At last Flint laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair to relax muscles and mind. Had he been called upon to define his condition, he would have summed it up simply in the one word "cooked." He lit a cigarette and allowed his thoughts liberty, it was seldom he permitted them to dwell upon the past, but to-night he was too tired for self-discipline. On leaving Rassih he had volunteered for famine work as a desperate antidote to his sickness of heart and spirit; this in face of the knowledge that the decision had probably cost him a chance of important advancement, but the future for him had been shorn of attraction, and the sight of wretchedness and want, his passionate pity for the helpless, the strain and the stress of the work had, he knew, preserved him from despair as no official promotion could have preserved him at the time.
All the same Stella had never been far from his memory, and to-night she seemed to him painfully near. Again he went over that last scene in the Commissioner's house, saw Crayfield standing grim and contemptuous in the big drawing-room, Stella weeping and helpless, himself worsted, ashamed, without honest claim to defence. "Slink, you young hound!" The sentence forced itself backwards and forwards through his brain, hitting his pride each time like a shameful blow.... In his weak selfishness what misery he had brought upon himself and the woman he loved, would never cease to love. Where was she now? What was she doing? He pictured her at the piano accompanying the self-satisfied vocal performance of her husband! He visioned the light on her hair, the delicate outline of her neck, and he writhed as the memory tortured his heart. What devilish fate had taken him to Rassih! Yet he had a feeling that in any case he and Stella must ultimately have met, and that some day, somehow, they must meet again. The refrain of a cheaply sentimental little ballad he had heard her sing came back to him: "Some day, some day, some day, I shall meet you"—he could almost hear the clear, chorister-like voice.... Of a certainty the day would come, and then? He smiled with a sweet bitterness as he recalled her faith in his work, in his usefulness to India; she had said: "Without men like you the wheel would not go round." Well, he was doing his best in his own way to act up to her trust; and for her sake he would stick to the wheel, humbly, unswervingly, though the zest and the savour of ambition had gone, wiped out by unlawful love....
A cold muzzle crept into his hand that hung listless at his side—Jacob, diffident, sensitive, asking attention; Jacob had loved her too, with all his tender dog-heart. On that terrible evening Jacob had sat shivering on the edge of her skirt, conscious of trouble, until he followed his miserable master from the room.
Suddenly he became aware that someone was speaking; he looked up to see an apologetic peon standing at his elbow.
"Sahib, there is a memsahib without."
For one wild second he fancied it might be Stella, his mind was so full of her. Had she fled to him, sure of his love and protection, willing to give herself into his care? He felt as though aroused from a distressing dream, perhaps to find that all the pain and the longing had passed——
"A memsahib is without," repeated the peon resentfully. "She will not depart, though this slave hath told her that the sahib is busy."
Flint rose mechanically, his reason flouting the fancy that Stella could be "the memsahib without." A tall figure was framed in the doorway of the tent.
"Yes?" he said with tentative politeness.
"I won't keep you long." The voice was brisk and high. "I've come from the Zenana Mission camp, where I'm helping Miss Abigail on behalf of the Charitable Relief Fund Committee."