"O all that in me wanders, and is wild,
Gathers into one wave, and breaks on thee."
—Phillips.

In the deep heart of Kalatope Forest, where the trees fall apart as if by unanimous consent, the natural glade of Kajiar lies like a giant emerald under a turquoise sky. Peace broods over this sanctuary of Nature's making, dove-like, with folded wings. No lightest echo of the world's turmoil and strife disturbs the stillness. Only at dawn and dusk, the thin note of the temple bell, the chanting of priests, and the unearthly minor wail of conches, announce the downsitting and uprising of the little stone image of godhead, housed in a picturesque temple that nestles among low trees, beside the Holy Lake, at the southern end of the glade.

For Hindus are the most devout Nature-worshippers on the face of the earth. To them, beauty of place translates itself as God's direct cry to the soul; and in the isolated glade of Kajiar, with its sweep of shelving turf, its encircling pines and deodars, and its towering snow-peaks standing sentinel in the north,—deity reigns supreme; deity and the great grey ape of the Himalayas.

Only for one week in the year does Kajiar spring full-fledged into a place of human significance. From Dalhousie, on the one hand, and from Chumba on the other, a light-hearted crowd of revellers profanes the quiet of earth and sky. On the outskirts of the forest tents spring up, like mushrooms, in a night; the devotional voices of the temple are drowned in the clamour of bugles, the throb of racing hoofs, the challenging gaiety of the band, and the heart-stirring wail of the Royal Chumba Pipers; wiry hill-men, in kilts and tartans;—the pride of the young Rajah's heart.

The 'Kajiar week' is the central event of Dalhousie's season:—an Arcadian revel of perfumed shadow, and sun-warmed earth; a carnival of camp-life; ushering in the gloom of the Great Rains;—the triple tyranny of mist, mildew, and mackintoshes. And early on the morning after the MÈla,—while the breath of night still lingered in gorges and ravines, and in shadowed patches of the ascending path, a mixed procession of men and horses, shuffling mules, and trotting coolies wound, snake-like, out of the Chumba valley towards Kalatope Forest and the emerald glade.

All the Rajah's party was mounted, save Mrs Mayhew and the medical missionary's wife, who preferred the leisurely ease of their dandies: and in the van of the procession, a hundred yards and more in advance of it, Quita rode with James Garth.

Her husband's bearing throughout the previous evening had convinced her that their passage of arms in the shamianah had killed the budding possibility of a better understanding between them: and the fact that she was to blame, did not make the knowledge easier to bear. For she knew now—knew consciously—that she craved the love and admiration of this big silent husband of hers, as she had never yet craved anything in earth or heaven: that his mere presence disturbed every fibre of her in a fashion she had hitherto believed impossible; that his aloofness drew and held her, as no other man's ardour had ever done. These two days of closer contact, of hearing his voice, of watching, without seeming to watch, the familiar movements of his face and figure, had waked to conscious life germs that had long lain at her heart, quickening in darkness.

But pride was a stubborn element in her. Where she gave greatly, she demanded greatly. The fact that he had taken her to task bred a suspicion that she had been sought out for that purpose, not because he could no longer keep away: and his evident determination to give her no chance of retrieving the damage done in a moment of irritation, brought her near to defiance,—the danger-point of her nature. Hence renewed encouragement of Garth, with intent to italicise her Declaration of Independence; and with a half-acknowledged hope that Lenox might be goaded by jealousy to renewed remonstrance.

And Garth,—who was used to the bestowal, rather than the receipt of favours,—accepted this woman's encouragement as gratefully as an enamoured subaltern. Desmond's recent tactics had but served to convince him that the walls of Jericho must be carried by assault. Whatever the outcome, the thrill of conquest must at least be his.

The six-foot roadway up to Kajiar gave him ample excuse for riding needlessly close to his companion; and he inclined himself closer in talking, thus giving a provocative flavour to ordinary speech.

"I think, in common fairness, it is my turn for an innings again,—don't you?"

She laughed, and lifted her shoulders, evading direct reply.

