usky eyes. They
always smiled, but to her there was something unpleasant behind the
smile. In her private soul she deemed him treacherous.

He invariably wore European costume, with the exception of his green
turban with its flowing puggaree. He was an excellent and graceful
horseman, and spoke English with extreme fluency.

Nick spent a good many hours of every day at the Palace, and they were
always on the best terms; yet Olga never saw him go without a pang of
anxiety or return without a thrill of relief.

Probably her recent severe illness had had a lasting effect upon her
nerves, for she was never easy in his absence, though Daisy Musgrave did
much to reassure her. She had taken Olga under her wing as naturally as
though they had been related, and they were much together.

The old life had begun to seem very far away to Olga, her childhood as
remote as a half-forgotten dream. The blank space in her memory remained
as a patch of darkness through which her thread of life had run indeed
but of which no record remained. She had ceased to attempt to read the
riddle, half in dread and half in sheer helplessness. It did not seem to
matter. Surely, as Max had once said to her, nothing mattered that was
past.

She did not spare much thought for Max either just then, instinctively
avoiding all mention of him. She had a vague consciousness that was more
in the nature of a nightmare memory than an actual happening, that they
had parted in anger. Sometimes there would rush over her soul the
recollection of piercing green eyes that searched and searched and would
not spare, and her heart would beat in a wild dismay and she would
shrink in horror from the vision. But it was not often that this came to
her now. She had learned to ward it off, to put away the past, to live
in the present.

For nearly a month she had been established with Nick in the bungalow on
the outskirts of the city, and the novelty of things had begun to wear
off. She was not strong enough to go out very much, and beyond a few
calls with Nick and a dinner or two at the cantonments she had not seen
much of the social life of Sharapura.

That night, however, they were to attend a State dinner at the Palace,
to which all the officers of the battalion and their wives had been
bidden. Olga was relieved to know that the Musgraves were also going,
for at present she was intimate with no one else, with the possible
exception of Noel, who visited them in a fash