his own portmanteau. "Take that also," he
said, and strode out of the room.

At least he had the right to shield her from comment. To all
appearance they must leave the place together! and he settled his
account with the smiling manageress, adding simply: "Madame has had bad
news."

He took a later train down the hill; deposited his trunk in a hotel
bedroom; and spent his wedding-night under the stars; walking,
ceaselessly, aimlessly, to deaden the ache at his heart.

Next morning he despatched half a dozen lines to Richardson disowning
all knowledge of Miss Maurice's concerns: and three weeks later he
sailed from Brindisi without seeing his wife again.

BOOK I.--AFTER FIVE YEARS.

CHAPTER I.

"I, who am Love, burn with too fierce a fire,
Even if I only pass and touch the soul,
Life is not long enough to heal the wound.
I pass, but my touch for ever leaves its mark.
I, who am Love, burn with too fierce a fire."
--Turkish Song.

Max Richardson lifted the "chick," paused on the threshold, and
surveyed the empty room.

A bachelor's room, in a frontier bungalow, boasts little of beauty,
less of luxury. The legend of Anglo-India--"Here to-day, and gone
to-morrow"--is visible on its nail-disfigured walls, battered camp
chairs and tables, supplemented by chance purchases from the "effects"
of brother officers, retired, or untimely hurried out of "the day, and
the dust, and the ecstasy."

To the observer for whom one hint of human revelation outweighs in
value a warehouseful of inexpressive furniture, a room of this type
holds one superlative interest. It is an index of character no less
infallible than its owner's face. Its salient features may tell the
same tale as a dozen others in the same station--the tale of a soldier
going to and fro in a land of unrest. But its minor details reveal the
man beneath the uniform.

There is as much individuality after all in a soldier as in any other
specimen of God's handiwork; even though tradition and the War Office
compel him to an external suggestion of having been turned out by the
dozen.

The ramshackle room whereon Eldred Lenox had set his seal differed in
one notable respect from others of its type. It contained no picture
either of a woman or a horse. The dingy white wall was relieved by
groups of barbarous weapons--Thibetan daggers, a pair of wicked-looking
kookries, the jezail and Brown Bess of Border tribesmen, and the
mur