As the endless weeks dragged on, there were interesting, even exciting moments—when you hardly felt the ache. But other times—evenings and Sundays—it came back sharper than ever. And in the course of those weeks he had learnt a number of things not included in the school curriculum. He had learnt that it was better to clench your teeth and not cry out when your ears were tweaked or your arm twisted, or an unexpected pin stuck into the soft part of your leg. But, inside him, there burned a fire of rage and hate unsuspected by his tormentors. It was not so much the pain, as the fact that they seemed to enjoy hurting him, that he could neither understand nor forgive.

And by now he felt more than half ashamed of those early letters to his mother, pouring out his misery of loneliness and longing; of frantic threats to run away or jump off the cliff, that had so strangely failed to soften his father's heart. It seemed, he knew all about it. He had been through it himself. But Mummy did not know; so she got upset. And Mummy must not be upset, whatever happened to Roy, who was advised to 'shut his teeth and play the man' and he would feel the happier for it. That hard counsel had done more than hurt and shame him. It had steadied him at the moment when he needed it most. He had somehow managed to shut his teeth and play the man; and he was the happier for it already.

So his faith in the father who wouldn't have Mummy upset, had increased ten-fold: and the letter he had nearly torn into little bits was treasured, like a talisman, in his letter-case—Tara's parting gift.

Strolling on, careless and content, he had reached a gap where the trees fell apart, framing blue deeps and distances of sea and sky. For some reason they looked more blue, more beautiful so framed than seen from the open shore; and there—sitting alone at the edge of all things, he had felt strangely comforted; had resolved to keep his discovery a profound secret; and to come there every Sunday for 'sanctuary'; to think stories, or write poetry—a very private joy.

And this afternoon was the loveliest of all. If only the sheltering leaves would not fall so fast!

He had been sitting a long time, pencil in hand, waiting for words to come; when suddenly there came instead the very sounds he had fled from—the talk and laughter of boys.

They seemed horribly close, right under the jutting cliff; and their laughter and volleys of chaff had the jeering note he knew too well. Presently his ear caught a high-pitched voice of defiance, that broke off and fell to whimpering—a sound that made Roy's heart beat in quick jerks. He could not catch what they were saying, nor see what they were doing. He did not want to see. He hated them all.

Listening—yet dreading to hear—he recognised the voice of Bennet Ma., known—strictly out of earshot—as Scab Major. Is any school, at any period, quite free of the type? It sounded more like a rough than an ill-natured rag; but the whimpering unseen victim seemed to have no kick in him: and Roy could only sit there wondering helplessly what people were made of who found it amusing to hurt and frighten other people, who had done them no harm....

And now the voice of Scab Major rang out distinctly: "After that exhibition, he'll jolly well salaam to the lot of us, turn about. If he's never learnt, we'll show him how."

At the bare suspicion, shrinking gave place to rage. Beasts, they were! If only he could take a flying leap on to them, or roll a few stones down and scare them out of their wits. But he could not stir without giving away his secret. And while he hesitated, his eye absently followed a moving speck far off on the shining sand.

It was a boy on a bicycle—hatless, head in air, sitting very erect. There was only one boy at St Rupert's who carried his head that way and sat his bicycle just so. From the first Roy had watched him covertly, with devout admiration; longing to know him, too shy to ask his name. But so far the godlike one, surrounded by friends, had hardly seemed aware of his existence.

Swiftly he came nearer; and with a sudden leap of his pulses, Roy knew he had seen——

Springing off his bicycle, he flung himself into the little group of tormentors, hitting out vigorously right and left. Sheer surprise and the fury of his onslaught gave him the advantage; and the guilty consciences of the less aggressive were his allies....

This was not cruelty, but championship: and Roy, determined to see all, lay flat on his front—danger of discovery forgotten—grabbing the edge of the cliff, that curved inward, exulting in the triumph of the deliverer and the scattering of the foe.

Bennet Major, one of the first to break away, saw and seized the prostrate bicycle. At that Roy lost his head; leaned perilously over and shouted a warning, "Hi! Look out!"

But the Scab was off like the wind: and the rest, startled by a voice from nowhere, hurriedly followed suit.

The crumbling edge was giving way under his hands, under his body. No time for terror. His jerk gave the finishing touch....

Down he went—over and over; his Sunday hat bouncing gaily on before; nothing to clutch anywhere; but by good luck, no stones——

The thought flashed through him, "I'm killed!" And five seconds later he rolled—breathless and sputtering—to the feet of the two remaining boys, who had sprung back just in time to escape the dusty avalanche.

