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