"Does that mean that you care nothing, one way or other?" There was smothered passion in his tone.

"And if it does? What then?"

"Gad! How coolly you stab a poor devil, whose worst sin is that he is in——" But before the word was out, she checked him sharply.

"Major Garth!—How dare you?"

Her white-hot anger seared both his vanity and his heart. But he had courage of a sort: and he stood his ground.

"A man in my case will dare anything. Besides, you have insight enough to have known it these many weeks; and why should the plain statement anger you, when evidently the plain fact does not?—Tell me that."

The question smote her to silence. For she could not tell him: neither could she answer hotly and break with him for good. Throughout the coming week, at least, their intimacy must remain intact; and beyond it her mind refused to look. She saw herself caught in a tangle of her own making: a hot wave of vexation at her helplessness, at her cruelly false position, fired her face from chin to brow.

But Garth, noting the phenomenon, interpreted it otherwise.

"You find my riddle unanswerable?" he questioned almost tenderly: and was met by a lightning-flash of denial.

"No. By no means! The answer is simple enough. Unhappily you cannot wipe out—the fact. But you can avoid expressing it: and you must,—unless you are prepared to lose everything."

"By Jove, no!—I keep what I have gained,—at any price. And at least your proffer of friendship gives me better right to monopolise you than that chap Desmond can lay claim to. But he appears to be privileged."

"He is privileged."

"How so?"

"Simply by being the right sort of man."

Garth scrutinised her keenly.

"And a V.C. into the bargain—eh? I don't mind betting that's half the attraction. Just a showy bit of pluck, dashed off at a hot-headed moment—and you women turn a man into a god on the strength of it! The fellow got his chance, and took it—that's all."

It is of the nature of small minds to disparage great ones; and in general Quita would have dismissed the matter with a light retort. But in her present mood, the man's petty personalities jarred more than usual. "I think we won't discuss Captain Desmond," she said without looking round. "To pick holes in a man of that quality only seems to accentuate one's own littleness."

"Yours—or mine?"

"Both."

"By Jove—but you're frank!"

"Have you ever known me otherwise?"

"Can't say I have.—But I'm hanged if I know what's come to you these last two days! Except that you are always far too alluring for my peace of mind, you hardly seem like the same woman."

The truth of his assertion wrenched her back to a lighter mood.

"What an alarming accusation! Is any healthily intelligent and progressive human being ever the same for many weeks together? Change—readjustment—is the keynote of life; the very breath of it. When you can accuse me of not changing I shall know that I have fallen into the sere and withered leaf past redemption. And now that I have expiated myself—(probably to your more complete confusion!)—we'll have a short canter to blow away cobwebs. The road is rather less breakneck just here."

A flick of the whip sent Yorick forward at a bound; and Garth—stifling unheroic qualms—could not choose but follow her daring lead.

Throughout the remaining eight miles neither her tongue nor her spirit flagged; and for the man at least the journey's end came too soon.

It was a transformed Kajiar that basked in the full glory of noon, as they emerged from the forest, and drew rein on the high ground behind the little wooden rest-house, to enjoy a few moments' survey of the brilliant scene.

At the far end, around the Rajah's private chalet, the native camp was fast springing into life. While, down in the northern hollow, where white tents clustered thickest, lay the big general camp; the core of all things social and frivolous.

Hurdles, water jumps, and a long tent pavilion had changed the centre of the glade into a racecourse, where subalterns, undaunted by a blazing sun, were practising ponies for forthcoming gymkhanas. Goal-posts were already fixed for the great yearly football match between Chumba and Dalhousie; in which contest victory was by no means always to the West, since Jeff Bathurst, a famous performer, trained and captained the Chumba team: and in another part of the green, three wooden sign-posts of unequal height gave promise of tilting matches to come.

Couples and groups, in the lightest of muslins and flannels, sauntered idly in the scented shadow of the pines; or lounged, smoking and talking, on the warm green earth.

The appeal of the whole was to a spirit of enjoyment pure and simple, to the casting aside of care and thought; a passing respite from the shadow of the future: and Quita's native zest for happiness urged her to instant response.

"Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them, if To-day be sweet,"

she quoted softly. "That is clearly the motto of the week; and it looks as if every one intended to live up to it,—conscientiously."

Garth saw his advantage and pressed it home.

"You and I among the number, eh? At least we understand one another, which is more than most of those philandering couples do. Why shouldn't we make the most of our seven golden days and leave next week to look after itself?"

"Why not, indeed?"

She spoke absently; her eyes resting on the snow-peak in the north. The answer lay too deep down for utterance. But Garth took her enigmatical echo for acquiescence, and laid his plans accordingly.

Nor were these two the only pair who arrived at Garth's philosophical conclusion. Life was fulfilled, for the nonce, with laughter and leisure; with the unchanging, passion-breathing blue and gold of a Himalayan June; and on all sides the charmed circle of pines and deodars shut them off from the forgotten world and 'them that dwell therein.'

Atmosphere, circumstance, and her own half-awakened heart conspired with Michael Maurice to draw Elsie down, by slow and delicious degrees, from the small pedestal whereon she had taken refuge since the night of the Palace dinner; till all unaware, she acceded to his fantastic notion of shutting the door upon Wisdom. Nor was it long before those whose profit and pleasure it is to make capital out of their neighbours' doings had assured themselves and each other that the 'week' would be responsible for two engagements at least.

Such talk did not readily reach Lenox's ears. But Kenneth Malcolm, whose aspirations were no secret to the busily idle world around him, was speedily enlightened: and there could be neither peace nor rest for him till he had confirmation or denial from Elsie's lips.

Six months earlier he had pleaded his cause with such halting eloquence as he could command; and the girl's refusal had been qualified by a confession that at least she preferred him to any other man of her acquaintance. On the strength of this admission the boy had simply stood aside and waited: hoping, as only the young can hope, because the fervour of their desire renders the possibility of non-fulfilment unthinkable. Then Maurice had entered the field, carrying all before him, with the inimitable assurance that was his; and by now Kenneth had reached the agony-point in a painful, if educative experience. Standing aside was no longer endurable. By some means he must secure Elsie, if only for ten minutes, and discover the truth.

"And a man need only look into her eyes for that," he decided, with a throb of troubled anticipation.

His opportunity came on the third day of the 'week.' The great football match between East and West was progressing vigorously to the tune of shouts and cheers. Maurice, who had small taste for sport, had gone sketching with his sister at her urgent request; and as Elsie settled herself, with a book, on a slope of hot pine-needles, she was surprised and startled to see Kenneth Malcolm approaching her.

"May I sit here for a little?" he asked. "I have hardly had two words with you since you came back from Chumba. I suppose you enjoyed it all tremendously?"

"Oh yes. It was delightful. Do sit down."

The restraint of his manner was infectious, as restraint is apt to be; and she was hampered by a prescience of things to come.

"I was awfully keen to go too," he said, as he obeyed her. "But perhaps it's just as well that I didn't get the chance, judging from . . . from what I hear."

"You shouldn't judge from what you hear," she murmured.

"Shouldn't I? But unluckily it fits in with . . . what I see. Miss Mayhew . . ." he pressed forward, his eyes searching her face, devout worship in the sincere blue depths of them. "Will you be angry with me, if I ask you a straight question?"

She shook her head.

"And will you give me a straight answer?"

"If I can."

"Is it true that you are likely to . . . marry Maurice?"

"Not that I know of." He took a great breath, like a condemned man who hears his reprieve.

"Then, may I still believe . . . what you told me at Lahore?"

Her answer seemed an eternity in coming; for a plain 'yes' or 'no' were equally far from the truth. This boy of four-and-twenty gave her the restful sense of reliance and reserve force that she so missed in Maurice. But there was no art, no thrill in his love-making. It was direct and simple as himself. He never struck a chord of emotion and left it quivering, as Maurice had done many times.

"May I?"—he persisted gently.

"I still think you are . . . the best man I know," she admitted, without looking at him; and he flushed to the roots of his hair.

"But not the one you—care for most? It's that that matters, you know."

