Jan, alone of all the household, kept watch, standing in the verandah, a ghostly figure, still in the tumbled white muslin frock she had had no time all day to change.
It was nearly one o'clock. Motors and carriages were beginning to come back from Government House, where there was a reception. The motor-horns and horses' hoofs sounded loud in the wide silent street, and the head lights swept down the Queen's Road like fireflies in flight.
Jan turned on the light in the verandah. Peter would perhaps look up and see her standing there, and realise why she kept watch. Perhaps he would stop and come up.
She wanted Peter desperately.
Compassed about with many relatives and innumerable friends at home, out here Jan was singularly alone. In all that great city she knew no one save Peter, the doctor and the nurse. Some few women, knowing all the circumstances, had called and were ready to be kind and helpful and friendly, as women are all over India, but Fay would admit none but Peter—even to see Jan; and always begged her not to return the calls "till it was all over."
Well, it was all over now. Fay would never be timid and ashamed any more.
Jan had not shed a tear. The longing to cry that had assailed her so continuously in her first week had entirely left her. She felt clear-headed and cold and bitterly resentful. She would like to have made Hugo Tancred go in front of her into that quiet room and forced him to look at the girlish figure on the bed—his handiwork. She wanted to hurt him, to make him more wretched than he was already.
A car stopped in the street below. Jan went very quietly to the door of the flat and listened at the top of the staircase.
Steps were on the stairs, but they stopped at one of the flats below.
Presently another car stopped. Again she went out and listened. The steps came up and up and she switched on the light in the passage.