There he lay—shaken and stupefied—his eyes and mouth full of sand; and his pockets and boots and the inside of his shirt. Nothing seemed to be broken. And he wasn't killed!

Some one was flicking the sand from his face; and he opened his eyes to find the deliverer kneeling beside him, amazed and concerned.

"I say, that was a pretty average tumble! What sort of a lark were you up to? Are you hurt?"

"Only bumped a bit," Roy panted, still out of breath. "I spec' it startled you. I'm sorry."

The bareheaded one laughed. "You startled the Scab's minions a jolly sight more. Cleared the course! And a rare good riddance—eh, Chandranath?"

To that friendly appeal the Indian boy vouchsafed a muttered assent. He stood a little apart, looking sullen, irresolute, and thoroughly uncomfortable, the marks of tears still on his face.

"Thanks veree much. I am going now," he blurted out abruptly; and Roy felt quite cross with him. Pity had evaporated. But the other boy's good-humour seemed unassailable.

"If you're not in a frantic hurry, we can go back together."

Chandranath shook his head. "I don't wish—to go back. I would rather—be by myself."

"As you please. Those cads won't bother you again."

"If they do—I will kill them."

He made that surprising announcement in a fierce whisper. It was the voice of another race.

Chandranath stared blankly. "But—they are of your country," he said; and turning, walked off in the opposite direction.

"A queer fish," Roy's new friend remarked. "Quite out of water here. Awfully stupid sending him to an English school."

"Why?" asked Roy. He was sitting up and dusting himself generally.

"Oh, because——" the boy frowned pensively at the horizon. "That takes some explaining, if you don't know India."

"D'you know India?" Roy could not keep the eagerness out of his tone.

"Rather. I was born there. North-West Frontier. My name's Desmond. We all belong there. I was out till seven and a half, and I'll go back like a bird directly I'm through with Marlborough."

He spoke very quietly; but under the quietness Roy guessed there was purpose—there was fire. This boy knew exactly what he meant to do in his grown-up life—that large, vague word crowded with exciting possibilities. He stood there, straight as an arrow, looking out to sea; and straight as an arrow he would make for his target when school and college let go their hold. Something of this Roy dimly apprehended: and his interest was tinged with envy. If they all 'belonged,' were they Indians, he wondered; and decided not, because of Desmond's coppery brown hair. He wanted to understand—to hear more. He almost forgot he was at school.

"We belong too——" he ventured shyly; and Desmond turned with a kindling eye.

"Good egg! What Province?"

"Rajputana."

"Oh—miles away. Which service?"

Roy looked puzzled. "I—don't know You see—it's my mother—that belongs. My grandfather's a Minister in a big Native State out there."

"Oh—I say!"

There was a shadow of change in his tone. His direct look was a little embarrassing. He seemed to be considering Roy in a new light.

More conundrums! But, warmed by Desmond's friendliness, Roy grew bolder.

"No. He hates politics. He's just—just a gentleman."

Desmond burst out laughing.

"Top hole! He couldn't do better than that. But—if your mother—he must have been in India?"

"Afterwards—they went. I've been too. He found Mother in France. He painted her. He's a rather famous painter."

"What name?"

"Sinclair."

"Oh, I've heard of him.—And your people are always at home. Lucky beggar!" He was silent a moment watching Roy unlace his boot. Then he asked suddenly, in a voice that tried to sound casual: "I say—have you told any of the other boys—about India—and your Mother?"

"No—why? Is there any harm?" Roy was on the defensive at once.

"Well—no. With the right sort, it wouldn't make a scrap of difference. But you can see what some of 'em are like—Bennet Ma. and his crew. Making a dead set at that poor blighter, just because he isn't their colour——"

Roy started. "Was it only because of that?" he asked with emphasis.

"'Course it was. Plain as a pike-staff. I suppose they'd bullied him into cheeking them. And they were hacking him on to his knees—forcing him to salaam." Twin sparks sprang alight in his eyes. "That sort of thing—makes me feel like a kettle on the boil. Wish I'd had a boiling kettle to empty over Bennet."

"So do I—the mean Scab! And he's pinched your bicycle."

"If they did—I would kill them."

Roy stated the fact with quiet deliberation, and without noticing that he had repeated the very words of the vanished victim.

This time Desmond did not treat it as a joke.

