"Ah, Love, but a day,
And the world has changed!"
—Browning.

An early return journey had been advocated by all experienced weather prophets of the mushroom colony of Kajiar. The great monsoon was already rolling up from the coast-line, and at any moment might break in thunder over the hills.

By eight of the morning tent-poles were swaying and falling on all sides: and the wide glade that had slept in silver when Quita parted from her husband, was astir from end to end. From every corner came the brisk insistent tapping of hammers on tent-pegs; the shrill neighing of ponies, and shriller chatter of coolies, bargaining for payment in advance; repudiating loads a few ounces overweight, and tragically prophesying death on the road if the illegal incubus were not removed.

Peremptory bugle-notes rang out upon the air; and mounted Englishmen, galloping hither and thither, scattered commands right and left in a series of deep-chested shouts.

Striking camp,—breaking up! It is the key-note of Anglo-Indian life.
The chord of change unchanging sounds unceasingly in travel-weary ears.

But experience breeds proficiency; and the native servant is an adept in the art of so oiling the wheels that his master shall accomplish his appointed pilgrimage with the least possible damage to his much-tried nervous system.

Zyarulla, the indomitable, was a man of this order. In his opinion the Sahib had no concern whatever with the minor details of the march: an opinion with which the Sahib in question had not the smallest desire to quarrel. And on this particular morning Lenox had little attention to spare even for the sorting and bestowal of his priceless manuscripts,—so impatient was he to verify the dream-like happenings of the night; to look into his wife's eyes and feel the answering pressure of her hand. Swallowing a hasty cup of tea and a banana while he dressed, he hastened out to the place of their parting seven hours earlier.

Afar off he caught sight of her, standing, in habit and terai, on the open space where her tent had been, supervising the departure of her last load of luggage, and listening patiently to tales of coolie villainy and extortion poured forth by her Kashmiri ayah, on a high note of vituperation.

He checked his advance for the pure pleasure of watching her from a distance: and when the ayah,—denouncing as she ran,—hurried off in the wake of her refractory army, he went briskly forward and held out his hand.

She gave him her own without a word, and for a full minute of time they stood thus, hands and eyes inter-locked, oblivious of the noisy world about them, which, happily for them, was absorbed in matters of far greater moment.

"Can't I help you?" Lenox asked; and the simple question, with all that it implied of his renewed right of service, thrilled her like a caress.

"I wish you could. But I've got through most of it already."

"That's bad luck. Maurice not much use on these occasions, I suppose?"

"Not the smallest use, bless him! He says I have more talent for it than he! But call him Michael, cher ami, only to me."

"Michael then, by all means—Quita.—You can't think what it is to me to be able to call you by your name again," he added with sudden fervour.

She laughed and blushed deliciously.

"I noticed that you never called me by—the other one," she said, looking intently at a distant tree.

"Good Lord, no—I'd have bitten my tongue out sooner!"

He could not keep his eyes from her face; and as the blush died down its pallor smote him.

"Did you sleep at all?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes; for an hour or two. Did you?"

"Didn't even lie down."

"Oh, mon pauvre——!"

"Hush!—Don't trouble your dear head about that,"

"But I must. It breaks my heart——"

He laughed. "That's worse than ever! You've got to keep your heart intact—for me."

His eyes travelled from her face to her unadorned left hand. Hers followed them; and a half smile parted her lips.

"Where d'you keep them?" he asked under his breath.

Still smiling, she unfastened two buttons of her habit and vouchsafed him a glimpse of gold and diamonds. "They live on a chain—in there," she explained softly.

"You have worn them, then, after a fashion?"

"Yes: since I learnt to love—my bondage!"

"Did you really never wish that I might be conveniently wiped out, even in the early days?"

"No, never:—and I am thankful now that I can say 'No' with perfect truth."

She drew in a long breath of ecstasy. The morning cheerfulness of the world at large, the music of her own pulses, and of the man's voice, vibrant with things inexpressible, filled her with a very oppression of happiness.

"Oh, Eldred," she breathed. "It still feels like a dream. Let's talk sheer prose just to make it feel real!—Are you and the Desmonds riding back with Colonel and Miss Mayhew?"

"Yes."

"So are we."

"And Garth?"

"I suppose so. But I want you to ride with me. Will you—darling?"

She added the entreaty of her eyes to the last word, and he hesitated.

"It will look a little odd, and sudden, of course. But I don't see why
I shouldn't."

"Nor do I. We can at least begin our courtship—can't we?—to prepare people for what is to come! Besides—if it isn't you, it will be Major Garth, and . . . I'm a little afraid of him after last night."

"Why? What the devil did he do?"

