It was distinctly one of Roy's great moments when, at last, they four stood together in Sir Lakshman's room: the old man, outwardly impassive—as became a Rajput—profoundly moved in the deep places of his heart; Arúna, in Oxford gown and sari, radiant one moment; the next—in spite of stoic resolves—crying softly in Dyán's arms. And Roy understood only too well. The moment he held her hand and met her eyes—he knew. It was not only joy at Dyán's return that evoked the veiled blush, the laugh that trembled into tears. Conceit or no conceit, his intuition was not to be deceived.

And the conviction did not pass. It was confirmed by every day, every hour he spent in her company. On the rare occasions, when they were alone together, the very thing that must be religiously stifled and hid, emanated from her like fragrance from a flower; sharply reawakening his own temptation to respond—were it only to ease her pain. And there was more in it than that—or very soon would be, if he hesitated much longer to clinch matters by telling her the truth; though every nerve shrank from the ordeal—for himself and her. Running away from oneself was plainly a futile experiment. To have so failed with her, disheartened him badly and dwarfed his proud achievement to an insignificant thing.

Much of this he had confided to Roy, in fragments and jerks, on the night of their amazing exit from Delhi; already sufficiently himself again to puzzle frankly over that perverted Dyán; to marvel—with a simplicity far removed from mere foolishness—"how one man can make a magic in other men's minds so that he shall appear to them an eagle when he is only a crow."

"That particular form of magic," Roy told him, "has made half the history of the world. We all like to flatter ourselves we're safe from it—till we get bitten! You've been no more of a fool than the others, Dyán—if that's any consolation."

The offending word rankled a little. The truth of it rankled more. "By Indra, I am no fool now. Perhaps he has discovered that already. I fancy my letter will administer a shock. I wonder what he will do?"

"He won't 'do.' You can bank on that. He may fling vitriol over you on paper. But you won't have the pleasure of his company at Jaipur. He left his card on us before the Dewáli. And there's been trouble since; leaflets circulating mysteriously; an exploded attempt to start a seditious 'rag.' So they're on the qui vive. He'll count that one up against me: but I'll manage to survive."

And Dyán, in the privacy of his heart, had felt distinctly relieved. Not that he lacked the courage of his race; but, having seen the man for years, as it were, through a magnifying lens, he could not, all in a moment, see him for the thing he was:—dangerous as a snake, yet swift as a snake to wriggle out of harm's way.

As Roy knew precisely how much—or rather, how little—Arúna liked working in the wards, he suffered a pang at the pathos of her innocent guile. And if Dyán had his own suspicions, he kept them to himself. He also kept to himself the vitriolic outpouring which he had duly found awaiting him at Jaipur. It contained too many lurid allusions to 'that conceited, imperialistic half-caste cousin of yours'; and Roy might resent the implied stigma as much as Dyán resented it for him. So he tore up the effusion, intended for the eye of Roy, merely remarking that it had enraged him. It was beneath contempt.

Roy would like to have seen it, all the same; for he knew himself quicker than Dyán at reading between the lines. The beggar would not hit back straight. But given the chance, he might try it on some other way—witness the pistol-shot in the arcade; a side light—or a side flash—on the pleasant sort of devil he was!

Back in the Jaipur Residency, in the garden that was 'almost England,' back in his good familiar tweed coat and breeches, the whole Delhi interlude seemed strangely theatrical and unreal; more like a vivid dream than an experience in the flesh.

But there was Dyán to prove it no dream; and the perilous charm of Arúna, that must be resisted to the best of his power....

It is thus that drama most often happens in life—a light under a bushel; set in the midst, yet unseen. Vincent, delving in ethnological depths, saw little or nothing outside his manuscript and maps. Floss Eden—engrossed in her own drawing-room comedy with Captain Martin—saw less than nothing, except that 'Mr Sinclair's other native cousin' came too often to the house. For she turned up her assertive nose at 'native gentlemen'; and confided to Martin her private opinion that Aunt Thea went too far in that line. She bothered too much about other people all round—which was true.

She had bothered a good deal more about Floss Eden, in early days, than that young lady at all realised. And now—in the intervals of organising Christmas presents and Christmas guests—she was bothering a good deal over Roy, whose absence had obviously failed to clear the air.