"Oh, I can't tell—truly I can't," she pleaded distressfully.

"Then I must just go on waiting."

"I wish you wouldn't even do that."

"I can only prevent it by putting a bullet through my head."

The quiet finality of his tone was more convincing than volumes of protestations; and she shuddered.

"Don't say such things, please.—You hurt me."

"I wouldn't do that for a kingdom. But it's the truth.—I go down on the fifteenth, you know."

"Yes.—I'm sorry."

"Are you? Then why—oh, I don't understand you!" he broke off in despair.

"I'm not sure that I understand myself—yet. It takes time, I suppose."

"Not when the right chap turns up, I fancy. But I'll give you as much time as you want. I have a year's leave due. Shall I take it, and go home?"

She looked rueful.

"A year is a long time. But perhaps that would be best. You might find—some one else there, who understood herself better."

"That's out of the question," he answered almost harshly.

"But at all events,—I'll go."

A prolonged silence followed this statement: and when he spoke again, it was of other things. Elsie followed suit: but the result was not brilliant. She endured the strain as long as she could; then inventing an excuse, she left him; though, to her surprise, it hurt her more than she could have believed a week ago.

That afternoon, during the progress of a hybrid gymkhana,—ranging from steeplechasing to obstacle races for men and natives,—the first whisper of current gossip reached Lenox's ears.

Standing behind a restless row of hats and parasols, he was watching with some interest the preliminary canter of a horse he had backed heavily, when Garth and Quita, deep in animated talk, passed across the line of chairs, and a woman close to Lenox turned to her neighbour.

"That match is a certainty, Mrs Mayhew. Say what you like. I'm sure of it. I only wonder it hasn't been given out before now."

Mrs Mayhew shifted her parasol and inspected the retreating pair through her gold-rimmed pince-nez, as though, by examining their shoulder-blades, she could determine the exact state of their hearts.

"I don't quite know what to think," she remarked with judicial emphasis. "I don't believe anything is a certainty where Major Garth is concerned. But if they are not engaged they ought to be! I don't like that girl, though. She is much too independent for my taste; and engagement or no, she probably lets Major Garth make love to her. He would never have stuck to her for six months otherwise."

On the last words Lenox started as it a cold finger-tip had touched his heart. Such a thought had never occurred to him: and he could have murdered, without compunction, the small self-satisfied woman who had lodged the poisoned shaft in his mind.

Turning on his heel, he made straight for his tent, where a littered camp-table gave proof that the art of taking a holiday could not be reckoned among his accomplishments. Then he sat down by it and bowed his head upon his hands. To doubt his wife's integrity was rank insult. Yet he knew Garth's evil reputation; knew also that the suggestion would cling to his memory like a limpet, and torture him in the endless hours of wakefulness from which there was now no way of escape.

Enforced abstinence from tobacco and stimulants had told severely upon his nerves, appetite, and health; and a foretaste of the sleepless night ahead of him tempted him to regret his hasty destruction of the bottle of chlorodyne, which had not been replaced.

Till dusk he worked without intermission; and, as if by a fiendish nicety of calculation, the evening mail-bag,—brought out by runner from Dalhousie,—contained the coveted parcel of tobacco, whose arrival he had alternately craved and dreaded throughout the past ten days.

Zyarulla set it before him with manifest satisfaction.

"Now will my Sahib taste comfort and peace again," he muttered into the depths of his beard, and having cut the strings of the parcel, discreetly withdrew.

For a while Lenox merely grasped his recovered treasure, feasting his soul upon the knowledge that here, within the space of one small cube, lay the promise of sleep, peace of mind, oblivion. Then, with unsteady hands, he opened the tin: took from his pocket a briar of great age and greater virtue; filled it; lighted it; and drew in the first mouthful of aromatic fragrance, with such rapture of refreshment as a man, parched with fever, drains a glass held to his lips.

A great peace enfolded him: and no thought of resistance arose to break the enchantment. For the 'mighty and subtle' drug kills with kindness. Coming to a tormented man in the guise of an angel of peace, it lures him, lulls him, and wraps him about with false contentment before plunging him into the pit.

