d ever closer about her. She sometimes felt as if her
very individuality were being absorbed into the marvellous beauty about
her, as if she had been crystallized by it and must soon cease to be in
any sense a being apart from it.

The siren-music of the torrent that dashed below their camping-ground
filled her brain day and night. It seemed to make active thought
impossible, to dull all her senses save the one luxurious sense of
enjoyment. That was always present, slumbrous, almost cloying in its
unfailing sweetness, the fruit of the lotus which assuredly she was
eating day by day. All her nerves seemed dormant, all her energies
lulled. Sometimes she wondered if the sound of running water had this
stultifying effect upon her, for wherever they went it followed them.
The snow-fed streams ran everywhere, and since leaving Srinagar she
could not remember a single occasion on which they had been out of
earshot of their perpetual music. It haunted her like a ceaseless
refrain, but yet she never wearied of it. There was no thought of
weariness in this mazed, dream-world of hers.

At the beginning of her married life, so far behind her now that she
scarcely remembered it, she had gone through pangs of suffering and
fierce regret. Her whole nature had revolted, and it had taken all her
strength to quell it. But that was long, long past. She had ceased to
feel anything now, but a dumb and even placid acquiescence in this
lethargic existence, and Ralph Dacre was amply satisfied therewith. He
had always been abundantly confident of his power to secure her
happiness, and he was blissfully unconscious of the wild impulse to
rebellion which she had barely stifled. He had no desire to sound the
deeps of her. He was quite content with life as he found it, content to
share with her the dreamy pleasures that lay in this fruitful
wilderness, and to look not beyond.

He troubled himself but little about the future, though when he thought
of it that was with pleasure too. He liked, now and then, to look
forward to the days that were coming when Stella would shine as a
queen--his queen--among an envious crowd. Her position assured as his
wife, even Lady Harriet herself would have to lower her flag. And how
little Netta Ermsted would grit her teeth! He laughed to himself
whenever he thought of that. Netta had become too uppish of late. It
would be amusing to see how she took her lesson.

And as for his brother-officers, even the taciturn