He nodded. He understood and recognized the fighting spirit, and his admiration kindled and mingled with a biting, cruel grief. He watched her as she walked proudly erect at Travers' side, and his heart ached. He understood what his wife had understood in the first moment and what an hour before would have seemed impossible to them both; he understood that they were helpless, that they could neither protect nor comfort the brave young life which had been confided to their care. Their love, great as it was, lay useless, and his last pride, his last consolation was gone. He threw it to the wrecked lumber on his life's road. He did not hear Stafford's farewell nor his wife's icy response. He stood there with his hand clenched on the balustrade, motionless and wordless, until the evening shadows had crept over the silent garden. In that hour he knew himself to be an old and broken man.
Many miles away a dusty, haggard-faced rider urged his weary horse over the great highroad. Danger lurked in every shadow, but he heeded nothing—was scarcely conscious of what went on about him. He, too, suffered, but no remorse mingled itself with his tight-lipped grief. He had done the right and—according to his code and way of thinking—the only merciful thing.
CHAPTER XV
THE GREAT HEALER
"Yes, it's a fine building," Travers said, looking about him with an expression of satisfaction. "The Rajah hasn't spared the paint in any way. You see, it was all native work, so he killed two birds with one stone—pleased us and gave the aborigines a job. He has gone quite mad on reforms, poor fellow!" He laughed, not in the least contemptuously, but with a faint pity. "And it's all your doing, Miss Beatrice," he went on, turning to her with an elaborate bow. "You should be very proud of your work."
She looked him straight in the face. They were in the new ballroom of the clubhouse which the Rajah of Marut had just opened. In the adjacent tearoom she heard voices raised in gay discussion, but for the moment they were quite alone.
"You give me more credit in the matter than I deserve," she said. "Is that generosity on your part, or—are you shirking your share of the responsibility?"
"I—shirk my share of the responsibility!" he exclaimed with a good-tempered lifting of the eyebrows. "My dear lady, have you ever known me to do such a thing?"
She smiled rather sarcastically.
"No, Mr. Travers, but I own that the idea does not seem to me wholly impossible."