d made me her confessor. It was unexpected; if it hadn't been, I
wouldn't have asked her to tea. She was so unhappy that she forgot about
the rouge, and it all came off on her handkerchief when she cried. The
man likes somebody else better this season. Well, I gave her nougat and
cheap cynicisms, and she allowed herself to be comforted! Why, the loves
of kitchen-maids are more dignified.'

They were riding on the broad four-mile road, blasted out of the rock,
that winds round Jakko. The deodars stood thick above them, with the
sunlight filtering through; a thousand feet below lay the little
square fields, yellow and green, of the King of Koti. The purple-brown
Himalayas shouldered the eye out to the horizon, and there the Snows
lifted themselves, hardly more palpable than the drifted clouds, except
for a gleam of ice in their whiteness. A low stone wall ran along the
verge of the precipice, and, looking down, they saw tangled patches
of the white wild rose of the Himalayas, waving and drooping over the
abyss.

'I am afraid,' said Innes, 'you are not even upon the fringe of the
situation.'

'It's the situation as I see it.'

'Then--excuse me--you do not see deep enough. That poor lady suffered,
I suppose, to the extent of her capacity. You would not have have
increased it.'

'I don't know, I should have preferred not to measure it.'

'Besides, that was not quite the sort of thing I had in mind. I was
thinking more of the--separations.'

'Ah!' said Madeline.

'It's not fair to ask women to live much in India. Sometimes it's the
children, sometimes it's ill health, sometimes it's natural antipathy to
the place; there's always a reason to take them away.'

'Yes,' said Madeline, turning a glance of scrutiny on him. His face was
impassive; he was watching mechanically for a chance to slay a teasing
green spider-fly.

'That is the beginning of the tragedy I was thinking of. Time does the
rest, time and the aridity of separations. How many men and women
can hold themselves together with letters? I don't mean aging or any
physical change. I don't mean change at all.'

'No,' said Madeline, and this time, though her curiosity was greater,
she did not look at him.

'No. The mind could accustom itself to expect that, and so forestall
the blow, if it really would be a blow, which I doubt. For myself, I'm
pretty sure that nothing of that kind could have much effect upon one's
feeling, if it were the real thing.' He spo