"Elfin and human, airy and true;
* * * * * *
Your flowers and thorns you bring with you."
—R.L.S.

But the stumbling-block reasserted itself, and prevailed.

The articles on Tibet were solid affairs, for a solid journal; twelve of them, to be paid for on acceptance; and since Lenox needed the money to clear off debts incurred when furnishing and pay for their trip to Kashmir, he decided to get them written as soon as might be, before the stealthy increase of heat made mental effort a burden. Thus, while the Battery absorbed his mornings, Tibet made unlawful inroads upon his afternoons and evenings; and the narrow margin of leisure thus left to him did not by any means satisfy Quita's healthy appetite for companionship. More than once she attempted remonstrance, pitched in the wrong key, only to be routed by the unanswerable argument that the work must be done, and that there was no other time in which to do it. Finally, in a mood between pride and resignation, she shrugged her shoulders and turned elsewhere for companionship; for interests to fill the long hours which Eldred's devotion to work left empty on her hands.

And here, in a virtue pushed to the confines of vice, in the man's blind unintentional neglect of the woman for whom he would wring the last blood-drop out of his heart, you have the nucleus of more than half the pitiful domestic tragedies of India. It is the crucial moment, the genesis of a hundred unsuspected possibilities, this first divergence of the man and woman, along separate paths of interest. Love may be strong enough to stand the strain, but it will be love debarred from that intimate fusion of heart and brain which alone constitutes true marriage. The other kind is at best a permanent 'friendship recognised by the police':—a tacit confession of failure which this high-hearted, if contrarious couple were by no means minded to arrive at, now or ever. But there is no warning sign-post at the turn of the road; and already their feet were nearing it, without knowledge that its easy gradient slips into the Valley of Dry Bones.

Quita, however, was in a better case than many wives so circumstanced; in that her art was no mere distraction for spare hours, but a living reality; though, unhappily, a capricious one. And now when she would have returned to it in earnest after months of philandering with brush and pencil, it stood aloof, unmanageable as Eldred himself! She was too genuinely an artist to attempt the completion of an imaginative picture against the stream; and for fresh work, fresh mental stimulus was needed. This was not readily to be found in the everyday happenings—the riding, tennis, and gatherings at the Club Gardens—that made up the cold-weather life at Dera Ishmael; and she had little taste for small social or domestic amenities, in themselves. The call of the wild was in her blood. One might as well hope to domesticate a sea-gull as a woman of this type. She managed her household on broad lines, ignoring minor details, and Zyarulla, to his secret relief, found himself still the lynx-eyed custodian of the Sahib's Izzat[1] in houses and compound, still the controller of his petty cash. Quita received his monthly account—plus a minute percentage on each item—in perfect good faith. His visions of possible dismissal evaporated. He heartily commended his master's choice of a wife; and, in moments of expansion over the evening hookah, confided to the Khansamah—a friend and ally in the matter of accounts—his conviction that Mem Sahibs who made pictures were of a different jat to those who played tennis, harried their ayahs, and rode rough-shod over the sensibilities of honest bearers like himself! [Transcriber's note: The "a" in "jat" is an a-macron, Unicode U+0101.]

And, in truth, the Bohemian and cosmopolitan elements in Quita made her airily contemptuous of trifles, of the petty point of view, the 'local' attitude of mind often found in isolated Indian stations, more especially among the women. And setting aside Honor and Frank, the half-dozen officers' wives belonging to the Infantry Regiments were for the most part colourless average types of femininity such as Quita was something too ready to despise.

But the woman element had never played a large part in her life; and it was to the men she turned instinctively for mental companionship; for the larger outlook, the saner grasp of things big and small. She drew them by a natural magnetism; and held them by a talent for comradeship which never degenerated into familiarity or freedom. The four Battery subalterns, headed by Richardson, surrendered at discretion. And there were others also; notably George Rivers, Desmond's subaltern, a promising Lothario with a profile, a tenor voice, and an unimpeachable taste in ties and waistcoats. But Quita gave the preference to Eldred's brother officers; and to their open delight made them free of the house. One or more of them dined with her at least three nights a-week; and her instantaneous gravitation to Max Richardson had already resulted in an informal friendship equally delightful for both.

Lenox accepted these developments without comment, yet not without inward regret. For he craved the restfulness of quiet evenings alone with his wife, after a hard day's work: and indeed saw more than enough of his subalterns—always excepting Dick—on the parade-ground and in the orderly room every morning. Very soon he took to excusing himself early, on these convivial evenings, with the result that before long the old habit of working at night had him in its clutches once again, the charm of it heightened by months of abstinence. For a while he held out against it; but the quiet within and without, the certainty of freedom from interruption, the lucidity of thought that brains of a certain order seem only able to arrive at in the small hours, were powerful advocates for surrender; and little by little habit conquered. He smoked more and slept less; and the quality of his work improved in great strides.