"Nothing—nothing definite. He only spoke rather strangely before I sent him away; and I don't want to be alone with him, if I can help it. You see, he . . . he cares for me, Eldred; and I am afraid he thinks now that I—care for him. Oh, I feel contemptuously wicked! But I have been rather desperate this week, all on account of you; and I really think it's your business to protect me from the consequences!"

"Of course it is my business, and my privilege to protect you," he answered fervently. Her confession of dependence was sweeter to him than honey in the honeycomb. "But you gave me an almighty snubbing the other day when I made a clumsy attempt at it."

"Make allowances, mon cher, and don't fail me now."

"Fail you?" He flashed a reproachful glance at her. "I hope I may never do that, while there's breath in my body! Trust me to be at your right hand when we start. Mrs Desmond will have wit enough to capture—your friend, if she sees that I want you."

"Why? Does she know all about it?"

"Just the bare facts. I told her myself."

"And he?"

"Certainly. They are one, those two, if ever man and woman achieved the miracle."

"Does that account for his flattering attentions to me since Chumba?"

"Quite possibly."

"But that wasn't fair play! He is such a grand fellow; and I was so proud of my small conquest!"

Her lighter mood was even more irresistible than her seriousness had been: but Lenox palled himself together.

"Tell him so, and you'll make your conquest at once, if you've not made it already! Hullo—there is the last breakfast bugle. Shall we go in together? If I am doomed to fall in love with you, I may as well set about it at once!"

Her answering look set a crown on him.

"Ah, my dear," she whispered. "In spite of all you said last night, I am happy beyond words."

"So am I," he answered simply. "Come."

From her own area of luggage-strewn ground, Honor Desmond,—carrying little Paul, whom she had insisted on bringing into camp,—looked after them as they went, her glad heart in her eyes; and Desmond, coming up from behind, took her lightly by the arm.

"Well, old lady," he asked. "Are you satisfied yet?"

"Abundantly."

"And am I to get my wife back again as a reward for distinguished services rendered?"

"I imagine so!" she answered, laughing happily. "Unless you would rather keep your grievance!—Now go on to breakfast, darling; and I'll follow when I have packed this priceless person into his dandy. Whatever happens, he and Parbutti must run no risk of getting drenched."

Breakfast was half through before Garth sauntered into the mess-tent: and Honor, who had watched for his coming, felt an unbidden pang of pity at sight of his blank face, when he beheld Quita sitting beside her husband, a bright spot of colour in either cheek, her eyes radiating a light that refused to be hidden under a bushel.

The unexpected blow roused all the devil in him. Man of prudence though he was, he could have murdered Lenox at that moment. But life rarely lends itself to melodrama: and instead he sat down at the far end of the table; and, for once in his life, ate a meal without being aware of its quality. His brain was busy reviewing the events of the previous day; putting two and two together, and trying not to see that they made four. A physical chill took him as he realised how narrowly he had escaped the ignominy of betraying the fact that he had counted on the consent of this proudest among women to the only proposals possible in the circumstances.

It was an awkward corner for James Garth; and in his chequered experience of awkward corners the rÔle of victim had rarely been his. Even the witness of his eyes did not carry conviction. By some means he must contrive to ride home with her, and learn from her lips the 'wherefore' of this astonishing change of front. He reflected that Lenox had little finesse, and anticipated small trouble in circumventing him.

But he reckoned without Honor Desmond, whose strategical skill came to her from a long line of distinguished soldiers, and whose sympathies had been touched to the quick by the grave contentment in Eldred Lenox's eyes when they lingered on his wife's face and figure.

Breakfast over, she accosted Garth straightway with a cheerful morning greeting: and from that moment, to the time of their departure, she took charge of him, gently yet irresistibly; keeping him well away from Quita's neighbourhood; and so isolating him that he could not desert her without open rudeness: proceedings that at once mystified and flattered him, as Honor herself was delightedly aware.

For a full hour the exodus of man and beast went noisily forward. But Colonel Mayhew's departure was delayed by his desire to see the Chumba contingent well under weigh before leaving: and by the time he announced his readiness to start, the last remaining units of the Great Camp were out of sight, trotting briskly along the shadowed road that winds up through the forest to Bukrota Mall.

"If we push along briskly we may get in with dry skins yet," he said, scanning the sky, where a vanguard of tattered cloud trailed aimlessly across the blue.

"And I was actually hoping we might get caught!" Quita confessed on a mock note of apology. "It would make such a thrilling finale: and I delight in your Indian storms."

Colonel Mayhew laughed and shook his head.

