o perceive that nothing could defer the day of reckoning much
longer; and on a certain afternoon in early December she exhumed her
detested sheaf of bills and sat down at her bureau to a
reconsideration of the hopelessness of things in general.

A panel of winter sunshine, flung across the room from the verandah
door, enveloped her in a glow of light and warmth. The drowsiness of
an Indian noon brooded over the compound. Honor was out riding with
Paul Wyndham; Theo busy in the next room, and very unlikely to
interrupt her, she reflected with a pang of regret. In an hour's time
she was going over to tea and tennis with the Kresneys; and had
decided that, after six months of silence, some mention must be made
of a fixed scale of repayment, to begin with the New Year. But in that
event, what hope of meeting any of those other demands, that were
again being urgently brought to her notice? What possibility of
ordering the two new gowns--bare necessities, in her esteem--to grace
the coming Christmas week at Lahore?

This same "week" is the central social event of the Punjab cold
weather, when most officers on the Border are certain of their fifteen
days' leave; when from all corners of the Province men and women
gravitate towards its dusty capital--women with dress baskets of
formidable size; men armed with polo-sticks, and with ponies, beloved
cricket-bats and saddles!

Through all the dismal coil of things, this one hour of festivity
gleamed on Evelyn Desmond's horizon like a light in a dark room. For
one brief blessed week she would be in her element, would escape from
the galling restraint of economy; and, more than all, in the
background of her mind there lurked a hope that by some means she
might recapture that vigorous, self-poised husband of hers, whose love
was, after all, the one real necessity of her life; and whom she now
saw slipping slowly, surely out of reach. But to recapture she must
recaptivate; and to that end faultless frocks were indispensable.

She leaned her head upon her hands, and fell to building extravagant
air-castles that eclipsed all practical considerations whatsoever.

So complete was her abstraction, that she failed to hear the study
door open, and was rudely startled back to reality by her husband's
voice at her elbow, sharp and stern, as she had never heard it till
now.

"What _is_ the meaning of this, Evelyn?" he demanded, bringing his
hand down on the desk beside her; and one glance