er conception of him was a
perfectly clear one. He was black-bearded and an opium-smoker, and she
hated to think of Everard as in any sense allied with him. Dark,
treacherous, and terrible, he loomed in her imagination. He represented
India and all her subtleties. He was a serpent underfoot, a knife in the
dark, an evil dream.

She could not have said why the personality of a man she did not know so
affected her, save that she believed that all Monck's secret expeditions
were conceived in the gloom of that stall she had never entered in the
heart of the native bazaar. The man was in Monck's confidence. Perhaps,
being a woman, that hurt her also. For though she recognized--as in the
case of that native lair down in the bazaar--that it were better never
to set foot in that secret chamber, yet she resented the thought that
any other should have free access to it. She was beginning to regard
that part of Monck's life with a dread that verged upon horror--a
feeling which her very love for the man but served to intensify. She was
as one clinging desperately to a treasure which might at any moment be
wrested from her.

Stiffly and wearily she undressed. Tommy must surely have returned ages
ago, though probably late, or he would have come to bid her good-night.
Why did not Everard return?

At the last she extinguished her light and went to the window to gaze
wistfully out across the verandah. That secret whispering--the stirring
of a thousand unseen things--was abroad in the night. The air was soft
and scented with a fragrance intangible but wholly sweet. India,
stretched out beneath the glittering stars, stirred with half-opened
eyes, and smiled. Stella thought she heard the flutter of her robe.

Then again the mystery of the night was rent by the cry of some beast of
prey, and in a second the magic was gone. The shadows were full of evil.
She drew back with swift, involuntary shrinking; and as she did so, she
heard the dreadful answering cry of the prey that had been seized.

India again! India the ruthless! India the bloodthirsty! India the
vampire!

For a few palpitating moments she leaned against the wall feeling
physically sick. And as she leaned, there passed before her inner vision
the memory of that figure which she had seen upon the verandah on that
terrible night when Everard had been stricken with fever. The look in
her husband's eyes that day had brought it back to her, and now like a
flashlight it leapt fro