"When you have seen and heard as many of them as I have, Miss Maurice, you will simply find them 'demnition damp and disagreeable,' like Mantalini's dead body! And even at the risk of disappointing you, I intend to make a bolt for it.—Come on, my contingent!"

Lenox was at his wife's right hand, as he had promised: and Garth had so far succumbed as to lift Mrs Desmond into her saddle.

"You are a practised hand at it!" she said, smiling down upon his obvious annoyance at the fate in store for him. "Why shouldn't you and I head the contingent? Some one must go first!"

There was nothing for it but to acquiesce; and to endure, as best he might, the torment of Quita's clear tones close behind, alternating with her husband's bass; both voices pitched too low to be articulate, Desmond followed with Mayhew, while Maurice and Elsie, and the customary string of coolies, brought up the rear.

For the first few miles splashes of sunlight gleamed and quivered on the rough pathway, on red-pine stems, and moss-coated rocks. But before half their journey was accomplished, it became evident that they were not to escape the opening storm of the great monsoon.

A shuddering wind set the dense pines above and below them swaying and moaning, a sound of strange and infinite melancholy. The sunlight went out like a snuffed candle; battalions of clouds, charged with electricity, rolled silently northward, obliterating all things; and an ochreous twilight settled down upon the forest. Save for the whispering of wind-tossed trees, all Nature seemed hushed, expectant, holding her breath.

The dusky stillness wrought upon the nerves of the riders, producing a vague, discomfortable sense of foreboding. Talk grew fitful; and was instinctively carried on in lowered tones.

"Push on a bit faster, Mrs Desmond. It would be as well to get out where the trees are thinner before the worst is upon us."

Colonel Mayhew's voice had an anxious note. He had weathered the opening storm of many monsoons; but his daughter's presence wakened in him a new fear of the thunderbolts of the gods.

Even as he spoke, a phosphorescent gleam sped through the trees, like a passing soul; and a threatening growl rumbled up from the South. It was the prelude. Two minutes later, rocks, stems, branches, and the minutest fir-needles that flickered against the grey, showed like ink-strokes on tarnished silver as a forked flash, leaped, quivering, from the heart of a blue-black cloud. The report that followed, after scarce five seconds of stillness, was smart, crisp, short as a revolver-shot; and long before a hundred peaks had made an end of flinging back the sound, a second flash and crash—in swifter succession—smote the eyes and ears of the riders, who now urged their horses to a canter, saises, coolies, and three devoted dogs panting zealously behind them.

Their hope was to gain shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood on that June morning.

The third flash split up the sky as a stone splits a window pane. Pulsating streaks of fire, red, green, and blue, radiated in all directions, half-blinding them with the brazen glare. And before it faded, a crackling detonation seemed to rip the very heavens from marge to marge.

As yet no rain had fallen: and for ten deafening minutes the little party rode in silence through an inferno of reiterate light and sound. Once or twice Quita glanced at her husband, cantering beside her, and wondered vaguely when she would hear him speak again; wondered, too, at her own matter-of-fact acceptance of that which a week ago had appeared impossible. But the storm stunned heart and brain, as well as eye and ear. Everything human,—life, death, love itself,—seemed trivial in face of this stupendous battle of the elements. Above them, and on all sides of them, the lightning leaped and darted, like a live thing seeking its prey. It was as if the sombre heavens were bringing forth brood upon brood of fiery serpents, and greeting the birth of each with ear-splitting peals of Titanic laughter.

Then came the rain:—not in mere drops, but in a solid sheet of water, blinding, drenching, stupefying. At the same instant the fury of the storm culminated in a blaze of white light that seemed to spring upon them from all sides at once, with a shout as of fiends let loose; and, through the echoing after-roll of thunder, came a sharper, harsher sound,—the death note of a mighty tree.

Lenox and his wife faced one another involuntarily with startled looks.

"How appalling!—What was it?" she asked between two breaths.

"A pine struck somewhere up the khud. Not frightened, are you, lass?" he added with tender concern. "It's the very thing you wanted. You've got your thrilling finale with a vengeance!"

A clatter of breaking branches made him look up. "Great God!" he cried, on a note of alarm. "Back your pony sharp. It's coming down on the top of us!"

And as she obeyed, with the swift instinct of fear, Desmond's voice reached him through the rush of the rain.

"Look out for yourself, Lenox! She's safe enough."

But before the words were out, the upper half of a great deodar crashed down upon the narrow path, and a long branch struck the Galloway's shoulder with tremendous force. For an instant Shaitan staggered under the blow:—then horse, and man, and tree were hurled headlong down the steep, rain-lashed ravine.

A great cry broke from Quita: and in that cry, and the white, rigid repression that followed it, Garth had his answer to the question he had never asked.

