o from a former life.

With superlative courage she turned and surrendered both her own. She
wanted to prove herself, at all points, simply his friend; and he gave
her no cause to repent of her courage, or to suspect the strong
restraint he put upon himself during that brief contact, which, at a
moment so charged with emotion, might well have proved fatal to them
both.

"Thank you, Honor," he said quietly.

But for her, speech was impossible. She bowed her head, and left him
standing alone, with the dregs of victory.

On reaching the blessed shelter of her own room she bolted the door;
and for once in her life grief had its way with her unhindered.

She could not guess, while railing against Desmond's tenacity of
purpose, that the same passionate self-reproach which had urged her to
go all lengths for Evelyn, was urging him now to a supreme act of
self-devotion to his wife's happiness.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE ONE BIG THING.

"The sky that noticed all makes no disclosure;
And earth keeps up her terrible composure."
--BROWNING.

His wife herself was, in the meanwhile, journeying hopefully back to
the Kresneys' bungalow, on the shoulders of four long-suffering
jhampanis, who murmured a little among themselves, without rancour or
vexation, concerning the perplexing ways of Memsahibs in general. For
the native of India the supreme riddle of creation is the English
"Mem."

They had but just cast aside their liveries and, squatting on their
heels in a patch of shadow, had embarked on leisurely preparations for
the evening hookah and the evening meal. The scent of curry was in
their nostrils; the regular "flip-flap" of the deftly turned chupattie
was in their ears; when a flying order had come from the house--"The
Memsahib goes forth in haste!" With resigned mutterings and
head-shakings they had responded to the call of duty, and the
_mate_,[30] who was a philosopher, had a word of comfort for them as
they went. "Worse might have befallen, brothers, seeing that it hath
pleased God to make our Memsahib light as a bird. Had it been the Miss
Sahib, now----" A unanimous murmur testified that the Miss Sahib would
have been a far weightier affair!

[30] Headman.

And on this occasion they must have found their mistress even lighter
than a bird; for instead of lying back among her cushions, she sat
upright, in strained anticipation, pressing between her hands th