"'Course you would," he agreed gravely. "And that sort of shindy's no good for the school. So I thought—better give you the tip——"

"I—see," Roy said in a low voice, without looking up. He did not see; but he began dimly to guess at a so far unknown and unsuspected state of mind.

Desmond sat silent while he shook the sand out of his boots. Then he remarked in an easier tone: "Quite sure there's no damage?"

Roy, now on his feet, found his left leg uncomfortably stiff—and said so.

"Bad luck! We must walk it off. I'll knead it first, if you like. I've seen them do it on the Border."

His unskilled manipulation hurt a good deal; but Roy, overcome with gratitude, gave no sign.

When it was over they set out for their homeward tramp, and found the bicycle, as Desmond had prophesied. He refused to ride on; and Roy limped beside him, feeling absurdly elated. The godlike one had come to earth indeed! Only the remark about his mother still rankled; but he felt shy of returning to the subject. The change in Desmond's manner had puzzled him. Roy glanced admiringly at his profile—the straight nose, the long mouth that smiled so readily, the resolute chin, a little in the air. A clear case of love at sight, schoolboy love; a passing phase of human efflorescence; yet, in passing, it will sometimes leave a mark for life. Roy, instinctively a hero-worshipper, registered a new ambition—to become Desmond's friend.

Presently, as if aware of his thought, Desmond spoke.

"I say, Sinclair, how old are you? You seem less of a kid than most of the new lot."

"I'm ten and a half," said Roy, wishing it was eleven.

Roy felt crushed. In a year he would be gone! Still—there were three more terms: and he would go on to Marlborough too. He would insist.

"Does Scab Ma. bother you much?" Desmond asked with a friendly twinkle.

"Now and then—nothing to fuss about."

Roy's nonchalance, though plucky, was not quite convincing.

"Righto! I'll head him off. He isn't keen to knock up against me." A pause. "How about sitting down my way at meals? You don't look awfully gay at your end."

"I'm not. It would be ripping."

"Good. We'll hang together, eh? Because of India; because we both belong—in a different way. And we'll stick up for that miserable little devil Chandranath."

"Yes—we will." (The glory of that 'we.') "All the same,—I don't much like the look of him"

"No more don't I. He's the wrong 'ját.' He won't stay long—you'll see. But still—he shan't be bullied by Scabs, because he's not the same colour outside. You see that sort of thing in India too. My father's fearfully down on it, because it makes more bad blood than anything; I've heard him say that it's just the blighters who buck about the superior race who do all the damage with their inferior manners. Rather neat—eh?"

Roy glowed. "Your father must be a splendid sort. Is he a soldier?"

"Rather! He's a V.C. He got it saving a Jemadar—a Native Officer."

Roy caught his breath.

"I would awfully like to hear how——"

Desmond told him how....

It was a wonderful walk. By the end of it Roy no longer felt a lonely atom in a strange world. He had found something better than his Sanctuary—he had found a friend.

Looking back, long afterwards, he recognised that Sunday as the turning-point....

Later in the evening he poured it all out to his mother in four closely-written sheets.

Lilámani read and re-read that letter curled among her cushions in the deep window-seat of the studio, a tower room with tall windows looking north, over jagged pine tops, to the open moor.

And while she read, Nevil stood at his easel, seizing and recording, the unconscious grace of her pose, the rapt stillness of her face. He was never weary of painting her—never quite satisfied with the result; always within an ace of achieving the one perfect picture that should immortalise a gleam from her inner uncaptured loveliness—the essence of personality that eternally foils the sense, while it sways the spirit. Impossible, of course. One might as well try and catch the fragrance of a rose, the bloom of an April dawn, or any other fragment of the world's unseizable beauty But there remained the joy of pursuing—and pursuing, not achieving, is the salt of life.

Something in her pose, her absorption—lips just parted, shadow of lashes on her cheek, primrose-pale sari against the green velvet curtain—had fired him, lit a spark of inspiration....

For, in truth, she was unaware; lost to everything but the joy of contact with her son. The pang of parting had been dulled to a hidden ache; but always the blank was there, however amply filled with other claims on heart and spirit. A larger schoolroom now: and Nevil, with his new Eastern picture on hand, making constant demands on her—as usual—in the initial stages; till the subject of the moment eclipsed everything, every one—sometimes even herself. Her early twinges of jealousy, during that phase, rarely troubled her now. As wife and mother, she better understood the dual allegiance—the twofold strain of the creative process, whether in spirit or flesh. Now she knew that, when art seemed most exclusively to claim him, his need was greater, not less, for her woman's gift of self-effacing tenderness, of personal physical service. And through deeper love, came clearer insight. She saw Nevil—the artist—as a veritable Yogi, impelled to ceaseless striving for mastery of himself, his atmosphere, his medium: saw her wifely love and service as the life-giving impetus without which he might flag and never reach the heights.

