ing luxuriously--whiffs of resin and
sun-warmed pine-needles. Oh, to be at home, in his own beech-wood! But
the journey in this weather would be purgatorial. Meantime, there was
his walk; and he decided, prosaically, to fortify himself with a slab of
chocolate. Instead--still more prosaically, he fell sound asleep....

But sleep, in an unnatural position, begets dreams. And Roy dreamed of
Lance; of that last awful day when he raved incessantly of Rose. But in
the dream he was conscious; and before his distracted gaze Roy held Rose
in his arms; craving her, yet hating her; because she clung to him,
heedless of entreaties from Lance, and would not be shaken off....

In a frantic effort to free himself, he woke--with the anguish of his
loss fresh upon him--to find the sky heavily overcast, the
breathlessness of imminent storm in the air. Away to the North there
were blue spaces, sun-splashed leagues of snow. But from the South and
West rolled up the big battalions--heralds of the monsoon.

He concluded apathetically that Baghi was 'off.' He was in for a
drenching. Lucky he had brought his burberry....

Yet he did not stir. A ton weight seemed to hang on his limbs, his
spirit, his heart. He simply sat there, in a carven stillness, staring
down, down, into abysmal depths....

And startlingly, sharply, the temptation assailed him. The tug of it was
almost physical.... How simple to yield--to cut his many tangles at one
stroke!

In that jaundiced moment he saw himself a failure foreordained; debarred
from marriage by evils supposed to spring from the dual strain in him;
his cherished hopes of closer union between the two countries he loved
threatened with shipwreck by an England complacently experimental, an
India at war with the British connection and with her many selves. He
seemed fated to bring unhappiness on those he cared for--Aruna, Lance,
even Rose. And what of his father--if he failed to marry? He hadn't even
the grit to finish his wretched novel....

He rose at last, mechanically, and moved forward to the unrailed edge of
all things. The magnetism of the depths drew him. The fatalistic strain
in his blood drew him....

He stood--though he did not know it--as his mother had once stood,
hovering on the verge; his own life--that she bore within her--hanging
in the balance. From the fatal tilt, she had been saved by the voice of
her husband--the voice of the West. And now, at Roy's critical moment,
it was the vo