For the hundredth part of a second all seven sat paralysed by the hideous thing that had happened before their eyes, and by the hopeless nature of the drop down which Lenox had disappeared:—wiped out, as though he had never been.

Then Desmond's practical vigour asserted itself, and he sprang lightly to the ground.

"Here, take hold of the Demon, some one!"

And it was Quita who leant forward and grasped the bridle with a steady hand. Her action gave him the chance he wanted of getting close enough to speak a few words of encouragement in a hurried undertone.

"Don't lose heart. It's an ugly drop. But he fell clear of the tree; and these khuds are the most chancy things imaginable. I'm off after him, as fast as hands and feet can take me."

Speech was beyond her; but she thanked him with her eyes.

A moment later he was kneeling in the mud, rapidly unfastening boots and gaiters; for one downward glance had convinced him that it would be a matter of climbing, and difficult climbing at that.

By now Colonel Mayhew had dismounted also; and as Desmond stood upright—in socks and breeches—and flung aside his dripping helmet, the older man drew him to the path's edge.

"Look here, my dear chap," he mid, when they were out of earshot of the group, who sat spellbound in the grip of tragedy, "are you justified in running a serious risk, probably—to no purpose? For I'm afraid poor Lenox hasn't a ghost of a chance. You're a married man, remember; and it looks to me uncommonly like madness to attempt that khud in such weather. It'll be a case of holding on with your eyelids; and there's a coolie track not far from here, that leads down to the valley."

Desmond's month took the dogged line that his sowars knew and loved; and a combatant light flashed in his eyes.

"Your blood's cooler than mine, sir," he answered quietly. "But I have a fairly steady head; and my wife would be the last person in the world to hold me back, thank God. In such cases five or ten minutes may mean just the difference between life . . . and death. If you will get together some sort of a stretcher—a good strong one—and come on post-haste down the coolie track, I'll be grateful. I suppose we haven't a drop of brandy among us?—bad luck to it!"

"There's a provision kilter on one of the coolies. Shall we have it turned out, on the chance?"

"Good Lord, yes. Get it done at once, please." Then he turned to
Garth. "I say, Major, gallop on, will you, and catch up Dr O'Malley.
I saw him start with the last contingent. They can't be more than two
miles ahead."

And as Garth obeyed the peremptory request, the devil himself must have whispered to his heart the despicable suggestion that possibly Fate had struck a blow in his favour after all.

Colonel Mayhew, meanwhile, rummaging feverishly in the depths of the kilter with scant hope of success, bestrewed the wet earth on all sides of him with canned fruits, sardines, greasy jharrons, and crumpled wads of newspaper: till at length, like Hope out of Pandora's casket, there came forth from an unsuspicious-looking bundle of clothes half a bottle of brandy, stowed carefully away by the kitmutgar, for private ends best known to himself.

Desmond, who stood by fuming with impatience to be gone, laid eager hands on it.

"Lord, what a miracle! Pity there's no flask handy," he muttered, buttoning his coat, and thrusting the unwieldly impediment into a side-pocket. Then, catching sight of a horn tumbler among the dÉbris, he picked it up, and drew out the bottle.

"Better leave you some for the women,—if you can get 'em to drink it diluted with a trifle of rain!—There now, I'm off. For God's sake, Colonel, look sharp after me."

Without waiting for an answer, he swung round on his heel, and for the first time looked at his wife, whose eyes had never left him since he sprang from the saddle. Now, as his own challenged them, they gave him in full the approval he craved; and, for the space of a few seconds, their spirits clung together in an embrace more intimate than any communion of the lips.

Then Theo Desmond wrenched himself away.

Stepping deliberately backward, over a short, sheer drop, he let himself down by his hands on to a tumbled mass of boulders, and began his perilous descent in earnest. Whereupon Brutus,—who stood at the khud's edge peering into space, ears and tail dumbly demanding explanation,—lunged forward, as if to follow so practical a lead; and only Colonel Mayhew's prompt clutch at his collar saved him from joining the master who had so basely deserted him. Both he and Desmond's distracted Aberdeen were handed over to a sais; and after much ineffectual choking and gurgling, subsided into apathetic despair.

Already half a dozen natives were busy devising an impromptu stretcher from fir branches, ropes, and strips of coolie blanket,—drenched and evil-smelling, yet acceptable enough; while Quita sat watching its construction in a dazed stillness; her eyes dry and wide; her artist's brain picturing too vividly that which lay awaiting it down there in the pitiless rain, that seemed to add a refinement of cruelty to the horse-play of lightning and thunder.