While the holiday folk trooped into the long mess-tent, laughing or lamenting over the afternoon's vicissitudes, Lenox sat at his table in shirt and trousers, his pen devouring the loose sheets before him. He bade Zyarulla bring him meat, bread, and a cup of coffee, and deny admittance even to 'Desmond Sahib' himself. And throughout the night he worked, and smoked, and finally slept as he had not slept since the Bachelors' Ball.

Before dawn he was up, and out: a gun on his shoulder, field-glasses slung across his back. He had given orders for a party of beaters to be requisitioned, in his name, from the Rajah's camp; and Zyarulla could be trusted to see to it that he should not starve. All day he tramped and climbed, shot and sketched, to his huge satisfaction; and returning at dusk, repeated his programme of the night before.

His departure without a word of explanation had roused Desmond's anxiety. He suspected a fresh supply of tobacco; and this sudden invisibility confirmed his worst fears. He spoke of them to his wife after breakfast: and for all her radiant hopefulness of heart, she had small consolation to offer him.

The 'week's' events had disappointed her grievously; for the deadlock between man and wife seemed complete.

"Truly, Theo, I don't know what to make of them both," she concluded desperately. "They are the most perverse couple that were ever invented. Benedick and Beatrice were turtle-doves by comparison! After this week I shall give them up in despair."

"Poor darling! They ought to mend their ways, if only out of consideration for you! Come on now and comfort your soul with tilting. I want you to carry all before you in the tournament."

"Do you indeed!" she answered, laughing. "But I shan't hit a single ring to-day. This distracting muddle is getting on my nerves!"

And if Honor Desmond found the strain of sympathetic anxiety ill to endure, what of Quita, whose life's happiness hung upon the issue?

For her the Kajiar Camp, despite its light-comedy atmosphere, had proved a nightmare of surface hilarity, broken rest, and growing distaste for the man whose name she had permitted to be coupled with her own:—all to no purpose, it seemed, save to inflate his self-satisfaction, and fortify his intention, now too clearly manifest, of hindering to the utmost her reunion with her husband.

Moreover, her self-imposed attitude became increasingly hard to maintain. A flash of defiance is one thing; but sustained defiance, when the heart has unblushingly gone over to the enemy, puts a severe strain upon the nerves.

And what was to be the outcome?

The question stabbed her in the small hours, when ugly possibilities loom large, like figures seen through mist. So strongly had this late love smitten her, that she had been capable of strangling pride, and taking the initiative, had Lenox's bearing given her the smallest hope of success. But unsought surrender, plus the mortification of failure, was more than she felt prepared to risk, even for a chance of winning the one man in all the world:—the man who could at least belong to no other woman, she assured herself with a throb of satisfaction. Thus there seemed no choice left but to go blindly forward along the line of least resistance.

Lenox's non-appearance on Wednesday evening had startled her into fuller knowledge of her dependence on his mere presence to maintain even a mimicry of good spirits; and she heaped contempt upon her own head accordingly. Nevertheless she escaped at an early hour; and lay awake half the night tormenting herself with unanswerable problems.

When breakfast brought no sign of him, she concluded that he must have returned to Dalhousie in disgust: and the conclusion brought her near to the end of her tether. She took refuge in her tent, and, for the first time in many years, sobbed shamelessly, till her eyelids smarted, and her head throbbed and burned. After that she felt better, and her unquenchable courage revived. There is much virtue in your thunder-shower at the psychological moment! She got upon her feet at last; hands pressed against pulsing temples, swaying a little, like a willow that the storm had shaken. But cold water, eau-de-cologne, and the stinging tonic of self-scorn, soon restored her to a semblance of her normal aspect: and by lunch-time she was out again in the mocking sunshine, swept unresisting back into the light-hearted whirl of things.

At tiffin, to her intense relief, Theo Desmond took the empty chair next her own. He had missed her during the morning: and a glance at her face sufficed to give him an inkling of the truth. All his heart went out to her; and he hastened to answer the question in her eyes.

