"Dear Frank, how clever of her! She can drive me over."
A minute later she was in the room; an angular workmanlike figure, in sun helmet, and the unvarying coat and skirt. It was her one idea of a dress,—drill in summer, tweed in winter. "An' be all that's sensible, what more should an ugly woman want?" had been her challenge to a misguided friend, who had suggested higher aspirations. "'Tis no manner o' use to dress up a collection of limbs and features without symmetry; an' it saves no end of mental wear and tear, to say nothing of rupees, that's badly wanted for polo ponies."
She entered talking; and shook hands talking still.
"The top o' the morning to you both! 'Tis an unholy hour for a visit. But I'm after the loan of a feeding-cup, knowing you've two. That murdering villain of a messalchi[2] broke me only one this morning; an' I'm afraid I used 'language' when I saw the corpse, besides threatening to cut the price of a new one out of his pay! 'Memsahib ke kushi,'[3] he answers, salaaming like a sainted martyr, and taking the wind clean out o' me sails. But I'll wash yours meself; so you needn't fear to lend it." Then, becoming aware of Honor's red eyelids, she broke off short. "Why, Honor, me dear, it's the born fool I am to be chattering like a parrot when you're in trouble, by the looks of it." A glance from one to the other revealed the telegram in Paul's hand. "Great goodness, it's never the child, is it?" she asked with a swift change of tone.
"Yes. Honor has had disturbing news," he answered for her. "She'll tell you about it while I send off this wire."
Honor, who had risen, sank into her chair again as he left the room.
"Read that, dear," she said simply: and while Frank Olliver read, a strange softness stole over her face, blanched and lined by many Frontier hot weathers. Outsiders, who wondered how any man had ever come to fall in love with her, might have wondered less had they chanced to see her then. On reaching the signature, she awkwardly patted Honor's shoulder.
"'Tis just one o' the bad minutes there's no evading, me darlint. The price you've to pay for the high privilege of carrying on the race."
"It seems a big price sometimes . . in India," Honor answered, not quite steadily. "And it's your one bit of compensation, Frank, that you're spared the wrench of having to live with your heart in two places at once."
At that Frank bit her lip, and stinging tears—an unusual phenomenon—blinded her eyes. But she was overstrung by a week of hard nursing; and some childless women never loss the tragic sense of incompleteness, the unacknowledged ache of empty arms.