"I suppose it's because I've always cared very much for men,"—she made the statement quite unblushingly. "Loving people is the only sure way of understanding them in the long-run."
"Is it?... You are clever, Honor. But it doesn't seem to help me much with Theo."
Such prompt, personal application of her philosophy of the heart was a little disconcerting. The girl could not well reply that in love there are a thousand shades, and very few are worthy of the name.
"It will help you in time," she said reassuringly. "It is one of the few things that cannot fail. And to-day, at least, you have learnt that when things are going hardly with Theo, it is kindest and wisest to leave him alone."
Evelyn understood this last, and registered a valiant resolve to that effect.
But the day's events gave her small chance of acting on her new-found knowledge. Desmond himself took the initiative: and save for a bare half-hour at tiffin, she saw him no more until the evening.
Perhaps only the man who has trained and loved a polo pony can estimate the pain and rebellion of spirit that he was combating, doggedly and in silence; or condone the passing bitterness he felt towards his uncomprehending wife.
He spent more time than usual in the stables, where Diamond nuzzled into his breast-pocket for slices of apple and sugar; and Diamond's sais lifted up his voice and wept, on receipt of an order to start for Pindi with his charge on the following day.
"There is no Sahib like my Sahib in all Hind," he protested, his turban within an inch of Desmond's riding-boot. "The Sahib is my father and my mother! How should we serve a stranger, Hazúr,—the pony and I?"