figure alone in a street full of sex-ridden Asiatics; feeling over and over the fierce need to get at her, to scold her furiously and catch her in his arms, heedless of the crowd. And she—independent little devil—turning her back on him, though she must have heard him shout: not thinking of him; crazed about her damned pony. Border thieves were slippery fish to catch——

The word thieves set his official brain working automatically. What was being done about it? No time to lose. She might forgive him if he rescued the pony—though she didn’t deserve it, running wild on her own, in that city of all others.

Confound his buzzing brain! The sun must have touched him up a bit. He ought not to have let himself go last night. But he could dispel the fog by an effort of will. He had succeeded more than once when an urgent summons came at an awkward moment.

Lying with fingers interlocked behind his head, he pressed the base of his palms savagely against his temples, concentrating every ounce of his normal willpower on the effort to think clear, see clear.

And surprisingly soon—as if by some physical change—he mastered his senses, his thoughts; took charge of himself again: a welcome sensation after hours of ignominious uncertainty as to what he might say or do next. His swift success amazed him. If one could only rely always on that reserve force of will-power . . .?

But as his brain cleared, his spirit was darkened by the familiar wave of depression, that so often accompanied a return to the normal. Even conquest was shadowed by the curse of his strongly marked duality; the gentleman in him—the right-minded man he had always been, up to a point—turning contemptuously on the ‘whiskified objectionable,’ given over to the evil thing that was slowly destroying him soul and body. None could help him, since he could not help himself. Strive as he might, the lurking beast in his blood would have him in the end.

And he—a man unfit to carry on the race—was clinging, with his weakness rather than his strength, to that plucky girl: seeking, at her expense, to regain his own lost youth. If his vaunted will-power were worth anything, let him conquer that consuming desire—and set her free. A cleansing wave of magnanimity drowned the protest of his heart and senses. He would go round to-morrow afternoon as arranged; confess his bitter sense of shame, of unworthiness; and release her from the promise she had generously given him without knowledge of all it might involve. Then—he would go straight to the Devil, with all his imperfections on his head.

To-morrow? Good God! He was supposed to be dining there to-night. Impossible—with sun-fever on him. Blessed be Afzul Khan! A verbal message must suffice; and it must be sent ek dum; also an order to his inspector about the pony.

He sprang up now, his tired body spurred by the need for action; soused his head in cold water and dried it vigorously. After that he felt better. When he had brushed his damp hair and adjusted a clean soft collar, he felt better still, thoroughly annoyed at missing those few hours with Eve and a rattling good dinner, forby. He wanted something more than a scratch meal after his strenuous day.

As for tamely relinquishing Eve, the desire of his heart and his senses—a fool’s idea. That cleansing wave of magnanimity retreated as swiftly as it came. Angus Monteith was his sane cynical self again. Give up the one thing that made life worth living, the battle against his baser self worth fighting? Not he.

Concentrate on the pony and win her forgiveness that way—she that had denied him even a definite date to lift him through the hot weather. These girls—little they understood . . . .

With his racking head, he was decidedly unfit for a social evening. Afzul Khan must streak round with that message.

Entering his sitting-room in shirt and trousers, he shouted for the bearer—who appeared with the announcement that Desmond Sahib was without, desiring to see the Presence.

The Presence swore under his breath. “Fool! Didn’t you tell him I was ill!”

“Hazúr, I said the Sahib had fever; but he answered it was only a matter of a few minutes; and he must see the Sahib himself.”

Monteith, puzzled and angry, consigned the officious youngster to the devil. Desmond could have no possible concern with him, unless——? Anything happened to Eve? Those tonga-drivers were reckless brutes.

“Salaam dō,” he said, his temper not improved by that dash of anxiety. Nor was he mollified by young Desmond’s brisk, “Good evening, Major. Hope I’m not disturbing you?”

To a man in his state, the boy’s whole appearance in smart polo kit—youth, health and good looks—was mortifying in the extreme: and the sensation affected his manner more obviously than he realised.

“I’ve had a punishing day. Just back from the city and I’ve got fever on me,” he said gruffly, “but of course if it’s important—anything gone wrong?”

The note of anxiety puzzled Desmond. “Not that I know of.”

“Aren’t you from Government House?”

“No. I’m from Lynch. Some important information to hand about that gang you’re after.”

Monteith stared, not all at once taking it in. Then he raged blindly against Lynch, against young Desmond and the whole situation.

“Damn you! What the hell have you got to do with that gang?”

Directly the words were out he knew they were unpardonable. But the knowledge only made him angrier with himself and the boy, who flung him a straight look and stiffened visibly.

“Nothing whatever. I only came to oblige Lynch as he thought you’d be glad to know at once. “But if that’s how you take it, I’ll telephone that he can let you have the information in the morning—through the proper channel.”

“No—you won’t!” Monteith deliberately forced a lighter tone. He had no wish to annoy Lynch, or to snub this favoured boy, who might be taking stock of him—unofficially. “I’ve got a racking head, and I thought I was through with work for to-day. But if you’ve anything important to say, for God’s sake come off your perch and say it. I should have thought to-night——”

“To-night——?”

“Didn’t you know I was dining?”

“No, I didn’t,” Desmond answered with an odd look. “I haven’t seen Eve since lunch.”

And suddenly it struck Monteith that he had been unwise to mention the city. Eve would never give him away; and perhaps he had done it himself.

“As it happens, I’m not fit enough to go,” he said casually. “The sun’s touched me up. I’ve got a temperature—and I’m off to bed. I was just going to send my bearer round. Perhaps you’d be good enough to let them know—also to give me that message from Lynch. I’m a sick man—or I wouldn’t have let fly.”

“That’s all right, Major,” Desmond acknowledged the tacit apology.

“Well then—won’t you take a seat? Have a cocktail?”

“No, thanks. I must be getting along.” The boy’s manner, though pleasant, was formal. Not so good-tempered as he looked. What would he go saying to his Chief?

He was saying things now that required official attention. Lynch’s underlings were a wide-awake lot; and while listening, Monteith made rapid notes. He was glad to have the information so promptly, grateful to the boy for bringing it, and the more vexed with himself for gratuitously losing his temper at the start.

“Thanks very much. That’s worth knowing,” was the best he could achieve, when all was said. “Make my excuses, please, to Lady Leigh. Tell Eve she needn’t worry. I’ll send word to-morrow. Be round in the afternoon anyhow——Good night.”.

“Good night, Major.”

And the boy went out—still pleasant, but still confoundedly formal—with that lift of his head, as if he owned, or intended to own, half the earth. A damned fine boy. The right sort—for Eve. That too clear recognition partially accounted, perhaps, for his flash of temper.

Lord! How good it would feel to be twenty-five again, with a clean defaulter sheet; to be only six years ahead of the dear girl, with God’s leave to go in and win her as she should be won. The fierce familiar quarrel with life awoke in him afresh: even the finest flower of emotion so fatally tainted with self; so inexorable the transit from desire to decay; the chastisement so pitiless for a side-slip here and there. Well, he would try his luck again to-morrow—with or without God’s leave; and doubtless the unsleeping Devil would be beforehand with him to queer the pitch. Eve would have to tell the Chief her story—whatever madness it was that took her to the city alone: and suppose, by some evil chance, the truth transpired about his touch of the sun? A personal reprimand from that quarter would fairly finish him. The thought produced a sinking sensation in his diaphragm: and too well he knew how swiftly that could be dispelled.

Rising, he went over to the locked cupboard and stood before it—motionless; two unequal forces pulling him this way and that. A draught of neat whisky; fire coursing through his veins—half pleasure, half self-scorn—would hearten him for his solitary evening. But what of to-morrow—if he were to bluff it out with Eve? Always the ghost of to-morrow at one’s elbow, chilling the passionate impulse of to-day. And whether he refrained or did not refrain—the Devil would have the last word.

To-night, for some reason, the Devil was routed; and the man, uncheered by his barren victory, went over to the sideboard for the cocktail shaker. No harm in that childish tipple. Then he shouted for ice, and ordered dinner—the best that Nasra Khan could improvise at an hour’s notice.

He beguiled his lonely meal with visions of a tomorrow that should make noble amends for a day of sweating over forms and returns, a racking head, and that final dose of ignominy.

He would leave her uncertain for most of the morning, trade on the softening effect of a little natural anxiety. Bad luck, that zealous boy butting in just when he looked so vexatiously normal. At least his manner hadn’t been normal. He felt ashamed of it now—but if it served as a blind, what matter? And if he could get away with the sun fever fiction, all would be simple enough. If she had her doubts about that, he would need every ounce of skill and persuasive power at his command.

For once in his life he refused to heed the deadly whisper of pessimism. He firmly intended to marry Eve, snatch a few years of distraction and bliss with her, even if the lurking beast in his blood must have him in the end.

Chapter Thirteen

We all have our own private Cathedrals, where we worship strange gods.
— Christopher Moreley

Sir Vincent Leigh, urged by his wife, had squandered an hour at the Deputy Commissioner’s tennis party. Thence he had basely fled, leaving Thea to pursue tennis balls, and had driven out to the polo ground, where Lance was distinguishing himself, and where he had hoped to find Eve, who had shirked the party. Seeing no sign of her he had returned early from the polo, and had settled down in his study for the one quiet hour that he enjoyed more than any other in the day. A born contemplative, he knew himself fortunate in having married a woman who—for all her natural gift of companionship—understood and respected his frequent desire to be alone.

He was browsing, not for the first time, on Lord Ronaldshay’s Heart of Aryavata—the kind of book he still hoped to write himself on the soul of this Northern India he had learnt to know up to a point, as she can only be known by those few and rare Englishmen who are innately free from the superiority complex—a state of mind unknown to Vincent Leigh. Indians had never exasperated him, as they constantly exasperated the efficient energetic British official, who believed in the Job Well Done more definitely than he believed in God. It was partly climate, partly creed, their laziness and fecklessness; their dread of responsibility. And how often did it occur to his own tireless countrymen, possessed by a ‘demon of doing’ that they themselves were living riddles to seekers after detachment, who could genuinely assert, “There are no evils except the things that make us say I am.” But then few, if any, Englishmen had indulged in the rash, unforgettable experiment of his own younger days—those strange weeks of pilgrimage, travelling as an Indian among Indians, when he had been tempted, almost, to give up the unequal struggle of the born recluse against all that made soldiering peculiarly difficult for him, and toughened the fibre of his being. Not for one moment had he ever regretted the stronger pull of his love for Thea Desmond; but the spiritual call and the inner response had left their impress on the secret Vincent—the hidden self, who lives in the most unlikely of us, and colours our views of the different being we seem to the world. That hidden self stirred in Vincent whenever he read books that opened windows on to the vague and spacious vistas of Hindu thought.

He was recalled by the sound of Eve’s voice at the door.

“Uncle Vinx,”—she opened it gingerly—“will I be a dismal nuisance—in your sacred hour?”

He promptly closed his book.

“A very welcome nuisance! Come along.”

She came—in her greenish drill riding habit; no hat, her hair clinging to her temples, the natural wave very marked, her expressive face rather white and strained.

“To what do I owe the pleasure——?” he asked, indicating the padded arm of his chair.

But she remained facing him, very slim and erect, a half-smile in her eyes.

“I’m afraid it’s not a pleasure—it’s a confession. I’ve committed an unforgivable sin. But unless you forgive me in advance, I’ll never manage to tell it.”

He gazed at her, startled and mystified. “Forgive the unforgivable? Sounds rather Irish! Are you trying to make my flesh creep?”

“No, I’m trying to soften your heart, because—because I’ve been riding alone in the city. I’ve been to the top of the Gaur Kutri There!”

“Eve! What possessed you?”

Anger flared for a moment. The madness of it; the flouting of rules not unknown to her.

“Very special things possessed me, or I wouldn’t have dared. I’ll try and tell you—if you aren’t too angry?”

“I am angry,” he said in a grave tone; his anger tempered, as always, by a too clear vision of the sinner’s point of view. “I should be angrier—if you hadn’t such a disarming way with you. I suppose you realise that you’ve committed a flagrant breach of regulations?”

“Yes, I realise all that,” she meekly admitted, a faint gleam in her eye. “But please don’t roll polysyllables over me,’ even if I deserve them!” She smiled—a wavering smile. “It isn’t anything to joke about, really. I’m only doing it in self-defence.”

“So I see.” He reached out and secured one of her hands, drawing her nearer. “Thank God you’re safe back again—unmolested.”

“Yes—but Shahzada isn’t.”

“My dear child! How’s that?”

“They stole him, while I was up on the tower. But I—I found a tonga. And I met that Yusuf Ali man. I told him——”

“What amazing luck! If he’s after the thieves, there’s just a chance. But we ought to let Monteith know. I’m afraid he’ll be very angry.”

“Yes—he will,” she agreed, in an odd resigned voice. “But Uncle Vinx—as the police know, and Yusuf Ali, is there any need to worry Angus—just now? I can tell him afterwards.”

Her request, and her manner of making it, so puzzled Sir Vincent that, rightly or wrongly, he gave in. Monteith’s anger would not be tempered with understanding, but sharpened by too clear knowledge of the dangers she had blindly courted.

“Well,” he said, “if they know at the thāna, that’s all right. I pin my faith on Yusuf Ali. Now sit down here and tell me, if you will, what possessed you—— I’m not angry any more. You’ve had a cruel shock. And I’m deeply concerned.”

He guessed at some trouble besides the loss of her pony; and who could feel angry, for long, with anything so gallant and honest, so terribly sensitive? Not Vincent Leigh.

Encouraged by his tone, she subsided on the arm of his chair. Her shy glance made him feel as if a bird had hopped on to his hand and must not be startled away.

“I could only tell it all—to a very special person,” she said, with no suspicion of flattery; and leaning lightly against his shoulder, she related in a low, impersonal voice the story of the tower, from its beginning—seven years ago.

“And ever since I saw it that morning, it’s kept haunting me, drawing me. There was I—and there was IT: the needle and the magnet. I knew I ought not; but I knew I must. And when the chance was flung at me this morning, I’m afraid I simply exulted. Of course it’s wicked yielding to temptation; but sometimes it can be a very lovely feeling—when your conscience is asleep or on a journey.”

“Yes it can,” he agreed, on a note of a conviction for which none of his family would have given him credit. “And you weren’t afraid—climbing those stairs alone?”

“I was horribly afraid. But I felt—if only I could reach the top, no matter what happened afterwards, I’d have had that. I didn’t think of Shahzada and poor Gulab. I’ll have to give him a big baksheesh to make up for his fright and his cut. Oh I have been a sinner all round. And if I’ve lost Shahzada . . .?”

She could say no more, but to his surprise and pleasure she, softly kissed his forehead. Then she stood up, gently withdrawing her hand from his.

“You’ve been much too kind to the sinner. Anyone else would have sworn at me.”

“You’ve had your punishment,” he said, in no doubt as to the identity of ‘anyone else.’

“Yes—I have.” Her tone confirmed his lurking suspicion of some deeper trouble, probably connected with Monteith; but he could do no other than deplore the man and respect her reticence.

“I can’t stop thinking of Shahzada. Those brutes hurt him—and it was all my fault——”

Tears threatened, but she kept her dignity intact.

“Don’t let your mind dwell on that,” he urged. “If any message comes through, I’ll send word to you at once.”

“Oh, you are kind,” she breathed—and was gone.

Sir Vincent Leigh, left alone again, did not trouble to pick up his book. No use attempting to read while Eve haunted his brain—her craziness and her shy confession; the sensitive, faintly satirical mouth; the under-current of sadness, of questioning, that contrasted so sharply with her zest for living—like a shadow thrown by a strong light. He saw that fitful radiance of hers as a torch held high, in defiance of inner doubts that must not be allowed to cripple courage. Sir Vincent, also a prey to inner doubts, understood all that; but he entirely failed to understand how a creature of that quality had been snared by a man like Monteith. To him it seemed that her guardian angel slept. She was so young; and he himself too clearly remembered the pains and penalties of youth, that suffers as keenly as it enjoys, since its nerves hold unimpaired the full capacity for pain. People, who romanced (unwittingly) about the days of their youth, forgot, or refused to admit, the acute self-consciousness, the incessant disappointments, the exaggerated, secret fears. Personally, he knew himself, at fifty, a happier man than at two-and-twenty; less unsure of himself, less afraid of life; enriched by wider impersonal interests, and genuinely more concerned for the future of India than for the fate of Vincent Leigh. At the moment, perhaps, his deepest personal concern was for the fate of Eve Challoner—who had so swiftly contrived to twist herself round his heart.

“I say, Uncle Vinx, are you very busy meditating?”

Another intruder! The voice of Lance this time—followed by Lance himself, in no doubt at all as to his welcome.

Sir Vincent saw at a glance that here was another volcanic upheaval of youth. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “You’re looking rather fierce.”

“I’m feeling fierce. I’ve just had a brush with that fellow Monteith——”

“More respectfully alluded to as ‘Major Monteith’——”

“Well, my respect in that quarter’s gone fut. Lynch asked me to drop in with an urgent message about some dacoity business—thinking he’d be glad to have it ek dum. And he swore at me for my pains.”

“Do you no harm, once in a way!” Sir Vincent commented placably, seeing that Lance was more perturbed than the occasion seemed to warrant. “It was tactless of Lynch. Those two are not good friends—and the dog that’s nearest is apt to get the kicks. Like many clever men, Lynch isn’t officially-minded, and Monteith mightn’t like an important piece of information to be sent through you.”

“He didn’t,” Lance rapped out almost viciously. “For quite another reason.” He hesitated, and his glance told Vincent what was coming. “The fellow’d been drinking. I could smell raw whisky. It’s occurred to me before that he had a leaning that way. Of course, I wouldn’t say it to an outsider. But if you don’t know, you ought to now—and so ought Eve.”

Sir Vincent nodded. “I don’t know—but I’ve been afraid so,” he admitted cautiously.

“Well, it was obvious this evening, though he’d pulled himself together. Said his temperature was up. I was to tell Aunt Thea he couldn’t dine to-night. I was to tell Eve he’d got fever. Damned if I’ll tell her lies—for his convenience. So I came to tell you the truth, hoping you’d get me out of the message to her. Put it delicately——”

“The lie indirect?” Sir Vincent lifted one eyebrow. “You think I’m better at it?”

Lance shook his head impatiently—a familiar gesture.

“I’m still in a towering rage. The fellow said he’d been in the city. Nice for all of us if the Superintendent of Police frequents the city in that state.” (The words were like a flashlight turned on Eve’s hidden trouble. Had she actually seen him so?) “If the Major’s a chronic toper, she ought to be told.”

The desperate note in his voice moved Sir Vincent to say soothingly: “Yes—of course. But it’s no light charge to bring against a man, and I’ve no clear proof. If that sort of thing comes to my knowledge —officially, I should have to deal with Monteith himself. If it goes on, he’ll have to leave the Service. Meantime, we’re worried—naturally.”

“And can’t anyone lift a finger? It’s damnable——”

“Steady, Lance. Don’t go losing your head in that quarter.”

“I’m not losing my head. It’s enough to make any decent man feel sick and disgusted. Don’t you—? And surely Aunt Thea——?”