Not that he was silent or aloof. But his gift of speech overlaid a reticence deeper than that of the merely silent man; the kind she had lived with and understood. Once you got past their defences, you were unmistakably inside:—Vinx, for instance. But with Roy she was aware of reserves within reserves, which made him the more interesting, but also the more distracting, when one felt entitled to know the lie of the land. For, Arúna apart, wasn't he becoming too deeply immersed in his Indian relations—losing touch, perhaps, with those at home? Did it—or did it not matter—that, day after day, he was strolling with Arúna, riding with Dyán, pig-sticking and buck-hunting with the royal cheetahs and the royal heir to the throne; or plunging neck deep in plans and possibilities, always in connection with those two? His mail letters were few and not bulky, as she knew from handling the contents of the Residency mail-bag. And he very rarely spoke of them all: less than ever of late. To her ardent nature it seemed inexplicable. Perhaps it was just part of his peculiar 'inwardness.' She would have liked to feel sure, however....

It was all over—the strenuous joy of planning and preparing. Christmas itself was over. From the adjacent borders of British India, five lonely ones had been gathered in. There was Mr Mayne, Commissioner of Delhi, Vincent's old friend of Kohat days, unmarried and alone in camp with a stray Settlement Officer, whose wife and children were at Home. There was Mr Bourne—in the Canals—large-boned and cadaverous, with a sardonic gleam in his eye. Rumour said there had once been a wife and a friend; now there remained only work and the whisky bottle; and he was overdoing both. To him Thea devoted herself and her fiddle with particular zest. The other two lonelies—a Mr and Mrs Nair—were medical missionaries, fighting the influenza scourge in the Delhi area; drastically disinfected—because of the babies; more than thankful for a brief respite from their daily diet of tragedy, and from labours Hercules' self would not have disdained. For all that, they had needed a good deal of pressing. They had 'no clothes.' They were very shy. But Thea had insisted; so they came—clothed chiefly in shyness and gratitude, which made them shyer than ever.

Something of this she divined—and was glad. Yet her exigent heart was not altogether at ease. His reaction to Lance, though unmistakable, fell short of her confident expectation. He was still squandering far too much time on the other two. Sometimes she felt almost angry with him: jealous—for Lance. She knew how deeply he cared underneath; because she too was a Desmond. And Desmonds could not care by halves.

This morning, for instance, the wretch was out riding with Dyán; and there was Lance, alone in the drawing-room strumming the accompaniments of things they would play to-night: just a wandering succession of chords in a minor key; but he had his father's gift of touch, that no training can impart, and the same trick of playing pensively to himself, almost as if he were thinking aloud. It was five years since she had seen her father; and those pensive chords brought sudden tears to her eyes.

What did Lance mean by it—mooning about the piano like that? Had he fallen in love? That was one of the few questions she did not dare ask him. But here was her chance to 'put in a word' about Roy.

So she strolled into the drawing-room and leaned over the grand piano. His smile acknowledged her presence, and his pensive chords went wandering softly away into the bass.

"Idiot—what are you doing?" she asked briskly, because the music was creeping down her spine. "Talking to yourself?"

"More or less."

"Well—give over. I'm here. And it's a bad habit."

He shook his head, and went wandering on. "In this form I find it soothing and companionable."

"Well, you oughtn't to be needing either at Christmas time under my roof, with Roy here and all—if he'd only behave. Sometimes I want to shake him——"

"But, my dear boy, do you realise that he's getting rather badly bitten with all this—Indian problems and Indian cousins——"

Lance nodded. "I've been afraid of that. But one can't say much."

"I can't. I was counting on you as the God-given antidote. And there he is, still fooling round with Dyán, when you've come all this way ... It makes me wild. It isn't fair——"

Her genuine distress moved Lance to cease strumming and bestow a friendly pat on her hand. "Don't be giving yourself headaches and heartaches over Roy and me, darlint. We're going strong, thanks very much! It would take an earthquake to throw us out of step. If he chose to chuck his boots at me, I wouldn't trouble—except to return the trees if they were handy! Strikes me women don't yet begin to understand the noble art of friendship——"

"Which is a libel—but let that pass! Besides—hasn't it struck you? Arúna——"

"My God!" His hands dropped with a crash on the keyboard. Then, in a low swift rush: "Thea, you don't mean it—you're pulling my leg."

"Bible-oath I'm not. It's too safely tucked under the piano!"

"My God!" he repeated softly, ignoring her incurable frivolity. "Has he said anything?"

"No. But it's plain they're both smitten more or less."

"Smitten be damned."

"Lance! I won't have Arúna insulted. Let me tell you she's charming and cultivated; much better company than Floss. And I love her like a daughter——"

"Would you have her marry Roy?" he flung out wrathfully.

"Of course not. But still——"

"Me—perhaps?" he queried with such fine scorn that she burst out laughing.

"Well—what else would I be? What else are you, by the same token?"