But Quita objected strongly to this barefaced revival of 'bachelor habits' within six months of marriage; and more than once—waking in the small hours to find herself alone—she had slipped on her dressing-gown and boldly invaded his study; a disarming vision enough, her face flushed with sleep, looking absurdly young in a halo of tumbled hair, her eyes alight with tenderness and enjoyment of her own daring. On each occasion she was reproved without severity; established herself in the deck-lounge of old days; fell asleep promptly, and was carried protesting back to bed; but not until she had seen the lamp put out and the detestable litter of papers tidied up for the night.

In this fashion the first half of March slipped uneventfully by, each day bringing with it that imperceptible advance of heat which strikes an undernote of dread through the rose-scented languor of a Punjab March. For in the vast Northern Plains of India, it is autumn, not spring, that bears the winged word of resurrection. But Quita was still at that enviable stage in love's progress when times and seasons and places shrink to mere pin-points beside the one supreme fact. A Frontier hot weather in Eldred's company held no terrors for her. Possibly two months' leave would be available later on, when they would spend the honeymoon—of which they had been twice defrauded—in Kashmir; and, in the meantime, so long as one roof covered them, all was well; in spite of her secret wish that Tibet and the Pamirs could be expunged from the map of Asia by means of a private deluge!

But if Quita were inclined to quarrel with her husband's industry, Max Richardson was not. He was enjoying, for the first time in his life, the mere pleasantness of a woman's intimate companionship;—in Quita's case a companionship full of incident, of delicate reticences, alternating with unexpected revelations of thought and feeling; and through it all a frank interest in everything that concerned himself, which is perhaps the subtlest form of coquetry. Not that Quita meant it as such. In her entire devotion to her husband, she simply did not consider her effect upon other men; to whom, in consequence, she showed her true self almost with the freedom and spontaneity of a child. Richardson's own simplicity of character, and the ease with which one slips into a pleasant path, helped matters forward; and before long, they had fallen quite naturally into the habit of riding or driving together when Lenox happened to be very much engaged. Quita saw no reason to conceal her pleasure in these outings. Lenox thanked his friend once or twice, bluntly enough, yet with evident sincerity; and Richardson accepted his own good fortune with an unquestioning appreciation very characteristic of the man.

His thoughts were running definitely upon this pleasant state of things, as he drove Quita Lenox homeward through the main street of the native city, on a glowing evening, some two weeks after Honor's visit to the studio. Behind them clattered a small guard of native police, without whom it would not be advisable to explore a frontier city; and on either hand stretched a narrowing vista of open shop fronts noisy with vituperative buyers and sellers; brilliant with piled vessels of brass and copper, with the rainbow tints of dyed silks and muslins, piles of parched corn and spices, oranges, bananas, and pomegranates; their upper storeys breaking out into quaintly carved windows and balconies, strange splashes of colour, or rough childish pictures, innocent of proportion. And, better than these, in Quita's esteem, was the wide street itself, packed with the noisy, leisurely life of an Indian city:—goats and cattle; women and children; open bullock-carts that seemed to have all eternity to travel in; princely-looking Afghan traders in long coats and peaked turbans; Waziris, with keen, Jewish faces framed in greasy locks that fell upon their shoulders; the sais from his tail-board shouting ineffectual commands to make way for the Sahib; long-legged fowls, leaping and fluttering up under the pony's nose; pariahs, lazily insolent, almost allowing the wheel to graze thigh-bone or paw, before they condescended to loaf away to a fresh resting-place; and over all an arch of blue, so deep and passionate as to be almost vocal; and pervading all, the indefinable, unforgettable smell of the East:—a smell compounded of musk, spices, open drains, and humanity.

When at last they emerged into the open, and quickened their pace, Quita drew a breath of satisfaction, and smiled up at her companion, who allowed his eyes to linger in hers a moment longer than the occasion required.

Their outing had been an unusually long one; for whenever she could find her way into the city Quita was insatiable. Again and again Richardson had sat waiting in the sun, while she made thumb-nail sketches of street corners, bargained with curio-sellers for the Alexander coins and relics which abound at Dera Ishmael, or extracted information from shy, smiling women, whose faces happened to take her fancy in passing.