“My dear boy, of course I do. And as we’re speaking quite privately, I can tell you that Aunt Thea has written about it to Mrs. Vane. Beyond that we can do nothing. If a girl’s blindly in love with a man——”

“Is she? I can’t make out.”

“She’s given the strongest proof you’ll get—unless you ask her outright.”

“Damned if I will!”

Sir Vincent glanced at him uneasily. But he said nothing; and Lance went on, “Some one ought to tell her the ugly truth about all that. Give her a proper scare—before it’s too late.”

Sir Vincent sighed. “My own opinion to a T. But that sort of thing’s apt to do more harm than good. And I fancy it would take a good deal to scare Eve. She’s just been in here coolly telling me that she went riding alone in the city this afternoon—and spent an hour on the Gaur Kutri.”

That jerked Lance out of his concern. “The city? Good God, she’s the maddest girl! I gave it her straight the other time——”

“What other time?”

Lance threw up his head and laughed, more like himself again.

“Her little lark on the Jamrud road. A dead secret! But she won’t mind now——”

So he told the story of the Jamrud road to an astonished, yet half-approving Chief Commissioner, who capped it with the ill news about Shahzada.

It smote Lance almost as sharply as the loss had smitten Eve. In nothing was he more Irish than in his love of horses as individuals; and Shahzada had a special place in his heart. He raged afresh, and Sir Vincent perceived, not without a tinge of relief, that he was furiously angry with the sinner.

“She doesn’t deserve to own him. The crazy girl she is! I’d have taken her like a shot.”

“And cut out a polo match? I don’t think! Besides—she didn’t want to be taken. She had her reasons—not for publication. She’s deeply unhappy and remorseful over the loss——”

But Lance seemed to be making rapid calculations in his head.

“Look here,” he said abruptly, “I’m off. I can nip through the gates before they close. If you’ll give me a pass for getting back, old Yusuf will see me safe out of the city. I’d lay five to one he gets the pony; but I can’t rest till I know. Eve wouldn’t sleep a wink—with her bad conscience and all. Uncle Vinx, can I go?”

Sir Vincent smiled. “You evidently intend to!”

“Yes—I do. With any luck I can streak back by eight-thirty. Don’t let Aunt Thea worry about food. I’ll tumble into any course that’s happening.” He sprang up and held out his hand. “Let me have the pass—please. I’ll take the orderly if you wish.”

“I do wish.”

He pocketed the pass, and at the door he turned. “Don’t forget that ‘indirect lie’! What on earth will the Major say about the city?”

Sir Vincent sighed. “That’s poor Eve’s look-out. We shall neither of us be there to hear.”

Left alone again, he fell to wondering—not about Angus Monteith, but about Lance Desmond. No trouble, he hoped, in that direction. It would be disastrous—even if things were otherwise. The boy had neither the means nor the temperament for early marriage. He had the natural impatience of his swiftness, brain and body; the defects and qualities of a thoroughbred Arab, who may stumble at a walk, but at a gallop will be sure-footed, wise and bold. It would be cruelty to animals if Fate attempted riding Lance Desmond on the curb. Something in the quality of his valiant youth, sharpened the older man’s sense of danger lurking everywhere under the surface securities of life——

When at last Thea came to him, he told her the eventful tale of his quiet hour, skilfully allayed her annoyance with Eve, and bade her make things clear to the other two, that there might be no awkward comments at dinner. Poor Eve would be sufficiently on wires till Lance returned.

“He’s a perfect owl about those ponies,” Thea said, in the accents of severity; but being a Desmond herself, she understood. “If they don’t get Shahzada, he’ll be dead cuts with Eve! She must be very unhappy, poor child. But she really does ask for it.”

She appeared at dinner pale and repressed, obviously forcing herself to swallow food and make stray remarks.

Tony was cheerful and unobtrusively attentive. At such times he showed at their best the virtues of simple good breeding. Casual, pleasure-loving and unheroic, he was a gentleman all through; and Eve, of whom the same might be said, responded gallantly. But the strain showed in her face. It never once lit up till the door opened—just as the roast duck had been served—and Lance entered, looking cool and spruce in a white drill coat.

Her eyes were on his face as Sir Vincent looked up.

“Got him?”

“Got him!”

The announcement was for Eve, who smiled at him seraphically with unsteady lips. At that moment she looked almost beautiful. And Sir Vincent, unenlightened, thought: “She loves that pony better than any of us.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said, on an indrawn breath, “because of him. I don’t deserve it.”

“No—you don’t!” Lance agreed; but his smile as he sat down beside her made amends, and Sir Vincent patted her hand.

“I won’t have her bullied.’

“Bullied? She’s properly spoilt! She flings ponies about India, and Yusuf and I have to run round picking up the pieces!”

“For which you’ve been charmingly thanked. Are you going to let us hear how it was done?”

While Lance told his story—in which Yusuf Ali played a major part—Eve listened without eating a morsel. When it was over—when a hungry Lance was thoroughly appreciating his duck and green peas, his iced whisky and soda—she turned to Thea with her appealing smile.

“Please—may I go now? I don’t want any more dinner.”

“Very well; you shan’t be condemned to sit and watch us eat! Lance will probably want three helpings, to make up for missing soup, fish, entrée.”

“Out of sheer gratitude, she ought to sit and watch me eat them all,” Lance remarked without looking up: but she could not, even if she would, rise to that veiled intimation, which might be jest or earnest.

As the door closed behind her, the boy sat silent a moment, staring at it. Then he turned and began talking eagerly to Thea, who administered a second generous helping of duck before she, too, rose and went out.

Eve did not appear again.

Chapter Fourteen

Why did you waken me
To light—if thus, in dark, you have forsaken me?
— Humbert Wolfe

Not till she awoke next morning, refreshed in mind and body, did Eve confront the fact of Angus—and explanations. Of course he would be furious about the city. Equally of course, he owed her an abject apology—which she hardly expected to receive. But human beings were incalculable things; Angus peculiarly so. Would he even expect her to believe in that touch of the sun?

If only she could make an end by one decisive note. But to a certainty he would insist on seeing her again, though it would make the wrench harder for both. If he were pitiful and penitent, if he talked again of suicide, there would be the awful sense of pushing him over a precipice.

On her bedside table lay an attractive snapshot of him that she was using as a marker. It had caught, by chance, the very lines that recalled her father, and was cruelly reminding her, now, that never again would she see in the flesh that living likeness, never again feel the strange thrill, the warmth at her heart, as if he were actually there. It was almost like losing him over again. And apart from that, Angus would haunt her mind. She could not suddenly cease from feeling responsible for him. Even in these few weeks there had been some mysterious mingling of his personality with hers. What a tortured tangle it was—this business of living and loving! And her half-knowledge of the human dilemma was a stumbling-block rather than a help.

But this time she must act decisively—and there an end.

By her plate, at breakfast, lay two mail letters—a day late: one from Beryl, the other from Anne—the first that had come direct to Peshawar. That meant it would be an answer to her own difficult letter from Karachi; so it remained unopened till she could escape to her room.

It was a brief letter, concerned with nothing but Eve’s amazing news.

“My darling Child,

“Yours from Karachi has filled me with dismay. So—if you are really expecting congratulations from this quarter, you had better tear this up unread. Because I am going to write bluntly, try to make you realise the grave risk involved. What has come to you, dear one? Not love. That I assert, however roundly you deny it. When you fall in love, you will have no more doubt about it than about a volcano in eruption! And you marry without it at your peril. I write of what I know from deep and tragic experience; though I don’t assert that love alone can ensure happiness in marriage. The secret of dwelling together in unity is not so simple as that.

“But believe me, my darling, if you persist in this false relation (as I see it) you will only be compounding with life. Your giving will be no true giving with the full consent of your whole personality.

“Man is born to trouble—and woman still more so. Without it you will never rise to your full stature, as artist or human being. But I can’t let you invite it—unwarned—in the shape of an early and disastrous marriage.

“There! Even if it’s useless, I’ve said it. I’m desperately busy, but I must catch this mail. It distresses me that you’re not even getting away to Kashmir. But that’s not my business. > > “Eve, my child, you are not yet ready for marriage. Break with that man, if you haven’t done so already. I know this may be hard counsel; but if my letter gives you courage to make a clean cut, perhaps you will thank me for it afterwards.

“Write by return, darling, to your deeply loving

“Anne.”

With a young impulsive gesture Eve pressed the thin sheet of paper against her cheek, as she had so often pressed the hand that wrote all that. It was like Anne to have written that difficult outspoken letter at once, in spite of her desperate busyness; and she would feel rewarded when she knew the comfort it had been at a worse than uncomfortable moment.

Not a line from Angus, though he said he would send word. Refusing to think of him, she fled out to the stables, that she might hug Shahzada and hear the soft whinnying with which he sometimes greeted the sound of her voice.

Gulab salaamed profoundly over her generous baksheesh, and Shahzada, from his loose-box, intimated that he knew she was there. Hurrying in to welcome him, she found that he already had a visitor—Lance, of course. He had flung an arm round the pony’s neck, his fingers were caressing the velvet ears, and he was talking to Shahzada in confidential tones, while Bijli lay in a corner, obviously resigned to a long interview.

At sight of Eve his tail rapped softly, and Lance looked round without shifting his position.

“I wondered if you’d been,” he said. “The boy’s deserving a little extra notice this morning. Uncle Vinx gave me leave to run out and tell him so. But the ungrateful blighter didn’t whinny for me. That’s the way you’re spoilt.”

“I’m not spoilt.” She said it with emphasis to steady herself.

“Well, we do our best in that line!” he apologised with a wicked look. “Some don’t deteriorate so quickly as others.”

He politely stood away from the pony, who pawed the air and reached an inquiring nose towards Eve’s hand. With a low sound she came close to him, and laid her cheek against his satin-smooth neck, while he fumbled for lumps of sugar in her hand.

“I won’t ever—I won’t ever again,” she told him under her breath, achingly aware that Lance had moved a step towards the door.

“Duty calls,” he said. “You won’t dare to be riding him to-day?”

“No. We’re driving after tea.”

She said it as coolly as that, though she did not believe she would ever drive with Angus again.

“I’m off early in the two-seater, for Michni Fort,” he remarked, “as I told you on Sunday. But I’ll be back well before dinner.”

He passed a caressing hand over the pony’s quarters. Bijli sprang up. In a moment he would be gone——

Impulsively, she turned and held out her hand.

“Lance, I don’t know how to thank you properly. If I’d had to wait—not knowing, till this morning, I could hardly have slept a wink.”

“I knew that,” he said in an odd contented voice. “Same here. I had to make sure. I talk no end of rot, Eve. But I’m awfully glad—for you.” His fingers closed firmly on hers, and it was as if they closed upon her heart. “Perhaps to-night you’ll give us some music?”

“Yes—to-night I will.”

As he thanked her and went out, the sudden thought leaped in her brain, “If I’m free to-night—free—I’ll play the moon and stars out of the sky!”

Very soon she returned to the house. Still no sign from Angus: and she hardened her heart. An attempt at writing music failed dismally. Fragments came back to her; but it would need quite another mood to recapture that amazing inspiration. She had just given it up in despair, when the peon’s voice outside announced: “Chitti hai, Miss-Sahib.”

The words recalled that morning at Karachi: but the chitti, when she opened it, was a very different affair.

“My darling,

“These few lines, in haste, to tell you I’m better. I’ll be with you before five and take you out after tea. I hated missing last night, but I’ll see you soon now.

“Your devoted lover,

“A. M.”

Not a word about the city or Shahzada. She was clearly expected to behave as if she had suffered no fatal shock of shame and disgust. “A good man to keep away from,” Peter the Great had said in his quaint American way. And he was right. Oh dear! They had all been right—and she had been hopelessly wrong: an admission ill calculated to hearten her not very robust faith in herself——

*  *  *

A little before five she appeared in the drawing-room, trying to look like a normal Eve expecting her lover for tea. And there was Aunt Thea, serene and smiling, safely past all this difficult and turbulent ‘season made for joy.’

“Tony and Mary,” she announced, “have gone to the Cullums. So you two can have this room. Vinx and I are hob-nobbing in the study.”

Eve protested at that.

“But, darling Aunt Thea—your own drawing-room——?”

“Well, our own study!” she retorted, tucking Biddy under her arm. “I assure you we enjoy an afternoon to ourselves quite as much as you love-beleaguered young people.”

Love-beleaguered! If she only guessed!

Aunt Thea gone, she felt on a sudden ridiculously small and isolated in that vast room. Waiting was a deadly infliction, whether for the desired or the undesired. But Angus did not keep her long.

She was standing aimlessly near the fireplace filled with cool green ferns, gazing absently at that threatening picture of the Kabul River, when she heard the car roll up. Recalling her last sight of him, she hardened herself for the shock of encounter.

Then the door opened. He was coming across the room. Turn she must——

And the man who came towards her seemed entirely unrelated to the hateful vision of yesterday; far more like Angus of the Rajasthan than he had been looking of late; and his grey flannel suit of boardship days added the subtle effect of association.

Something in her aspect seemed to check him. But before she could speak, he had come forward; his arms were round her. She felt her whole body stiffen; and so swiftly she turned her face aside that his ardent kiss lighted on her cheek close to her hidden ear.

“Darling!” he protested—half angry, half dismayed, “that’s a nice sort of welcome—after two whole days. To me it seems an age.”

“Yes. It is an age,” she agreed in a strange voice, not looking at him.

“Eve!” he cried, startled at that, and caught her closer; but silently she strained away from him. “Eve?”

“Angus—don’t you understand?” She plunged with desperate courage. “After yesterday, I can’t . . . I can’t——”

“Why were you there yesterday?” he demanded, ignoring her statement in his disconcerting way, and still holding her—otherwise. His fingers had closed firmly on her arms, so that they stood face to face. “Careering about the city alone—losing your pony——”

“He’s found!” she triumphed, glad of a moment’s respite from the greater issue.

“So I heard. I was hoping to get him back for you myself. But they told me at the thāna the men were caught by that fellow Yusuf Ali. Don’t know what he had to do with it.”

“Oh, they bought Shahzada through him. So when he heard . . . he was keen to stop the thieves.” She skilfully avoided mention of Lance—or her own encounter with the big Peshawari.

“Glad he succeeded. But that doesn’t account for you—running round on your own, when you know it’s not allowed.”

“Yes, I know. But—I had to. I’ve told Uncle Vinx all that.”

“And you’re going to tell me.”

“No—I’m not,” she retorted, resenting the note of authority. “It’s my own affair.”

“I like that!” His eyes had their hard strange look, but behind his aggressive manner she could feel the hidden fear. “Your reasons may be—but your actions are very much my affair.”

“They’re not. That’s all over—I said so just now.” She seized her chance of forcing the truth on him. “It’s been a mistake all along. And, after yesterday—I simply can’t. Please don’t pretend not to understand. And please—let me go.”

She tried to free herself, but he would not have it.

“I can’t let you go,” he said in the queer, stifled voice that meant he was very deeply moved. “You’re all I have to hold on to in this world . . . and for me there’s no other. I’ve told you all that. You can’t pretend not to understand——”

“I do understand,” she admitted, shaken by the human tragedy of it, by the desperate look in his clouded eyes.

And he, seeing she was unnerved, pressed his point—the only point that seemed calculated to pierce her heart, so swiftly hardened against him.

“If that’s so, you might have some mercy on a driven man—you, that don’t know the meaning of temptation. You can’t be cruel enough to chuck me for one bad lapse, of which I’m heartily ashamed. It’s not your form, Eve—to kick a man when he’s down. At least give me a hearing. Even a murderer is given as much——”

It was upon her now—the conflict she dreaded. He was pressing her down on to the sofa; kneeling, as he had knelt on Sunday; his eyes clinging to hers, as his fingers still clung to her arms. Then he began speaking in the rapid manner that he only used when he feared interruption, and did not mean to give her the chance.

“I’ve had the devil’s own time running round the district in this heat, craving to be back here with you. But, for your sake, I’ve kept steady—no lapse worth mentioning,” he corrected himself with a pathetic impulse of honesty. “And I swear it wouldn’t have happened now, if you hadn’t left me on Sunday feeling so deadly disheartened that I didn’t care a damn what became of me. If you’d only marry me, in June or July, you don’t know the lift it would give me—how it would stiffen my powers of resistance to feel that any failure on my part would mean letting you down.”

“But, Angus—it does now,” she vainly urged.

“Yes. It’s bad enough now. But, for me, there’d be the world’s difference—once I’d made you my wife. If you can’t grasp the full implication of that, you’re surely woman enough to know it’s true. Eve my angel of light, you’re my only light in a very dark place.”

Shaken and pale with passion, utterly sincere, he was deceiving himself rather than her: and the sight of him, so abased, so deceived, cut her to the heart. To her, wrought upon, yet unconvinced, it was a terrible thing—this love-conflict, gathering all its forces for the struggle of life with life.

It was a second or two before she could command her voice.

“Angus—dear,” she said at last, “it hurts me horribly to say it—but I’m quite certain that, if you can’t keep steady for the sake of your own self-respect, you wouldn’t be able to do it—even for me.”

Confounded by that flash of young sagacity, he gazed at her hard and long.

But before he could speak, she found courage to add: “Besides—I can see now that, in any case, we’ve no right; because . . . because there might be—children.”

“God!” he breathed, half angry, half dismayed: an infant of nineteen flinging children in his face. She confounded him right and left with her honesty, her young clear-headedness: no dark waves of passion clouding the issue.

“I didn’t think of that—before,” she confessed with engaging simplicity. “And I was trying to love you. But honestly—I can’t. Honestly—I’m sure I never will.”

She said it with unguarded fervour, not looking at him, because it was a brutal thing to say, and it gave her an awful sense of pushing him into the pit out of which he was trying to climb by clinging to her. She did not know that his eyes never left her face, that he was seeing the very thing she could not bear him to see.

“You never will?” he echoed in a strange tone. “Why are you suddenly so very sure of that? What’s come to you, Eve?”

Instinctively she clasped her hands one over the other, as though she would hide her secret between them.

“That knowledge has come to me,” she said very low: but now she felt his eyes fixed on her, felt the warm blood stealing into her cheeks, betraying her in spite of herself.

“That’s it—is it?” he said at last, in a kind of dull fury. “One of those young jackanapes been making love to you? The feather-pated Air Force boy——?”

His own torment blinded him to the insult—till he saw how it angered her.

“I don’t know any young jackanapes,” she retorted, with an impatient jerk of her arms—and he released them at last. “And anyhow—I wouldn’t let them . . .”

“I beg your pardon—of course you wouldn’t,” he retrieved his slip; but perplexity goaded him to add: “All the same, there is some other fellow. I can see it in your face. I can feel it——”

Startled and dismayed, her cheeks flamed. She could not deny the truth; nor would she admit it in so many words.

“You can think whatever you choose,” she said, her voice low and steady. “But you mustn’t talk about it—please. I can’t bear it, because . . . it only concerns me. And it has nothing to do with you now.”

“No—it has nothing to do with me now, he repeated in a stunned voice, “except—as I told you before, it puts an end to everything.”

“Angus—you shall not.” Instinctively she grasped his arm; but, with a curious gentleness, he detached her hand and put it from him.

“I shall do what I please with my own worthless life. That has nothing to do with you now.”