"Not adulterated," she denied stoutly. "Perhaps a wee bit less 'prejudiced.' The awful result, I suppose, of failing to keep myself scrupulously detached from my surroundings. Besides, you couldn't be married twenty years to that Vinx and not widen out a bit. Of course I'm quite aware that widening out has its insidious dangers and limitation its heroic virtues—Hush! Don't fly into a rage. You're not limited, old boy. You loved—Lady Sinclair."

"I adored her," Lance said very low; and his fingers strayed over the keys again. "But—she was an accomplished fact. And—she was one in many thousands. She's gone now, though. And there's poor Sir Nevil——"

He rose abruptly and strode over to the fireplace. "Tell you what, Thea. If the bee in Roy's bonnet is buzzing to that tune, some one's got to stop it——"

"That's my point!" She swung round confronting him. "Why not whisk him back to the Punjab? It does seem the only way——"

Lance nodded again. "Now you talk sense. Mind, I don't believe he'll come. Roy's a tougher customer than he looks to the naked eye. But I'll have a shot at it to-night. If needs must, I'll tell him why. I can swallow half a regiment of his Dyáns; but not—the other thing. I hope you find us intact in the morning!"

She flew to him and kissed him with fervour; and she was still in his arms, when Roy strolled casually into the room.

There were only three outsiders that night: the State Engineer and two British officers in the Maharajah's employ. But they sat down sixteen to dinner; and, very shortly after, came three others in the persons of Dyán and Sir Lakshman Singh, with his distinguished friend Mahomed Inayat Khan, from Hyderabad. Nothing Thea enjoyed better than getting a mixed batch of men together and hearing them talk—especially shop; for then she knew their hearts were in it. They were happy.

As a matter of fact, Lance, too, was troubled with faint compunction. He had never seen Roy in this kind of company, nor in this particular vein. And, reluctantly, he admitted that it did seem rather a waste of his mentally reviving vigour hauling him back to the common round of tennis and dances and polo—yes, even sacred polo—when he was so dead keen on this infernal agitation business, and seemed to know such a deuce of a lot about it all.

Lance himself knew far too little; and was anxious to hear more, for the intimate, practical reason that he was not quite happy about his Sikh troop. The Pathan lot were all right. But the Sikhs—his pride and joy—were being 'got at' by those devils in the City. And, if these men could be believed, 'things' were going to be very much worse; not only 'down country,' but also in the Punjab, India's sure shield against the invader. To a Desmond, the mere suggestion of the Punjab turning traitor was as if one impugned the courage of his father or the honour of his mother; so curiously personal is India's hold upon the hearts of Englishmen who come under her spell.

Agitation against the sane measures embodied in the Rowlatt Bills was already astir, like bubbles round a pot before it boils. And Inayat Khan had come straight from Bombay, where the National Congress had rejected with scorn the latest palliative from Home; had demanded the release of all revolutionaries, and wholesale repeal of laws against sedition. Here was shop sufficiently ominous to overshadow all other topics: and there was no gêne, no constraint. The Englishmen could talk freely in the presence of cultured Indians who stood for Jaipur and Hyderabad, since both States were loyal to the core.

Dyán, like Lance, spoke little and pondered much on the talk of these men, whose straight speech and thoughts were refreshing as their own sea breezes after the fumes of rhetoric, the fog of false values that had bemused his brain these three years. Strange how all the ugliness and pain of hate had shrivelled away; how he could even shake hands, untroubled, with that 'imperialistic bureaucrat' the Commissioner of Delhi, whom he might have been told off, any day, to 'remove from this mortal coil.' Strange to sit there, over against him, while he puffed his cigar and talked, without fear, of increasing antagonism, increasing danger to himself and his kind.

"There's no sense in disguising the unpalatable truth that New India hates us," said he in his gruff, deliberate voice. "Present company excepted, I hope!"

He gravely inclined his head towards Dyán, who responded mutely with a flutter at his heart. Impossible! The man could not suspect——?

And the man, looking him frankly in the eyes, added: "The spirit of the Mutiny's not extinct—and we know it, those of us that count."

Dyán simply sat dumfounded. It was Sir Lakshman who said, in his guarded tone: "Nevertheless, sir, the bulk of our people are loyal and peaceable. Only I fear there are some in England who do not count that fact to their credit."

"If they ever become anything else, it won't be to our credit," put in Roy. "If we can't stand up to bluster and sedition with that moral force at our backs, we shall deserve to go under."

They exchanged a glance that stirred Roy's pulses and gave him confidence to go on: "I don't believe it is too late. But what bothers me is this—are we treating our moral force as it deserves? Are we giving them loyalty in return for theirs—the sort they can understand? With a dumb executive and voluble 'patriots,' persuading or intimidating, the poor beggars haven't a dog's chance, unless we openly stand by them; openly smite our enemies—and theirs."

