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rom them all. And it was responsible for a happy inspiration. Rummaging among his papers, on the eve of departure, he came upon the sketch of India that he had written in Delhi and refrained from sending to Aruna. Intrinsically it was hers; inspired by her. Also--intrinsically it was good: and straightway he decided she should have it for a parting gift. Beautifully copied out, and tied up with carnation-pink ribbons, he reserved it for their last few moments together. She was still such a child in some ways. The small surprise of his gift might ease the pang of parting. It was a woman's thought. But the woman-strain of tenderness was strong in Roy, as in all true artists. She was standing near the fire in her own sitting-room, wearing the pink dress and sari, her arm still in a sling. Last words, those desperate inanities--buffers between the heart and its own emotion--are difficult things to bring off in any case; peculiarly difficult for these two, with that unreal, yet intensely actual, bond between them; and Roy felt more than grateful to the inspiration that gave him something definite to say. Instantly her eyes were on it--wondering ... guessing.... "It's a little thing I wrote in Delhi," he said simply. "I couldn't send it to Jeffers. It seemed--to belong to you. So I thought----" He proffered it, feeling absurdly shy of it--and of her. "Oh--but it is too much!" Holding it with her sling hand, she opened it with the other and devoured it eagerly under his watching eyes. By the changes that flitted across her face, by the tremor of her lips and her hands, as she pressed it to her heart, he knew he could have given her no dearer treasure than that fragment of himself. And because he knew it, he felt tongue-tied; tempted beyond measure to kiss her once again. If she divined his thought, she kept her lashes lowered and gave no sign. He hoped she knew.... But before either could break the spell of silence that held them, Thea returned; and their moment--their idyll--was over.... END OF PHASE III. PHASE IV. DUST OF THE ACTUAL CHAPTER I. "It's no use trying to keep out of things. The moment they want to put you in--you're in. The moment you're born, you're done for."--HUGH WALPOLE. The middle of March found Roy back in the Punjab, sharing a ramshackle bungalow with Lance and two of his brother officers; good fellows, both, in their diametrically opposite f
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