a miracle of a
morning: divinely clear, with the mellow clearness of England; massed
trees, brooding darkly; the lawn all silver-grey with dew; everywhere
blurred outlines and tender shadows; pure balm to eye and spirit after
the hard brilliance and contrasts of the East.

Madness to get up; yet impossible to lie there waiting. He tried it, for
what seemed an endless age: then succumbed to the inevitable.

While he was dressing, clouds drifted across the blue. A spurt of rain
whipped his open casement; threatening him in playful mood. But before
he had crept down and let himself out through one of the drawing-room
windows, the sky was clear again, with the tremulous radiance of
happiness struck sharp on months of sorrow and stress.

Striding, hatless, across the drenched lawn, and resisting the pull of
his beech-wood, he pressed on and up to the open moor; craving its
sweeps of space and colour unbosomed to the friendly sky that seemed so
much nearer earth than the passionate blue vault of India.

It was five years since he had seen heather in bloom--or was it five
decades? The sight of it recalled that other July day, when he had
tramped the length of the ridge with his head full of dreams and the
ache of parting in his heart.

To him, that far-off being seemed almost another Roy in another life.
Only--as his father had feelingly reminded him--the first Roy and the
last were alike informed by the spirit of one woman; visible then,
invisible now; yet sensibly present in every haunt she had made her own.
The house was full of her; the wood was full of her. But the pangs of
reminder he had so dreaded resolved themselves, rather, into a sense of
indescribable, ethereal reunion. He asked nothing better than that his
life and work should be fulfilled with her always: her and Tara--if she
so decreed....

Thought of Tara revived impatience, and drew his steps homeward again.

Strolling back through the wood, he came suddenly upon the open space
where he had found the Golden Tusks, and lingered there a
little--remembering the storm and the terror and the fight; Tara and her
bracelet; and the deep unrealised significance of that childish impulse,
inspired by _her_, whose was the source of all their inspirations. And
now--seventeen years afterwards, the bracelet had drawn him back to them
both; saved him, perhaps, from the unforgiveable sin of throwing up the
game.

On he walked, along the same mossy path, almost in a d