He boldly addressed himself to Mayne, the sole symbol of authority present; and the Commissioner listened, with a gleam of amused approval in his eye.

"You're young, Mr Sinclair—which doesn't mean you're wrong! Most of us, in our limited fashion, are trying to do what we can on those lines. But, after spending half a lifetime in this climate, doing our utmost to give the peasant—and the devil—his due, we're apt to grow cynical——"

"Not to mention suicidal!" grunted the slave of work and whisky. "We Canal coolies—hardly visible to the naked eye—are adding something like an Egypt a year to the Empire. But, bless you, England takes no notice. Only let some underbred planter or raw subaltern bundle an Indian out of his carriage, or a drunken Tommy kick his servant in the spleen, and the whole British Constitution comes down about our ears!"

Thea needed no second bidding. While the men talked, an insidious depression had stolen over her spirit—and brooded there, light and formless as a river mist. Half an hour with her fiddle, and Lance at his best, completely charmed it away. But the creepiness of it had been very real: and the memory remained.

When all the others had dispersed, she lingered over the fire with Roy, while Lance, at the piano, with diplomatic intent, drifted into his friend's favourite Nocturne—the Twelfth; that inimitable rendering of a mood, hushed yet exalted, soaring yet brooding, 'the sky and the nest as well.' The two near the fire knew every bar by heart, but as the liquid notes stole out into the room, their fitful talk stopped dead.

Lance was playing superbly, giving every note its true value; the cadence rising and falling like waves of a still sea; softer and softer; till the last note faded away, ghostlike—a sigh rather than a sound.

Roy remained motionless, one elbow on the mantelpiece. Thea's lashes were wet with the tears of rarefied emotion—tears that neither prick nor burn. The silence itself seemed part of the music; a silence it were desecration to break. Without a word to Roy, she crossed the room; kissed Lance good-night; clung a moment to his hands that had woven the spell, smiling her thanks, her praise; and slipped away, leaving the two together.

Roy subsided into a chair. Lance came over to the fire and stood there warming his hands.

It was a minute or two before Roy looked up and nodded his acknowledgments.

"You're a magician, old chap. You play that thing a damn sight too well."

The more practical soul of Lance Desmond had already dropped back to earth, as a lark drops after pouring out its heart in the blue. In spite of concern for Roy, he was thinking again of his Sikhs.

"I suppose one can take it," he remarked thoughtfully, "that Vinx and Mayne and that good old Moslem johnny know what they're talking about?"

Roy smiled—having jumped at the connection. "I'm afraid," he said, "one can."

"You think big trouble is coming—organised trouble?"

"I do. That is, unless some 'strong silent man' has the pluck to put his foot down in time, and chance the consequences to himself. Thank God, we've another John Lawrence in the Punjab."

"And it's the Punjab that matters——"

"Especially a certain P.C. Regiment—eh?"

Lance was in arms at once:—that meant he had touched the spot. "No flies on the Regiment. Trust Paul. It's only—I get bothered about a Sikh here and there."

"Quite so. The blighters have taken particular pains with the Sikhs. Realising that they'll need some fighting stuff. And Lahore's a bad place. I expect they sneak off to meetings in the City."

"Devil a doubt of it. Mind you, I trust them implicitly. But, outside their own line, they're credulous as children—you know."

"Rather. In Delhi, I had a fair sample of it."

Another pause. It suddenly occurred to Lance that his precious Sikhs were not supposed to be the topic of the evening. "You're quite fit again, Roy. And those blooming fools chucked you like a cast horse——" he broke out in a spurt of vexation. "I wish to God you were back with your old Squadron."

And Roy said from his heart, "I wish to God I was."

"Paul misses you, though he never says much. The new lot from home are good chaps. Full of brains and theories. But no knowledge. Can't get at the men. You could still help unofficially in all sorts of ways.—Why not come along back with me? Haven't you been pottering round here long enough?"

Lance kicked an unoffending log. "Confound your old novel!"—A portentous silence. "See here, Roy, I don't want to badger you. But—well—if I'm to go back in moderate peace of mind, I want—certain guarantees."

Roy lifted his eyes. Lance frankly encountered them; and there ensued one of those intimate pauses in which the unspeakable is said.

Roy looked away. "Arúna?" He let fall the word barely above his breath.

"Just that."

"You're frightened—both of you? Oh yes—I've seen——" He fell silent, staring into the fire. When he spoke again, it was in the same low, detached tone. "You two needn't worry. The guarantee you're after was given ... in July 1914 ... under the beeches ... at Home. She foresaw—understood. But she couldn't foresee ... the harder tug—now she's gone. The ... association ... and all that."

