learned that she need not say much, as his one wish was
naturally to revile the authorities and all their work. But one item
interested her.

'After all,' he said, 'I don't see why I should talk. I've had enough of
it. I'm sending in my papers as soon as I've settled a small job at
Perim. I'll get back to Aden and shake all that beastly Asiatic dust off
my shoes.'

'Surely,' said Victoria, 'you're not going to leave the Service?' Her
intonation implied that she was urging him not to commit suicide. Some
women must pass twice under the yoke.

'Fed up. Simply fed up with it. Suppose I do waste another twenty years
in India or Singapore or Hong Kong, how much forrarder am I? They'll
retire me as a colonel or courtesy general and dump me into an England
which doesn't care a hang about me with the remains of malaria, no
digestion and no temper. I'll then while away my time watching the
busses pass by from one of the windows of the Rag and give my daily
opinion of the doings of Simla and the National Congress to men who will
only listen to me so long as I stand them a whisky and soda.'

'It isn't alluring,' said Victoria, 'but it may not be as bad as that.
You can do marvels in India. My husband used to say that a man could
hope for anything there.'

Cairns suppressed the obvious retort that Fulton's ideals did not seem
to have materialised.

'No,' he said, 'I'm not ambitious. India's steam rollered all that. When
I've done with my job at Perim, which won't be much more than a couple
of months, I'm going home. Don't know that I'll do anything in
particular. Farm a bit, perhaps, or have some chambers somewhere near St
James' and dabble in balloons or motors. Some shooting too. All that
sort of thing.'

'Perhaps you are right,' said Victoria after a pause. 'I suppose it's as
well to do what one likes. Shall we join the others?'

CHAPTER III

LIFE on a trooper is not eventful. Victoria was not so deeply absorbed
in her mourning or in the pallid literature borrowed from Molly as not
to notice it. Though she was not what is termed serious, the perpetual
quoits on the upper deck in company with Alastair and his conversation
limited by smiles, and with Mr Parker and his conversation limited by
uneasiness palled about the second game. Bobby too was a cypher. It was
his fate to be known as 'Bobby,' a quantity of no importance. He
belonged to the modern school of squires of dames, ever ready to fetch a
handkerchief,