d there be a
formula?'

'Look here, Judy,' I said, 'you know me very well. What if the flesh
leaps with the spirit?'

She looked at me, very white. 'Oh no,' she said, 'no.'

I waited, but there seemed nothing more that she could say; and in the
silence the futile negative seemed to wander round the room repeating
itself like an echo, 'Oh no, no.' I poked the fire presently to drown
the sound of it. Judy sat still, with her feet crossed and her hands
thrust into the pockets of her coat, staring into the coals.

'Can you live independently, satisfied with your interests and
occupations?' she demanded at last. 'Yes, I know you can. I can't. I
must exist more than half in other people. It is what they think and
feel that matters to me, just as much as what I think and feel. The best
of life is in that communication.'

'It has always been a passion with you, Judy,' I replied. 'I can imagine
how much you must miss--'

'Whom?'

'Anna Chichele,' I said softly.

She got up and walked about the room, fixing here and there an intent
regard upon things which she did not see. 'Oh, I do,' she said at one
point, with the effect of pulling herself together. She took another
turn or two, and then finding herself near the door she went out. I felt
as profoundly humiliated for her as if she had staggered.

The next night was one of those that stand out so vividly, for no
reason that one can identify, in one's memory. We were dining with the
Harbottles, a small party, for a tourist they had with them. Judy and I
and Somers and the traveller had drifted out into the veranda, where the
scent of Japanese lilies came and went on the spring wind to trouble the
souls of any taken unawares. There was a brightness beyond the foothills
where the moon was coming, and I remember how one tall clump swayed
out against it, and seemed in passionate perfume to lay a burden on the
breast. Judy moved away from it and sat clasping her knees on the edge
of the veranda. Somers, when his eyes were not upon her, looked always
at the lily.

Even the spirit of the globe-trotter was stirred, and he said, 'I think
you Anglo-Indians live in a kind of little paradise.'

There was an instant's silence, and then Judy turned her face into the
lamplight from the drawing-room. 'With everything but the essentials,'
she said.

We stayed late; Mr. Chichele and ourselves were the last to go.
Judy walked with us along the moonlit drive to the gate, which is so