"You have been a miracle of patience!" she assured him, as they neared cantonments. "And I daresay you hated it half the time, and scorned my globe-trotter behaviour! I've noticed how quickly most Anglo-Indians get bored if one asks questions, or shows the smallest interest in the country and the people."

"Probably they don't enjoy airing their own ignorance," he suggested, with lazy amusement in his eyes. "I'm not bored with you, though. Shouldn't be, even if you were to pelt me with questions till midnight."

She laughed lightly.

"Don't dare me to put you to the test! It might make us enemies for life. And it's really capital that we get on so well. Just think how awkward for Eldred if I had taken one of my strong unreasoning dislikes to you!"

"Still more awkward for me! I never thought you carried hidden weapons of that sort about with you."

"Wait till you know me better. I am a hopeless creature of extremes!
You can't think how I hated my dear Honor Desmond last year,—though
I'd cut off a hand for her now; nor how I still hate . . . some one I
have never seen;—some one who wrote to Eldred—about me—years ago."

She broke off, remembering that in his eyes she had only been married nine months; though if she had been looking at him instead of contemplating the hands that lay clasped in her lap, she must have noticed his start, the sudden tension of his face and figure. Lenox had never told her, then. He might have guessed as much. And why should she ever know, after all? His native honesty prompted him to make a clean breast of it, and ask her forgiveness. But something stronger,—a new imperative desire to stand well with her at any price,—held him silent. Presently, she glanced up at him curiously; but his straight-featured profile and steady hands upon the reins revealed nothing beyond a momentary abstraction of thought.

"I forgot, when I spoke just now," she said in a changed voice—a voice of closer intimacy—"that you don't know how long we have really been married,—do you?"

"Yes, I do know," he answered, still intent upon the pony. Every moment made him more exquisitely uncomfortable. But he could not lie to her.

"Did my husband tell you?" she flashed out almost angrily.

"No, indeed. He's not that sort. I—found out by chance."

"How strange! Another man did the same. One can never keep a secret in this world. Well—it was the letter I spoke of that did all the harm; that broke up everything between us for five years. Can you wonder that I've never forgiven the writer, and never shall? Not because he wrote unfairly of me, but because of all that Eldred suffered then, and afterwards."

"Did you never make allowance for the fact that he could not have known how things were between you,—that he meant no harm?"

"I'm afraid I made no allowances; though I'm quite aware that, speaking justly, one can't blame him. Probably Eldred never did. But I told you my dislikes were unreasonable; and it makes me hate him to think that he was quite happy away there in England all those five years, while Eldred was half-killing himself with work and misery."

"Yes, I understand that. But it's all over now; and the harm's repaired."

"I hope so, in a measure; though it's my belief that harm done can never really be repaired; only patched up."

"That's a very terrible doctrine, Mrs Lenox."

"I'm afraid facts go to prove the truth of it."

Although she spoke quietly, a touch of hardness had invaded her voice; and Richardson had no answer to give her. His cheerful, easy-going nature had rarely been so deeply stirred. A new and delightful experience seemed to be taking an unlooked-for turn, and his lame attempts at self-defence in the third person struck him as bordering on the grotesque. He set his teeth and flicked the pony viciously; then hauled at his mouth because he broke into a canter. Yet he was a tender-hearted man.

"Poor little beast! Don't treat him like that," she rebuked him, between jest and earnest, "What's wrong? The city seems to have disagreed with you."

Again he did not answer: and for a time they drove on without speaking, each, if the truth be told, thinking of the other. Then she startled him with one of her direct, inconsequent questions.

"Mr Richardson, how old are you?"

He laughed.

"Just thirty. Why?"

"I was only wondering. You're the sort of man who ought to marry.
Have you never thought of it yet?"

"No. Too little money. Besides, I'm a lazy beggar, and I shirk the responsibility."

"That means you've never been in love!"

"I suppose not. Nothing more serious than a passing inclination. Mere growing pains!" He smiled at the remembrance of a certain romantic episode in his early twenties. "What's your notion? Have I been overdosing you with my company that you are so keen to marry me off?"

"Don't talk nonsense. I was simply thinking of you. You've the right stuff in you for a husband. But personally, I prefer you unattached. I should probably quarrel with your wife; and she would break up our friendship; which would be a thousand pities."

"Mrs Lenox—d'you mean that? Do you really value it one little bit?"

His repressed eagerness puzzled her, and she lifted her eyebrows. "But yes, mon ami! Would I go about with you so much if I didn't? I have failings enough, Heaven knows, but insincerity is not one of them. By the way, am I to put you on my other side to-night? Wouldn't you prefer Mrs Norton, or Mrs Lacy Smith for a change? I couldn't get the Desmonds; and Eldred hates my poor little party in consequence."