It was a painful effort to rise from his knees, and he sank heavily into the nearest chair. Leaning an elbow on the arm, he laid a hand across his eyes—a thin brown hand, the joints and knuckles strongly marked; and the sigh that shuddered through him was like a dry sob.

Eve could only sit there feeling overpowered, hurt inexpressibly by the obvious implication; hurt also by the knowledge that she could not, now, go and sit on the arm of his chair, draw his head against her shoulder and comfort him, as she genuinely longed to do. There was no possible comfort that she could give him. They had no part or lot in one another any more. She ought to feel thankful for that; and she was not feeling anything of the kind. She was only aware that, in some way, he belonged to her still; acutely aware of those lines that recalled her father and clutched at her heart. It was as if, in that painful pause, he was giving her a chance to look and look, because never again would she capture that living likeness, that was a vital element in her unimpassioned love for him.

And he, drowned in his own anguish, had no faintest knowledge of her pain. He only knew he had held in his hand, for these few weeks, a wild bird, a star, a wave of the sea. Now—it was gone from him.

With a sharper sigh, he uncovered his eyes and looked at her—sitting calmly there, miles removed from his tempestuous love, his battered life.

“Yes. That about settles it,” he said in a dull voice, as if she had spoken. “Makes it quite as impossible for me as for you. Why didn’t you tell me so straight?”

“Because—I couldn’t bear anyone to know,” she said simply. “And because it is the other . . . nearly as much.”

He nodded, as if she had spoken of the weather; but his calm had an unnatural quality that stirred a sudden fear. It was not the outward sign of inner control. It was a thin glaze over turbulent forces that an unguarded word might set violently in motion. His eyes had their queer look—as if he might have been drinking to steady himself before he came; and his hands were clenched so that the knuckles made white blotches on his sunburnt skin.

He sat there and gazed at her with a discomposing directness, as if he were seeing her, for the first time, apart from himself.

“Poor child. You’ve had a lucky escape,” he said—as calmly as that. “I had no right to force it on you. But I did believe I’d exorcised the devil; and when a man’s crazed with love he sees everything out of focus. What a damned wasteful muddle it all is! If only I could hand on my futile craving—to the other fellow, it might be of some use to you. Now it’s driving me on to the rocks.”

“Oh, don’t—don’t say that!” she pleaded, rising impulsively, longing to shake herself free from the burden of this unendurable sincerity between them. Again she stood by the mantelpiece, gazing absently at that threatening picture of the river.

“I’m giving you the truth for the truth,” he reminded her with sudden harshness—feeling himself dismissed, yet unable to believe that he would never be alone with her thus again.

At that thought passion flared up and mastered him. He sprang to his feet; his unnatural calm fell away.

“Eve—you lovely maddening thing, I can t leave you like this!”

As she turned, amazed, he caught her in his arms—that were shaking, yet taut and hard. He crushed her against him, kissing her till she was breathless. Unable to resist, she could only endure—if it gave him any satisfaction so to treat the husk of her. It was the last time——

And he—smitten to compunction by her yielding that was no true yielding—released her as abruptly as he had seized her: the two men within him so terribly at odds that he feared for his own sanity.

“I apologise,” he said humbly. “I’m beat to the wide. But I beg of you—come for that drive. You want to see the river in a rage. And I want you near me for another hour or so. Promise I won’t . . . make love to you. That’s over. Say ‘Yes,’ Eve—for once in a way.”

And Eve, shaken by his embrace, startled at the unexpected request, felt as if her nerves would snap under the added strain.

“I don’t want the drive or the river—now,” she murmured, withdrawing to a safer distance from him. “And wouldn’t it make things worse—for you?”

“They couldn’t be worse,” he stated bluntly. “Would you turn, me down under the eyes of all Government House? Aren’t the Leighs at home?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. You see what I mean? Darling . . . it’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

He held out his hands, his eyes pleading, his face lined and tragic. She definitely did not want to go! and, for some indefinable reason, she felt afraid. But she could not tell him that; and flat refusal would be cowardly, unkind.

“Angus—I seem to be always hurting you,” she said in her softest voice. “If you want the drive so specially . . . of course I’ll come.”

“You’ll come?”

He seemed hardly able to take it in. Then, grasping her hands, he drew her to him with a gentleness that quieted her fear and kissed her so lingeringly that tears filled her eyes. In that wordless fashion he was thanking her, bidding her good-bye, renewing so strangely the sense of losing some part of herself that her perverse heart had never felt nearer to loving him than in this poignant moment of making an end.

A discreet cough outside intimated that Nizam Din—a delicate-minded person—was politely asking leave to bring in the tea.

Chapter Fifteen

Who knows but the world may end to-night?
— Browning

It was over—the ordeal of their last meal together. Eve trying to be sensible and swallow food, though her throat had gone dry; Angus not attempting to eat, drinking cup after cup of tea, as if nothing could quench his thirst. And they had literally not a word to say to one another. Their world of mutual interest had been blotted out; and the few remarks they exchanged had neither salt nor savour. For the rest, Angus sat looking straight before him, absorbed in his own pain; probably quite unaware that he was inflicting very real pain on her. Eve hoped she would never be obliged to sit through a meal like that again.

One last attempt she made, when it was over, to dissuade him from the drive, her unreasoning fear revived by the subtle change that had come over him. No sign now of the gentleness, the tragic appeal that had so deeply moved her. Sunk in profound dejection, he yet seemed, in some queer way, to be detached from himself and his own misery, to regard it with a mocking bitterness—as if the Angus who suffered and the Angus who mocked were two different men.

The Angus who mocked said harshly, “I’m a rotten specimen; but I’ve been cheated out of everything. And I won’t be cheated out of my last drive with you.” He quoted Browning in a hard contained voice that hurt her more than tears:

“‘Since nothing at all my love avails,
Since all my life seemed meant for, fails—’

Damn! How does it go on?”

He frowned and pressed a hand against his forehead in the effort to remember.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” she pleaded. It was so unlike him, quoting sentimental stuff in that unnatural tone.

But he paid no heed. She even doubted whether he had heard.

Suddenly he uncovered his eyes and looked at her very straight.

“Who knows—but the world may end to-night?’”

Startled and shaken, she forgot that he was merely quoting. Words and tone stirred the roots of her hair. But in a second she had pulled herself together.

“Angus, don’t be melodramatic. The world won’t end to-night,” She assumed a practical manner, to steady herself no less than him. “And I’m not cheating you of your drive. It can be no pleasure, but—if you insist——?”

“Yes—I insist.”

It did give him pleasure of a sort, that he could still insist where she was concerned.

With a helpless, fated feeling, she went to put on her hat and thin coat before joining him in the verandah, where peons sprang respectfully to attention—and that painful scene in the drawing-room seemed unbelievable.

Angus settled her in with his usual concern for her comfort. It felt like any other day. But as the car swerved through the wide gateway on to an empty road, he put out his left hand, quietly captured one of hers, and pressed it to his lips.

“For this hour or so—you are still mine, he said in his normal voice of deep feeling.

The pathos of it hurt her so that she could not answer. He was welcome to fancy what he pleased if it comforted him at all. Her sole comfort lay in the fact that it need not be more than an hour; though once he got possession of her, he might drive her round the country till dinner-time.

Submitting to his will, yet unable to help, or even to talk, she tried to turn her mind away from him to think of seeing Lance again this evening; but she found that it troubled her to be thinking of Lance while poor bereft Angus sat there, mute and gloomy, his elbow almost touching her own.

At first it was a relief, not attempting to talk. But soon the silence became oppressive: nor was there any gleam of beauty in this savage country to distract her mind. Even casual traffic was less frequent here than on the road to the Khyber Pass.

Presently a repeated sound of knocking in the engine stirred a practical fear that something might have gone wrong. She was not clever about car insides; but the poor old Morris had been racketed round the district for hundreds of miles, and if anything went wrong—how awful!

With an effort she forced herself to speak.

“Angus——” she called his name as if he were far away. “The car’s knocking. Are you sure it’s all right? I don’t want to be stranded out here. I’d much rather go home.”

“Don’t fuss. She’ll manage. No distance now,” he said, without looking round, gloomily intent on his wheel. He was steering past a string of transport carts from Shabkadr; but even so, it was quite unlike him to answer her in that fashion. Too puzzled and hurt for vexation, she glanced at his profile, set in lines of strain and pain. It recalled, with an intolerable pang, her father’s face in that last awful illness, and her own pain moved her to try and reach him through the fog of his misery.

“Angus—dear,” she urged, “you’re not fit to be driving. I wish you’d go back. You’ll get fever again.”

To her amazement, he neither turned nor answered. Perhaps she had not spoken loud enough: but she could not bring herself to try again. She could only sit there feeling crushed and futile, wishing the Kabul River had never been born. He ought not to have insisted. Her presence—unpossessed and unpossessable—was having a fatal effect on him. Words were a vain mockery, and she dared not venture even a hand on his arm. He might fling it off: and that she could not bear. He was in one of his black moods, beyond the reach of any human comfort; so unlike himself, so far removed from her, that again she began to feel afraid—definitely afraid of the hidden desperate streak in him. For under his contained exterior there was chaos: neither faith in God, to strengthen him against the Secret Enemy, nor fear of God to check his violent impulses. He was like a ship without chart or compass. Only at such crazy moments one perceived how one’s inner sense of safety hung on the simple belief that the average man or woman would act—even at a crisis—with average sanity and self-control. To feel uncertain of that was like stepping from firm earth into a quicksand. And she felt uncertain now. Yet still she scouted her fear as fanciful; still believed that it would evaporate if he would discard his tragic air and have the courtesy to seem aware of her presence.

While she was nerving herself to speak again, she saw another car coming towards them; a little two-seater with one occupant: Lance—returning from Michni Fort.

The sight of him set her heart in a tumult and banished fear.

As he drew near, he saluted and waved to her.

“The river’s in a rage,” he called out; and Eve, unable to speak, waved vigorously, longing to call a halt and drive back with him to Peshawar.

Angus, she noticed, stared at him without a flicker of recognition, which set her tingling—half anger, half alarm.

As the little car slid past, her eyes so instinctively followed it that she turned her head unawares; Angus forgotten; intent on Lance. There was safety in his mere presence. When he was gone, that creepy sense of danger would return.

The voice of Angus startled her back to her senses.

“That’s the fellow—damn him! I might have known.”

Sharply she pulled herself together. She could not lie about it. She could only say in a toneless voice, “You needn’t damn him. He doesn’t know. He—doesn’t care.”

It was hateful putting the bald fact into words; still more hateful when Angus turned on her a hard stare that was almost inimical.

“Got you—has he? Without lifting a finger? And he doesn’t care? Don’t you believe it. Full of conceit. Eaten up with ambition. But he’s got some eyes in his damned head.”

Tone and manner were as strange as that inimical stare. An alien spirit, not himself, seemed to be looking at her out of the eyes she knew.

Half frightened, half angry again, she almost hated him; and more than ever she felt a fool for having come. It was no true kindness; and it pained her to be near him, since he had guessed her secret, and so roughly flung it in her face. Inwardly quivering, outwardly cool, she would not seem afraid or deign to answer words, spoken in a jealous fury, of which the true sane Angus would be heartily ashamed.

Too late she saw how her silence maddened him. She seemed fated to do the wrong thing to-day.

He swore again, muttered something inarticulate, and pressed his foot on the accelerator.

The car leaped forward. The needle sprang from thirty to forty—to forty-five: and Eve, between fear and excitement, wondered—“What now?” But she dared not speak or stir.

The needle jerked again; and the sense of danger—now terribly actual—mounted in her like a rising tide. It was as if the Prince of Darkness were running away with her. And Lance, cheerfully unconcerned, was speeding towards Peshawar.

Almost at once they reached the river, swirling and foaming between its desolate banks, racing under the bridge of boats—great flat pontoons across which a road had been laid—the only link between Peshawar and the frontier posts that guarded the Mohmand border, the route to Malakand. And above those tempestuous waters the sun was slipping deliberately down a calm, unclouded sky.

She had her wish. She had seen the Kabul River in a rage; and she never wanted to see it again. She would never forget it while she lived—if she lived . . .?

Active terror seized her. Needle-points tingled in the roots of her hair. What on earth was Angus doing now? He was steering all wrong. He seemed to have lost control. . . .

Emboldened by fear, she clutched his left arm.

“Angus—are you crazy? Do take care.”

To her immense surprise, he answered her:

“I’m taking care all right. If I can’t have you, he shan’t have you. Let me alone.”

He roughly jerked away her hand; and she sat there chilled all through. In a flash, she had grasped his meaning. Her life—her own most precious possession—would he dare to rob her of that in his mad desire to take his own? A vain question. In this half-crazed mood he would dare anything.

All her faculties seemed frozen over: yet, under the frozen surface, her brain was working swiftly, recalling his strange words when she tried to dissuade him. Had he intended, then? Even at his worst she would not believe that of him. It was the sight of Lance—the instant recognition. It was a fierce impulse of jealousy, the blackest devil in his distorted soul.

Faced with the awful certainty, terror fell away from her. Brain and spirit were lit up with the flame of an exalted courage. She was indeed slipping over the edge. She would see—the Other Side. . . .

“Daddy—I’m coming,” her heart cried to him; and there was immense comfort in the thought: no glimmer of doubt.

She dared not venture a glance at Angus, driving like a man possessed. But the pace had slackened. He had some of his wits about him. He was making a clumsy shot at the bridge.

As they bumped on to it she heard him swear: heard and saw, on either side, the rushing, swirling river.

Almost at once the car lurched violently. There was a horrid jolt, the crashing of splintered wood. In another moment the car would turn clean over.

The fury of the river and urgent love of life spurred her to instinctive action.

Before he could realise, she had sprung upon the seat, had taken a bold flying leap sideways—clear of the car, sure of the bridge, that offered at least a gambler’s chance of life. . . .

In the act of falling, she heard the crash and splash of the overturned car as if it were miles away. And there darted through her brain one last coherent thought, “If I am killed after all—Daddy, Daddy!”

Something struck her violently. After the shock, a sharp knife-thrust of pain: and no light, no sound any more——

Chapter Sixteen

With one hand touching heaven; with the other, earth.
— George Herbert

Thea Leigh had spoken truth when she told Eve that she and her husband enjoyed an afternoon to themselves. But on this particular occasion they were not concerned with themselves. To their mutual astonishment, they were expecting the arrival of Vanessa Vane: and Eve was not to be told—by order.

Thea had received, only that morning, a hurried letter from Vanessa, explaining the reason of her headlong journey from the heights at this eleventh hour.

“Dearest” (she wrote),—“Prepare to register amazement! I’m flying down to Peshawar on the wings of anxiety about Eve. A mad proceeding—? Perhaps. But I’m badly worried, and reproaching myself for not having allowed the sweet child to come straight here, at no matter what inconvenience. I’ve had a difficult time this spring, and am still in the thick of it. But Eve should have been my first consideration.

“A brief boardship affair could have been more easily snapped off. The man seems clever enough to hold her in spite of herself. That’s my impression. And there’s the fatal likeness to Ian; God knows how far that might carry Eve. Your letter bothered me; but when she wrote of it, I took fright. No knowing what he might persuade her to promise before she joins me.

“So I decided, on the spur of a very thorny moment to get my own impressions of her Angus—at all costs—and act accordingly. I’m off at once, so expect me soon after you get this. But don’t tell the Darling—or she’ll be marshalling arguments in his favour! I want to take her by surprise: see how she responds to the unexpected.

“If that seems rather unfair, remember—she’s my dearest thing on earth: and only so can I hope to discover whether it’s her heart, or simply her promise, that she has given to this regrettable man.

“Be in, if you can. I’d be glad of a talk with you first.

“My love, and deep respects to your very Wise One,

“Always your friend,

“V. V.”

If Sir Vincent shook his head over her belated impetuosity, Thea could not wholly disapprove of an impulse that sprang from the heart. For the rest, they knew their Vanessa too well to ‘register amazement’; knew that the essential sanity of your genuine artist can coincide with a certain craziness in the practical issues of life. So they had obeyed her injunctions, unaware of all that the word unspoken had involved for Eve.

They were peacefully reading and writing in the study when Vanessa Vane arrived—hot and travel-weary, but triumphant. Divested of her sun-hat and light silk coat, she stood looking from one to the other, amused query in her eyes. Her expressive face—with its faintly arrogant nose and oblique brows—gave the lie to her forty-two years, though these had traced delicate lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and her figure still retained the grace of the early thirties. They knew her, these two, for a woman who—to almost any age—would sway the hearts and passions of men: yet, at five-and-thirty, she had put all that behind her—on account of Eve’s father.

“Crazy of me?” she asked, lightly defiant.

“Quite crazy of you!” Sir Vincent agreed with decision.

“Think what you please, I simply had to come. The journey, from Pindi, was hell fire—paying for my sins in advance! Thank God it’s over.” She subsided into Sir Vincent’s proffered chair, and pleaded for an iced peg and sandwiches in place of a belated tea. “I couldn’t afford it really. My bank account’s in a parlous state. But the self that counsels queer things usually knows best. Any luck? Is the Darling in?”

Her face clouded when they told her that the Darling had gone out driving with the regrettable man; and she heard, with deeper dismay, Sir Vincent’s tale of the city escapade, his conviction that Eve must have seen Monteith in a more than regrettable condition.

“Yet she’s had him to tea—and gone off with him this afternoon? Damn! Have you got anything more definite out of Lynch? Do tell me all you know, that I may be armed for this delicate and difficult encounter. Oh, these men!”

“‘The female of the species is more deadly than the male,’” Sir Vincent remarked in his most unaggressive manner. Then, simply and straightly, he told her the little he knew; for he saw that she would need mental distraction till the child returned.

Between them they valiantly kept it up, Thea, with feminine skill, luring her away from the subject of Eve. There was a good deal that she herself wanted to hear about Havelock Thorne; and Vanessa, equally skilled, talked with the utmost freedom and intimacy of the Viceregal visit, and the delights of Datchigam—yet, virtually told them nothing at all.

Only when the clock on the mantelpiece struck seven there fell a pause. It was broken by Thea; but other pauses fell—and lasted. They were listening for the car.

At twenty past seven, unmistakable sounds brought Vanessa to her feet. But it was a man’s step that came straight to the study door; and it was Lance who entered, looking concerned.

At sight of Vanessa he exclaimed in surprise.

“Yes,” she said briskly. “I’ve just arrived from the moon! Urgent private affairs—What were you going to say?”

She had seen his hesitation at sight of her.

“Nothing much. But I thought—Eve and the Major would be back by now. Bishn Singh says they’re not.”

He stooped to caress the Aberdeen, and something in his manner prompted Sir Vincent to ask: “D’you know where they went?”

“Yes. Out to the river. I passed them just this side of it. And I’ve been back some time, with Lynch——” Still on one knee caressing the dog, he glanced uneasily at Vanessa. “I don’t want to put the wind up. But, fancying that Eve seemed a bit scared, I happened to look round, and the fellow was driving like blazes. Puzzled me.”

“He shouldn’t have been out to-day. Did he look ill?”

“He certainly looked . . . queer.”

That veiled answer to his veiled question troubled Sir Vincent—remembering yesterday. And Vanessa—also remembering—sat down rather abruptly.