Women of wide social and intellectual activities might raise perplexed eyebrows over her secluded life, still instinct with the 'spirit of purdah.' She found the daily pattern of it woven with threads so richly varied that to cherish a hidden grief seemed base ingratitude. Yet always—at the back of things—lurked her foolish mother-anxieties, her deep unuttered longing. And letters were cold comfort. In the first few weeks she had come to dread opening them. Always the bitter cry of loneliness and longing for home. What was it Nevil had said to make so surprising a change? Craving to know, she feared to ask; and more than suspected that he blessed her for refraining.

And now came this long, exultant letter, written in the first flush of his great discovery——

With a playful movement—pure Eastern—she drew it half over her face.

"Oh, Nevil—you wicked! I never guessed——"

"That was the beauty of it. I make my salaams to Roy! What's he been up to that it takes four sheets to confess?"

"Not confessing. Telling a tale. It will surprise you."

"Let's have a look."

She gave him the letter; and while he read it, she intently watched his face. "The boy'll write—I shouldn't wonder," was his verdict, handing back her treasure, with an odd half-smile in his eyes.

"And you were hoping—he would paint?" she said, answering his thought.

"Yes, but—scarcely expecting. Sons are a perverse generation. I'm glad he's tumbled on his feet and found a pal."

"Yes. It is good."

"We'll invite young Desmond here and inspect him, eh?"

"Yes—we will."

He was silent a moment, considering her profile—humanly, not artistically. "Jealous, is she? The hundredth part of a fraction?"

"Just so much!" she admitted in her small voice. "But underneath—I am glad. A fine fellow. We will ask him—later."

The projected invitation proved superfluous. Roy's next letter informed them that after Christmas Desmond was coming for ten whole days. He had promised.

They discovered, incidentally, his wonderful gift of music. "Got it off my mother," was his modest disclaimer. "She and my sister are simply top-hole. We do lots of it together."

His intelligent delight in pictures and books commended him to Nevil; but, at twelve and a half, skating, tramping, and hockey matches held the field. Sometimes—when it was skating—Tara and Chris went with them. But they made it clear, quite unaggressively, that the real point was to go alone.

Day after day, from her window, Lilámani watched them go, across the radiant sweep of snow-covered lawn; and, for the first time, where Roy was concerned, she knew the prick of jealousy,—a foretaste of the day when her love would no longer fill his life. Ashamed of her own weakness, she kept it hid—or fancied she did so; but the little stabbing ache persisted, in spite of shame and stoic resolves.

Tara and Christine also knew the horrid pang; but they knew neither shame not stoic resolves. Roy mustn't suspect, of course; but they told each other, in strictest confidence, that they hated Desmond; firmly believing they spoke the truth. So it was particularly vexatious to find that the moment he favoured them with the most casual attention, they were at his feet.

He had seen no Indian women, he explained, except in bazaars or in service; so he couldn't quite understand, until his own mother made things clearer to him and recommended him to go and see for himself. Now he had seen—and succumbed: and Roy's very private triumph was unalloyed. Second only to that triumph, the really important outcome of their glorious Ten Days was that, with Desmond's help, Roy fought the battle of going on to Marlborough when he was twelve—and won....

It was horrid leaving them all again; but it did make a wonderful difference knowing there was Desmond at the other end; and together they would champion that doubtfully grateful victim—Chandranath. Their zeal proved superfluous. Chandranath never reappeared at St Rupert's. Perhaps his people had arrived at Desmond's conclusion, that he was not the right "ját" for an English school. In any case, his disappearance was a relief—and Roy promptly forgot all about him.

Years later—many years later—he was to remember.

After St Rupert's—Marlborough:—and just at first he hated it, as he had hated St Rupert's, though in a different fashion. Here it was not so much the longing for home, as a vague yet deepening sense that, in some vital way—not yet fully understood—he was different from his fellows But once he reached the haven of Desmond's study, the good days began in earnest. He could read and dream along his own lines. He could scribble verse or prose, when he ought to have been preparing quite other things; and the results, good or bad, went straight to his mother.