"So shall I, if you banish me from your end of the table."

"Well, that settles it. Two conspicuously large men in open mutiny would be more than the rest of us could stand!"

They swerved in between the gate-posts, and drew rein as she spoke.
The sound of their wheels had brought Lenox into the verandah.

"It's high time you were back again, you two," he said, with a touch of decision, as he lifted his wife from the cart. "I was wondering what had come to you. See you again at eight, Dick."

And Richardson, having quite recovered from his bad quarter of an hour, drove off humming the refrain of a song Quita had sung to him a few evenings back. After all, so long as she liked him, and valued his friendship, she was welcome to hate the supposed unknown, whose identity she must never be allowed to guess.

Meanwhile Lenox and his wife went on into the house, Quita disarming reproof by instant apology. "It was delightful; but I'm sorry we were away too long, dear."

He smiled contentedly down upon her. "Well—there are limits! Where on earth did you go?"

"All through the city again, and I unearthed endless treasures. You'd have loved it."

"Of course I should. Great fool that I was not to chuck the writing and take you myself!"

"Oh, if you only would, a little oftener!"

Something in her tone smote him; and putting both hands on her shoulders, he bent towards her, pain and passion in his eyes.

"Darling, tell me, have I been neglecting you lately?"

Her low laughter reassured him. "Neglecting me? Dear stupid! D'you suppose I'd sit down under it if you did? Now I'm going to change for dinner; and do please make yourself agreeable to Mrs Norton this evening."

For the Deputy Commissioner's wife was honouring her husband with a flying visit, before going north to spend the season in Simla.

"The devil take Mrs Norton. Odious woman!"

"No,—it's you that will have to take her!" she answered, laughing. "And it's not my fault that you won't have your beautiful Honor on the other side to keep the balance true."

Quita enjoyed her little dinner, and saw to it that others did likewise. She was a natural-born hostess. Talk never flagged in her neighbourhood, and her own lack of self-consciousness set the stiffest and shyest at their ease. Besides, she always enjoyed talking to Norton, whose cynicism and critical attitude she disarmed by the simple means of ignoring them. She liked the man's plain, hard-featured face, ploughed with deep lines of thought and effort, and only redeemed from ugliness by his remarkable eyes.

"Stoking up!" he remarked grimly, sipping his soup with a keen appreciation of its quality. "Punkahs and hell-fire again in no time. One hardly has time to cool down before the winter slips away. Mrs Norton's off to Simla in ten days; and I suppose you'll be bolting also by the end of next month?"

She laughed, and shook her head. "If you're counting on getting my husband to chum with you this hot weather, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

He eyed her quizzically for a moment.

"Of course—I forgot. You're a new broom! If I meet you in March three or four years hence, I shall hear another story."

"And enjoy the triumph of your own cynicism! Very well, I accept your challenge. I shall write to you three years from now, just to tell you how the land lies."

"Do. And if you forget, I shall hear of you from some one else. We know all one another's little doings in this corner of the world. I feel curious about you, and prophesy that Simla and amateur theatricals will carry the day; though for Lenox's sake I hope all the triumph will be on your side. But it's no light matter, I can tell you, to win your spurs as a Frontier officer's wife of the right quality."

"Like Mrs Desmond, for instance?"

"Quite so. Like Mrs Desmond."

"I notice all the cynicism goes out of your voice when you speak of her. Yet you can make insulting prophecies about me, at my own table too! Am I so immeasurably inferior?"

"That remains to be seen! You have still to be tested in the furnace, and no imaginary furnace either. Man or woman, staying power's the great requisite for India, Mrs Lenox. To pull through for half a dozen hot weathers is all very well,—mere getting one's hand in. But by the time a man has completed his twentieth he begins to know something about the weakness of the flesh. I seem to you, with your youth and high courage, a cynical, disagreeable fellow enough. But perhaps when you are middle-aged and disillusioned, and all the good blood in your veins has been dried up by fever, you'll forgive my straight speaking to-night; though by then I shall be a forgotten old fogey, eating my heart out in England, or I shall have dropped in harness, which would be the kinder fate of the two."

"Indeed I have forgiven you already," she answered in a softened tone; and involuntarily her eyes sought the handsome heavy-featured woman beside her husband, whose Paris dinner-dress was cut lower than need be, and whose elaborate 'fringe' rather too obviously grew off her head.

