nd the
delicate arch of her eyebrows poised like outspread wings above the
brown, limpid depths of her eyes. He could not tell that she was still
little more than a girl; barely eight-and-twenty. For him she was
ageless:--protector and playfellow, essence of all that was most real,
yet most magical, in the home that was his world. Unknown to him, the
Eastern mother in her was evoking, already, the Eastern spirit of
worship in her son.

Very close to her nestled Tara, a vivid, eager slip of a girl, with
wild-rose petals in her cheeks and blue hyacinths in her eyes and
sunbeams tangled in her hair, that rippled to her waist in a mass almost
too abundant for the small head and elfin face it framed. In
temperament, she suggested a flame rather than a flower, this singularly
vital child. She loved and she hated, she played and she quarrelled with
an intensity, a singleness of aim, surprising and a little disquieting
in a creature not yet nine. She was the despair of nurses and had never
crossed swords with a governess, which was a merciful escape--for the
governess. Juvenile fiction and fairy tales she frankly scorned. Legends
of Asgard and Arthur, the virile tales of Rajputana and her warrior
chiefs, she drank in as the earth drinks dew. Roy had a secret weakness
for a happy ending--in his own phrase, "a beautiful marry." Tara's rebel
spirit rose to tragedy as a flame leaps to the stars; and there was no
lack of high tragedy in the records of Chitor--Queen of cities--thrice
sacked by Moslem invaders; deserted at last, and left in ruins--a sacred
relic of great days gone by.

This morning Rajputana held the field. Lilamani, with a thrill in her
low voice, was half reading, half telling the adventures of Prithvi Raj
(King of the Earth) and his Amazon Princess, Tara--the Star of Bednore:
verily a star among women for beauty, wisdom, and courage. Many princes
were rivals for her hand; but none would she call "lord" save the man
who restored to her father the Kingdom snatched from him by an Afghan
marauder. "On the faith of a Rajput, _I_ will restore it," said Prithvi
Raj. So, in the faith of a Rajputni, she married him:--and together, by
a daring device, they fulfilled her vow.

Here, indeed, was Roy's 'beautiful marry,' fit prelude for the tale of
that heroic pair. For in life--Lilamani told them--marriage is the
beginning, not the end. That is only for fairy tales.

And close against her shoulder, listening entranced, sat