And all the while, subconsciously, she was drawing nearer to the given moment of religious surrender that would complete the spiritual link with husband and children. As the babies grew older, she saw, with increasing clearness, the increasing difficulty of her position. Frankly, she had tried not to see it. Her free spirit, having reached the Reality that transcends all forms, shrank from returning to the dogmas, the limitations of a definite creed. In her eyes, it seemed a step backward. Belief in a personal God, above and beyond the Universe, was reckoned by her own faith a primitive conception; a stage on the way to that ultima Thule where the soul of man perceives its own inherent divinity, and the knower becomes the Known, as notes become music, as the river becomes the sea. It was this that troubled her logical mind and delayed decision.

But the final deciding factor—though he knew it not—was Roy. By reason of her own share in him, religion would probably mean more to him than to Nevil. For his sake—for the sake of Christine and Tara and the babies, fast sprouting into boys—she felt at last irresistibly constrained to accept, with certain mental reservations, the tenets of her husband's creed; and so qualify herself to share with them all its outward and visible forms, as already she shared its inward and spiritual grace.

The conviction sprang from no mere sentimental impulse. It was the unhurried work of years. So—when there arose the question of Roy's confirmation, and Tara's, at the same Easter-tide, conviction blossomed into decision, as simply and naturally as the bud of a flower opens to the sun. That is the supreme virtue of changes not imposed from without. When the given moment came—the inner resolve was there.

Quite simply she spoke of it to Nevil, one evening over the studio fire. And behold a surprise awaited her. She had rarely seen him more deeply moved. From the time of Roy's coming, he told her, he had cherished the hidden hope.

"Yet too seldom you have spoken of such things—why?" she asked, moved in her turn and amazed.

"Nevil—lord of me!" She slipped to her knees beside him. "I am ready. But oh, you wicked, how could I know that all the time you were caring that much in your secret heart."

He gathered her close and said not a word.

So the great matter was settled, with no outward fuss or formalities. She would be baptized before Roy came home for the Easter holidays and his confirmation.

"But not here—not Mr Sale," she pleaded. "Let us go away quietly to London—we two. Let it be in that great Church, where first the thought was born in my heart that some day ... this might be."

He could refuse her nothing. Jeffrey might feel aggrieved when he knew. But after all—this was their own affair. Time enough afterwards to let in the world and its thronging notes of exclamation.

Roy was told when he came home. For imparting such intimate news, she craved the response of his living self. And if Nevil's satisfaction struck a deeper note, it was simply that Roy was very young and had always included her Hindu-ness in the natural order of things.

Wonderful days! Preparing the children, with Helen's help; preparing herself, in the quiet of her "House of Gods"—a tiny room above the studio—in much the same spirit as she had prepared for the great consecration of marriage, with vigil and meditation and unobtrusive fasting—noted by Nevil, though he said no word.

Crowning wonder of all, that golden Easter morning of her first Communion with Roy and Tara, with Nevil and Helen:—unfolding of heart and spirit, of leaf and blossom; dual miracle of a world new made....

END OF PHASE I.

THE VISIONARY GLEAM

Oxford on a clear, still evening of June: silver reaches of Isis and Cher; meadows pied with moon daisies and clover, and the rose madder bloom of ripe grasses; the trill of unseen birds tuning up for evensong; the passing and repassing of boats and canoes and punts, gay with cushions and summer frocks; all bathed in the level radiance that steals over earth like a presence in the last hours of a summer day....

Oxford—shrine of the oldest creeds and the newest fads—given over, for one hilarious week, to the yearly invasion of mothers and sisters and cousins, and girls that were neither; especially girls that were neither....

Two of the punts, clearly containing one party, kept close enough together for the occupants to exchange sallies of wit, or any blissful foolishness in keeping with the blissfully foolish mood of a moonlight picnic up the river in 'Commem.'

Roy Sinclair's party boasted the distinction of including one mother, Lady Despard; and one grandfather, Cuthbert Broome; and Roy himself—a slender, virile figure in flannels, and New College tie—was poling the first punt.

As in boyhood, so now, his bearing and features were Nevil incarnate. But to the shrewd eye of Broome the last seemed subtly overlaid with the spirit of the East—a brooding stillness wrought from the clash of opposing forces within. When he laughed and talked it vanished. When he fell silent, and drifted away from his surroundings, it reappeared.

Broome had not seen much of the boy, intimately, since the New Year; and he did not need spectacles to discern some inner ferment at work. Roy was more talkative and less communicative than usual; and Broome let him talk, reading between the lines. He knew to a nicety the moment when a chance question will kill confidence—or evoke it. He suspected one of those critical corners. He also suspected one of those Indian cousins of his: delightful, both of them; but still....