"Thank you. It's more than I deserve; and I'm sorry I must repay you by giving you your first taste of the pleasant little surprises that are a main feature of Frontier life. I have to go off across the Border early next week, to fix the position of a post we are going to build for our Mahsud levies, and to collect a fine from some rascals who have been raiding Tank."

"Where's that?"

"An unlucky village near the Gomal Pass,—the great trade route into the hills. It gets burnt to the ground periodically by the Waziris, probably much to its advantage; but one can't overlook the insult to British authority. So I'm obliged to visit them in state and talk to them like a father, after collecting their fine; and I'm afraid I must take your husband and Richardson along with me, besides a handful of cavalry and infantry by way of protection and prestige."

Quita's face fell. "For how long?" she asked, collecting her last crumbs of pastry with a peculiar deliberation.

"We might be ten days coming and going. Not more."

"And—would there be fighting?"

"Probably not. It's a peaceful deputation. But peace armed to the teeth is the only kind the Waziri understands; and he can't always control his rifle when he finds the eternally aggressive white man taking liberties with his sacred hills! We shan't be sorry for a whiff of cool air any of us; and you won't be the only injured wife. Colonel Montague, of the Sikhs, comes with us; and I'm going to rob Mrs Desmond of her preux chevalier also. I only want half a squadron, but I shall make special request for Desmond. He's a capital man to have handy in case of accidents. As for Lenox, he'll be delighted, if that's any consolation to you."

"Well, naturally," she faced him now, eyes and lips under control. "Besides, ten days is nothing. One has to make a beginning; and it might have been ever so much worse."

"That's the plucky way to look at it," he said in evident approval, and
Quita rather abruptly changed the subject.

The evening that followed was a remarkably cheerful affair, imbued with that spirit of friendly informality which makes the little dinners of India live long in the memory. O'Flannagan had brought his banjo. Rivers and Richardson both sang creditably; and Quita herself was in one of her 'inspired' moods. Only Mrs Norton, having deposited her grey satin magnificence upon the sofa, protested mutely against what she considered a tendency to 'rowdyism' in her hostess; flirted—intellectually—with any one who had the hardihood to sit near her; and on the stroke of ten rose with a suppressed yawn and a transparently insincere little speech about an enjoyable evening.

"Begad, but her works want oiling badly!" O'Flannagan confided to Quita, as the last shimmering morsel of her train slid out of sight. "She's one o' your immaculate Englishwomen who give me the blues. Come on, Mrs Lenox. Thank Heaven for the dash of ould Ireland in you; and let's begin to enjoy ourselves!"

From that moment the evening took a new lease of life. Two battery subalterns came over from mess, and it was close on midnight when Lenox, returning from his final duties in the verandah, found Quita standing by the mantelpiece, her cheeks flushed, her eyes radiating enjoyment.

"Thank the Lord that's over!" he ejaculated fervently, flinging himself into a deep arm-chair; and she turned on him promptly, with a visible ruffling of her feathers.

"Eldred, you're positively inhuman. When you talk like that you make me want to hit you!"

She stood above him, threatening him with one slim hand; but Lenox, reaching up lazily, grasped her arms below the elbow, and gently but irresistibly forced her on to her knees.

"Hit out, lass, if you've a mind to," he said good-humouredly. "I swear I won't retaliate!"

She struggled for freedom; but he held her in a vice.

"You great schoolboy,—let me go!" she commanded, between laughter and vexation. "I don't care if you do hate dinner parties. I must have them sometimes. I love to see people enjoying themselves as they all did tonight, except that odious Mrs Norton, who doesn't count. You're not pliable enough. That's what's the matter with you. But if I live to a hundred and twenty you'd never make a hermit out of me!"

"And if you gave a party every night of your life you'd never make a society man out of me. I should simply apply for a trans-frontier billet, where wives are not admitted. But look here, little woman, did Norton tell you about next week?"

"Of course he did. You'll be gone in three or four days. It's hateful. Do let me have my arms back, darling."

And he surrendered this time.

"Are you sleepy?" she asked, her eyes, full of laughter, resting in his.

"Lord, no. I'm going to sit up and put in two hours work at least before turning in."

"Indeed you'll do no such thing. You're going to sit up and talk to me. I didn't like to bother Mr Norton; but I've a hundred questions to ask you about it all."

"HazÚr ke kushi! [2] Ask away. Only let me get at my pipe, and I'm at your service."

He filled and lighted it with leisurely satisfaction; and Quita, settling herself on the carpet beside him, her face looking into his, her bright head laid against his knee, kept him talking of Border politics and Border warfare till all thought of putting in two hours' work was out of the question.

[1] Prestige.

[2] As your Honour's pleases.