e fondly believed, at the moment when
she, too, entered into the world called sleep.

Therefore, either it was all imagination or he caught her waking
thoughts, or perhaps those that haunted her upon this border land were
delayed until his subtler being could interpret them. Who knows? At
least, unless something had happened to disturb him, those nights were
rare when as he was shutting his eyes, Godfrey did not seem to be
sensible of Isobel's presence. At any rate, he knew that she had not
forgotten; he knew that somewhere in the vast world she was ever
thinking of him with more intensity than she thought of any other man
or thing. And during all those lonely years this knowledge or belief
was his greatest comfort.

Not that Godfrey's life in India was in any way unhappy. On the
contrary it was a full and active life. He worked hard at his
profession and succeeded in it to a limited extent, and he had his
friends, especially his great friend Arthur Thorburn, who always clung
to him. He had his flirtations also; being a man of susceptibility who
was popular with women, how could they be avoided? For above all things
Godfrey was a man, not a hermit or a saint or an aesthete, but just a
man with more gifts of a sort than have some others. He lived the life
of the rest, he hunted, he shot tigers, doing those things that the
Anglo-Indian officer does, but all the same he studied. Whether it were
of his trade of soldiering, or of the natives, or of Eastern thought
and law, he was always learning something, till at last he knew a great
deal, often he wondered to what end.

And yet, with all his friends and acquaintances, in a way he remained a
very lonely man, as those who are a little out of the ordinary often
do. In the common groove we rub against the other marbles running down
it, but once we leap over its edge, then where are we? We cannot wander
off into space because of the attraction of the earth that is so near
to us, and yet we are alone in the air until with a bump we meet our
native ground. Therefore for the most of us the groove is much better.
And yet some who leave it have been carried elsewhere, if only for a
little while, like St. Paul into the third heaven.

CHAPTER XVIII

FRANCE--AND AFTER

Nothing so very remarkable happened to Godfrey during those ten years
of his life in India, or at least only one or two things. Thus once he
got into a scrape for which he was not really responsible, and got o