But Colonel Mayhew, unaware of the morning's double tragedy, had eyes only for his daughter; and, in his first free moment, hurried to her side. She had hidden her face, and was crying softly, to Michael's open dismay. Once or twice he had even laid a hand on her, unheeded, and unrebuked. But her father's touch roused her, and she took convulsive hold of him. She was still little more than a child; and this was her first face-to-face encounter with the brutality of God's universe.

"Don't upset yourself, girlie," he said kindly. "The damage may be less than we think for. I must stay here and help; but you must be a good child, and ride on at once. You'll see her safe home for me, won't you, Maurice?"

Michael acquiesced eagerly. Unrelieved tragedy upset his nerves. He longed to escape from the consciousness of Quita's dumb despair; and when Elsie had been induced to swallow a drop of brandy that would not have warmed a sparrow, they rode off briskly through the sullen downpour.

With a breath of relief, Colonel Mayhew went up to Honor Desmond, who had just dismounted.

"What's that for?" he asked anxiously. "You and Miss Maurice are going on too, of course."

Honor shook her head.

"But you can do no earthly good by waiting. We may be an hour or more before we get up here again. It will be slow work, if . . . if Lenox is alive;—and you will be drenched to the skin."

"There are worse evils than that!" she answered with gentle immobility. "Don't trouble about me, please. I must stay here till I know what has happened; and I think Miss Maurice will wish to stay too. We shall come to no harm. We women have nine lives, you know!"

"And if you will—you will. . . . I know that also! But at least take a nip to keep out the damp. Your husband gave me this at the last moment for the three of you."

"How like him to think of it!" she murmured, smiling unsteadily.

"Yes—it was like him,"—and in the expansion of the moment the warm-hearted Resident put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. "He's a deuced fine fellow, my dear, and he has found a wife that's worthy of him."

Honor blushed rose-red, and took the proffered stimulant.

"I'll give Miss Maurice some too," she said. "Don't lose a second on our account, please."

Thus urged, the good man hurried away; and Honor went straight to
Quita, whose unnatural apathy cut her to the heart.

"Miss Maurice, here's brandy," she said softly. "Drink all of it, before I help you down."

Quita emptied the tumbler; and Honor, grasping her waist with both hands, lifted her out of the saddle.

"How strong you are," she said, in the toneless voice of a sleep-walker. Then her frozen anguish melted suddenly and completely. For Honor Desmond, instead of releasing her, clasped her close, kissing her, with passionate tenderness, on cheeks and brows, like wet marble: and in the midst of her bewildered misery Quita realised dimly what it might mean to possess a mother.

"Theo and I know about it all," Honor explained at length; and Quita nodded. The fact that she was crying her heart out on the shoulder of her detested rival made the whole incident dreamlike to the verge of stupefaction: and it was Honor who spoke again.

"We'll just wait here together till they come back; and shut—the worst out of our thoughts. You have splendid courage, my dear, and I think I love nothing in the world more than courage. Sit down with me now on this pile of fir-needles. It looks a little less saturated than the rest of the world."

Still keeping an arm round her, she drew her down unresisting to her side: and Quita, choking back the tears that had probably saved her brain from after-effects of the shock, looked with awakened interest at her new-found friend.

"I don't deserve that you should be so good to me," she said, humour flashing through her pain like a watery sunbeam on a day of mist. "I have hated you, with all my heart, ever since I first saw you!"

At which confession Honor pressed her closer. "Bless you for telling me!—I take it simply as the measure of—your love for him."

"Mon Dieu, no! Not now," she answered very low.

"I am glad of that too. For I want very much to be good friends with
Captain Lenox's wife."

On the last word a slow colour crept back into Quita's cheeks.

"You mustn't speak of it—yet, to any one else. There are difficulties—big difficulties . . ."

"I know;—but you may trust him to conquer them. One feels in him the sort of force that moves mountains."

Again Quita nodded. "You seem to know everything," she added, a last spark flickering in the ashes of her jealousy. "And I suppose you blame me for it all."

"I am too ignorant of the facts to blame either of you. I only know that even if he wronged you in any way, he has been more than sufficiently punished."

At that Quita's lips quivered, and the storm of her grief broke out afresh: while the greater storm overhead, having accomplished its evil work, rolled rapidly northward, with the colossal unconcern of a giant who crushes a beetle in his path; and the first stupendous downrush of water subsided into a melancholy drizzle of rain.

In that endless hour of looking and waiting for those who seemed as if they had been blotted out for all time, Quita learned once and for all what manner of woman Honor Desmond was; learnt also something of the loyalty and reserve that had marked Eldred's intercourse with her whom he had spoken of as his best friend.