s of Anna. Her eyes shone with the things she told me then:
she seemed to keep herself under the influence of them as if they had
the power of narcotics. At the end of a time like this she turned to me
in the door as she was going and stood silent, as if she could neither
go nor stay. I had been able to make nothing of her that afternoon: she
had seemed preoccupied with the pattern of the carpet which she traced
continually with her riding crop, and finally I, too, had relapsed. She
sat haggard, with the fight forever in her eyes, and the day seemed to
sombre about her in her corner. When she turned in the door, I looked up
with sudden prescience of a crisis.

'Don't jump,' she said, 'it was only to tell you that I have persuaded
Robert to apply for furlough. Eighteen months. From the first of April.
Don't touch me.' I suppose I made a movement towards her. Certainly
I wanted to throw my arms about her; with the instinct, I suppose, to
steady her in her great resolution.

'At the end of that time, as you know, he will be retired. I had some
trouble, he is so keen on the regiment, but I think--I have succeeded.
You might mention it to Anna.'

'Haven't you?' sprang past my lips.

'I can't. It would be like taking an oath to tell her, and--I can't take
an oath to go. But I mean to.'

'There is nothing to be said,' I brought out, feeling indeed that there
was not. 'But I congratulate you, Judy.'

'No, there is nothing to be said. And you congratulate me, no doubt!'

She stood for a moment quivering in the isolation she made for herself;
and I felt a primitive angry revolt against the delicate trafficking
of souls that could end in such ravage and disaster. The price was too
heavy; I would have denuded her, at the moment, of all that had led
her into this, and turned her out a clod with fine shoulders like fifty
other women in Peshawur. Then, perhaps, because I held myself silent and
remote and she had no emotion of fear from me, she did not immediately
go.

'It will beat itself away, I suppose, like the rest of the unreasonable
pain of the world,' she said at last; and that, of course, brought me to
her side. 'Things will go back to their proportions. This,' she
touched an open rose, 'will claim its beauty again. And life will
become--perhaps--what it was before.' Still I found nothing to say,
I could only put my arm in hers and walk with her to the edge of the
veranda where the syce was holding her horse. She stro