After all, he must feel as though he had
murdered the girl, and though I fully agree with you that there was
nothing else to be done, still one can imagine how the memory of the
deed will haunt the poor chap all his life."

"Yes." Rex Payton lifted his cap from the table and prepared to take his
leave. "Well, good-night, sir. I think I'll just step across and see how
he's getting on. By Jove, what a magnificent night. It's as bright as
day out here."

"Yes. Let me know in the morning how things are going."

"Right you are, sir." With another hasty good-night Rex turned and
strode away across the compound in search of the doctor.

"Still asleep, thank God," was Morris' report. "Give you my word I dread
his awakening."

"Seems a pity he's got to wake at all," said Payton moodily. "Couldn't
you have given him a double dose while you were about it, and put the
poor devil out of his misery?"

"That's not the way we work," returned the other dryly. "There's been
one--miscalculation--to-day, and we can't afford any more. If he likes
to do it himself, when he comes round, that's a different matter. I
don't think he will, somehow. He doesn't strike me as that sort. He'll
face it out, I believe, though it will go hard with him in the doing."

"When will he be himself again?"

"I don't know. I shall keep him under as long as I dare. After all"--the
doctor, who prided himself on his lack of emotion, for once betrayed a
glimpse of the real humanity beneath the rather grim exterior--"he'll
have to serve a life-sentence in the way of regret, and one can't grudge
the poor wretch an hour or two's Nirvana."

And:

"By God, sir, I agree with you," was all Rex Payton could find to say.

III

One evening three weeks later Anstice sat in the smoke-room of a
well-known hotel in Bombay waiting for the arrival of the one person in
the world whom he might have been expected to avoid.

The P. and O. boat had docked that afternoon; and among the passengers
was the man to whom Hilda Ryder had been engaged--the man to whom
Anstice must answer for the deed done as the sun rose on that fatal
morning twenty-one dawns ago.

The news of the girl's death had been cabled to the young engineer in
Cairo immediately, followed by a letter from Colonel Godfrey relating so
much of the affair as he himself knew; and in response had come a
laconic message to the effect that Bruce Cheniston had sought and
obtained leave, and would be in In