The young simplicity of the words brought a very soft light into Honor's eyes.
"I promised John I would go down just in order to be 'shown to Theo,'" she answered smiling. "But you must put off showing me to the rest till another day. I'm a little tired: and I can't keep my mind off John for very long just now."
"You still love him better than any one in the world, then?"
"Isn't the fact of my coming here to stay two years sufficient proof of that?"
"The very greatest proof imaginable!" Mrs Desmond flung out her hands with a pretty, characteristic gesture. "I'm only wondering if you know what you've let yourself in for? I thought India was a lovely placed till I came here. Theo warned me it wouldn't be a bit like Pindi or Lahore. But that didn't seem to matter, so long as I had him. Only I am so seldom able to have him! The regiment swamps everything. The men are always in uniform, and always at it; and the aggravating part is that they actually like that better than anything."
Honor laid her hand over the one that rested on her knee. She saw both sides of the picture with equal vividness.
"What a dire calamity!" she said gently. "I am afraid that on the Frontier, if a man is keen, his wife is bound to stand second; and if only she will accept the fact, it must surely be happier for both in the long-run."
Mrs Desmond looked up at her with pathetic eyes.
"But I don't want to accept the fact. I want to be first always: and I ought to be. It's easy enough for you to talk, because you haven't a notion how nice Theo is! When you've married a man like that, and buried yourself in a howling wilderness because of him, he ought to belong more to you than to his sacred Frontier Force! But Theo seems to be the private property of half the regiment! There's his chief friend Major Wyndham, and the Boy, his subaltern, he thinks the world of them; and they seem to live in the house. Then there's a tiresome old Ressaldar always coming over to do Persian with him for his Higher Proficiency exam; and I don't find it half amusing to be one of a mixed crowd like that!"