The question remained, which was it—the girl or the boy?

The girl, Arúna—student at Somerville College—was reclining among vast blue and pink cushions in the bows, pensively twirling a Japanese parasol, one arm flung round the shoulders of her companion—a fellow-student; fair and stolid and good-humoured. Broome summed her up mentally: "Tactless but trustworthy. Anglo-Saxon to the last button on her ready-made Shantung coat and the blunted toe of her white suède shoe."

Arúna—in plain English, Dawn—was quite arrestingly otherwise. Not beautiful, like Lilámani, nor quite so fair of skin; but what the face lacked in symmetry was redeemed by lively play of expression, piquante tilt of nose and chin, large eyes, velvet-dark like brown pansies. The modelling of the face—its breadth and roundness and upturned aspect—gave it a pansy-like air. Over her simple summer frock of carnation pink she wore a paler sari flecked with gold; and two ropes of coral beads enhanced the deeper coral of her full lower lip. Not yet eighteen, she was studying "pedagogy" for the benefit of her less adventurous sisters in Jaipur.

After Desmond—Dyán Singh: each, in his turn and type, own brother to Roy's complex soul. Broome—in no insular spirit—preferred the earlier influence. But Desmond had sped like an arrow to the Border, where his eldest brother commanded their father's old regiment; and Dyán Singh—handsome and fiery, young India at its best—reigned in his stead. The two were of the same college. Dyán, twelve months younger, looked the older by a year or more. Face and form bore the Rajput stamp of virility, of a racial pride, verging on arrogance; and the Rajput insignia of breeding—noticeably small hands and feet.

He was poling the second punt with less skill and assurance than Roy. His attention was palpably distracted by a vision of Tara among the cushions in the bows; an arm linked through her mother's, as though defending her against the implication of being older than any one else, or in the least degree out of it because of that trifling detail—tacitly admitted, while hotly denied; which was Tara all over.

Certainly Lady Despard still looked amazingly young; still emanated the vital charm she had transmitted to her child. And Tara at twenty, in soft butter-coloured frock with roses in her hat, was a vision alluring enough to distract any young man from concentration on a punt pole. Vivid, eager and venturesome, singularly free from the bane of self-consciousness; not least among her graces—and rare enough to be notable—was the grace of her chivalrous affection for the older generation. In Tara's eyes, girls who patronised their mothers and tolerated their fathers were anathema. It was a trait certain to impress Roy's Rajput cousin; and Broome wondered whether Helen was alive to the disturbing possibility; whether, for all her genuine love of the East, she would acquiesce....

How sharply they tugged at his middle-aged heart, these casual and opinionated young things, with their follies and fanaticisms, their Jacob's ladders hitched perilously to the stars; with their triumphs and failures and disillusions all ahead of them; airily impervious to proffered help and advice from those who would agonise to serve them if they could....

A jarring bump in the small of his back cut short his flagrantly Victorian musings. Dyán's punt was the offender; and Dyán himself, clutching the pole that had betrayed him, was almost pitched into the river.

His achievement was greeted by a shout of laughter, and an ironic "Played indeed!" from Cuthbert Gordon—Broome's grandson. Roy, tumbled from some starry dream of his own, flashed out imperiously: "Look alive, you blithering idiot. 'Who are you a-shoving'?"

The Rajput's face darkened; but before he could retort, Tara had risen and stepped swiftly to his side. Her fingers closed on the pole; and she smiled straight into his clouded eyes.

"Let me, please. I'm sick of lazing and fearfully keen. And I can't allow my Mother to be drownded by anyone but me. I'd be obliged to murder the other body, which would be awkward—for us both!"

"Miss Despard—there is no danger——" he muttered—impervious to humour; and—as if by chance—one of his hands half covered hers.

"Let go," she commanded, so low that no one else knew she had spoken; so sternly that Dyán's fingers unclosed as if they had touched fire.

"Now, don't fuss. Go and sit down," she added, in her lighter vein. "You've done your share. And you're jolly grateful to me, really. But too proud to own it!"

"Not too proud to obey you," he muttered.

She saw the words rather than heard them; and he turned away without daring to meet her eyes.

As he settled himself, her clear voice rang out: "Wake up, Roy! I'll race you to the backwater."

They raced to the backwater; and Tara won by half a length, amid cheers from the men.

