the bright shop window," he said with a laugh,
while his eyes wandered round the room. "I look in through the glass from
the pavement outside, and--"

His voice halted and stopped; and when he resumed he spoke without his
former gaiety. Indeed, the change of note was more perceptible than the
brief pause. His friend conjectured that the words which Linforth now
used were not those which he had intended to speak a moment ago.

"--and," he said slowly, "I wonder what sort of fairyland it is actually
to live and breathe in?"

While he spoke, his eyes were seeking an answer to his question, and
seeking it in one particular quarter. A few tables away, and behind
Linforth's friend and a little to his right, sat Violet Oliver. She was
with a party of six or eight people, of whom Linforth took no note. He
had eyes only for her. Bitterness had long since ceased to colour his
thoughts of Violet Oliver. And though he had not forgotten, there was no
longer any living pain in his memories. So much had intervened since he
had walked with her in the rose-garden at Peshawur--so many new
experiences, so much compulsion of hard endeavour. When his recollections
went back to the rose-garden at Peshawur, as at rare times they would, he
was only conscious at the worst that his life was rather dull when tested
by the high aspirations of his youth. There was less music in it than he
had thought to hear. Instead of swinging in a soldier's march to the
sound of drums and bugles down the road, it walked sedately. To use his
own phrase, everything was--_just not_. There was no more in it than
that. And indeed at the first it was almost an effort for him to realise
that between him and this woman whom he now actually saw, after three
years, there had once existed a bond of passion. But, as he continued to
look, the memories took substance, and he began to wonder whether in her
fairyland it was "just not," too. She had what she had wanted--that was
clear. A collar of pearls, fastened with a diamond bow, encircled her
throat. A great diamond flashed upon her bosom. Was she satisfied? Did no
memory of the short week during which she had longed to tread the road of
fire and stones, the road of high endeavour, trouble her content?

Linforth was curious. She was not paying much heed to the talk about the
table. She took no part in it, but sat with her head a little raised, her
eyes dreamily fixed upon nothing in particular. But Linforth remembered
w