"Is it—only that?"

"It's mostly that."

To Lance Desmond, very much a man, it seemed the queerest state of things; and he knew only a fragment of the truth.

"Look here, Roy," he urged again. "Wouldn't the Punjab really be best? Aren't you plunging a bit too deep——? Does your father realise? Thea feels——"

"Yes. Thea feels, bless her! But there's a thing or two she doesn't know!" He lifted his head and spoke in an easier voice. "One queer thing—it may interest you. Those few weeks of living as an Indian among Indians—amazingly intensified all the other side of me. I never felt keener on the Sinclair heritage and all it stands for. I never felt keener on you two than all this time while I've been concentrating every faculty on—the other two. Sounds odd. But it's a fact."

"Good. And does—your cousin know ... about the guarantee?"

"When——?"

Roy straightly returned his friend's challenging gaze. "Damn you!" he said softly. Then, in a graver tone: "You're right. I've been shirking it. Seemed a shame to spoil Christmas. Remains—the New Year. I fixed it up—while you were playing that thing, to be exact."

"Did I—contribute?"

"You did—if that gives you any satisfaction!" He rose, stretched himself and yawned ostentatiously. "My God, I wish it was over."

It was the last day of the year; the last moon of the year, almost at her zenith. Of all the Christmas guests Lance alone remained; and Thea had promised him before leaving, a moonlight vision of Amber, the Sleeping Beauty of Rajasthán. The event had been delayed till now, partly because they waited on the moon; partly because they did not want it to be a promiscuous affair.

To Thea's lively imagination—and to Roy's no less—Amber was more than a mere city of ghosts and marble halls. It was a symbol of Rajput womanhood—strong and beautiful, withdrawn from the clamour of the market-place, given over to her dreams and her gods. For though kings have deserted Amber, the gods remain. There is still life in her temples and the blood of sacrifice on her altar stones. Therefore she must not be approached in the spirit of the tourist. And, emphatically, she must not be approached in a motor-car; at least so far as Thea's guests were concerned. Of course one knew she was approached by irreverent cars; also by tourists—unspeakable ones, who made contemptible jokes about 'a slump in house property.' But for these vandalisms Thea Leigh was not responsible.

Her young ones, including Captain Martin, would ride; but, because of Arúna, she and Vincent must submit to the barouche. So transparent was the girl's pleasure at being included, that Thea's heart failed her—knowing what she knew.

"Buck up, Lance," he said abruptly; for Desmond, who saw no ghosts, was keenly interested. "Let's quit this place of skulls and empty eye-sockets. Amber's dead; but not utterly decayed."

He knew. He had ridden out alone one morning, in the light of paling stars, to watch the dawn steal down through the valley and greet the sleeping city that would never wake again—half hoping to recapture the miracle of Chitor. But Amber did not enshrine the soul of his mother's race. And the dawn had proved merely a dawn. Moonlight, with its eerie enchantment, would be oven more beautiful and fitting; but the pleasure of anticipation was shadowed by his resolve.

He had spoken of it only to Thea; asking her, when tea was over, to give him a chance:—and now he was heartily wishing he had chosen any other place and time than this....

The brisk canter to the foothills was a relief. Thence the road climbed, between low, reddish-grey spurs, to the narrow pass, barred by a formidable gate, that swung open at command, with a screech of rusty hinges, as if in querulous protest against intrusion.

Another gateway,—and yet another: then they were through the triple wall that guards the dead city from the invader who will never come, while both races honour the pact that alone saved desperate, stubborn Rajputana from extinction.

Descending at a foot's pace, the chill of emptiness and of oncoming twilight seemed to close like icy fingers on Roy's heart; though the death of Amber was as nothing to the death of Chitor—the warrior-queen, ravished and violently slain by Akbar's legions. Amber had, as it were, died peacefully in her sleep. But there remained the all-pervading silence and emptiness:—her sorrowful houses, cleft from roof to roadway; no longer homes of men, but of the rock-pigeon, the peacock, and the wild boar; stones of her crumbling arches thrust apart by roots of acacia and neem; her streets choked with cactus and brushwood; her beauty—disfigured but not erased—reflected in the unchanging mirror of the Lake.

If Roy and Lance had talked little before, they talked less now. From the Lake-side they rode up, by stone pathways, to the Palace of stone and marble, set upon a jutting rock and commanding the whole valley. There, in the quadrangle, they left the horses with their grooms, who were skilled in cutting corners and had trotted most of the way.

