ut and spend the day at Baghi dak bungalow,
ten miles on. Taking things easily, he believed it could be done. He
would look through his manuscript; try and pick up threads. Suraj could
follow later; and he would ride home over the pass in the cool of the
evening.

He set out under a clear heaven, misted with the promise of heat: the
air rather ominously still. But the thread of a path winding through
the dimness and vastness of Narkhanda Forest was ice-cool with the
breath of night. Pines, ilex, and deodars clung miraculously to a
hillside of massive rock, that jutted above him at
intervals--threatening, immense; and often, on the _khud_ side, dropped
abruptly into nothingness. When the road curved outward, splashes of
sunlight patterned it; and intermittent gaps revealed the flash of
snow-peaks, incredibly serene and far.

Normally the scene--the desolate grandeur of it--would have intoxicated
Roy. But the stranger he was carrying about with him, and called by his
own name, reacted in quite another fashion to the shadowed majesty of
looming rocks and forest aisles. The immensity of it dwarfed one mere
suffering man to the dimensions of a pebble on the path. And the pebble
had the advantage of insensibility. The stillness and chillness made him
feel overwhelmingly alone. A sudden craving for Lance grew almost
intolerable....

But Lance was gone. Paul, with his bride, had vanished from human ken;
Rose, a shattered illusion, gone too. Better so--of course; though,
intermittently, the man she had roused in him still ached for the sight
and feel of her. She gave a distinct thrill to life: and, if he could
not forgive her, neither could he instantly forget her.

Still less could he forget the significance of the shock she had dealt
him on their day of parting. Patently she loved him, in her passionate,
egotistical fashion--as he had never loved her; patently she had
combated her shrinking in defiance of her mother: and yet...!

Rage as he might, his Rajput pride, and pride in his Rajput heritage,
were wounded to the quick. If all English girls felt that way, he would
see them further, before he would propose to another one, or 'confess'
to his adored Mother, as if she were a family skeleton or a secret vice.
Instantly there sprang the thought of Aruna--her adoration, her exalted
passion; Aruna, whom he might have loved, yet was constrained to put
aside because of his English heritage; only to find himself put aside by