But Ferlie and he would find it difficult to isolate themselves from their neighbours, even if Cyprian's reputation as a recluse preceded him and Ferlie's advertised one as a widow.
Fortunate for her now that the Burma Season had never materialized before her father's enforced retirement; for, though Burma is not the size of a London suburb, news there travels in more persistent circles.
As things were, the few remaining officials who had known her father well enough to remember he had a daughter would hardly connect the knowledge with the advent of "Mrs. Clifford" to keep house for a brother, up-country, who was not a Member of the Services. Cyprian felt that the change might result in a more normal and wholesome life for Ferlie, at her age, than he could originally have offered her, and she owned to rejoicing in the prospect of medical aid should John get ill.
The first time she saw their bungalow of dark crimson wood, with its shingled roof and white painted verandah, the porch trembled beneath the red tubes of blossoming kuskwalis, the subtle velvet scent of which mingled with the thick creamy sweetness pouring from the waxen stars of two leafless frangipani trees in the garden.
"Cyprian, how beautiful!" as the loose crowns showered over her with every gust of breeze. "I wonder why there is something sorrowful in the message their scent holds for me."
But he remembered that the lilies sentinelling the church for Ferlie's wedding had been numerous enough to saturate the air with a similar sickly-sweet fragrance.
Since they were seeking forgetfulness in these surroundings he said nothing.
The radiance of their life together during the next few months was an amazement to his unintrospective soul.
He had sometimes wondered on what foundation rested Ferlie's invincible faith that, in this purely spiritual companionship, they would not be tempted beyond their strength to trample the Code.
He did not know that, since John's birth and her husband's development in a direction which made normal married life with him impossible, Ferlie, with her passion for complete understanding unclouded by merciful ignorance, had delved into strange formidably-backed volumes in her efforts to tear out by the roots the tragedy which had shattered her innocence. She had shrunk at first towards asceticism as an answer to the racking question "What shall we do to be saved?"—from Self; a mankind weak and bewildered but sub-conscious, nevertheless, of an attainable state of grace synonymous with Immortality.