“They ought to be back by now,” she said in a controlled voice. “Perhaps—there’s been an accident?” With a swift pang she turned to the silent, troubled man, whose brain was working rapidly under the stillness. “Vinx, what can we do about it? The gates will be shutting soon. I can’t sit here waiting—in cold blood——”

“It’s the hardest thing in life,” he admitted gently “But I won’t take you with me. I’m going at once in the big car. Lance—will you give the order and ring up Dr. Norman? I’ll take two peons. I dare say it’s only a punctured tyre,” he added briskly, “and Monteith forgot to take a spare.”

But rapid speech and action from Vincent revealed to those three, who knew him, the measure of his secret fear.

Lance, springing up to obey, said with a touch of hesitation, “If I’d be any use, Uncle Vinx?”

“No. You stay here. If they’re merely stranded, we’ll be back in no time.”

*  *  *

They were not back in no time. Lance went out with them, and the two women were left alone. There was little to be said; nothing to be done. Both, under a mask of courage, were mortally afraid: and they had leisure to be so. The clock ticked solemnly on. The dogs curled themselves up and slept. The silent room was filled with their soft regular breathing and the ceaseless whisper of the clock. Those small sounds became an obsession; yet Vanessa could not force herself to speak. There was no room in her mind for anything but the thought of Eve, the whispered dread of life—without Eve. . . .

At last—the sound of a car. She was holding her wits together by force of will, when the door opened to admit an improvised stretcher; Eve—still as death, her dear head bandaged, her left arm strapped to her body. Her face had a poignant look of Ian as Vanessa had seen him last, and her dazed brain took death for granted. She looked quickly at Dr. Norman the brusque kindly Scot, who had upheld her through those awful days.

“She’s alive,” he said. “God knows how she managed it. Cut her head. Broken the upper arm and collar-bone. A nasty smash; but a trifle considering. She was conscious for a bit, in the car.”

Vanessa, shaken by the reaction from strained control, felt consciousness slipping away from her.

“And Major Monteith——?” she forced herself to ask.

Dr. Norman’s gesture was answer enough. “Swept clean away. We didn’t get to the river. Sir Vincent will tell you——”

Vanessa heard no more. A blurred voice, blurred faces, dissolved in darkness. . . .

When her lost senses came slowly back, she was lying in the leather chair, the taste of brandy was on her lips; and Vincent, sitting beside her, had his fingers on her wrist. No sign of Eve. That vision of her seemed a mental aberration.

“Tell me,” she breathed. “How did they find her—where?”

And Sir Vincent told her that, eight miles out, they had met a couple of transport carts coming from Michni Fort. The men had stopped the car to announce that they had picked up a Miss-Sahib on the bridge of boats; that she seemed dead, but had returned to life. In the river they had seen an overturned car, carried some distance by the mighty current and embedded in a sand-bank near the shore. To the question—“Any sign of a Sahib?” they answered, “No sign of a Sahib.” Those who fell into the Kabul River were not likely to be seen again—living or dead.

“How he came to be steering all wrong—how Eve came . . . not to go over,” he said in a voice of awe, “you can only find out from her, when she is able—if she is able to talk of it. Don’t question her. Norman seems more concerned for the possible effect of shock than for her injuries. It’s a wonder they were no worse.”

“It’s a wonder she’s here at all,” Vanessa answered, tears streaming unheeded down her cheeks. “Thank goodness I came, though the reason has been so tragically extinguished. The self that insisted knew—— Dear Vinx, you’ve been so good to her. And I won’t be a fool any more. I’ll devote myself to the Darling, and get her away out of this heat the moment Norman gives us leave to go.”

Chapter Seventeen

And, as the sap that rises
Disturbs the heart of spring,
The sense of near surprises
Made all my pulses sing.
— Gerald Gould

Eve, emerging slowly from darkness and confusion—streaked with moments of blank terror, moments of pain—found herself gazing in bewilderment at Vanessa’s face, clinging to Vanessa’s hands.

“Oh, darling,” she murmured. “Are you a dream? Where are we?”

To her inexpressible comfort, a real Vanessa leaned down and kissed her with a fervour that cleared the mist from her brain.

“We’re together at last,” Vanessa told her. “I’m here—in Peshawar.”

“But why are you?”

“Never mind. We’ll talk about that when you’re better. Oh, my sweet child—forgive me. This is the way I welcome you to India.”

Such a lovely surprise,” Eve murmured, not feeling quite clear, in that dazed moment, why there was anything to forgive. “But my head—my arm?”

“Not seriously damaged. Not hurting much now?”

“N-no, not much—if I keep still.” She closed her eyes, trying to make some clear pattern out of all the broken pieces, yet afraid of looking back into that darkness and confusion. Was it only an accident? Was all the rest—that awful flash of knowledge—a hideous delusion? And Angus . . .? She dared not ask, dared not yet speak his name. The mere thought of him sent waves of fear through her whole body. . . .

Returning from very far away—she opened her eyes, half afraid that Vanessa might prove to be a delusion. No: she was still there.

“Vinessa—is it evening?” she asked irrelevantly.

“Yes, dear.” Vanessa smiled at the name of old days.

“What time is it?”

“A quarter past nine.”

“They must have finished dinner?”

“Yes——”

“Oh, but I promised Lance . . . I would play this evening. Please tell him . . .”

“Dearest, he knows——”

“But tell him,” she repeated with the irritability of weakness, “how fearfully sorry I am that I wouldn’t play on Sunday. And now I can’t. . . . Oh, Vanessa! When will I be able to play again?”

Sudden anguish flooded her; and she lay there weeping helplessly, while Vanessa comforted her and kissed away the tears, assuring her that in a month, or perhaps five weeks, the poor arm would be itself again.

A month—five weeks . . .? And for all those weeks she could make no music. Listening to it had not the same effect at all. At thought of her deprivation, of the terror, and the knowledge that she had been very near death, a dull glow of hatred burned in her heart. She had never hated a human being, had believed she never could; and she was still too numb for any acute sensation, But from the inner darkness and confusion one clear fact stood out. Goaded crazed perhaps—by a sudden fury of jealousy, he had definitely intended to take her life. It was the unforgivable sin. And the knowledge was her own private affair. She would never let any of them suspect the truth. They would not understand—as she did, in a measure—the violent devotion from which that violent impulse sprang. They would not know, as she did, how the true sane Angus would be glad that, thanks to her presence of mind and a big pinch of luck—she was still here. And she was in no hurry to be otherwhere. . . .

Vanessa had risen and moved away. She was going out of the room. At thought of being left alone Eve’s shaken nerves went to pieces. She was on the bridge of boats, the car lurching under her; and there was the swirling foaming river . . .

“Angus! Angus!” she cried, clutching the bed with her one sound hand.

Vanessa came running back—frightened and dismayed. Kneeling beside her, she flung an arm round her shaken body.

“My sweetest one—you’re safe with me. There’s no more Angus.”

“No more Angus——?” Eve echoed in a queer voice, still not quite able to take it in. He must be there, in the bungalow. To-morrow he would be sending round some frantic note. Then it would be all to do over again.

And while her bewildering thoughts ran on, she heard her own voice begging, “Don’t—don’t leave me alone. It keeps coming back. The river—the river! I only feel safe if you’re there. Couldn’t you sleep near me?”

It was the plea of a frightened child; but Vanessa wouldn’t think her a fool.

“Darling, of course I could. I’ll have a small bed put close to yours, so you can hold my hand.”

“Yes, that’s what I want,” she sighed, contented again. “You are an angel.”

And Vanessa said, with an ache in her voice, “I’m far removed from an angel. Eve. I feel sinfully responsible for all this.”

“I won’t let you feel anything so grim.” The first gleam of humour flickered, and she smiled up into Vanessa’s face with the questioning eyebrows and the sensitive lips that looked strained and sad, as she remembered them seven years ago. “I’m the sinner. I ought—to have waited. Promise I’ll get well soon, and not be a ton of coals on your conscience!”

Of course she was kissed again; and lulled by the warm comforting human presence she fell asleep.

*  *  *

When she awoke, believing it to be morning—there stood Vanessa before the long glass in a pink silk night-gown, patting cream into her face with skilful fingers; and there was the friendly little bed close to her own. There was Vanessa’s travelling hat and a long soft scarf flung carelessly into Eve’s big chair. Though new to her, they were unmistakably Vanessa. She was one of those very individual people who set an impress on their most trivial belongings. Her writing on an envelope, a chance pair of gloves or shoes, could give one almost the feeling of her presence. But for all her subtle charm and the comforting sense of security, there crept in again the haunting fear of Angus still in his bungalow. It was sheer craziness; but there could be no peace till she knew for certain—though she could hardly bear to speak his name.

“Vinessa,” she asked in a voice of awe, “is Angus—dead?”

Vanessa started and came over to her. “Yes—he is,” she said, caressing her cheek with cool finger-tips. “It must have been over very quickly. Try not to think about it.”

That was easily said; but as Eve lay watching Vanessa’s deft movements, she kept thinking, thinking of the one tragic fact—the spark of life extinguished by that ruthless river—wondering if it were wicked to feel this immense relief, since he had willed to die; realising, with a queer pang, that Vanessa thought she was unhappy. That was scarcely the word for her dazed distress, her natural pain and pity, and haunting sense of responsibility for the man she had—unknowingly, unwillingly—lured to his undoing. They would all suppose her to be heartbroken because she had lost her lover. No escape yet from the trammels of her false position. He could not bear them to know he was turned down; and now—they need not know. Death itself could not dissolve her sensitive loyalty to the man who had so loved and so suffered on her account. She could not, in any case, talk of it. Later on, in Kashmir, to Vanessa, perhaps . . .?

Vanessa was bending over her now. She drank delicious warm stuff and fell asleep again. But even in sleep her mind was a prey to the after-effects of shock.

Once, in the dead of night, she woke screaming, “Angus—take care! Daddy—Daddy!” Again she felt the lurch of the car, heard the crash of splintered wood, the insensate fury of the river. Again she sprang into space: but before the bridge rose up and struck her—she awoke, in Vanessa’s arms, her whole body shaken with helpless, sobbing.

She felt woefully ashamed of herself: but she knew it would happen again. And it did——

*  *  *

Next time she woke it was actually morning. Vanessa was up and dressed; Biddy, on the little bed, making overtures; very interested in the arm that could not move. It hurt a good deal; so did her head, when Dr. Norman came and meddled with it. But he told her she was brave; and there was comfort in the spiritual lift, if it did not ease the pain. While he rearranged the bandages, she became suddenly aware that no ring adorned her third finger; but she could say nothing till he had gone.

As the door closed, she looked round at Vanessa, who was arranging sprays of shell-pink oleander in a slim vase.

“Dearest,” she said, “did you take off my ring?” Vanessa looked startled.

“My dear, I never touched it—never saw it.”

And Eve mused softly, “How queer—if it’s gone! It was rather loose. Perhaps it fell off.”

“Much more likely one of those drivers appropriated it, fancying you wouldn’t come back to life. What a shame!”

Eve sighed. She had loved the beautiful thing for its own sake; but she could not, just then, feel vehemently about anything.

“It was a perfect opal. I wanted you to see it. But don’t worry Uncle Vinx. I’m glad—it’s gone. How queer!”

Vanessa’s kiss, intended for comfort, made Eve feel that she, too, was glad. She would be—of course.

Because of her head, Eve was kept quite quiet all the morning. But just before tiffin she was promoted to the drawing-room sofa; and she could not tell them how the ghost of Angus would seem to kneel there, pleading and pleading—hurting himself and her. . . .

The gong had summoned them all; and as she entered, supported by Vanessa, she glanced instinctively towards the mantelpiece, dreading the sight of that threatening picture.

It was not there: and she almost cried out——

In its place hung an atmospheric water-colour of the Wular Lake in spring. The wonder of it melted her heart, and the light pressure of Vanessa’s arm told her whose forethought had spared her the added shock of seeing that picture again. Unable yet to speak of it, she could only turn and kiss Vanessa’s cheek as she was lowered into a corner of the soft deep chesterfield.

“Not afraid to be left now?” Vanessa asked.

“No—not afraid any more.”

Embedded in sofa cushions, eased of that haunting dread, she lay there alone; her over-clear senses conscious only of the curious unreality, the strangeness of familiar things, that gives a sense of new birth to the mind recovering from illness or shock. Nizam Din brought her tempting dishes, and she ate them in a dream. Very soon, perhaps in half an hour, she would see Lance again; but the thrill of it hardly seemed to penetrate. Between the terror and the final shock, she felt numbed all through. She had been so close to death that life, in its fullness, dazzled her.

She was roused by a sound outside the door, and Lance came in—alone, Bijli at his heels.

Without a word of greeting, he walked straight to the sofa and stood there looking down at her in mute distress, absently holding a leaf-shaped silver dish of sweets.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked, not in his usual quick way, but in a low troubled tone that penetrated her numbness to the point of pain.

“I feel as unbecoming as I look!” she said, forcing the lighter note. “And I don’t like it one bit.”

“Nor do I,” he stated gravely, and held out his little dish of sweets. “Tony was putting them away wholesale, so I rescued a few. Thought you might be feeling lonesome. And I’m not death on coffee and liqueurs.”

That touch of simple consideration so moved her that she could only look her gratitude for his casual gift of these few minutes alone with him in the pause between her dream state and her full awakening.

Unaware of all that, he sat down on a low chair beside her, and between them they solemnly emptied the little dish of sweets. Then he produced his cigarette case: but she shook her head. Vanessa had said; “Not yet”; and she did not even desire the tempting thing. It was wonderful simply to have him there, but difficult to talk of ordinary matters: and her difficulty begat an inspiration.

“Lance—I’m dying for some music,” she said, taking her courage in both hands. “As I can’t play to you, won’t you—play to me?”

He gazed at her, oddly disconcerted. “You know I never do that.”

Dismayed by his implicit refusal, she could not meekly accept it as final.

“Well, you might—once in a way, for a battered specimen!” she urged, smiling at him under her lashes. “Just a few simple things. I would love—the ’Derry Air.”

“That? I wouldn’t venture—in your hearing. I can’t get the harmonies right.”

“I didn’t hear much wrong with them—on Sunday.”

“Sunday?” He looked positively alarmed.

“Yes. I was listening, loving it, till the wind flung me in. Do give me another chance. It would count as your good deed!”

That appeal to the Boy Scout spirit took effect, and his smile lit up the gold flecks in his hazel-grey eyes.

“Spoilt Person! You know how to get what you want!”

“‘An excellent thing in woman,’” she lightly turned it off.

“Oh, very excellent—for the woman, he muttered in an odd voice—and her cheeks grew warm under his gaze, because she wanted nothing less than his love; and she did not know how to get that at all.

“I’m sure old Norman would insist that you mustn’t be thwarted.”

Having opened the piano, and strummed a few soft chords, he glanced round at her.

“On your head be it. I’m not responsible for what happens in the bass!”

Then he began to play the “’Derry Air”—softly and slowly, as if he were feeling his way; yet giving every note its true value, because the spirit of music was in him. Presently, gaining confidence, he began working it out in chords, the lovely melody rising and swelling—crescendo, fortissimo—luring her back to life, plucking the heart out of her body.

And she lay there consciously imprinting on her mind that familiar view of him, his head just tilted as if he were listening for those minor harmonies that enriched the simple bass. Not the remotest fear that he might look round, so absorbed he was in the music, so completely unaware that he was at once hurting her and lifting her to unimagined heights of thought and feeling. In her shaken state, it was almost too much—that tidal wave of renewed sensation sweeping her away from all lesser landmarks out to open sea. . . .

The last triumphant chords, lifting and falling, brought sudden tears to her eyes; but she whisked them away because they blurred her view of him, And he might turn when the Air was ended.

He did not turn. For a few seconds he sat very still, his hands resting on the keys; and she, watching them, recalled how Anne used to say, “Some people are their hands.”

They were moving again now, playing a lively fragment of Grieg. Though his fingers were too unskilled for swift or complex music, his light sure touch suited the gay little tune that seemed to dance on the tree tops, stepping airily down and down to unexpected modulations in a minor key, while the bass kept up a soft swaying rhythm, a kind of grave undercurrent to that elfin dance.

But, absorbed as he was in the tricky thing, he heard the dining-room door open—and sprang up briskly, closing the piano with an air of decision. Then he turned and smiled at her—a smile that lingered in the eyes.

“Done my good deed—not too clumsily?” he asked.

“Beautifully,” she answered very low, afraid to trust her voice. “I was feeling down-hearted—and you comforted me.”

“I’ll begin to be proud of my tuppenny talent,” he said without looking at her.

“It’s not that——”

But they were coming out of the dining-room, and she could say no more.

When the door opened he was crouching by the sofa, working Bijli up into a state of excitement about nothing, while Biddy nestled close to Eve’s body, little quivers running through her, elaborately pretending not to be aware of the commotion.

As Lance sprang up, Vanessa remarked, “Since when? I didn’t know you could play like that!”

And Eve had never seen him so nearly put out of countenance.

“I can’t—in a general way,” he said in a hurried voice. “I was acting under orders.”

“To-day we’re all under orders!” Uncle Vinx backed him up; and leaning down he kissed her, there before the others. From him that was a salutation indeed. “I think it will be better for the damaged head if we entertain her in sections, not in battalions. And as the victim is a lady, I suggest—Gentlemen first. Lance having snatched his innings, I follow on.”

When they had all melted away, he sat down by her in Lance’s low chair, covered her free hand with his and pressed it hard. But beyond that mute gesture of thankfulness, of sympathy, he made no allusion to the tragedy of Angus, to her own all-but fatal disaster.

His quiet dry humour was the very tonic she needed in her state of shaken nerves and emotional stress. Never, since that afternoon at the Zoo, had he come so completely out of his shell; yet he scarcely touched on personal matters at all. He was full of a big book parcel that had come by the mail. He had picked out one or two for her: brought her Beethoven’s Letters, ordered by Aunt Thea; unobtrusively, he transported her into another world. She almost resented it when he was whisked away.

After she had held her little court, in sections, Vanessa insisted on an hour of absolute rest before tea-time—when they all reappeared; six people and five dogs! And there was Lance again—waiting on her, sitting beside her, quieter than usual.

They were all spoiling her, as she had not been spoilt since Villars; though poor Angus, in his own fashion, had done what he could. And she lay there, not saying much, but watching them, loving them all better than she had ever loved them yet. Partly it was because she must leave them; partly it came from seeing them in the fresh light of their concern for her. It was a singularly revealing test, that instinctive response or recoil, when another’s suffering made its challenging demand on the true self, so carefully hidden, so rarely revealed. Inevitably she thought of Mrs. de Cray, and the bright surface sympathy, tinged with impatience, that she had accorded to a prostrate Eve, lonely in spirit, sick in body. She thought of Elsa—that unobtrusive angel, seldom lively or interesting in the normal round; but if one were sick or sorry, one would turn to Elsa as naturally as one would flee from Mrs. de Cray.