"Lenox went off at sunrise, for a day's shooting," he remarked conversationally, when they had exchanged greetings.

She lifted her eyebrows. "Did he? Sensible man! I suppose he is tired to death of our frivolous fooling."

"That's rather severe! I can't let you run him down. The other thing's more in his line, that's all; and it'll do him a power of good. He suffers cruelly from want of sleep, poor chap.—By the way, have you heard the latest suggestion for to-morrow?"

"No. I was—lying down this morning. What is it?"

"A burlesque polo match: ladies against men: the men to play on side-saddles by way of a mild handicap! Some of the older folk are a bit horrified at the notion. But I believe it'll come off; and they want me to captain the team."

"You? One of the champions of the Punjaub! What impertinence! Shall you?"

"Why, certainly. It will be rather a lark."

"Well, then, I'll play too, if they'll have me. Will you ask them, please?"

He regarded her in frank astonishment. "Jove! I never thought of that.
Are you in earnest?"

"But yes. In cut-throat earnest!" she answered, laughing.

"Ever tried your hand at it?"

"Never, in all my days. I will this afternoon though, if you'll take me in hand for an hour or so."

"With all the pleasure in life. You can ride Diamond, if you like. He knows almost as much about the game as I do."

Her eyes sparkled.

"That gem of an Arab? May I, really? I always thought you were a man in a hundred; and now I know it! That's a bargain, then. Things have been deadly insipid the last two days. But I have something to live for now!"

Garth received her announcement with open dismay. He suspected Desmond's influence: and, in his zeal to dissuade her, ventured on a mild tone of authority, with disastrous results.

"Well, I shan't have a comfortable moment till the thing is safely over," he concluded unwisely: and she tossed an indignant head.

"Am I such a despicable horseman?" she demanded haughtily. "Captain
Desmond doesn't find me so, I assure you."

And indeed, after an hour of assiduous instruction, Desmond had frankly expressed his approval both of her aptness and daring.

When Lenox heard the news on Friday morning, he heartily wished he had decided on a second day's shooting.

Anxiety apart, the knowledge that the woman he loved could thus make a public exhibition of herself for the amusement of a very mixed crowd, set the fastidious, old-world temper of the man on edge. For all that he was in his place, well before the appointed time: and from the first crack of polo-stick on ball his eyes never left his wife's flushed face and lightly swaying figure.

The polo ground, occupying the centre of the glade, was ringed about by a crowd as varied and gay in colouring as a bed of mixed tulips in spring. Even the open tent, where the English spectators were gathered, showed a prevailing lightness and brightness of tint. On the farther side of the tent, the Depot band gave out a cheerful blare of sound; and a June sun beamed complacently over all.

For the first twenty minutes the serio-comic game went forward merrily: the women playing in desperate earnest; the men making broad farce out of their ludicrous handicap.

Quita, who had elected to play Diamond first and fourth, was restrained at the outset by the fact that she was handling a priceless pony. But, with the opening of the third chukkur, increasing self-confidence, coupled with the pace and keenness of Bathurst's 'Unlimited Loo,' fired her venturesome spirit: and she flung herself heart and soul into the intoxication of the game; half hoping that some sudden crash and fall might solve the problem of her life by the simple expedient of putting out the light.

More than once Desmond called out an unheeded warning. He saw that pony and rider alike were in danger of losing their heads; and Lenox, leaning forward in an anguish of suspense, followed her every movement with conflicting fury and admiration.

At last the chukkur drew to an end.

Away by the farthest goal-posts a fine parody of a scrimmage was in progress, Desmond and Quita being 'on the ball.' The advantage was hers; and she made haste to secure it. Rising in the saddle, she swung her stick for an ambitious back-handed stroke, missed the ball, and smote 'Unlimited Loo,' with the full force of her arm, high up on the off hind-leg.

At this uncalled bolt from the blue, the sensitive animal,—who had never in all his days been chastised by a polo stick for doing his simple duty,—lost his head outright. His first bound snapped the curb chain; and taking the bit between his teeth he bolted across the green as if all the fiends in hell were after him. In vain Quita sat back, and put her whole light weight into her arms. Sheer terror had caught hold of him: and he headed blindly for the ring of natives, who broke away right and left, with shrill cries that gave the finishing touch to his terror.

