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[Illustration: "Miss Cary has consented to become my wife.">[

THE NATIVE BORN

or

THE RAJAH'S PEOPLE

by

I. A. R. WYLIE

1910

with Illustrations by

JOHN NEWTON HOWITT

PREFACE

In earlier days a preface to a novel with no direct historical source always seemed to me somewhat out of place, since I believed that the author could be indebted solely to his own imagination. I have learned, however, that even in a novel pur sang it is possible to owe much to others, and I now take the opportunity which the despised preface offers to pay my debt—inadequately it is true—to Mr. Hughes Massie, whose enthusiastic help in the launching of this, my first serious literary effort, I shall always hold in grateful remembrance.

I. A. R. W.

May 9th, 1910

CONTENTS

BOOK I

CHAPTER I WHICH IS A PROLOGUE II THE DANCING IS RESUMED III NEHAL SINGH IV CIRCE V ARCHIBALD TRAVERS PLAYS BRIDGE VI BREAKING THE BARRIER VII THE SECOND GENERATION VIII THE IDEAL IX CHECKED X AT THE GATES OF A GREAT PEOPLE XI WITHIN THE GATES XII THE WHITE HAND XIII THE ROAD CLEAR XIV IN WHICH MANY THINGS ARE BROKEN XV THE GREAT HEALER XVI FATE XVII FALSE LIGHT

BOOK II

I BUILDING THE CATHEDRAL II CATASTROPHE III A FAREWELL IV STAFFORD INTERVENES V MURDER VI CLEARING AWAY THE RUBBISH VII IN THE TEMPLE OF VISHNU VIII FACE TO FACE IX HALF-LIGHT X TRAVERS XI IN THE HOUR OF NEED XII HIS OWN PEOPLE XIII ENVOI

THE NATIVE BORN

BOOK I

CHAPTER I

WHICH IS A PROLOGUE

The woman lying huddled on the couch turned her face to the wall and covered it with her hands in a burst of uncontrollable horror.

"Oh, that dreadful light!" she moaned. "If it would only go out! It will send me mad. Oh, if it would only go out—only go out!"

Her companion made no immediate answer. She stood by the wall, her shoulders slightly hunched, her hands clasped before her in an attitude of fixed, sullen defiance. What her features expressed it was impossible to tell, since they were hidden by the deep shadow in which she had taken up her position. The rest of the apartment was lit with a grey, ghostly light, the reflection from the courtyard, in part visible through the open doorway, and which lay bathed in all the brilliancy of a full Indian moon.

"When the light goes out, it will mean that the end has come," she said at last. "Do you know that, Christine?"

"Yes, I know it," the other answered piteously; "but that's what I want—the end. I am not afraid to die. I know Harry will be there. He will not let it be too hard for me. It's the suspense I can not bear. The suspense is worse than death. I have died a dozen times tonight, and suffered as I am sure God will not let us suffer."

Margaret Caruthers bent over the cowering figure with the sympathy which education provides when the heart fails to perform its office. There was, indeed, little tenderness in the hand which passed lightly over Christine Stafford's feverish forehead.

"You give God credit for a good deal," she said indifferently. "If the light troubles you, shall I shut the door?"

Christine sprang half upright.

"No!" she cried sharply. "No! I should still see it. Even when I cover my face—so—I can still see it flickering. And then there is the darkness, and in the darkness, faces—little John's face. Oh, my little fellow, what will become of you!" She began to cry softly, but no longer with fear. Love and pity had struggled up out of the chaos of her despair, rising above even the mighty instinct of self-preservation. Margaret's hand ceased from its mechanical act of consolation.

"Be thankful that he is not here," she said.

"I am thankful—but the thought of him makes death harder. It will hurt him so."

"No one is indispensable in this world."

Christine turned her haggard, tear-stained face to the moonlight.

"How hard you are!" she said wonderingly. "You, too, have your little girl to think of, but even with the end so close—even knowing that we shall never see our loved ones again—you are still hard."