And now, in deeper trouble, she could see how her pain and her supposed grief drew Uncle Vinx out of his shyness—perhaps because he too had suffered. He, who was useless at a party, knew how to draw one away from painful thoughts without seeming to lift a finger. More clearly still she saw, and also remembered, the subtle change it wrought in Vanessa—when one was really suffering, not fussing over trifles; how it brought to the surface those finer elements hidden under the shrewd, cool self she faced the world with. As for Lance—and the way he waited on her, noticed if an awkward movement jerked her arm——

But she found she must be very guarded in thinking of Lance when others were present. She must accept him in with the rest, and bask in the brief happiness that had blossomed out of pain.

After dinner—before she was ruthlessly removed to an early bed and fears that would return with the dark—they gave her music of the best: Aunt Thea at the piano, Vanessa with Eve’s violin; Lance in the winged chair, presenting an absorbed profile to her gaze when she ventured to look that way.

And as they played, the room was filled with a sense of things that can be uttered only by music, heard only by those who have ears to hear. Across the veiled thoughts, the mortal virtues and failings of those who listened and those who played—across young aspirations and indelible griefs—the twofold stream of sound wove patterns of beauty that included all, transcended all. For true music has the quality of miracle—of being in life yet not of it. In Beethoven it conquers life; reaches out from the stormy heart of things, beyond and again beyond. . . .

They began, at Eve’s request, with the first movement of Vanessa’s Tone Poem, “Gangabal. The Andante she had not played for seven years; and Eve now knew why. She had played it to Daddy on the day he died. They went on to the Grieg Sonata that Vanessa rendered superbly; and they ended with Beethoven. For after Beethoven there seemed no more to be said.

*  *  *

Next morning, after Dr. Norman’s visit of inspection, Vanessa said cheerfully: “Good child, no complications. In a few days, if all goes well, I’ll snatch you out of this detestable heat. We’ll take it leisurely. I’ll give you twenty-four hours’ rest in Murree. Then—Kashmir!”

And Eve’s sole inner response to that magic word was a swift contraction of the heart. But her voice was saying in quite the proper tone: “I can’t believe in it—till I’m there. And I would like two days in Murree. I must see my Peter-boy; and I want to see you see Mrs. de Cray!”

“Very well. Two days—if I can run to it. I’ll write to Havelock at once.”

She went straight to the table, where her photograph and Daddy’s occupied a folding frame. And Eve—instead of counting the hours to Kashmir—was thinking with a dull weight inside: “Only two or three more afternoons. Will he play polo all the time?”

It seemed hard to believe that the dream of seven years was about to be fulfilled. For its swifter fulfilment she had rushed half across the world—only to find the glory of achievement dimmed by the law of irony, that so mysteriously controls the fulfilling of desire.

Book Four

Farthest End

Chapter One

It is too late to be possessed;
The dear surrender ties and binds.
Peace runs upon the running wind.
In liberty’s the only rest.
— Gerald Gould.

It was early evening, near the end of May. Cool air off the water and long cool shadows refreshed sight and sense after a blazing day. Even Srinagar was becoming too hot for comfort. Though roses and strawberries and the Residency garden, at its loveliest, created an illusion of England in June, the sandfly was a burden and the thermometer had touched 84 in the shade. Vanessa and Eve, still among those who lingered in the valley, would soon be moving up to Sonamarg; and possibly on again to Gangabal, the lonely glacier lake—shrine of imperishable memories.

At this delectable hour Vanessa sat alone in the garden, under one of the four great chenars flanking the long lawn that swept up to the house and enhanced its mellow air of Home. But beyond that veritable fragment of England—rose-beds and herbaceous borders and noble old trees—loomed the bare Takt-i-Suliman; and beyond that again the blue distance of hills, the gleam of snow-peaks delicately aloof.

May in Srinagar is England’s June—the month of roses; and in this favoured garden they were everywhere. Bushes and climbers glowed with living colour; the long herbaceous borders flaunted every English flower of summer’s high festival. Chestnut boughs were heavy with blossom, and long plumes of Indian May gleamed silver-white where the low sun caught them. Even a few sprays of lilac still lingered on the massed bushes that shielded the garden from contact with the main road.

Vanessa, at ease in her long chair, was thankful for this brief respite between a strenuous afternoon of “tennis and twaddle” and a small dinner to follow on: just themselves and the Residency party—Sir George Burton, a learned archaeologist, and the two nice Americans, Mr. and Miss Van Doran. Eve was wandering somewhere with young Van Doran—a board-ship friend who looked like aspiring——? But thank Heaven she was safe for the present. Havelock, button-holed by the sister and Sir George—ardent theorists both—had lured them down to the Club, probably in the hope of detaching himself without damage to courtesy.

Since her return, she had skilfully avoided being long alone with him; and it might be an act of wisdom to fly home before he returned. But safety and wisdom were dreary words: and she was in no mood for a possibly superfluous retreat. Young leaves overhead were being conjured into flakes of green light. There was hardly a sound in that quiet place but the breathing of Larry—asleep at her feet—and the love-calls of birds: the liquid note of the golden oriole, brief snatches of song from siskins, finches and tits. Out of the big chestnut flew a couple of paradise fly-catchers, two males quarrelling over some hidden female. Bird, beast and man, it was eternally the same, all down the ages; the same words, kisses and desires repeated ad nauseam; yet, in the fact itself, there was always the sense of having discovered a marvel that no one else could have discovered before in quite the same way. She herself, even at five and thirty, had succumbed to the dear illusion, that would never revisit her heart. Yet there remained the potent fact of her womanhood—more than ever potent in these years of second blooming. Having squandered her first youth on a worthless husband, must the last of her youth perish unfulfilled because her genuine feeling for Havelock Thorne stopped short of the authentic rapture?

The birds, it seemed, had the best of it. They could follow the natural mating instinct, untroubled by hauntings of a vanished spring. For her, each returning April and May in this familiar garden poignantly recalled that distant spring when she had walked and talked with Ian among these same roses, under these same chenar trees in their young leafage—scarcely realising what had come to her after ten years of degrading marriage and half a year of personal freedom. Here again, in these two months, she had been seriously tempted to free herself, by drastic action, from the vanished hands that still held her captive.

There were clear-eyed moments when the shrewd Vanessa—of Bob Vane’s creating—would point out, in plain terms, to the Vanessa of Ian Challoner’s creating that here was she, turned forty, a woman of fastidious tastes and slender means, who would presently have to leave Kashmir, to face the limitations of life at home. And here was a simple large-hearted man to whom she need only say, “I will marry you”—and she would lift his sober spirit to dizzy heights. She would also, incidentally, become mistress of the most lovable house and garden in all India: a very real temptation, that last.

And the man himself genuinely attracted her. Under his genial lazy exterior there was power, though he rarely troubled to exert it. Thorough in work and play, well found in brains and character, he lacked one quality only—and it was crucial—the ability to wean her from this futile constancy to an undying memory, this allegiance to something more vital than a memory. It was the sense of a link not entirely broken that had enabled her to suffer loss, while remaining whole; had kept alive in her a rarefied emotion far removed from sentiment—for it had passed beyond the senses. No longer a flame in the blood, it remained ‘a star in darkness,’ hidden yet indestructible. So freely in her time of desolation she had drawn upon that clear inner sense of him for solace and inspiration, that she could not, now, exchange it at will for an earthlier satisfaction.

It was five years since Havelock had urgently begged her to marry him. Since then an appointment in Rajputana had kept them more or less apart. Now his return to Kashmir had thrown them together again. Nominally he had accepted the role of friend; actually, he remained—and would always remain—her steadfast lover: and before starting up the Datchigam Valley she had almost, at heart, accepted the compromise that would simplify many things. Eve’s advent, at that critical moment, would have been hard on Havelock, difficult for herself—a revival of the past that can be at once so dead, yet so actively alive. For that reason, among others, she had begged a half-enlightened Thea to keep the child for a month.

If Havelock had spoken then——? But he did not speak. And, for her, the news of Eve’s engagement had eclipsed all personal issues. Followed—Thea’s letter; the drink, the likeness, Eve’s innocent alarming postscript, and her own flying descent on Peshawar in the teeth of wrathful protest from the poor bewildered man. To him she could not explain the nature of her fear: her uncertainty as to how far—or how fatally—Eve might have been influenced by that living likeness to her dead father. The child had all Ian’s repressed capacity for love: and in him it had been a tremendous thing. Throughout that brief tragic week—when illness and his wife’s desertion had thrown them together—she had felt the power of it, ill as he was. In some vital sense his compelling spirit had reached out and mingled with her own; and his parting kiss had set the seal on their unearthly union. If any power could span the gulf between the worlds, it must surely be love of that flame-like quality. As it held her, so—in another fashion—it held Eve; and she had arrived in Peshawar determined to combat, for the child, that which she could not combat in her own heart and life. Though her costly impulse had proved superfluous, as regards herself it had been crucial. The suspense, the shock, the look of Ian in Eve’s lifeless face, the joy of reunion unclouded by her secret jealousy of Anne, had renewed her desire to keep faith with something more than a memory—not merely in spirit, but in body and heart.

It had been a difficult matter, on her return, refusing Havelock’s invitation to stay at the Residency: but, for all her scruples, they were more often there than not. It was beyond Vanessa, even in a virtuous mood, to resist that garden after the sweltering Punjab: and Eve was loving it also; blossoming visibly, though still a shade subdued. She had not yet been roused to the old ecstasies; and Vanessa set down her curious brooding silence to sadness—present or past. Not a word so far as to the unsolved mystery of that drive: and Vanessa, who very much wanted to know, was still waiting for a renewal of the old clear confidence between them.

Meantime young Van Doran was enlivening things with his companionship, and his American humour. Somewhere in the distance she heard Eve’s laugh. Just overhead a pair of golden orioles flitted through the branches like gleams of light. The love-songs of these ecstatic birds vaguely troubled her heart. It was time to have done with brooding, to collect the child, stroll back to her own bungalow and dress for dinner.

She had just slid her feet off the rest, when Larry cocked an ear, and there was Havelock coming towards her from the house.

The familiar look of him—large and leisurely, his straw-coloured hair touched with grey—pricked her with vexation at the irony of life, the perversity of the human heart. Ian’s devotion and this man’s honest love—equally doomed to frustration.

As he reached her, she would have risen; but to her complete surprise, he—who rarely touched her—laid a large hand on her shoulder.

“In a mortal hurry all of a sudden?”

“No. But I’m off home,” she answered, ignoring the fact that his hand prevented her. “Time to fly and change my frock.”

“I don’t see the necessity.” He gravely considered her straight slip of a garment: pale mauve quaintly patterned in powdery pinks and blues. “That gown’s good enough for me.”

“Not good enough, though, for Sir George!”

He chuckled at that and removed his hand. “Sir George wouldn’t take notice if you turned up in a draped bath towel.”

“Don’t tempt me,” she laughed softly. “I’m sure that’s a libel; and I would so love to prove it!”

“Not at my dinner-table! Anyhow, there’s no hurry. We haven’t spent half an hour together since you came back. I’m not the plague, that you should shun me.”

“No, indeed, my dear,” she said in quite another tone. “You’re one of my greatest blessings.”

“If you could say the greatest blessing, I’d thank you for that.”

He said it as coolly as if they had been married twenty years; and the knowledge of all that glowed under the coolness stirred her, as things familiar will suddenly do at unexpected moments.

“I wish I could say it honestly,” she answered very low.

“Perhaps if you honestly tried . . .?” he suggested; and she found it difficult to meet his eyes. “I’ve never supposed I could supplant . . . a man like Challoner. But if you’d only give me the right, you dearest woman, there’s a good deal I could do for you and Eve. Doesn’t—all this tempt you a bit?”

“Oh, don’t—don’t——” She stood up now, unhindered, shaken by his echo of her least worthy self. “I can’t say it. And I’ve been trying to spare you this.”

“What use?” He sighed. “It goes on all the time. You may marry me or not marry me, I shall never be cured of loving you—the true Vanessa, whom you fancy I don’t see. You’ve become for me a part of the things a man can’t express. And that essence of you is mine—though you go on denying me so long as we both shall live.”

He spoke those solemn words with a grave simplicity that made any answer seem trivial but the one that she could not give him. And after a difficult pause he said in his normal manner: “Now go home and put on your most becoming frock—for me, not for Sir George.”

She could only smile at him—and risk letting him see the tears in her eyes. Then she walked quickly away out of that enchanted garden and on to her own bungalow—lost in his pain and her own tragedy, Eve forgotten.

In that brief talk Havelock had given her a new impression of himself. Inured though she was to his implicit devotion, the things he had said to-day in his measured voice, had been more impressive than any pleading. Though her own disability remained the question crept in—how long would it remain if he went on like that? Always some one had to be hurt. Life seemed to resolve itself into these perpetual and painful choosings; the past so fatally entangled with the present, the done with the undone; right so cruelly prolific in begetting wrong. Where was the sense of the aimless tangle? Where the ‘deep design’——?

Here, at all events, was her delightful bungalow in its May garment of Fortune’s yellow. Here was the call to put on her most becoming frock in record time. And suddenly she remembered Eve. It was a tribute to Havelock that she had forgotten to collect the Darling.

“That you, Vanessa? You’ll be fearfully late,” the Darling’s voice called from her own bedroom, where she found Eve preening her feathers before the long glass in the pale green frock, with dewdrops, that so charmingly became her. No disfiguring bandage now; the plastered cut hidden by the droop of her hair, and the left arm slung in a green silk handkerchief.

“I saw you two having a solemn confab,” she explained. “And Colonel Thorne looked so terribly serious that I tactfully vanished on my own.”

“K’ever Baby!” Vanessa applauded her; and admired the frock.

She seemed rather talkative in a forced way, and Vanessa thought: “What now? None of us exempt for long.” But, if confidences were impending, they must wait till bedtime.

So soon as she had whisked out of one frock into another—orange and gold with a barbaric girdle—they fled back to the Residency. The long row of poplars shimmering in the level light seemed to stand head downwards in the river, so clear was the water, and so still.

It was two minutes past eight when they stepped into the Residency drawing-room; and Havelock’s eyes applauded her punctuality, also her dress.

There were only two outsiders, both soldiers on their way up to the higher valleys for shikar. Assisted by Havelock they kept the table lively, conspired perhaps to save it from an overdose of archaeology and social reform—an indigestible mixture little to their taste. And Vanessa, conspiring also, found it hard to believe that, only an hour ago, Havelock Thorne had revealed to her, in fine and simple language, the shyest depths of his heart. Though she had done him an ill service when she flirted with him years ago, there could be no denying that his frustrated love for her had made him a finer man. Moreover, he could and did extract a deal of sane satisfaction from his congenial life and work; and in the company of first-rate sportsmen he was entirely happy—as to-night, in spite of her hard refusal.

Young Van Doran, no sportsman, seemed quieter than usual. He and Eve were talking less to one another. There could only be one reason for that; and Vanessa would hear it, no doubt, before she and the child parted for the night.

*  *  *

Always, while she undressed, Eve sat on her bed talking at random, whisking the comb through her dark hair and transforming herself into a golliwog, because Vanessa couldn’t abide it. But to-night her impish humour was in abeyance. Having pensively combed her hair, she let her hand fall into her lap and sighed.

“Oh, poor Pete——”

“Another board-ship victim?” Vanessa asked without turning; for she looked straight into Eve’s reflected eyes.

“Yes—a mild one. He only seemed hovering on the verge. So I hoped he’d have recovered from me by now, and we could be friends. But I’m afraid it won’t work. They are rather troublesome creatures, aren’t they?”

She appealed to Vanessa as to one who must often have found them so. And Vanessa asked with her quizzical smile, “Even the ones we want?”

This time Eve’s sigh came from the depths.

“I should say they’d be the worst. When you want them, they probably won’t . . .! When I wildly rushed out—uninvited!—I was simply crazed for Kashmir and you and a nice wild time in the mountains. But we don’t seem able to get away from these men——”

The naïveté of that moved Vanessa to a smile that was not quizzical.

“That’s supposed to be one of the chief delights of living in India. And they do add a flavour—an interest—to life.”

“Yes—they do,” Eve quaintly admitted, with the absent-minded air that so movingly recalled her father. “If only—the wrong ones wouldn’t keep wanting me, like this. It makes life such a strain.”

And Vanessa said to herself, “She didn’t love that man. If she’d only tell me——”

Perhaps to-night she would. She looked so lone and tragic sitting there staring at nothing; baffled, as only the young can be baffled, by the simplest yet most deeply significant fact of life.

Vanessa, slipping into her night-dress, sat down and laid an arm round her shoulders.

With a sigh of relief Eve leaned to her. “It does hurt so badly—saying ‘No.’ Why will they?”

“Partly because they’re a perverse generation, ‘pursuing that which flies.’ Partly because there’s something magnetic about you, Eve. It was the same with Daddy. He didn’t really want women—that way; and probably more of us than he ever guessed—wanted him.”

“But, Vinessa—didn’t he want you? I always thought——”

It was said scarcely above a whisper; and Vanessa tightened her arm. She, it seemed, was being lured into giving confidences.

“Always thought——? Since when, you scandalous child?”

“Well, long ago I had sense enough to guess . . . to remember little things. And I can show you a sketch of yours in his letter-case—a blue poppy.”

“Eve! “ Vanessa gazed at her—confounded by her young untroubled attitude to a situation that she, the experienced woman, had been hesitating to speak of till Eve joined her permanently; fearful of provoking comparison with her admired Anne; of tarnishing, in the least degree, her radiant faith in her father. And here she was shyly offering proof; ignoring, with superb honesty, the existence of her mother. Of the two, it was Vanessa who felt almost shy—on Ian’s account.

And Eve, caressing the hand that lay in her lap, asked softly, “Darling Vinessa—didn’t he ever tell you? Did he know—about you? I’ve been hoping he did. Longing to ask—and not daring.”

At that Vanessa put both arms round her and kissed her fervently. “My sweet child, he did tell me, he did know—on the day he was taken ill. Not before. Your mother had gone. She had given him a shock; and there was no one . . . otherwise he wouldn’t have spoken. He would never have known.”

“Then I’m not so sorry—Mummy did that,” Eve said in a curious quiet way that recalled a tragic child of twelve saying hard things, in a dazed voice, about her own mother.

It seemed wisest to ignore that unfilial aside, though the implied concern for herself and Ian went to Vanessa’s heart.

“Darling, I can tell you everything now,” she said, pressing Eve’s head against her own. “But it’s too long a story for to-night. Besides, I want you to tell me what I haven’t liked to ask about till you were better all round.”

“D’you mean—caring for Angus?” Eve asked in a low hurried tone, as if she feared it might be something else.

“Yes. Did you really care?”

Eve shook her head, looking straight before her.

“Did you know—about the drink?”

“Afterwards I did.”

“Yet—you meant to go through with it?”

“I was trying to. But after I saw him . . . like that in the city, I had to say ‘No’—when he came.”

“Then why the devil did you go for that drive?” Again Eve’s strange smile recalled her father.

“D’you always know why you do things?”

“No—Not always. In your case, I suspect—sheer pity. And that’s how he rewarded you. Was he drunk?”

“No.”

There was reproach in the vehement denial. One must be careful, it seemed—though she did not love him, though he had nearly killed her.

“I think,” she said slowly, “he was just mad desperate. He wanted that last drive; but it made him frantic. I don’t think he much cared what happened to—to either of us.”

“And I’m certain of it.” Vanessa, believing the worst, was in no mood to be careful.

