ple would do better forgotten--so much hid sorrow
in the heart of us. . . . Something always kept me from making the
covenant with him; yet I have been closer and closer up the years to
the point of giving my life to the natives altogether. . . . That day
in the monkey glen, after the work was done . . . I looked into your
face! . . . You went away and came again. I had heard your voice.
The old tiger down by the river had made _you_ forget everything--but
your power"--

Carlin laughed. The last phrases had been spoken low and rapidly.

"I didn't forget everything, dear," she went on. "I didn't forget
anything! Everything meant _you_--all else tentative and preparatory.
I knew then that the plan was for joy, as soon as we knew enough to
take it--"

On the third morning of the pig-sticking Ian Deal rode by the elephant
stockades in Hurda just as the American passed. The hands were long
that held the bridle-rein, the narrowest Skag had ever seen on a man.
The boots were narrow like a poster drawing. It was plainly an
advantage for this man to ship his own horse from the south for the few
days of sport. The black Arab, Kala Khan, seemed built on the same
frame as its rider--speed and power done into delicacy, utter balance
of show and stamina. When the Arab is black, he is a keener black than
a man could think. His eyes were fierce, but it was the fierceness of
fidelity; of that darkness which intimates light; no red burning of
violence within.

Ian's face was darker from the saddle; the body superb in its high
tension and slender grace. Was this the brother that Roderick Deal,
the eldest, had spoken of as being darker than the average native? Yet
the caste-mark was not apparent; the two bloods perfectly blent.

The depth of Skag's feeling was called to pity as well as admiration.
The rift in this Deal's nature was emotional not physical--some mad
poetic thing, forever struggling in the tight matrices of a hard-set
world. India was rising clearer to Skag; even certain of her profound
complexities. He knew that instant how the fertilising pollen of the
West was needed here, and how the West needed the enfolding spiritual
culture which is the breath within the breath of the East. This swift
realisation had something to do with his own real work. It was filmy,
yet memorable--like the first glimpse of one's sealed orders, carried
long, to be opened at maturity. Also Skag had the dim impulse of a
tho