"Well, you see, I had to let you," Roy explained, as she confronted him, flushed with triumph. "Seemed a shame to cut you out. Not as if you were a giddy suffragette!"

"Qui s'excuse—s'accuse!" she retorted. "Anyway—I'm the winner."

"Right you are. The way of girls was ever so. No matter what line you take, it's safe to be the wrong one."

"Hark at the Cynic!" jeered young Cuthbert. "Were you forty on the 9th, or was it forty-five?"

Roy grinned. "Good old Cuthers! Don't exhaust yourself trying to be funny! Fish out the drinks. We've earned them, haven't we—High Tower Princess?" The last, confidentially, for Tara's ear alone.

And Dyán, seeing the smile in her eyes, felt jealousy pierce him like a red-hot wire.

The supper, provided by Roy and Dyán, was no scratch wayside meal, but an ambrosial affair:—salmon mayonnaise, ready mixed; glazed joints of chicken; strawberries and cream; lordly chocolate boxes; sparkling moselle—and syphons for the abstemious.

It was a lively meal: Roy, dropped from the clouds, the film of the East gone from his face, was simply Nevil again; even as young Cuthbert, with his large build and thatch of tawny hair, was a juvenile edition of Broome. And the older man, watching them, bandying chaff with them, renewed his youth for one careless golden hour.

Dyán sat by Tara, anticipating her lightest need; courage rising by leaps and bounds. Arúna, from her nest of cushions, exchanged lively sallies with Roy. Petted by a college full of friendly English girls, she had very soon lost what little shyness she ever possessed. Now and again, when his eyes challenged hers, she would veil them and watch him surreptitiously; one moment approving his masculine grace; the next, boldly asking herself: "Does he see how I am wearing the favourite sari—and how my coral beads make my lips look red?" And again: "Why do they make foolish talk of a gulf between East and West?"

To that profound question came no answer in words; only in hidden stirrings, that she preferred to ignore. Both brother and sister had persuaded themselves that talk of a gulf was exaggerated by unfriendly spirits. They, at all events, having built their bridge, took its stability for granted. Children of an emotional race, it sufficed to discover that they loved the cool green freshness of England, the careless kindly freedom of her life and ways; the hum of her restless, smoky, all-embracing London; her miles and miles of books and pictures. Above everything they loved Oxford, where all were brothers in spirit—with a proper sense of difference between the brothers of one's own college and the mere outsider:—Oxford, at this particular hour of this particular June evening. And at this actual moment, they loved salmon mayonnaise and crushed strawberries fully as much as any other manifestation of the delectable land.

And down in subconscious depths—untroubled by the play of surface emotions—burned their passionate, unreasoned love of India that any chance breath might rekindle to a flame.

Presently, as the sun drew down to earth, trees and meadows swam in a golden haze. Arrows of gold, stealing through alders and willows, conjured mere leaves into discs of pure green light. Clouds of pollen brightened to dust of gold. In the near haze midges flickered; and, black against the brightness, swallows wheeled and dipped, uttering thin cries in the ecstasy of their evening flight.

Only Arúna did not smoke; and Emily Barnard, her fanatic devotee, retired with her to the bank, where they made a lazy pretence of "washing up." But Arúna's eyes would stray toward the recumbent figure of Roy, when she fancied Emmie was not looking. And Emmie—who could see very well without looking—wished him at the bottom of the river.

Propped on an elbow, he lay among Arúna's cushions, his senses stirred by the faint carnation scent she used, enlarging on his latest enthusiasm—Rabindranath Tagore, the first of India's poet-saints to challenge the ethics of the withdrawn life. When the mood was on, the veil of reserve swept aside, he could pour out his ardours, his protests, his theories, in an eloquent rush of words. And Arúna—absently wiping spoons and forks—listened entranced. He seemed to be addressing no one in particular; but as often as not his gaze rested on Broome, as though he were indirectly conveying to him thoughts he felt shy of airing when they were alone.

A pause in the flow of his talk left a space of silence into which the encompassing peace and radiance stole like an inflowing tide. None loved better than Roy the ghostly music of silence; but to-night his brain was filled with the music of words—not his own.

"Just listen to this," he said, without preamble. His eyes took on their far-away look; his voice dropped a tone.

"The night is night of mid-May; the breeze is the breeze of the South.

"From my heart comes out and dances the image of my Desire.

"The gleaming vision flits on.

"I try to clasp it firmly, it eludes me and leads me astray.

