ked the animal's
neck. 'Everything in me answered him,' she informed me, with the grave
intelligence of a patient who relates a symptom past. As she took the
reins she turned to me again. 'His spirit came to mine like a homing
bird,' she said, and in her smile even the pale reflection of happiness
was sweet and stirring. It left me hanging in imagination over the
source and the stream, a little blessed in the mere understanding.

Too much blessed for confidence, or any safe feeling that the source
was bound. Rather I saw it leaping over every obstacle, flashing to its
destiny. As I drove to the Club next day I decided that I would not
tell Anna Chichele of Colonel Harbottle's projected furlough. If to Judy
telling her would be like taking an oath that they would go, to me it
would at least be like assuming sponsorship for their intention. That
would be heavy indeed. From the first of April--we were then in March.
Anna would hear it soon enough from the General, would see it soon
enough, almost, in the 'Gazette', when it would have passed into
irrecoverable fact. So I went by her with locked lips, kept out of the
way of those eyes of the mother that asked and asked, and would have
seen clear to any depth, any hiding-place of knowledge like that. As I
pulled up at the Club I saw Colonel Harbottle talking concernedly to the
wife of our Second-in-Command, and was reminded that I had not heard
for some days how Major Watkins was going on. So I, too, approached Mrs.
Watkins in her victoria to ask. Robert Harbottle kindly forestalled her
reply. 'Hard luck, isn't it? Watkins has been ordered home at once. Just
settled into their new house, too--last of the kit came up from Calcutta
yesterday, didn't it, Mrs. Watkins? But it's sound to go--Peshawur is
the worst hole in Asia to shake off dysentery in.'

We agreed upon this and discussed the sale-list of her new furniture
that Mrs. Watkins would have to send round the station, and considered
the chances of a trooper--to the Watkinses with two children and not
a penny but his pay it did make it easier not to have to go by a
liner--and Colonel Harbottle and I were halfway to the reading-room
before the significance of Major Watkins's sick-leave flashed upon me.

'But this,' I cried, 'will make a difference to your plans. You won't--'

'Be able to ask for that furlough Judy wants. Rather not. I'm afraid
she's disappointed--she was tremendously set on going--but it doesn't
matter t