Close to the gate stood a temple of fretted marble—neither ruined nor deserted; for within were the priests of Kali, and the faint, sickly smell of blood. Daybreak after daybreak, for centuries, the severed head of a goat had been set before her, the warm blood offered in a bronze bowl....

"Pah! Beastly!" muttered Lance. "I'd sooner have no religion at all."

Seated on a carven slab, they looked downward into the heart of desolation; upward, at creeping battlements and a little temple of Shiva printed sharply on the light-filled sky.

"Can't you feel the ghosts of them all round you?" whispered Roy.

"No, thank God, I can't," said practical Lance, taking out a cigarette. But a rustle of falling stones made him start—the merest fraction. "Perhaps smoke'll keep 'em off—like mosquitoes!" he added hopefully.

But Roy paid no heed. He was looking down into the hollow shell of that which had been Amber. Not a human sound anywhere; nor any stir of life, but the soft ceaseless kuru-kooing doves, that nested and mated in those dusky inner rooms, where Queens had mated with Kings.

"'Thou hast made of a city an heap, of a defencéd city a ruin ...Their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there,'" he quoted softly; adding after a pause, "Mother had a great weakness for old Isaiah. She used to say he and the minor prophets knew all about Rajasthán. The owls of Amber are blue pigeons. But I hope she's spared the satyrs."

"Globe-trotters!" suggested Lance.

"Or 'Piffers' devoid of reverence!" retorted Roy. "Hullo! Here come the others."

Footsteps and voices in the quadrangle waked hollow echoes as when a stone drops into a well. Presently they sounded on the stairs near by: Flossie's rather boisterous laugh; Martin chaffing her in his husky tones.

"Great sport! Let's rent it off H.H. and gather 'em all in from the highways and hedges for a masked fancy ball!"

Roy stood up and squared his shoulders. "Satyrs dancing, with a vengeance!" said he; but the gleam of Arúna's sari smote him silent. A band seemed to tighten round his heart....

"Hush—it's coming," murmured Thea:—and it came.

Hollow thuds, quickening to a vibrant roar, swelled up from the temple in the courtyard below. The Brahmins were beating the great tom-tom before Kali's Shrine.

It was the signal. It startlingly waked the dead city to discordant life. Groanings and howlings and clashings, as of Tophet, were echoed and re-echoed from every temple, every shrine; an orgy of demoniac sounds; blurred in transit through the empty rooms beneath; pierced at intervals by the undulating wail of ram's horns; the two reiterate notes wandering, like lost souls, through a confused blare of cymbals and bagpipes and all kinds of music.

Flossie, with a bewitching grimace at Martin, clapped both hands over her ears. Roy—standing by the balustrade with Arúna—was aware of an answering echo somewhere in subconscious depths, as the discords rose and fell above the throbbing undernote of the drum. It was as if the claimant voices of the East cried out to the blood in his veins: 'You are of us—do what you will; go where you will.' And all the while his eyes never left Arúna's half-averted face.

Sudden and clear from the heights came a ringing peal of bells, as it were the voices of angels answering the wail of devils in torment. It was from the little Shrine of Shiva close against the ramparts, etched in outline, above the dark of the hills.

Arúna turned and looked up at him. "Too beautiful!" she whispered.

He nodded, and flung out an arm. "Look there!"

"Would you be afraid—to stroll round a little ... with me?" he asked.

"Afraid? I would love it—if Thea will allow." This time she did not look up.

Vincent and Thea were sitting a little farther along the balustrade; Lance beside them, imbibing tales of Rajasthán. Flossie and her Captain had already disappeared.

"I'm going to be frankly a Goth and flash my electric torch into holes and corners," Lance announced as the other two came up. "I bar being intimidated by ghosts."

"We're not going to be intimidated either," said Roy, addressing himself to Thea. "And I guarantee not to let Arúna be spirited away."

Vincent shot a look at his wife. "Don't wander too far," said he.

"And don't hang about too long," she added. "It'll be cold going home."

Though he was standing close to her, she could say no more. But, under cover of the dusk, her hand found his and closed on it hard.

The characteristic impulse heartened him amazingly, as he followed Arúna down the ghostly stairway, through marble cloisters into the hanging garden, misted with moonlight, fragrant with orange trees.

And now there was more than Thea's hand-clasp to uphold him. Gradually there dawned on him a faint yet sure intimation of his mother's presence, of her tenderly approving love—dim to his brain, yet as sensible to his spirit as light and warmth to his body.

It did not last many moments; but—as in all contact with her—the clear after-certainty remained....

Exactly what he intended to say he did not know even now. To speak the cruel truth, yet by some means to soften the edge of it, seemed almost impossible. But nerved by this vivid, exalted sense of her nearness, the right moment, the right words could be trusted to come of themselves....

