hubble-bubble, squatted in line upon their thresholds and accepted them
with indifference. So they passed, worthy of a glance from that divinity
who shapes our ends.

They talked of the accident. "You stopped the horses, didn't you?" Hilda
said, and the speculation in her eyes was concerned with the extent to
which a muscular system might dwindle, in that climate, under sacerdotal
robes worn every day.

"I told them to stop, poor things," Arnold said; "they had hardly to be
persuaded."

"But you didn't save my life or anything like that, did you?" she
adventured like a vagrant in the sun. The blood was warm in her. She
did not weigh her words. "I shouldn't like having my life saved. The
necessity for feeling such a vast emotion--I shouldn't know how to cope
with it."

"I will claim to have saved your other hand," he smiled. "You will be
quite grateful enough for that."

She noted that he did not hasten, behind blushes, into the shelter of
a general disavowal. The cassock seemed to cover an obligation to
acknowledge things.

"I see," she said, veering round. "You are quite right to circumscribe
me. There is nothing so boring as the gratitude that will out. It is
only the absence of it, too plainly expressed, that is unpleasant. But
you won't find that in me either." She gave him a smile as she lowered
her parasol to turn into the shop of Lahiri Dey, licensed to sell
European drugs, that promised infinite possibilities of friendship; and,
he, following, took pleased and careful possession of it.

An hour later, as they approached Number Three, Lal Behari's Lane, Miss
Howe looked pale, which is not surprising since they had walked and
talked all the way. Their talk was a little strenuous too; it was as if
they had fallen upon an opportunity, and, mutually, consciously made the
most of it.

"You must have some tea immediately," Arnold said, before the battered
urns and the dusty crotons of her dwelling.

"A little whisky and soda, I think. And you will come up, please, and
have some too. You must."

"Thanks," he said, looking at his watch. "If I do--"

"You'll have the soda without the whisky! All right!" she laughed, and
led the way.

"This is vicious indulgence," Arnold said of his beverage, sitting
under the inverted Japanese umbrellas. "I haven't been pitched out of a
ticca-gharry."

It is doubtful whether the indulgence was altogether in the soda, which
is, after all, ascetic in its quality, and only