afage; all steeped in the delicate clarity of rain-washed
air--the very aura of England, as dust was the aura of Jaipur.

Dinner was over. They were sitting out on the lawn, he and his father; a
small table beside them, with glass coffee-machine and chocolates in a
silver dish; the smoke of their cigars hovering, drifting, unstirred by
any breeze. No Terry at his feet. The faithful creature--vision of
abject misery--had been carried off to eat his heart out in quarantine.
Tangled among tree-tops hung the ghost of a moon, almost full.
Somewhere, in the far quiet of the shrubberies, a nightingale was
communing with its own heart in liquid undertones; and in Roy's heart
there dwelt an iridescence of peace and pain and longing shot through
with hope----

That very morning, at an unearthly hour, he had landed in England, after
an absence of three and a half years: and precisely what that means in
the way of complex emotions, only they know who have been there. The
purgatorial journey had eclipsed expectation. Between recurrent fever
and sea-sickness, there had been days when it seemed doubtful if he
would ever reach Home at all. But a wiry constitution and the will to
live had triumphed: and, in spite of the early hour, his father had not
failed to be on the quay.

The first sight of him had given Roy a shock for which--in spite of
Tara's letter--he was unprepared. This was not the father he
remembered--humorous, unruffled, perennially young; but a man so changed
and tired-looking that he seemed almost a stranger, with his empty
coat-sleeve and hair touched with silver at the temples.

The actual moment of meeting had been difficult; the joy of it so deeply
tinged with pain that they had clung desperately to surface
commonplaces, because they were Englishmen, and could not relieve the
inner stress by falling on one another's necks.

And there had been a secret pang (for which Roy sharply reproached
himself) that Tara was not there too. Idiotic to expect it, when he knew
Sir James had gone to Scotland for fishing. But to be idiotic is the
lover's privilege; and his not phenomenal gift of patience had been
unduly strained by the letter awaiting him at Port Said.

They were coming back to-night; but he would not see her till
to-morrow....

In his pocket reposed a brief Tara-like note, bidding her 'faithful
Knight of the Bracelet' welcome Home. Vainly he delved between the lines
of her sisterly affection. Nothing could s