or Fay, and the nurse, tired out,
was also sleeping--on Jan's bed.

Jan, alone of all the household, kept watch, standing in the verandah, a
ghostly figure, still in the tumbled white muslin frock she had had no
time all day to change.

It was nearly one o'clock. Motors and carriages were beginning to come
back from Government House, where there was a reception. The motor-horns
and horses' hoofs sounded loud in the wide silent street, and the head
lights swept down the Queen's Road like fireflies in flight.

Jan turned on the light in the verandah. Peter would perhaps look up and
see her standing there, and realise why she kept watch. Perhaps he would
stop and come up.

She wanted Peter desperately.

Compassed about with many relatives and innumerable friends at home, out
here Jan was singularly alone. In all that great city she knew no one
save Peter, the doctor and the nurse. Some few women, knowing all the
circumstances, had called and were ready to be kind and helpful and
friendly, as women are all over India, but Fay would admit none but
Peter--even to see Jan; and always begged her not to return the calls
"till it was all over."

Well, it was all over now. Fay would never be timid and ashamed any
more.

Jan had not shed a tear. The longing to cry that had assailed her so
continuously in her first week had entirely left her. She felt
clear-headed and cold and bitterly resentful. She would like to have
made Hugo Tancred go in front of her into that quiet room and forced him
to look at the girlish figure on the bed--his handiwork. She wanted to
hurt him, to make him more wretched than he was already.

A car stopped in the street below. Jan went very quietly to the door of
the flat and listened at the top of the staircase.

Steps were on the stairs, but they stopped at one of the flats below.

Presently another car stopped. Again she went out and listened. The
steps came up and up and she switched on the light in the passage.

This time it was Peter.

He looked very tired.

"I thought you would come," Jan said. "She died at midnight."

Peter closed the outer door, and taking Jan by the arm led her back into
the sitting-room, where he put her in a corner of the big sofa and sat
down beside her.

He could not speak, and Jan saw that the tears she could not shed were
in his eyes, those large dark eyes that could appear so sombre and then
again so kind.

Jan watched him enviously. She was acutely cons