And now no more than a stretch of shelving turf lay between him and the unfathomed lake. Towards it he fled at an undiminished pace: and Quita, sitting square and steady, with a rushing sound in her ears, foresaw that in less than five minutes her mad hope might be terribly fulfilled. For at the lake's edge the pony must needs swerve sharply, or come to a dead halt: and in either case, at their present rate of speed, she would be flung violently out of the saddle.

Desmond dared not follow, lest he make matters worse.

Maurice sprang up from his seat in the pavilion, and stood transfixed, helpless. "Nom de Dieu . . . que faire? Elle va mourir!" he muttered with shaking lips: and Elsie, child as she was, yearned over him with all the tenderness and pity of inherent motherhood.

Then the tall figure of Lenox broke away from the stunned crowd racing diagonally across the clear stretch between the pony and the lake.

The instant Quita missed her stroke he had risen to his feet; and his intent now was to reach a given spot simultaneously with the pony, and by the force of his added weight on the reins save the situation.

A shout of approval went up from soldiers and natives; and 'Unlimited Loo' fled faster. He passed the point Lenox was making for a bare hand's-length out of reach: but two strides landed him on a treacherous strip of thinly-crusted bog that encircles the lake, and he sank up to his knees in semi-liquid mud.

Quita, breathless and shaken, was jerked out of the saddle, and must have fallen, ignominiously, face downward in her Slough of Despond, but that Lenox,—reaching her in the nick of time—caught and crushed her in his arms.

"You're not hurt. Thank God, you're not hurt," he whispered unsteadily.

With a gasp of amazement that ended in a sob, she leaned her cheek against his coat; and the riotous music of their hearts seemed to fill the universe.

Then reality rushed in, and shattered the dream. For Garth, Maurice, and
Bathurst were hurrying towards them.

Quita felt her husband stiffen, and lifted her head.

"Thank you—thank you," she said with a twisted smile. "I think I can stand on my feet now."

In two strides he was clear of the mud, and had set her on firm earth. But she was still clinging to his arm when Garth came up, brimming with concern.

"I'm quite disappointingly all right," she assured him hastily, stung by a keen sense that her catastrophe had fallen headlong from impending tragedy to bathos. "Please bestow all your sympathy on Mr Bathurst, and Unlimited Loo!"

For a second Garth looked up at the man who stood beside her; but only for a second. For in the Scotchman's eye hate gleamed like a naked sword; and Garth had small taste for bared weapons of any kind.

"Ah, mon pauvre Michel!" Quita exclaimed, in a quick rush of tenderness, as her brother half ran to her, white and panting, both hands outstretched: and deserting Lenox, she flew to him, anathematising her own folly in a rapid flow of French. "Take me to my tent now," she concluded, linking her arm in his. "I still feel idiotically shaky, and I am certainly no loss to my side!—Mr Bathurst"—she turned in Jeff's direction—"please forgive me. I promise I'll never ask you to lend me a polo pony again!"

Bathurst,—who had rescued his treasure, and was feeling him all over with skilled hands,—shouted a cheery: "Don't mention it, Miss Maurice. Always glad to oblige a lady!"

And with a tired smile she turned back to Michael.

"Viens, mon cher," she said gently; and he led her away.

Conscious of Garth's eyes on her face, she could not trust herself to look again at Lenox, who had neither moved nor spoken since he set her on dry ground. But that one moment in his arms had solved her problem in a fashion that she dreamed not of: a fashion that still seemed past belief. She knew now that she had never lost him; and her heart sang a Jubilate Deo all the way to her tent. But she knew also that his pride equalled hers; that the first move was 'up to her'; and that now, at last, she might make it without fear of rebuff. But how—how?

Ten minutes later Maurice left her prostrate, in the twilight of her tent;—eau de cologne on her temples, and a chaos of mixed emotions at her heart.