From a primitive passion it had become a rarefied emotional atmosphere in which she lived and moved. And this garden of eerie lights and shadows was saturated with it; thronged, to her fancy, with ghosts of dead passions and intrigues, of dead Queens, in whom the twin flames of love and courage could be quenched only by flames of the funeral pyre. Their blood ran in her veins—and in his too. That closeness of belonging none could snatch from her. About the other, she was growing woefully uncertain, as day followed day, and still no word. Was there trouble after all! Would he speak to-night...?

They had reached a dark doorway, and he was trying the handle. It opened inwards.

"I'm keen to go a little way up the hillside," he said, forcing himself to break a silence that was growing oppressive. "To get a sight of the Palace with the moon full on it. We'll be cautious—not go too far."

"I am ready to go anywhere," she answered; and the fervour of that simple statement told him she was not thinking of hillsides any more than he was—at the back of his mind.

Silence was unkinder than speech; and as they passed out into the open, he scanned the near prospect for a convenient spot. Not far above them a fragment of ruined wall, overhung by trees, ended in a broken arch; its lingering keystone threatened by a bird-borne acacia. A fallen slab of stone, half under it, offered a not too distant seat. Slab and arch were in full light; the space beyond, engulfed in shadow.

Far up the hillside a jackal laughed. Across the valley another answered it. A monkey swung from a branch on to the slab, and sat there engaged in his toilet—a very imp of darkness.

"Not be-creeped—are you?" Roy asked.

"Just the littlest bit! Nice kind of creeps. I feel quite safe—with you."

At their approach, the monkey fled with a gibbering squeak: and Roy loosened his hold. Between them and the lake loomed the noble bulk of the palace; roof-terraces and façades bathed in silver, splashed with indigo shadow; but for them—mere man and woman—its imperishable strength and beauty had suddenly become a very little thing. They scarcely noticed it even.

"There—sit," Roy said softly, and she obeyed.

Her smile mutely invited him; but he could not trust himself—yet. He might have known the moonlight would go to his head.

"Arúna—my dear——" he plunged without preamble. "I took you away from them all because—well—we can't pretend any more ... you and I. It's fate—and there we are. I love you—dearly—truly. But...."

How could one go on?

"Oh, Roy!"

Her lifted gaze, her low impassioned cry told all; and before that too clear revealing his hard-won resolution quailed.

"No—not that. I don't deserve it," he broke out, lashing himself and startling her. "I've been a rank coward—letting things drift. But honestly I hadn't the conceit—we were cousins ... it seemed natural. And now ... this!"

A stupid catch in his throat arrested him. She sat motionless; never a word.

Impulsively he dropped on one knee, to be nearer, yet not too near. "Arúna—I don't know how to say it. The fact is ... they were afraid, at Home, if I came out here, I might—it might ... Well, just what's come to us," he blurted out in desperation. "And Mother told me frankly—it mustn't be, twice running ... like that." Her stillness dismayed him. "Dear," he urged tenderly, "you see their difficulty—you understand?"

"Of course, I ought to have thought. But, as I say, it seemed natural.... Only—on Dewáli night——"

She caught her breath. "Yes—Dewáli night. Mai Lakshmi knew. Why did you not say it then?"

"Well ... so soon—I wasn't sure ... I hoped going away might give us both a chance. It seemed the best I could do," he pleaded. "And—there was Dyán. I'm not vamping up excuses, Arúna. If you hate me for hurting you so——"

"Roy—you shall not say it!" she cried, roused at last. "Could I hate ... the heart in my own body!"

"Better for us both perhaps if you could!" he jerked out, rising abruptly, not daring to let the full force of her confession sink in. "But—because of my father, I promised. No getting over that."

She was silent:—a silence more moving, more compelling than speech. Was she wondering—had he not promised...? Was he certain himself? Near enough to swear by; and the impulse to comfort her was overwhelming.

"If—if things had been different, Arúna," he added with grave tenderness, "of course I would be asking you now ... to be my wife."

At that, the tension of her control seemed to snap; and hiding her face, she sat there shaken all through with muffled, broken-hearted sobs.

"Don't—oh, don't!" he cried low, his own nerves quivering with her pain.

"How can I not" she wailed, battling with fresh sobs. "Because of your Indian mother—I hoped.... But for me—England-returned—no hope anywhere: no true country now; no true belief; no true home; everything divided in two; only my heart—not divided. And that you cannot have, even if you would——"

Tears threatened again. It was all he could do not to take her in his arms.

"If—if they would only leave me alone," she went on, clenching her small hands to steady herself. "But impossible to change all the laws of our religion for one worthless me. They will insist I shall marry—even Dyán; and I cannot—I cannot——!"