“Oh, but I don’t mean—that.” Eve turned swiftly, a great fear in her eyes. “I mean—it was a kind of madness. When—when he crashed into the railings—I jumped——”

She shivered and clung to Vanessa like a frightened child.

“Don’t—don’t make me talk about it. I shall dream it all over again.”

And Vanessa, filled with self-reproach, insisted on putting the chair-bed in her room. Protests were unavailing; and Eve, more comforted than she would admit, fell sound asleep at once. It was Vanessa who lay awake, doing penance on the hard bed, thanking God for the love and understanding of Ian’s gifted child.

As regards that mysterious drive, Eve’s special pleading had not carried conviction. Whether she knew or guessed more, nothing would induce her to admit. That was her loyal attitude to the detestable man—virtually guilty of murder. That had been Ian’s acceptance of his detestable, unloved wife. If she could not emulate either, she could sincerely admire both: and the child’s clear-eyed acceptance of her own tragic affair melted her heart.

From all the strain and anxiety of this recent upheaval she plucked a few comforting conclusions: Eve was clearly going to compose music; she was immensely keen about the Book of Trees; and she wanted to get away from men. She would be in no hurry—after this disastrous affair—for fresh emotional adventures; and Vanessa, having secured her at last, hoped to keep her—unshared by any demanding lover—for three or four years at least.

Chapter Two

Blind hope and phantom warning
Are vaguely touched with fire;
My heart has faced the morning,
Desiring to desire.
— Gerald Gould

The middle of June found them encamped on the shores of Gangabal—lake of pilgrimage for two English women, no less than for hundreds of Hindus. Here they had come seven years ago with Larry and Faizullah, newly bereft of the man whose spirit had continued, in diverse fashion, to haunt and colour their lives.

This time, as before, they had chosen the upland route from Sonamarg, by the Nichnai Pass and Lake Vishn Sar; down and down between ramparts of the Vishna mountains; up, and again up, over snow-fields and rolling meadowland, blue with gentian and dwarf delphinium, to the summit of their final pass, the first vision of Haramokh—so high and far that it was as if one stood upon the ramparts of the world and beheld, with earthly eyes, the hills of Heaven.

For Eve, all these years, there had been music in their very names. Now, living and moving among them from day to day, she experienced the profound truth of Clive’s words, spoken at Villars, “Only high mountains and music give one the feeling of liberation.” And for her they had the very qualities of music. In their near splendours and infinite distances there was rhythm, there were soundless melodies. At the stillest moments, of evening or early morning, the ear of her spirit could catch the echo of fairy flutes and ghostly violins. They alone, like music, could lift her out of her troubled self——

At Sonamarg—the evening before they really began to climb—she had wandered away along the narrow path above the Sind River. Tired and sad, she had sat a long while on the bank facing the naked Grey Peaks across the valley; had told herself sternly that she must go on being brave and sensible and bottled up over this tragic business of loving unloved, because it was dismally better not to tell everything even to your dearest and best. But she must see Lance and hear of him sometimes. To lose him altogether now would be to lose the better part of herself. Even the mountains would never be quite the same to her; and her courage would never be whole any more.

He had written only once; a short friendly note about some harness that had been left behind, about the dogs and the move up to Nathia Gully. Of course her answer had been twice the length: a real letter. The rest was silence—and a dwindling hope.

Two weeks ago, Aunt Thea had written to Vanessa, “Lance has gone on leave, shooting, and climbing in Kashmir. No hill stations for him!” So they were actually in the same country; yet their chances of meeting were as remote as if he had fled to the moon. The Nathia Gully address would find him; but pride, no less than her heart, desired a letter undemanded. How if it never came? He was not a letter-writing man. No daily post-bag could reach them on the march: and there was virtue in the exhilaration of high snow, and up-thrusting peaks. Mysterious and aloof from man’s insect miseries, these regions enshrined a secret or two worth all the effort of ascent. For, among mountains, ‘not only the body but the spirit goes up a journey’—a journey bounded by no unscalable heights.

Now, after four stiff marches, each one over a high pass, they had their reward in the serene unearthly beauty of Gangabal—three miles of turquoise-blue water flowing close under glaciers and ice-cliffs and stark walls of rock that culminated in the north-eastern buttress of Haramokh; all the foreshore bright with marsh buttercups and Alpine flowers. Back to this remembered loveliness she had come, seeking beauty as joy and stimulant. But beauty could hurt too much. It could even stir a perverse longing for wings to carry her away from the ache of it, the unrest of desires it could quicken, yet not fulfil. One’s highest faculties seemed mockingly given to increase one’s capacity for pain. Only for pain? In the morning she would no doubt rediscover her equal capacity for joy.

They were camping here for three or four nights so that one batch of letters could reach them before the return journey, and of course Vanessa had timed their arrival—pilgrim fashion—to coincide with the full moon. So the nights would be even lovelier than the days, and it would seem a sin to waste them in sleep.

On this first night, however, Eve’s tired body allowed her no choice in the matter; but her excitable brain woke her before dawn.

Instantly she was out of bed, huddled in a warm dressing-gown, her tent-flaps pulled back; absorbing, entranced, the stillness, the whiteness of that unearthly hour. Here and there stars quivered. The moon hung low—a pearl-white ghost above dead-white peaks. Over Haramokh a few films of cloud, like breath on glass; and in the ice-green waters all was faintly mirrored—pale stars, pale moon, peaks and curves of unblemished snow. Beyond Haramokh, mountains, and again more mountains, empty of life, yet perhaps fulfilling some unknown purpose; their age-long silence only broken by the muffled roar of an avalanche, or the whisper of ice rivers.

Minute after minute she stood so, till her mind lost all sense of boundaries and articulate thought was stilled; her very self dissolved in a quiet happy loss of personality—that seemed gain rather than loss.

Was this what the mystics called experiencing God——?

Quietly as it had come, it passed—that moment of liberation. She was herself again, standing at the peaked opening of her tent, in a very earthly dressing-gown. But a new courage had been born into her heart; and with return to actuality came a sense of having done this before, having felt so before, in a lesser degree.

Villars! What miles away it seemed in space and time! How small and strange that other Eve, wrapped in an eiderdown on a chalet balcony—like looking at oneself down the wrong end of a telescope. Was she, in truth, only a few months older than that callow Eve who had dreamed of these very mountains—she who had travelled across half the world alone, had looked in the face of love and death, had spread the wings of her spirit, for one timeless moment, in the pathless sky?

She had fulfilled the inspiration of that other enchanted hour. She was once again a bird of the air; but the human heart in her body was weighing her down to earth—as her little dark imp had foretold.

The new day was blossoming now behind the head of Haramokh. On the water a faint surface vibration shivered the reflected scene. Rapidly she pulled on her grey-green coat and breeches; knelt for a few minutes beside her bed; then she left the little tent and walked briskly away from the sleeping camp, to explore the dark slopes of rock and juniper where streams splashed and tumbled into the lake.

Outwardly she was still the same Eve, eager for all that life could yield of beauty and happiness. She would still lose her gloves and her keys and enjoy ‘scrumptious’ food; still vainly desire to marry Lance Desmond; still feel alarmed at the idea of marriage, even with him. But, deep inside, she would never again be so terribly not sure about the big things.

Everywhere larks were voicing their ecstasy without shame or restraint. Finches, redstarts and wagtails, all were greeting the day. The sky was full of music. Then—sudden and swift—the sun.

In this early morning beauty, in this down-pouring of pure light on stainless snow, there was no ache, but infinite promise; a reminder that life was full of surprises, that the frailty and brevity of all lovely things increased the worth and the wonder of them.

“He that kisses a joy as it flies
Dwells in eternity’s sunrise.”

That was the message of the birds and the lake and the risen sun to her eager yet bewildered brain—born to bewilderment, in a world full of unanswered riddles. But from that very bewilderment sprang the urge to pursue flying fragments of truth and conjure them into beauty. What was it Lance said that evening——?

“Something you can’t understand, but you can believe——”

“Oh, Lance, Lance!” The mere echo of his name brought her soaring spirit to earth with a run.

One reached the mountain-top of philosophy only to slip ignominiously down the other side. Some joys flew before you could even salute them with a kiss. No use whining about it. Better far to live in a world full of uncertainty and danger, to die a little daily than to vegetate safely, even in Heaven. If Heaven itself were a permanent state, however blissful, it would be no heaven for her. And even in this dangerous uncertain world she could remain faithful to her knowledge of what love could be—fulfilled or no. Like Vanessa, she would put it all into her music——

She was walking back to camp now, eager for breakfast. There were figures moving by the little kitchen tent and a tuft of smoke like a grey-blue feather. No sign of Vanessa or Larry—the inseparables. But, as Eve drew nearer to their tent, she became aware of a faint sound—a melody played so softly on muted strings that it seemed as if the mountains were distilling their own ethereal music.

It was Vanessa, at that unusual hour, playing the slow movement of her own ‘Gangabal.’ Eve had only heard it once before; and arrested by the surprise, by the loveliness of that pure melody, she stood listening, every sense suspended, so as to miss no shade or shadow of a tone. Not till the last faint note drifted into silence did her brain detach itself sufficiently to wonder: Could it possibly be that she was playing to Daddy? Did she believe that his spirit was with them here—where he had first known he loved her? (That was one of many things she had told a privileged Eve during their upward journey.)

One could hardly suppose it of the everyday Vanessa armed with ironic understanding of life and men, or even of the inspired Vanessa who could do wonders on the violin. But people were so sealed up. So trivial—compared with our inner selves—were the apparitions that walked and talked and did all the expected things. To Eve that chance revealing of the sealed-up Vanessa was a wonder and a joy; but unless she were given a lead, she would say no word. And so it went on——

When she entered the tent she found Vanessa sitting on the bed fondling Larry’s ears. The creature had a way of resting his nose on her knee and gazing up a her with abjectly sentimental eyes—the kind of thing that only a dog could do without the remotest sense of shame.

No sign of the fiddle—and no word about it: but a good many words from Eve about her latest inspiration—a Hymn to the Rising Sun, for violin and flute and piano. There must be a flute for the birds.

After breakfast she was troubled by a longing to put fragments of her morning walk on paper—for Lance. But again pride would not permit. So she sat apart for an hour, jotting down, in skeleton form, the two main themes for her Hymn to Sunrise.

An exhilarating walk carried them miles from any sign of human life. They returned to find lunch—a steaming hot-pot—laid in the open; and on Vanessa’s chair hung the post-bag—their first contact with the everyday world for nearly a week.

It contained letters from Anne and Beryl, but no envelope in Lance’s clear vigorous handwriting. The deadly sinking of her heart went far to undermine pride; and the minute escape was possible, she succumbed to the very temptation so valiantly resisted a few hours earlier.

Having succumbed, she let herself go; and the joy of talking to him, even on paper, compensated for damage to pride. She must needs address it to Nathia Gully: and the dāk-runner carried it away into space.

Returning to their al fresco table, she found Vanessa studying the two sheets of music on which she had jotted down her themes: and Vanessa, the hypercritical, seemed impressed.

“Darling, you are coming on,” she said, drawing Eve down on the camp-chair beside her. “I see great possibilities here. If I might collaborate——?”

“Oh, Vanessa, of course you may.”

Her mind, still full of Lance, hardly grasped the high compliment of that; and Vanessa was busy again, making marginal notes in her swift, decisive way.

Suddenly she pushed the sheets aside and turned to Eve with a purposeful air.

“It’s a bigger thing, this gift of yours, than I thought possible. You may do fine work some day—if you choose.”

“How—choose?” Eve asked, half excited, half alarmed.

“Well, a good deal depends on the self that doesn’t write music; the self that I imagine wants all it can get!”

“And can’t it get anything?” Eve asked in a small voice.

“It can get all that’s worth having—in due time. Suppose you devote a few years entirely to music? I would take you abroad, give you every chance to hear and study it in earnest.”

She enlarged on her generous offer, spoke of Leipzig, Dresden, the Bayreuth festival. Six months ago Eve could scarcely have contained herself at the prospect. Even now, failing Lance, she could ask nothing better of life: but the thought of leaving India gave her a queer cold feeling all through.

“Oh, Vanessa—how wonderful!” she said on an indrawn breath, gazing at the sunlit peaks of Haramokh—thinking of Lance. “But if I devote myself entirely—do you mean I must do nothing else?”

“I mean—if music is to count in your life, it must be more than an absorbing side-issue. Everything else must come second to that.”

“Even—getting married!”

“Especially getting married! I don’t flatly assert that marriage and creative art are incompatible. But in most cases they’re a misfit. Take yourself. You can get fragments of real music out of a morning walk. Suppose you fall in love and marry? You fancy you have secured a fine pair of wings for high flying—love and music: but marriage holds one firmly to earth—to master’s requirements, children’s schooling!”

Eve sighed. “Earth is always the difficulty, when you aren’t made that way. But as we can’t live in the clouds, I suppose—we’ve got to make terms with it somehow.”

Vanessa’s smile had an odd sad quality. “Perhaps—only those win heaven who can make terms with earth. Achievement, like everything else, is bought with a price. We’re all more or less frustrated— starved of one thing or another. And those thwarted longings not only make character, they blossom in art. You can’t have it both ways.”

And of course Eve wanted it every way.

Deeply impressed, and not a little disturbed, by the wisdom of this new Vanessa, she said shyly: “There’s a quotation Anne wrote in my little green book. Do you know it? ‘Art is a kind of mysticism; to reach its high places one must leave all and follow—life.’”

Vanessa regarded her with troubled eyes. “That’s a hard saying. Outside my ken. Life didn’t give me a chance. It caught me early, and badly battered my art. Naturally I don’t want to see your lovely art battered by the same unsparing hand. If the men will only give the music a fair field till you’re twenty-five, you’ll be better able to tell, by then, whether it is going to stand permanently first in your life.”

Behind those practical words Eve could feel the real Vanessa—who had played to Daddy—longing that it might be so. She was lonely—a fact that Eve had never yet grasped: unable, on account of Daddy, to marry Colonel Thorne. And she wanted more than her art. They two had come closer in the last fortnight than ever before; and this intimate talk had, on Eve, almost the effect of an appeal. Puzzled and deeply moved, she could only lean closer and fling an arm round the dear woman who had done so much for her, and was prepared to do so much more.

“Vanessa—darling Vanessa,” she murmured, the warmth of her kiss intensified by the strange uncertainty within.

Three days later they reluctantly left Gangabal; and Eve, turning for a last look at the golden foreshore, at the ice-green lake and all its mirrored loveliness, caught herself wondering which of her two latest Impromptus would most vitally affect her life—the fragments of her Hymn to Sunrise or that letter to Lance, written in spite of proud resolves? Each stood for a form of attainment. And of course, being Eve—by nature insatiable—she ardently desired both.

Chapter Three

I must keep a steady helm
By the star I cannot see—
— Herbert Trench

At last they had reached Sonamarg. They were once more in touch with civilisation. No postbag till the morning after their arrival: and out of it came the desired letter from Lance. Since it could not be read under Vanessa’s eyes, Eve had to be very discreet about sauntering off along the path above the river. And there—where she had lately sat in profound dejection—she opened the envelope and unfolded the single sheet.

“Camp—below Zoji-la Pass——”

Her heart gave a wild leap. He was here in this very region! Swiftly, eagerly she read:

“My dear Eve,—

“What a wonderful girl you are—troubling to write me all that while it was fresh in your mind. I never guessed you had another talent up your sleeve! Your letter made me see these mountains with new eyes. Could they suggest music to anyone but you? I like the notion of a ghostly symphony. Wish I could hear it. I’ve had a fine time among them, as you may have heard. The Sind Valley takes a lot of beating. Like you, I’m for Gulmarg, to put in a week or two of civilisation—and polo. I’ll hope for some rides and some music, if your arm’s fit to ‘make friends’ with the fiddle again.

“I’m dead sleepy after climbing all day. Wish I had your gift and could tell you the half of what I’ve seen. This is a poor return for a letter that was immensely appreciated by

“Yours to command,

“L. D.”

Of course she read it all over again; and the second time there sprang an inspiration. Perhaps—perhaps he would come on to Sonamarg before they left—if Vanessa could be persuaded to suggest it? Pride insisted that it must be Vanessa, that he must have a chance to make polite excuses.

Strolling back to camp, she found Vanessa in a canvas chair under a group of silver birches, reading her own important dāk.

“Well—what’s happened?” She looked round with her welcoming smile.

How could one deceive such a woman?

“Only a letter from Lance,” Eve answered, overdoing the coolness. “He’s camping in the Sind Valley.”

Vanessa raised her eyebrows. “Written to you, has he? I’ve just written myself—last night, to be exact. Thea mentioned his whereabouts. And as you two seem such friends, it occurred to me that—after weeks of your elderly Vanessa—he might be a harmless diversion.”

“Stark harmless,” Eve asserted with entire conviction as regards Lance. “But you aren’t elderly. You won’t be even when you’re eighty!”

Vanessa’s laughing eyes thanked her for that. “Wait and see! Anyhow, I sent him a line saying here we were. And would he care to come out and join camps, if he wasn’t assiduously avoiding petticoats—even in breeches! I intended to spring a nice little surprise on you—if he accepted. . . .”

Eve, subsiding on the cool grass, leaned a head against her arm to escape the scrutiny of her too discerning eyes; and Vanessa’s fingers lightly touched her cheek.

“How did the young villain come to know our movements?”

“Oh, I wrote him a description of that sunrise at Gangabal—via Nathia Gully. He’s loving the Sind Valley. I’m sure he won’t want to be bothered with petticoats. I hope you gave him a loophole to refuse charmingly?”

“I gave him several loopholes. It didn’t amount to an invitation. Personally, I think he’ll come.”

“Personally—I don’t,” said Eve, convinced that she knew him best. “It was awfully sweet of you, all the same.”

“Oh, awfully sweet!” Vanessa echoed, tweaking a side lock of hair. “Lance will say ‘awfully decent’! We shall probably know to-morrow, or the day after, which of us is right.”

*  *  *

They knew the day after: and Vanessa was right. Lance did say it was ‘awfully decent’ of her. He also said he was starting at once, and would be with them for dinner. Eve, braced for polite refusal, sat very quiet, for a moment, unsteadied by the vehemence of her own sensations. When it seemed safe to move, she stood up and, without any flimsy excuse, walked away among the trees above the camp.

Vanessa was used to her wandering ways; and she must imperatively be alone to face the dazzling fact that, within a few hours, she would actually be seeing Lance—hearing his voice again. . . .

Half an hour before dinner he arrived—heralded by a great commotion of barking dogs—Larry resenting the intrusion of Bijli and a strange Airedale that Lance was keeping for a friend.

There he actually stood, shaking hands with Vanessa, looking very sunburnt and vigorous in his shooting-kit. Then, he turned to her, his face alight; and the close grasp of his hand strangely steadied her—the last thing she had expected from actual contact.

But after the first rush of excitement there followed an odd sense of flatness—so apt to spoil the first few minutes with any loved person one had been longing to see. Not all at once could the joy of his presence penetrate: and unconsciously she was holding sensation in check.