"I have no loved ones, and life has taught me to be hard. Why should death soften me?" was the cold answer. Both women relapsed into silence. Always strangers to each other, a common danger had not served to break down the barrier between them. Christine now lay quiet and calm, her hands clasped, her lips moving slightly, as though in prayer. Her companion had resumed her former position against the wall, her eyes fixed on the open doorway, beyond which the grey lake of moonlight spread itself into the shadow of the walls. In the distance a single point of fire flickered uneasily, winking like an evil, threatening eye. So long as it winked at them, so long their lives were safe. With its extermination they knew must come their own. Hitherto, save for the murmur of the two voices, a profound hush had weighed ominously in the heavy air. Now suddenly a cry went up, pitched on a high note and descending by semitones, like a dying wind, into a moan. It was caught up instantly and repeated so close that it seemed to the two women to have sprung from the very ground beneath their feet. Christine started up.

"Oh, my God!" she muttered. "Oh, my God!" She was trembling from head to foot, but the other gave no sign of either fear or interest. There followed a brief pause, in which the imagination might have conjured up unseen forces gathering themselves together for a final onslaught. It came at last, like a cry, suddenly, amidst a wild outburst of yells, screams, and the intermittent crack of revolvers fired at close quarters. Pandemonium had been let loose on the other side of the silver lake, but the silver lake itself remained placid and untroubled. Only the red eye winked more vigorously, as though its warning had become more imperative.

Christine Stafford clung to a pair of unresponsive hands, which yielded with an almost speaking reluctance to her embrace.

"You think there is no hope?" she pleaded. "None? You know what Harry said. If the regiment got back in time—"

"The regiment will not get back in time," Margaret Caruthers interrupted. "There are ten men guarding the gate against Heaven knows how many thousand. Do you expect a miracle? No, no. We are a people who dance best at the edge of a crater, and if a few, like ourselves, get swallowed up now and again, it can not be helped. It is the penalty."

"If only Harry would come!" Christine moaned, heedless of this cold philosophy. "But he will keep his promise, won't he? He won't let us fall into those cruel hands? You remember what happened at Calcutta—"

"Hush! Don't frighten yourself and me!" exclaimed Margaret impatiently. "Does it comfort you to hold my hand? Well, hold it, then. How strange you are! I thought you weren't afraid."

"I shan't be when the time comes—but it's so very lonely. Don't you feel it? Are you made of stone?"

Margaret Caruthers set her teeth hard.

"I would to God I were!" she said. All at once she wrenched her hand free and pointed with it. Her arm, stretched out into the light, had a curious, ghostly effect. "Look!" she cried.

The red eye winked rapidly in succession, once, twice, three times, and then closed—this time for ever. An instant later two dark spots darted out into the brightly lighted space and came at headlong pace toward them. Christine sprang to her feet, and the two women clung to each other, obeying for that one moment the instinct which can bind devil to saint. But it was an English voice which greeted them from the now darkened doorway.

"It's all over!" Steven Caruthers said, entering with his companion and slamming the door sharply to. "We have five minutes more. Mackay has promised to keep them off just so long. Stafford, see to your wife!" He spoke brutally, in a voice choked with dust and pain. The room was now in pitch darkness. Harry Stafford felt his way across, his arms outstretched.

"Christine!" he called.

She came to him at once, with a step as firm and steady as a man's.

"Harry!" she cried, her voice ringing with an almost incredulous joy. "Oh, my darling!"

He caught her to him and felt how calm her pulse had become.

"Are you afraid, my wife?"

"Not now. I am so happy!"

He knew, strange though it seemed, that this was true and natural, because her love was stronger than life or the fear of death.

"Do you trust me absolutely, Christine?"

"Absolutely!"

"Give me both your hands—in my one hand—so. Kiss me, sweetheart."

In the same instant that his lips touched hers he lifted his right disengaged hand, and something icy-cold brushed past her temple. She clung to him.

"Not yet, Harry! Not yet! Oh, don't think I don't understand. I do, and I am glad. If things had gone differently the time must have come when one of us would have been left lonely. Now, we are going together. What does it matter if it is a little sooner than we hoped? Only, not yet—just one minute! We have time. Do not let us waste it. Let us kneel down and say 'Our Father,' and then—for little John—" Her voice broke. "Afterward—when you think fit, husband, I shall be ready."

He put his arm about her, and they knelt down side by side at the little couch. Christine prayed aloud, and he followed her, his deeper voice hushed to a whisper.

The two other occupants of the room did not heed them. They, too, had found each other. At her husband's entrance Margaret Caruthers had crept back to the wall and had remained there motionless, not answering to his sharp, imperative call. He groped around the room, and when at length his hands touched her face, both drew back as one total stranger from another.

