I had deserved the blessing of her presence.

Next day I could see that she tried gently hut clearly to discourage our
meeting and for three days I never saw her at all. Yet I knew that in
her solitary life our talks counted for a pleasure, and when we met
again I thought I saw a new softness in the lovely hazel deeps of her
eyes.

III

On the day when things became clear to me, I was walking towards the
Meryons' gates when I met her coming alone along the sunset road, in the
late gold of the afternoon. She looked pale and a little wearied, and I
remembered I wished I did not know every change of her face as I did. It
was a symptom that alarmed my selfishness--it galled me with the sense
that I was no longer my own despot.

"So you have been up the Khyber Pass," she said as I fell into step at
her side. "Tell me--was it as wonderful as you expected?"

"No, no,--you tell me! It will give me what I missed. Begin at the
beginning. Tell me what I saw."

I could not miss the delight of her words, and she laughed, knowing my
whim.

"Oh, that Pass!--the wonder of those old roads that have borne the
traffic and romance of the world for ages. Do you think there is
anything in the world so fascinating as they are? But did you go on
Tuesday or Friday?"

For these are the only days in the week when the Khyber can be safely
entered. The British then turn out the Khyber Rifles and man every crag,
and the loaded caravans move like a tide, and go up and down the narrow
road on their occasions.

Naturally mere sightseers are not welcomed, for much business must be
got through in that urgent forty eight hours in which life is not risked
in entering.

"Tuesday. But make a picture for me."

"Well, you gave your word not to photograph or sketch--as if one wanted
to when every bit of it is stamped on one's brain! And you went up to
Jumrood Fort at the entrance. Did they tell you it is an old Sikh Fort
and has been on duty in that turbulent place for five hundred years And
did you see the machine guns in the court? And every one armed--even the
boys with belts of cartridges? Then you went up the narrow winding track
between the mountains, and you said to yourself, 'This is the road of
pure romance. It goes up to silken Samarkhand, and I can ride to Bokhara
of the beautiful women and to all the dreams. Am I alive and is it
real?' You felt that?"

"All. Every bit. Go on!"

She smiled with pleasure.

"And you saw the litt