n, he was as lost to the world and its
opinion as the longest-haired lentil-eater of us all. Though at any
moment during that one year of their love he would have risked his life
and sacrificed his career for a whole day in her company, he never, by
word or look, compromised her. He had carried his punctilious observance
of her "honour" to a point more bitter than death, consenting, even, to
her covering up the tracks of their child's coming. Paying that
gambler's debt was by far the bravest deed of his life, and even now its
memory festered.

To this very room he had come back after hearing she was dead; this very
room which he had refurnished to her taste, so that even now, with its
satinwood chairs, little dainty Jacobean bureau, shaded old brass
candelabra, divan, it still had an air exotic to bachelordom. There, on
the table, had been a letter recalling him to his regiment, ordered on
active service. If he had realized what he would go through before he
had the chance of trying to lose his life out there, he would undoubtedly
have taken that life, sitting in this very chair before the fire--the
chair sacred to her and memory. He had not the luck he wished for in
that little war--men who don't care whether they live or die seldom have.
He secured nothing but distinction. When it was over, he went on, with a
few more lines in his face, a few more wrinkles in his heart, soldiering,
shooting tigers, pig-sticking, playing polo, riding to hounds harder than
ever; giving nothing away to the world; winning steadily the curious,
uneasy admiration that men feel for those who combine reckless daring
with an ice-cool manner. Since he was less of a talker even than most of
his kind, and had never in his life talked of women, he did not gain the
reputation of a woman-hater, though he so manifestly avoided them. After
six years' service in India and Egypt, he lost his right hand in a charge
against dervishes, and had, perforce, to retire, with the rank of major,
aged thirty-four. For a long time he had hated the very thought of the
child--his child, in giving birth to whom the woman he loved had died.
Then came a curious change of feeling; and for three years before his
return to England, he had been in the habit of sending home odds and ends
picked up in the bazaars, to serve as toys. In return, he had received,
twice annually at least, a letter from the man who thought himself Gyp's
father. These letters he read and an