der the influence of an
electric battery; every nerve and every vein seemed to be tingling.

He had not asked a question, yet she felt that in some fashion he had
made it incumbent upon her to speak in answer. In the silence that
followed his words she was aware of an insistence that would not be
denied. She tried to put it from her, but could not. In the end, more
than half against her will, she yielded.

"I suppose I shall have to go," she said, "if only to pacify Tommy."

"A very good and sufficient reason," commented Monck enigmatically.

He lingered on beside her for a while, but nothing further of an
intimate nature passed between them. She felt that he had gained his
objective and would say no more. The truce between them was to be
observed until the psychological moment arrived to break it, and that
moment would occur some time on Christmas Eve in the moonlit solitudes
of Khanmulla.

Later she reflected that perhaps it was as well to go and get it over.
She could not deny him his opportunity, and it would not take long--she
was sure it would not take long to convince him that they were better
as they were.

Had he been younger, less wedded to his work, less the slave of his
ambition, things might have been different. Had she never been married
to Ralph Dacre, never known the bondage of those few strange weeks, she
might have been more ready to join her life to his.

But Fate had intervened between them, and their paths now lay apart. He
realized it as well as she did. He would not press her. Their eyes were
open, and if the oasis in the desert had seemed desirable to either for
a space, yet each knew that it was no abiding-place.

Their appointed ways lay in the waste beyond, diverging ever more and
more, till presently even the greenness of that oasis in which they had
met together would be no more to either than a half-forgotten dream.

CHAPTER X

THE SURRENDER

The moon was full on Christmas Eve. It shone in such splendour that the
whole world was transformed into a fairyland of black and silver. Stella
stood on the verandah of the Green Bungalow looking forth into the
dazzling night with a tremor at her heart. The glory of it was in a
sense overwhelming. It made her feel oddly impotent, almost afraid, as
if some great power menaced her. She had never felt the ruthlessness of
the East more strongly than she felt it that night. But the drugged
feeling that had so possessed her in the mount