At dinner, she left Vanessa to do most of the talking, though Lance himself did a good deal. He had had full details from Dick of the Air Force action against those lively Mohmands, whose daring plan to isolate a depleted Peshawar had justified the ‘alarmists’ and the military precautions to the full. Police posts had been reinforced, officers recalled from local leave, and the Mullah had refused to disperse his thousands on demand. Then the aeroplanes had been ‘slipped from leash’—in Dick’s dramatic phrase. Eighteen of them had flown over the Border, and had given the Mohmands the surprise of their lives. The argument from Heaven had proved too strong for an earthly Mullah, who had no power over Djinns ridden by Afrits.¹⁶ His followers did not stand upon the order of their going; and after a little more desultory bombing the ‘show’ had fizzled out.

Talk of all that carried Eve back to Peshawar; and when Vanessa drew Lance on to discuss Border politics, the constraint of his nearness evaporated. She felt at home with him again.

They had arranged to stay another three days a Sonamarg. So she would have the inside of a week in this daily life of outdoor freedom and home-like intimacy with the new Lance, in whom she observed a deeper quiet and seriousness that made him seem farther away from her, yet more than ever the man of her choice.

Those extra days were Vanessa’s gift to Eve—a gift the more generous because the dust thrown in her eyes by guileless nineteen had not blinded her to the true state of affairs. The child had all Ian’s capacity for hiding her light under a bushel; but the response of her whole face when Lance spoke, or looked her way, could not be hidden from one who had seen it so illumined at a word or a caress from her father. What the boy thought or felt even Vanessa’s eyes could not so easily discover. He was an admirable boy, a Desmond, true to type; she liked the fearless directness of his attitude to people and things. But, according to Thea, he had neither the wish nor the wherewithal for early marriage. He would not, she fancied, readily squander his emotions; and he had seen Eve always as the property of another man. Now he might see her in a fresh light; and here was she herself undesignedly flinging the chance in his way.

But, by the end of the second day, a light dawned on her that would certainly not dawn on a dazzled Eve. Lance naturally supposed her to be still shadowed by a tragic loss. He knew nothing of the broken engagement; and if by any chance he also cared, that knowledge was a key that he had every right to possess. Lacking it, he would probably return to Nathia Gully without a word. That she herself—wanting Eve more than anything in life—should feel impelled to put the key into his hands was a stroke of irony in keeping with all that had gone before. Had she been a professing Christian she must have concluded that the Lord loved her beyond measure, so unsparingly had He chastened her with hard refusals.

But, for Ian’s child—who would unceasingly love her—she could rise above herself: and, in the course of a strenuous day’s outing up the valley, she decided that this evening she must contrive to secure Lance for half an hour.

Quite coolly, as if it were of no particular consequence, she would put the key into his hands. She could do no less. She could do no more. The final issue was his affair.

On their return to camp, Eve—elated, but a shade over-tired—was commanded to lie down before dinner.

Of course, the child made pathetic eyes at her, but she obeyed; and Vanessa detained Lance by calling for whisky and soda.

They filled their tumblers and lighted cigarettes. Lance, looking very brown and handsome, leaned an elbow on the table and gazed absently at the peaks across the valley; and Vanessa nerved herself to remark conversationally, “I get so bitten with this life that I grudge returning even to semi-civilised Gulmarg. Often and often, when I’m in camp, I vow that I will never—so help me God—eat a meal under a roof again. Yet, after a month or so, I creep ignominiously back to the inescapable herd, and eat dozens of disenchanted meals—with relish!”

At that he threw up his head and laughed.

“Stopping there for the rest of the season, are you?”

“I’m not sure. For two or three weeks, at any rate, we shall be at the Residency, with Colonel Thorne’s party.”

“And will she be going out as usual? Dancing and all that?” he inquired casually: but his unconscious use of the pronoun gave him away.

“Yes. She’ll enjoy all that; though she, too, is a wild thing by temperament. The camping and marching have quite set her up.”

He glanced round in his quick way. “The arm seems all right now. When can she play again?”

“That’s for Dr. Thorold to decide. I m taking no risks. But it’s been a big deprivation.”

“Five weeks—a damned shame.”

He said it with controlled fury, and Vanessa liked him the better for that.

“Yes—a damned shame. It’s hard to forgive the man. I’m afraid I don’t try.”

Lance said nothing, but the set of his lips said a good deal. There was a prolonged pause, and Vanessa felt thankful for the semblance of occupation provided by her cigarette and tumbler. Her crucial facts must not be dragged in by the heels. If she gave him time, he would give her an opening. And he did.

“D’you know how it was—she didn’t go over in the car?”

Vanessa nodded. “Simply thanks to her own pluck. When the car hit the railings—she jumped.”

His anger was visibly rising at the recollection. His left hand, resting on the table, closed sharply.

“What was the man up to—driving like that?”

“None of us will ever know—for certain. Eve says he was ‘mad desperate.’ You see—she had just told him she couldn’t marry him.”

“She told him—before they went out?” He was grasping the full significance of that.

“Yes. She saw him in the city that day. And the shock gave her courage to make the clean cut. I came down for that purpose. I suspected then—what I know now—that Eve was never really in love with him.”

She said it slowly, that the statement might sink in: and, for a moment, he neither spoke nor stirred.

It came with an effort, the inevitable question: “Then—why?”

“That’s a riddle without an answer.” She reverted to her lighter manner. “I doubt if even she could supply one. A curious look of her father had something to do with it. And things happen on board ship that would never happen on land. They’re all so cooped up together—so thoroughly bored.”

She was enlarging on the affair to help him out. The poor dear was so obviously longing to bolt; very concerned not to give himself away, with never an inkling that he had done it several times already.

Having administered her electric shock, she stood up. “My bath must be getting cold,” she said—and left him sitting there.

Alone in her little tent, she sank down rather abruptly on her camp-bed, that creaked under the assault.

Thank goodness it was done—and deftly done. Vanessa rarely failed in technique, whether in life or in art. Lance, would not be likely to beat about the bush: and when all was happily settled—Eve should know. Vanessa considered she had earned the right to a halo.

As for marriage—if they could, be induced to wait till Eve was twenty-one, it would only be common wisdom. But common wisdom was a rare commodity where passionate love entered in. They would gang their ain gait, regardless of wise counsels. And Eve’s music? God knew what would become of that. The boy’s inordinate ambition would dominate their lives. She herself would do all in her power to keep the flame of Eve’s art alight; but already the child had virtually passed beyond her guardianship into that of the inevitable man. Nor could she, for consolation’s sake, marry Havelock Thorne. Gangabal had made that clearer than ever.

In those few colourless moments of reaction she felt dismally alone.

Chapter Four

Greatness is to hear the bugles—and not to doubt.
— Humbert Wolfe

Minute after minute Lance Desmond sat where Vanessa Vane had left him, staring at the mountains over the way, sunk in the profound stillness of a strong nature profoundly moved. He was giving those coolly spoken statements time to sink in; realising amazedly the swift transformation they had wrought—in himself, in his immediate prospects, his whole clear scheme of life.

Eve had never really loved that man. He had once or twice suspected as much, but the actual knowledge dazzled him like an arrow of sunlight flashed in his eyes. She had broken with the fellow before setting out for the drive that might have been the end of her. No wonder the poor devil looked so queer. Those strange inimical eyes, that brief contact with the naked soul of violence, came back to him now—enlightened: stirred a hideous suspicion. Had the man dared——? Had Eve guessed? The mere possibility—so alien to his young sane view of life—sent a curious chill along his nerves.

His neglected cigarette dwindled till it burnt his fingers. He shook it off like a stinging insect, stood up and looked about him with the dazed air of a dreamer startled out of sleep. Then he turned and walked quickly away along the narrow path he had trodden two days ago, anticipating no more than the keen delight of seeing her again, of renewed contact with her vivid personality. Wilful and eager, warmly human, yet unseizable as quicksilver, she captured a man’s imagination no less than his heart. All these weeks he had been secretly loving her with the mingled ardour and worship of a boy’s clean passion. Unpossessable in any earthly sense, she had become his sky and his faith, the something apart that men consecrate, that colours their inner lives. And now, in ten minutes’ talk, Mrs. Vane had revealed her in a new aspect—not grieving for a lost lover, but freed from an impossible engagement: an Eve who might be conceivably induced to care. . . .

But though love is winged, life goes upon two feet along a dusty road. And beyond that astounding possibility hovered the more complex consideration of marriage—definitely relegated to the distant thirties. Only a few months ago, taking counsel with wise Uncle Vinx, he had reached that sane conclusion; had even admitted a certain temperamental distaste for the domesticities: a distaste that Uncle Vinx—married to the dearest of women—seemed curiously to understand. When he thought of marrying at all—and he seldom did—he saw himself, years ahead, taking a wife who would be the perfect comrade, who would share his masculine pursuits without deflecting him a hair’s breadth from his larger aims. Because his stifled love had entailed no thought of marriage, it had struck deeper into his being than he had realised till now. And even now—supposing she cared, supposing he dared . . .? —the prospect of making himself responsible, in all ways, for a creature of her quality, her headlong impulses, did, for one cowardly moment, frighten him out of his life. He admitted as much with a dash of his native honesty and humour.

Striding on along that narrow path, he felt more strangely perturbed, more at odds with himself than during those few tempestuous days out at Malakand, when he had first confronted his dilemma. That beautiful and tragic discovery had been a comparatively simple affair, owing to his clear sense of right and wrong and a practical streak in him that urged the futility of succumbing to a hopeless passion.

For more than one reason, this—the biggest thing in life—had stolen upon him unawares. He had seen Eve from the first as a promised wife. He had been attracted by her eager intelligent interest in life, her genuine feeling for India; also by the fact that she did not think it necessary to keep on reminding a man that she was a girl. More and more he had enjoyed riding with her, talking to her; yet—ass that he was in such matters—it had not struck him that love might spring from so happy and natural a contact of mind with mind. That evening in the garden when they talked of marriage, he had accepted, in perfect good faith, her offer of friendship, her naive suggestion that they should ‘discard the difference.’ Then they went in—and she had played to him as never before or since; standing there by the open door, wrapt away into a world of her own creation. And he—disturbingly wrought upon by her music, could only follow a blind instinct to escape any direct assault on his emotions.

Later on, when the disturbance subsided, he had assigned a good deal of it to her and his playing and his own susceptibility to music. It was the ensuing week that had more and more deeply involved him, while Eve’s lack of feminine wiles deluded him into the belief that friendship was possible after all, with the right kind of girl. He had been too happily occupied in making that original discovery to perceive where it was leading him, till the near prospect of Monteith’s return, of losing those daily delights, had flashed upon his consciousness the dazzling dismaying truth. And because he naturally thought in terms of action, he had seized the opportunity of getting right away to Malakand where he could do Uncle Vinx a service and pull himself together. He had vowed, in his youthful arrogance, that he could do without women and entangling emotions; and he had left Peshawar still convinced of his own inner mastery. But complete loss of her delightful companionship had speedily forced on him the one personal discovery that really astonishes a man. Even so, his resolute will had taken it for granted that this commanding emotion would yield, like his violent temper, to an ingrained habit of self-control; that he could stifle it as he had stifled his passing passion for Ina Slade at Bannu—thanks to standards and beliefs implanted by the mother he had worshipped and lost only three years ago. But in this tremendous affair of loving Eve his whole being was involved. It was a conflict with something above and beyond mere strength of will.

Up to a point, however, his will had prevailed. He had returned to Peshawar convinced that he could manage to remain her friend: and she, all unaware, had put him sharply to the test on the very afternoon of his return. Blown in upon him by the dust storm, she had obliged him to stand there close beside her in the dark, had strung him to battle by her clear confidence in him as the friend she wished him to be. After that—resolved to give her what she wanted of him at any cost—he could, and did, achieve an inner command that was something between himself and himself, that went clean down to the source of revealing looks and words.

And again his fine resolve had been swiftly and terribly put to the test. When he had passed her, on the Tuesday, driving with that fellow, when he perceived in a flash the man’s incipient violence, her helpless fear—when for one black half-hour he had almost believed her dead—the threat of loss had revealed, as no living contact could do, the futility of any further attempt at assuming the cool mask of friendship. It must be a clean cut——

And now—sudden as dawn in a clear sky—Mrs. Vane’s implicit assurance that this glory of desire, and of love that was more than desire, need not remain for ever hidden in his heart. The wonder of it, and all it might involve, forced him to a brief self-communing foreign to his nature, a clear consideration of means and prospects, before he dared embark upon this very great adventure. For Eve had her own winged ambitions. Marriage with her would be a high and fine delight; but it would involve more than he had ever contemplated in the way of self-adjustment. Their friendship had revealed to him a personality positive as his own, a wayward lovely thing that might be possessed yet never assimilated. But, with all her wildness and waywardness, there was no taint of mere restlessness, of sex and go-as-you-please. Because she was essentially straight, a man’s heart could build on her as on a sure foundation. And he, who was bold and reckless in all physical adventure, needed that sense of firm ground underfoot where his heart was involved. Even in love his fastidious passion concentrated on the quality of the thing desired. It is that which carries love deep, and enables it to establish those spiritual contacts whose influence is incalculable. If he had the amazing good luck to win her, he could be straight with her about his bachelor tendencies, his ambitions. For he still meant to reach the top of the ladder; though already his secret self knew, beyond a doubt, that lordship over the heart and life of Eve Challoner was more to be desired than lordship over a Province of this magnetic India.

Drawn back to her by that irresistible letter, the spell was upon him again stronger than ever. Incessantly he wanted to be near her: in absence he could not keep his thoughts from dwelling on her: she had command of every part. And this process of secret unfolding had cast out his instinctive fear of feminine dominion, of being touched and held. Life, after all, would have its own way with the man of high ambition, as with the trundler along tram-lines—life that depended for continuance on this ‘great unbalancing factor,’ so entirely natural, yet so mysteriously potent in effect, that, even in an age of withering analysis, it continued to devastate and glorify the world. It had persuaded Lance Desmond that there might be greater issues at stake than his own important plans; that, by submitting instead of resisting, a man might eventually find himself in enlarged and unexpected ways.

Though he still saw this complex affair of marriage as a drastic step, not to be lightly undertaken, it had come to this, that—Eve permitting—he did sincerely desire to undertake it at all costs . . . to himself or her.

Chapter Five

I have given my grief away.
I am shed in the springs of the day
And dispersed in the foam of the sea;
I have found out my kin——
— Gerald Gould

For Eve—unaware of service rendered—those few days of transition from schooled hopelessness to shining certainty had a quality of tremulous excitement entirely new to her. Down at Peshawar, in darkest ignorance, she had wondered what it would be like to feel the man you loved edging shyly nearer to the moment of avowal. Now she knew—or fancied she knew; and the knowledge woke her perverse instinct to delay any imminent delight. Perhaps, deeper still, the wild strain in her shied at the near prospect of capture even by the dearest man alive. In the reluctant surrender to Angus her true self had not been involved. Now every shy look, every chance touch of hands, was telling her that with Lance it must be a case of giving all she was, all she would ever be; and the faint indefinable change in him made her feel curious to be near him; desirous, yet half afraid of those shy looks and chance contacts that set the blood dancing in her veins. Lifted above herself, she talked unlimited nonsense, raced on ahead, spurned his proffered help over rocks or boulders, almost toppled into a rushing stream, and felt capable of any madness.

By the time they reached Gulmarg, it was Lance who seemed the shy one; it was Eve who assumed, in self-defence, the careless easy manner of friendship. And Vanessa, watching them both, loving them both, knew she had done well to speak, though the knowledge was shot with pangs of envy and the ache of imminent loss.

Havelock’s party consisted only of Kaye and Chris Lenox, who were moving on shortly to higher regions. Except for the absence of Ian and the presence of Lance, they were the same party who had dined together in the same Residency on that sad July evening when Dr. Norman had pronounced the dread word typhoid. There were two small Lenoxes now in bed upstairs and Eve was transformed into an attractive young woman. Outwardly all things else seemed much the same—only the ghost of Ian at every turn.

For Eve, also, the house was too full of memories. Colonel Thorne had put her in her own little room—Vanessa’s doing, no doubt. She couldn’t have borne to sleep anywhere else; though indeed she could hardly bear the sharpened clash between her new happiness and this old underlying pain.

Seated once more at a real dinner-table—glass and silver and bowls of roses blurring the polished surface—with scarlet kitmutgars in attendance, they felt indeed like beings descended from Olympus. Eve—in a condition of suppressed yet bubbling excitement was talking her head off through the meal, because she had insisted on seeing the doctor at once, and he had given her leave to play again—with care. She was to play after dinner—something simple: only one item, by order. And of course that only item—by request from Lance—had to be the ’Derry Air. How she would get through it with quite another Lance listening—perhaps caring—was a question that only her fingers could answer.

After dinner it was still not quite dark, and they sat with their coffee and cigars in the familiar verandah—glazed, and converted into a room. Eve, as usual, stood well away from her audience, near one of the open doors, overlooking the garden, with its English aspect and its Himalayan setting of blue pine, maple and fir. How accurately she remembered the pattern of those trees against the sky. Her hands trembled a little as she tucked the fiddle under her chin. Colonel Thorne and the Lenoxes had not heard her since she was a child: but she was playing to Lance—to Vanessa, who had not heard her for more than a year.

First the tuning-up process. Then, closing her eyes to steady herself, she began.

Before she had played half a dozen bars she knew that her fingers had not lost their magic. She and the fiddle were friends again. To-night that moving melody, originally a simple human love-song, was an outpouring of her own heart—if Lance had ears to hear. And on the wings of the triumphant close her spirit seemed to soar above the tree-tops into the darkening sky, where Venus glowed like a small steadfast light of earth. . . .

It was over. They neither exclaimed nor clapped. But there was a low murmur—the attar of applause.

Colonel Thorne muttered, “I didn’t expect that.” Kaye said something charming. Eve, unable to answer coherently, could only smile at him; and as she subsided into a corner of the sofa, Vanessa put out a hand that mutely told her what she thought of that brief performance.

Lance had said nothing, and Eve had not yet dared to look at him, though she could feel his gaze drawing her like a magnet. At last she looked, just for a moment—and his eyes held her, so she couldn’t look away. They were telling her unbelievable things.

Snapping her lids together, as if dazzled by a strong light, she leaned back against her cushion—only for a second or two But Vanessa noticed at once and laid a hand on her knee.

“Darling, you’re done up after our long day,” she said softly. “Go to bed!”

And Eve, leaning closer, kissed her cheek. Then she rose, and included the four of them in a gay little gesture, smiling at Colonel Thorne. She would not shake hands with any of them, because—after that look—she dared not shake hands with Lance. Her shining certainty was no false dawn. Millstone or no, Viceroy or no—he was wanting her, loving her, with all his soul.

*  *  *

In her own little bedroom, where a bereft Eve had cried her heart out, she slept peacefully, unvisited by dreams, good or ill. As usual, she woke at an early hour; and her first clear thought was—not of Lance, but of the radiant fact that, at last, she could handle her violin again. At once she was smitten with compunction. Was she still inhuman—even at the summit of human happiness? Was it inhuman to feel, at times, that urgent need to be entirely alone, that odd detachment from life—even from one’s very dearest: yet never for a moment to feel detached from one’s art? Or did it simply mean that her music was an integral part of her, as no separate person could possibly be—however desired, however beloved?

