ly cut down; and only the Anglo-Indian housewife knows what it
means to be flung almost entirely upon the tender mercies of the
Bazaar. Informal dinner-parties, for which the Desmonds were famous,
became rare events; and nights at Mess--a favourite and justifiable
luxury--were reduced in number as far as might be without eliciting
remonstrance from his brother officers. For in India, and more
especially in the Army of India, it is profoundly true that "no man
liveth unto himself." In the Land of the Open Door the second of the
two great commandments is apt to be set before the first; and nowhere,
perhaps, is the bond of union stronger, more compelling, than in the
isolated regiments of the Frontier Force. But, with due regard for
this unwritten law, Desmond accomplished much in those few months of
unremitting self-denial; and if his friends noted certain changes in
his way of life, they accepted these in the true spirit of
comradeship, without question or comment.

Even Wyndham kept silence, though he had fuller knowledge of his
friend's abstemiousness, and was disturbed by a great longing to
remove the hidden cause. But intimate speech played a minor part in
the friendship of these two men. The very depth and strength of their
feeling for each other constrained them to a particular reticence in
the matter of self-expression.

On the first occasion of Paul's dining at the blue bungalow, after his
return from Murree, Desmond spoke a few words of apology for the
absence of wine and cigars.

"Sorry to treat you shabbily, old man," he said, when they were alone.
"Just a little necessary economy. It won't last long."

Paul nodded, smiling, and quietly proffered his own cigar-case.

"At least you'll not refuse one of mine, Theo," he said; and their
talk drifted into the fertile channel of "shop," and the prospect of
serious collision with Russia, which at that time loomed on the
political horizon.

Paul was thus left to draw his own conclusions, which were not
complimentary to his friend's wife. For reserve has its drawbacks,
like every other virtue; and those who practise it often, forget that
if there is a time for silence, there is also a time for speech.

Evelyn clung tenaciously to her disapproval of the whole proceeding.
The scarcity of stores, and of pleasant little dinners, were the only
retrenchments that directly disturbed her comfort, and she made the
most of them, though the problems of housekeeping fell m