He frowned perplexedly, following her words through a labyrinth of memory and fancy and finding no end.
"Is that a quotation?"
"A sort of one——"
"It seems to express something——" He paused, meditating. The bugle sounded again, louder and more metallic and now in answer came the subdued hurrying of feet, the jangle of steel. Suddenly he faced her, fiercely, almost violently, like a man throwing off an obsessing weakness. There was a fire of energy in the throw-back of his great shoulders, in the clear passionate desire of his regard. She faltered under it. It swept her from her light fantastic dominion over him into deep, fast-flowing waters which engulfed her, stupefied her, shook her calm supremacy to its foundations. She did not know what had happened—what had wrought the change in him. He who had fought grimly and knowingly with the realism in the lives of others had somehow come to grips with reality in his own. He had ceased to weave dreams. It was not as a vision and a visionary that they faced each other, but as a man and a woman. A flash of lightning had burst through the unsubstantial mists of their relationship. And behind the figure of the dreaming Stoic there loomed the stark, primeval human being, vital, virile, armed with all the white, burning power of unsoiled, sternly guarded passions. They flared in his blue eyes which held hers for the first time with full recognition, with a daring, reckless revelation of their own existence. And though inwardly she faltered, her gaze was as steady as his own. She dared not turn from him. She felt that if she did she would come face to face with herself—as fiercely, as terribly awakened.
They spoke very quietly, very naturally to one another.
"I'll promise," he said. "A last day—no one could grudge it me?"
"No one." She held out her hand to him and it did not tremble. "Come, now I will drive you to Heerut."
CHAPTER XV
THE WEAVERS
Barclay rode past the Boucicaults' bungalow on the afternoon when Mrs. Boucicault gave her garden party in honour of the regiment's new commander and his wife. It was a very grand function, and rather gruesome if one stopped to think what lay inert and listening in a room somewhere at the back, but to stop and think was a mental pastime in which no one in Gaya indulged willingly. Mrs. Boucicault had been right. Gaya was not in the least outraged. It was not even very upset when it found that without a word of farewell Anne had gone south to Trichy to pay her father's people a long visit. In its casual, easy-going way, Gaya understood both points of view and sympathized.