ction, like a
margin for the picture, that its foreground had been very often occupied
by the woman I profoundly worshiped and Ingersoll Armour. She told me
that he had sent me a sketch of it, and I very much wished he hadn't.
One felt that the gift would carry a trifle of irony.

'He has told me,' she said once brusquely, 'how good you have been to
him.'

'Is he coming to Simla again?' I asked.

'Oh yes! And please take it from me that this time he will conquer the
place. He has undertaken to do it.'

'At your request?'

'At my persuasion--at my long entreaty. They must recognize him--they
must be taught. I have set my heart on it.'

'Does he himself very much care?' I asked remembering the night of the
thirty-first of October.

'Yes, he does care. He despises it, of course, but in a way he cares.
I've been trying to make him care more. A human being isn't an orchid;
he must draw something from the soil he grows in.'

'If he were stable,' I mused; 'if he had a fixed ambition somewhere in
the firmament. But his purpose is a will-o'-the-wisp.'

'I think he has an ambition,' said Miss Harris, into the dark.

'Ah! Then we must continue,' I said--'continue to push from behind.'

Dora did not reply. She is a person of energy and determination, and
might have been expected to offer to cooperate gladly. But she didn't.

'He is painting a large picture for next season's exhibition,' she
informed me. 'I was not allowed to see it or to know anything about it,
but he declares it will bring Simla down.'

'I hope not,' I said, piously.

'Oh, I hope so. I have told him,' Dora continued, slowly, 'that a great
deal depends on it.'

'Here is Mrs. Symons,' I was able to return, 'and I am afraid she is
looking for you.'

March came, and the city lay white under its own dust. The electric fans
began to purr in the Club, and Lent brought the flagging season to a
full stop. I had to go that year on tour through the famine district
with the Member, and we escaped, gasping, from the Plains about the
middle of April. Simla was crimson with rhododendron blossoms, and
seemed a spur of Arcady. There had been the usual number of flittings
from one house to another, and among them I heard with satisfaction
that Armour no longer occupied Amy Villa. I would not for the world have
blurred my recollections of that last evening--I could not have gone
there again.

'He is staying with Sir William Lamb,' said Dora, handing me my cup o