"Roy—Dilkusha!" Involuntarily her hands went out to him. "If it is true ... you are caring—and if I must not belong to you, there is a way you can belong to me without trouble for any one. If—if we make pledge of betrothal ... for this one night, if you hold me this one hour ... I am safe. For me that pledge would be sacred—as marriage, because I am still Hindu. Perhaps I am punished for far-away sins—not worthy to be wife and mother; but, by my pledge, I can remain always Swami Bakht—worshipper of my lord ... a widow in my heart."

And Roy stood before her—motionless; stirred all through by the thrill of her exalted passion, of her strange appeal. The pathos—the nobility of it—swept him a little off his feet. It seemed as if, till to-night, he had scarcely known her. The Eastern in him said, 'Accept.' The Englishman demurred—'Unfair on her.'

"My dear——" he said—"I can refuse you nothing. But—is it right? You should marry——"

"Don't trouble your mind for me," she murmured; and her eyes never left his face. "If I keep out of purdah, becoming Brahmo Samaj ... perhaps——" She drew in her full lower lip to steady it. "But the marriage of arrangement—I cannot. I have read too many English books, thought too many English thoughts. And I know in here"—one clenched hand smote her breast—"that now I could not give my body and life to any man, unless heart and mind are given too. And for me.... Must I tell all? It is not only these few weeks. It is years and years...." Her voice broke.

"Arúna! Dearest one——"

And suddenly a rush of memory wafted him from the moonlit hillside to the drawing-room at Home. It was his mother he held against his breast:—the silken draperies, the clinging arms, the yielding softness, the unyielding courage at the core....

So vivid, so poignant was the lightning gleam of illusion, that when it passed he felt dizzy, as if his body had been swept in the wake of his spirit, a thousand leagues and back: dizzy, yet, in some mysterious fashion, reinforced—assured....

He knew now that his defences would hold....

And Arúna, utterly at rest in his arms, knew it also. He loved her—oh yes, truly—as much as he said and more; but instinct told her there lacked ... just something; something that would have set him—and her—on fire, and perhaps have made renunciation unthinkable. Her acute, instinctive sense of it, hurt like the edge of a knife pressed on her heart; yet just enabled her to bear the unbearable. Had it been ...that way, to lose him were utter loss. This way—there would be no losing. What she had now, she would keep—whether his bodily presence were with her or no——

Next minute, she dropped from the heights. Fire ran in her veins. His lips were on her forehead.

"The seal of betrothal," he whispered. "My brave Arúna——"

Without a word she put up her face like a child; but it was very woman who yielded her lips to his....

For her, in that supreme moment, the years that were past and the years that were to come seemed gathered into a burnt-offering—laid on his shrine. For her, that long kiss held much of passion—confessed yet transcended; more of sacredness, inexpressible, because it would never come again—with him or any other man. She vowed it silently to her own heart....

Again far up the hillside a jackal laughed; another and another—as if in derision. She shivered; and he loosed his hold, still keeping an arm round her. To-night they were betrothed. He owed her all he had the right to give.

"Some monkey perhaps," she whispered, startled by his look and tone.

"Hush—listen!" His grip tightened and they stood rigidly still, Roy straining every nerve to locate those stealthy sounds. They were almost under the arch; strong mellow light on one side, nethermost darkness on the other. And from all sides the large unheeded night seemed to close in on them—threatening, full of hidden danger.

Presently the sounds came again, unmistakably nearer; faint rustlings and creakings, then a distinct crumbling, as of loosened earth and stones. The shadowy plumes of acacia that crowned the arch stirred perceptibly, though no breeze was abroad:—and not the acacia only. To Arúna's excited fancy it seemed that the loose upper stones of the arch itself moved ever so slightly. But was it fancy? No—there again——!

And before the truth dawned on Roy, she had pushed him with all her force, so vehemently that he stumbled backward and let go of her.

Before he recovered himself, down crashed two large stones and a shower of small ones—on Arúna, not on him. With a stifled scream she tottered and fell, knocking her head against the slab of rock.

Instantly he was on his knees beside her; stanching the cut on her forehead, binding it with his handkerchief; consumed with rage and concern;—rage at himself and the dastardly intruder,—no monkey, that was certain.

His quick ear caught the stealthy rustling again, lower down; and, yes—unmistakably—a human sound, like a stifled exclamation of dismay.

"Arúna—I must get at that devil," he whispered. "Does your head feel better? Dare I leave you a moment?"

"Yes—oh yes," she whispered back. "Nothing will harm me. Only take care—please take care."