"Very well. That settles it. But I'll let you off the hearth-rug, even though you did fling Dak bungalows at my head! Captain Lenox is in Baby's nursery; and we can shut off the dressing-room for you, if you can manage with a chair-bed. It's quite safe. Everything has been disinfected. I believe Theo knew you were coming! Will that do?"
"Do? Ma foi, . . but how does one say thank you for such goodness?"
"One refrains!" Desmond remarked, handing her empty cup across to his wife.
Quita laughed.
"You are incorrigible!" said she. "But there is still this to think of. With your friends coming and going, how am I to be . . accounted for till I have seen . . Eldred? If I am Miss Maurice, par exemple, what am I doing in Dera Ishmael? And if not . . ? Mon Dieu, but it's an ignominious tangle. I'm as bad as Alice in Wonderland in the wood. I seem suddenly to have lost my identity: and in my mad anxiety and impatience to get here I never thought anything about it till I was sweltering in that horrible barge this morning. Shall I live altogether in my room? It would be no more than I deserve."
"My dear, you'll do nothing of the sort." It was Honor this time, "Luckily for you, the Battery's in camp; and since Captain Lenox's illness there's been an end of my tea-parties. Our own people may be looking in now he's better. But for the next two days or so I shall simply be 'dawazar bund.'[5] It needs no effort to develop a headache, or a touch of fever this weather. There's only Paul, and Frank, whom I couldn't shut out. May we just explain to them, more or less, how things stand?"
"But yes. Of course you must. And . . after all . . ."
She hesitated, flushing painfully.
"After all," Desmond came to her rescue, "it won't be so very long before the vexed question of your identity is settled for good. Now I'd better go and speak to Paul. He may be turning up for tea, any minute; and that would be awkward for you."
As he reached the door at the far end of the room, Honor fled after him.