For a few minutes she lay with closed eyes, letting the sense of a new day, a new life, steal into her veins; half afraid to move lest she frighten away the shy wild joy hiding in her heart. Then the invading sun made a brightness through her closed lids, saying like old Miriam, “Open it eye, Missy Sahib. Time for git-up.”

As the sun must be obeyed, she opened an eye, and there was the garden in its dewy stillness, the trees and flowers hardly yet out of dreamland, only the birds wide awake, greeting the sun. She would get up at once, carry her violin to some far corner where she could play unheard—finger practice and difficult passages with this evening in view. Later on in the morning there might be no opportunity. If Lance stayed on—as he probably would—he might be wanting to tell this very dense Eve, in words of one syllable, all the amazing things his eyes had told her last night.

In less than no time she was up and dressed, stealing out through the verandah door. No sign of Larry, who slept in Vanessa’s room. Only Caesar, Colonel Thorne’s ugly powerful bull-terrier, sat blinking at the sun, a gleam of teeth showing along his protruding lower jaw. He was a person of character and a ‘bonny fechter’: but his ugliness repelled her. Out of mere politeness she said, “Good Caesar!” and he blinked at her instead of at the sun with his bleared eyes. But he did not follow her, as almost any other dog would have done: and she was glad.

There, just above the lawn, stood the summer-house, full of morning light: and she ran up the wooden steps into the place of her dreams: the same chair, the same camp-table with its rounded flap, but both had been painted a new strong green.

Resting a hand on the back of the chair, she closed her eyes. “Darling Daddy, I am here again, in reality. Do you know?” she said, just above her breath—and waited.

A delicious warmth flowed through her—not of mere sunshine, though the light beat upon her lids. He was there. He did know. In that brief exquisite moment, as on the tower, no nagging doubt troubled her mind. Her spirit apprehended direct. It was almost as if he had given her his blessing.

Reluctantly she left that sacred spot and wandered on up the garden to a sheltered path, beyond the lawn, shadowed by great blue pines and maples. Along one side ran a grassy bank roughly dented, here and there, into the semblance of a seat. On one of these she sat down, lost in the dear familiarity of it all in the ache of the past that subdued and yet deepened the new wonder of the present. Hidden flowers of the spirit were secretly unfolding in this atmosphere of green quiet, of rapture that was not yet—and all the lovelier for being not yet. Inner doors seemed to stand ajar. The desire for full consciousness of life had at last invaded her——

Voices of barking dogs reminded her that her world was waking up. And what of those difficult passages? She picked up her treasure and was soon happily at work; her fingers regaining their magic, her mind centred on the niceties of accurate execution, shades of tones.

Sounds from the lawn below—dogs again—startled her out of her happy detachment from houses and people. Obviously a fight going on, growls and snarls from the aggressor, frenzied yelps from the victim. The aggressor would certainly be Caesar. And tucking the fiddle under her arm, she ran——

There, in the middle of the lawn, was an agitated jumble of Caesar and Kaye’s nervous, excitable fox-terrier puppy, who had captured Eve’s heart last night. Probably within the jumble there lurked a bone. Probably the puppy had been perky and thievish. But he was a delicious, affectionate creature. Though fighting dogs terrified her, she was determined to rescue him. He had begun squealing again. There was blood on his ears.

Down went fiddle and bow on the summer-house step. She had heard of wonderful people who caught each combatant by the tail and wrenched them apart. But Caesar’s stump was well tucked down; and she doubted the strength of her damaged arm.

Trembling, but valiant, she made a grab at Caesar’s collar. His teeth were firmly lodged in the puppy’s loose skin—and there, of course, was a leg of mutton bone.

Idiotically, she snatched it with her left hand to fling it far from them. But Caesar surprised her by dropping the puppy, who sprang at the bone. The enraged bull terrier made for the hand that held it.

At the impact of his strong teeth, Eve dropped the bone—and found herself cavalierly thrust aside by a man’s arm.

A cane came down sharply—once, twice—across Caesar’s head and shoulders. With a snarling yelp, he fled towards the house, while the puppy—bone and all—was off like a streak of lightning in the opposite direction.

Eve, deserted by the combatants, found herself alone with a startled, angry Lance—the little gold flecks very bright in his eyes.

“Good God! You gave me a fright. Don’t you know it’s dangerous to handle fighting dogs?”

“Yes—but I hadn’t a stick. I didn’t think——”

She feebly excused herself between two breaths. This was not at all the kind of meeting she had planned.

And he wasn’t even attending. He was looking at her left hand, where Caesar’s teeth had grazed it: three white streaks and a red one—the skin just not broken.

Having satisfied himself about that, he glanced at her in his quick way; and his anger seemed suddenly dissolved.

“You are a trouble,” he said, but it sounded more like, “You are a darling.”

“I know I am,” she meekly admitted. “Always have been. Probably always will be——” Then she dropped her eyes and said very low, “So you’d better take care——”

“That’s what I’m after,” he remarked, gazing at her hand again. Then, with an odd hesitation, he took hold of it, cherishing it as if it were a wounded bird; lifted it and kissed it—a soft slow kiss, where Caesar’s teeth had been.

“Oh, Lance!”

It was a breathless whisper. Her heart beat in heavy separate leaps; and they stood there, tingling in a fiery embarrassment, as if he were a chance-met man taking liberties, not her dear familiar friend, blossoming into a lover.

When he spoke, it was in the same low tone—almost as if they were in church:

“Eve—it’s past belief. D’you mind—if I kiss you?”

And she, taken aback by that unexpected question, answered in a soft, excited tone: “I don’t mind anything—when it’s you.”

She heard him catch his breath as he pulled her nearer and laid a cool firm cheek against hers, that was all on fire. And when she turned to him—puzzled, expectant—he very shyly, very gently kissed her lips, that quivered as though they had never been kissed before.

That first tremulous thrill seemed to lift her delicately, deliciously, high in the air, and set her down again—calm without, giddy within. Yet, even in the deliciousness there lurked a vague troubled feeling—“Is that all?” From Lance, with his vitality, his temperament like a clear flame, she had expected more fervour; while he, afraid of his own fervour, hardly dared lay hands on her. At this supreme moment, she—the shy one—was the less embarrassed of the two.

“Lance,” she ventured—determined to have it in words, “Are you quite sure?”

By the swift pressure of his hand she was answered.

“What else would I be—kissing you and all? But I’m not quite taking it in. I’m too busy adoring you.”

“Well, you can go on adoring me!” She veiled her own dazzled eyes.

“And if I go on—will you then?” he asked very softly.

“Oh, I will. At least—I want to fearfully. But you see, I happen to know all about those millstones and ambitions. So I ought to be saying ‘No.’ Unless you desperately—feel you must——?”

At that the gold flecks came alight again. “Lot you know about it.” He glanced apprehensively at the house with its many windows. “We can’t talk here. Come up the garden, where I can tell you properly—if I feel I must.”

His change of tone and look presaged an arm round her waist; but she found a hand slipped past her elbow, fingers interlocked with hers in a light, firm grip, holding her close to him. And, if once again she felt puzzled, she loved him the more for not snatching at the thing he had won.

They walked quickly, not speaking, up to the sheltered path, the early sun on their heads and in their hearts the heightened awareness of love only half told, yet deeply known.

Now that they were quite alone, there crept into her veins a dim, delicious fear of this unknown Lance that awakened her perverse instinct to defer the imminent delight.

Aware that his fingers had loosened a trifle in walking, she deftly freed herself and darted forward along the shadowed path. Utterly content to be near him, she fled from him—or was it from something in herself, so vehement that it frightened her? Would he suppose she was merely coquetting with the wonder of his love? Or would he understand?

Well ahead of him now, she flung herself down on the dented bank, her limbs shaking, her face buried in the cool grass. She heard him come quickly up and stand still beside her: but she could not move. She could only lie there—her heart glowing, her mind flaming like the sky at dawn.

Now his fingers were gently moving in her hair, and little burning sensations tingled all through her. No thought of shifting her head away from this man’s touch.

“You darling Eve,” he said, his low tone charged with feeling. “Didn’t you know before? Is it too much?”

“Yes—it’s too much,” she said in a muffled voice, marvelling that he had understood.

“Are you frightened of me—you of all girls? Shall I go away for a bit?”

“No. Stay—stay!”

His hand was on her shoulder now. She could feel the warmth of it through her thin frock. He was bending down, and his breath stirred the lock of hair over her ear.

“Are you loving me?”

“I’m crazed with loving you. I have been—for ages.”

No escape now; no desire to escape. She uncovered her face and told him the truth, looking straight into his eyes.

“I’ve been crazed too—for ages,” he confessed, sitting down on the green ledge: and at last his arms were round her, holding her slowly close and closer. He who was so quick in other ways knew how to go slowly with this big thing. A blissful sense of utter confidence in him stole through her. All kinds of beautiful things came into her mind, but she couldn’t say one of them; and they seemed more beautiful for not being said.

Then a sudden memory of Angus crept in, as if he were jealous and trying to spoil her wonderful moment. She thrust it from her, wishing fiercely and vainly that no man’s hand had ever touched her till now: and Lance, no less fiercely, was wishing it too.

“All the same—I began it,” she murmured, burrowing into his shoulder.

His lips brushed the corner of her temple. “As forward as that, are you? How d’you know?”

“Because I choose it to be me first. Besides—you couldn’t.”

“Well, I did.”

“So did I.” She lifted her head and faced him again—not afraid any more. “Lance—do you know? Did Vanessa tell you?”

“Yes. She told me. Or I’d have gone off again, not daring to suppose——”

Grown bold, she nestled closer. “Lovesome Vanessa.”

“Yes, indeed.” He hesitated. “You angel girl—that was a mad, bad thing to do.”

She nodded, her soft hair rubbing his cheek. “But oh, dearest Dear, there was a strange mysteriousness behind it all. I’ll tell you everything possible—but not now. It’s over. For the real me—it never was.”

A small shiver ran through her. Angus intruding again——? The crazy sensation was painfully real, and half in fear, half in rapture, she flung her arms round Lance, hiding her face against him.

The mute appeal of those clinging arms released all the ardour he was so carefully holding in check.

“Eve—look up,” he pleaded—and she looked up, her eyes shining.

He said not a word, but he held her closer now; and at last he was kissing her with a man’s fervour, with a boy’s worship. It seemed to draw the heart out of her body—this yielding, that was one with giving, this tremulous darkening of her senses; and in deeper depths, the very springs of life welling up in her with a strong new beat. She had never imagined that a kiss could mean so much.

Dazed a little, she lay limply against him, her eyes closed, her slow, heavy heart-beats almost a pain. And he let her rest so, not saying a word. It was a very real part of their new-found joy in each other that they could be silent together thus, simply thinking and being——

The thinking process brought them back to the Residency garden, to the prose of a house and a breakfast table—awaiting them, miles away.

“I suppose we must?” Eve murmured: and rising reluctantly they smiled at one another, as if they had returned from a far journey.

“We’ve done it now,” he said in a contented voice: and she slanted a mischievous look at him.

“And are you scared out of your life? Am I God’s darkest conundrum?”

“Oh, you are,” he agreed with conviction. “And it’s quite on the cards you always will be. But it goes deeper than understanding—if it’s worth anything.”

“It passes understanding,” she said in a voice of awe. “People talk and write reams about it. Stupid people make fun of it. But we haven’t a glimmering idea what it really is. It’s like music——” And suddenly she remembered her deserted violin. Oh, my poor fiddle! I flung it down because of that thankless puppy.”

“And clean forgot it,” he triumphed—aware already that the fiddle would be his rival in chief. Come along and tell it why.”

Drawing a thin veil over the glory that could not be hid, they strolled demurely down the lawn, almost a foot apart, birds calling overhead, and in their hearts the singing of invisible choirs.

It was still so new—this wonder of shared feeling, this contact of spirit, demanding contact of hands and lips—that all they had just been saying and doing seemed suddenly, to Eve, like a dream: so queerly isolated she felt with Lance walking beside her—completely detached, perhaps not even thinking of her. Only a look or touch from him could make things feel real again. And suddenly it struck her, with almost a sense of awe, that now she herself might touch him whenever she so desired.

Shyly, with the back of her hand, she brushed his. He started, as if his thoughts were far away, crushed her fingers hard a moment, and let them go.

In that moment they both saw Vanessa standing outside on the steps. As they drew near, she opened her arms; and Eve hurled herself into them in the old childish way. It was almost a relief to hug Vanessa, to feel a familiar warmth of heart that was not overwhelming: and Vanessa’s long kiss was proof that she knew——

Still holding the girl, she offered her left hand to Lance.

“Her father would give you leave——” she said in an odd repressed voice. “There are very few men to whom I could say that—from my heart.”

Lance could say nothing; but, to Eve’s surprise and pleasure, he raised the hand still holding his and kissed it. Then the gong boomed through the house and they detached themselves. Three quite ordinary people—two of them extraordinarily shy—went in to breakfast.

*  *  *

The day that followed was, for Eve, the strangest mixture of dream and reality that she had ever known: up in the sky one moment, down on solid earth the next. In between the high tides of emotion Lance became his usual self, easy and delightful to be with; life became an everyday affair of ways and means, of shikar talk and delicious Lenox babies.

Soon after breakfast—Lance being captured by Kaye—Eve went up to her room for an hour’s practice; but the inviting fiddle lay untouched while she moved restlessly about doing aimless unconscious things, feeling a little lost and shaky when Lance wasn’t there, yet secretly armoured by his kisses, his shy “Will you then?” against the little dark imp and his malignities. If this was love—this blend of disturbing emotion and inner peace, of ardour and utmost gentleness—surely to win and keep it any barren independence were worth losing. That other Eve had sailed for India only craving for freedom to go her own way. This enlightened Eve had made the supreme discovery that no way can be entirely your own in a world of interdependence. Always this wind of the spirit, that is life, blowing through the hearts of men and women, whispering the magic formula, “Only the bond are free.”

Finally she forced herself to practise difficult passages, and found—in mental concentration—a wholesome swing back to the normal.

After lunch, absolved from appearing at a big tennis At Home, they went off together for a ride round the Circular Road: Eve—proud owner of two mounts—on Zaidée, the Arab of perfect paces, Lance on Shahzada. And the spirit of Ian Challoner, on an elder Shahzada, rode with them all the way. For Eve, at least, his presence was no mere fancy: and the joy of their first ride was dimmed only by a feeling that some question hovered in Lance’s mind—something he hesitated to ask. Once or twice she saw it in his eyes; and a painful suspicion that it might concern Angus checked her natural impulse to help him out. She wanted no raven’s wing to brush across the radiance of her perfect day. But Lance was a resolute person. If he intended to say it—whatever it was he would do so, without her assistance.

It was just after dinner; and he—oblivious of her for the moment—deep in his masculine talk with Kaye, while she lingered near the open door, beset by one of her sudden impulses to escape, even from all she desired most; to fly out and be alone in the half light with her new happiness, her old memories.

By cautious degrees she edged out on to the steps; and once she was safe down them—she ran.

As the breeze lifted her hair, so this new excitement lifted her heart. Joyfully she ran from him, joyfully she would return when he came to seek her. She had given away a large measure of her cherished personal freedom—not grudgingly or of necessity: and if God loved a cheerful giver, He must be feeling kindly to-day toward this elated Eve—dwarfed to a wholesome feeling of her own unimportance by the brooding trees and the mountains and the first silvery stars . . .

“Eve! Eve!”

The voice of Lance rang out. He had discovered her flight. He was standing on the lawn, not yet able to see her, fresh from the strong light inside.

“Eve!” he called again, a note of longing, almost entreaty, in his voice.

And as she came running to him, he opened his arms. No shyness now: and the swift mutual kiss was a fresh revealing.

“You beloved girl,” he said in her ear. “Why did you go rushing away again like that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her face still hidden. “Partly for the excitement of rushing back to you. Partly because I’m a wild thing; and I’m afraid I’ll always be.”

“So best. I love you the way you’re made—wildness and all.”

“What a crowning mercy! To please you I’d try to be almost anything—even a terribly tame rabbit! But it would be such an effort.”

He laughed. “Well, I’m not after tame rabbits. So you needn’t worry your head about that.”

He pressed it against his own, his fingers strayed in her hair; and suddenly—she knew what he was going to say.

“Come on up the lawn. I want a little more talk before we go in.”

This time he did keep his arm round her; and the pressure of his hand, his altered tone, told her it was coming now——

“Darling,” he said, “there’s a thing I want to ask.”

“I know there is. I’ve been feeling it—seeing it in your eyes. Is it—about Angus?”

He glanced round at her dim face. “It is.”

“Must you say it?”

“Yes. I must.”

“Darling Lance”—she pressed close to him. “I don’t want to talk about Angus.”

“Nor do I, my beauty. And we never will again. But this one thing I must know. It’s bad to have ill thoughts of the dead. And I’ve been thinking—the worst. Could you take your oath, Eve, that that crash was just—careless driving?

“No—it wasn’t,” she said, barely above her breath. “Can’t you—leave it at that?”

He shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t.” There was no combating his tone. “I must get at the truth. Have you any reason to suppose—he meant you to go over, too?”

She turned and hid her face against him; a strong tremor ran through her.

“Lance—don’t ask me that.”

By her plea, by her tremor, he was answered.

“Damn the man,” he said softly and fiercely, catching her to him with sudden vehemence.

“No, please——” she protested in a muffled voice. “Isn’t he damned enough already?”

Then she put her two hands on him, pressing away a little so that she could look into his eyes.

“Darling, listen. I never did love him—though I couldn’t feel certain, till I found you. But he did love me in the real big way. And he was a tragic person. Everything against him. When I had to tell him the truth, I think it crazed him for the time being. And when you passed us, he guessed—about you. That made him furious.”

“But, Eve,”—he pressed her, more puzzled now than persistent,—“how could you know his intention?”

She looked at him straightly for a second or two. There was more in it, she suddenly divined, than her resolve not to strip the last shred of decency from the man who had so loved her, so nearly killed her. It was, in some dim way, important, as regards their whole future, that in spite of his resolute air she should hold her own.

“I know,” she said slowly, “because of something he said. And I’m not going to tell you what it was. So please be good about it, Lance—and don’t badger me to say any more.”

“Badger you? Not I. The splendid girl you are! I want no more.”

She let out a slow breath of relief. By her reservation, by his manner of accepting it, they seemed more closely linked than by any lover’s raptures.

“I didn’t mean—to tell anyone,” she said when she could command her voice, “not even you. But now, it’s between ourselves. We do know—that about poor Angus. And we wouldn’t let anyone else know for the world.”

“Of course we wouldn’t,” he said gravely, adoration in his eyes. “But I had to know.”

“Yes. I think you had to,” she quaintly agreed, with her cheek against his.

They wandered on up the lawn, not talking, content with the simple fact of being together and in perfect accord.

At the far end they turned and looked back at the house that had enshrined her bitterest grief, her deepest joy. Figures hovering near the open door, black against the light within, reminded them that the world held other beings, other demands. Lance was afflicted with a troublesome sense of duty.

“I suppose,” he sighed, we ought, correctly speaking, to go in again. They’ll be wanting you for some music.”

“Oh, they shall have some music.”

And to herself she added—as they strolled reluctantly back to the normal world of lights and people—“To-night I will play the moon and the stars out of the sky.”

The End