"I seek what I cannot get; I get what I do not seek."

It passed in a second; and Roy was speaking again—not to Tara, but to her mother.

"Is there any poet, East or West, who can quite so exquisitely capture the essence of a mood, hold it lightly, like a fluttering bird, and as lightly let it go?"

Lady Despard smiled approval at the simile. "In that one," she said, "he has captured more than a mood—the very essence of life.—Have you met him?"

"Yes, once—after a lecture. We had a talk—I'll never forget. There's wonderful stuff in the new volume. I know most of it by heart."

"Spare us, good Lord," muttered Cuthbert—neither prejudiced nor perverse, but British to the core. "If you start again, I'll retaliate with Job and the Psalms!"

Roy retorted with the stump of an extinct cigarette. It smote the offender between the eyebrows, leaving a caste-mark of warm ash to attest the accuracy of his aim.

"Bull's eye!" Tara scored softly; and Roy, turning on his elbow, appealed to Broome. "Jeffers, please extinguish him!" ("Jeffers" being a corruption of G.F., alias Godfather).

Broome laughed. "I had a hazy notion he was your show candidate for the Indian Civil!"

"He's supposed to be. That's the scandal of it. A mighty lot of interest he's cultivating in the people and the country he aspires to administer."

"High art and sloppy sentiment are not in the bond," Cuthbert retorted, with a wink at Dyán Singh.

That roused Lady Despard. "Insight and sympathy must be in the bond, unless England and India are to drift apart altogether. The Indian Civilian should be caught early, like the sailor, and trained on the spot. Exams make character a side issue. And one might almost say there's no other issue in the Indian services."

Cuthbert nodded. "Glorious farce, isn't it? They simply cram us like Christmas turkeys. Efficiency's the war-cry, these enlightened days."

"Hear, hear!" Broome applauded him. "But I'm afraid, my dear boy, the Time Spirit is out to make tradesmen and politicians of us all. Thank God, the soul of a race lives in its books, its philosophy and art."

"Very well then"—Roy was the speaker,—"the obvious remedy lies in getting the souls of both races into closer touch—philosophy, art, and all that—eh, Jeffers? That's what we're after—Dyán and I—on the lines of that society Dad belongs to."

Broome looked thoughtfully from one to the other. "A tall order," said he.

"A vision splendid!" said Lady Despard.

Roy leaned eagerly towards her. "You don't sneer at dreams, Aunt Helen."

"Nor do I, my son. Dreamers are our strictly unpaid torch-bearers. They light the path for us; and we murmur 'Poor fools!' with a kind of sneaking self-satisfaction, when they come a cropper."

"'Which I 'ope it won't 'appen to me!'" quoted Roy, cheered by Lady Despard's approval. "Anyway, we're keen to speed up the better understanding move—on the principle that Art unites and politics divide."

"Very pithy—and approximately true! May I be allowed to proffer a sound working maxim for youth on the war-path? 'Freedom and courage in thought—obedience in act.' When I say obedience, I don't mean slavish conformity. When I say freedom, I don't mean licence. Only the bond are free."

That roused the much-enduring British Lion—in the person of Cuthbert Gordon.

"Confound you, Roy! This is a picnic, not a bally Union debate. You can't argue for nuts; and when you start spouting you're the limit. But two can play at that game!" He flourished a half-empty syphon of lemonade, threatening the handle with a very square thumb.

"Fire away, old bean." Roy opened his mouth by way of invitation. Cuthbert promptly pressed the trigger—and missed his mark.

There was a small shriek from Tara and from the girls on the bank: then the opponents proceeded to deal with one another in earnest....

Dyán soon lost interest when India was not the theme; and, as the elders fell into an undercurrent of talk, his eyes sought Tara's face. Her answering smile spurred him to a bold move; and he leaned towards her, over the edge of the boat. "Miss Despard," he said under his breath, "won't you come for a stroll in the field?—Do."

She shook her head. "I'm too lazy! We've had enough exercise. And there's the walk home."

Her refusal jarred him; but desire overruled pride. "You couldn't call it exercise. Do come."

"Truly—I'm tired," she insisted gently, looking away from him towards her mother.

It was Lady Despard's boast that she could listen to three conversations at once; but even Tara was surprised when she casually put out a hand and patted her knee. "Wise child. Better keep quiet till we start home."

The hand was not removed. Tara covered it with her own, and further maddened the discomfited Dyán by saying, with her very kindest smile: "I'm so sorry. Don't be vexed."