"Why did you not answer?" he asked hoarsely. "Are you not aware that any moment may be our last?"

"Yes," she said.

"I have something I wish to say to you, Margaret, before the time comes."

"I am listening."

"I wish to say if at any period in our unfortunate married life I have done you wrong, I am sorry."

She made no answer.

"I ask your forgiveness."

"I forgive you."

The sound of firing outside had grown fainter, the shrieks louder, more exultant, mingling like an unearthly savage chorus with the hushed voices By the couch.

—"Thy will be done—" prayed Christine valiantly.

Margaret Caruthers lifted her head and laughed.

"Don't laugh!" her husband burst out. "Pray now, if you have ever prayed in your life. You have need of prayers." He lifted his arm as he spoke; but, as though she guessed his intention, she sprang out of his reach.

"No!" she said, in a voice concentrated with passion. "I am not going to die like that. Stafford can shoot his wife down like a piece of blind cattle if he thinks fit—but not you. I won't die by your hand, Steven. I hate you too much."

"Hush!" he exclaimed. "The account between us is settled."

"Do you think I can begin to love you just because we are both about to die?"

"You are my wife," he answered, grasping her by the wrists. "There are things worse than death, and from them I shall shield you, whether you will or not."

"Is it not enough that you have taken my life once?" she retorted.

"What do you mean? How dare you say that!"

"I say it because it is true. I have never lived—never. You killed me years ago—all that was best in me. Save your soul from a second murder."

"If you live, do you know what may lie before you?"

"You talk of things 'worse than death.' What shame, what misery could be worse than the years spent at your side?"

"You are mad, Margaret. I shall pay no attention to you. I must save you against your will."

All through the hurried dialogue neither had spoken above a whisper. Even in that moment they obeyed the habit of a lifetime, hiding hatred and bitterness beneath a mask of apparent calm. Without a sound, but with a frantic strength, Margaret wrenched herself free.

"Leave me to my own fate!" she demanded, in the same passionate undertone.
"You have ceased to be responsible for me."

He made one last effort to hold her. In the same instant the firing ceased altogether. There followed the roar and crash of bursting timber, the pattering of naked feet, the fanatic yells drawing every second nearer.

"Margaret!" he cried wildly, holding out his revolver in the darkness.
"If not at my hands, then at your own. Save yourself—"

"I shall save myself, have no fear!" she answered, with a bitter, terrible laugh.

From the couch Christine Stafford's voice rose peacefully:

"Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!"

Another voice answered, "Amen!" There was the report of a revolver and a sudden, startling stillness. It lasted only a breathing space. Furious shoulders hurled themselves against the frail, weakly barred door. It cracked, bulged inward, with a bursting, tearing sound, yielded. The moonlight flooded into the little room, throwing up into bold relief the three upright figures and the little heap that knelt motionless by the couch.

The crowd of savage faces hesitated, faltering an instant before the sahibs who yesterday had been their lords and masters. Then the sahibs fired. It was all that was needed. The room filled. There was one stifled groan—no more than that. No cry for mercy, no whining.

Little by little the room emptied again. The cries and bloodthirsty screams of triumphant vengeance died slowly in the distance, the grey moonlight resumed its peaceful sovereignty. Only here and there were dark stains its silver could not wash away.

CHAPTER II

THE DANCING IS RESUMED.

"Oh, I love India—adore it, simply!" Mrs. Cary exclaimed, in the tone of a person who, usually self-controlled, finds himself overwhelmed by the force of his own enthusiasm. "There is something so mystic, so enthralling about it, don't you think? I always feel as though I were wandering through a chapter of the Arabian Nights full of gorgeous princes, wicked robbers, genii, or whatever you call them. Isn't it so with you, Mrs. Carmichael?"

Her hostess, a thin, alert little woman with a bony, weather-beaten face, cast an anxious glance at the rest of her guests scattered about the garden.

"There aren't any robbers about here—except my cook," she said prosaically. "My husband wouldn't allow such a thing in his department, and in mine he is no good at all. As for the princes, we don't see anything of the only one this region boasts of. He may be gorgeous, but I really can not say for certain."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Cary, with a placid smile. "You have been in fairyland too long, dear Mrs. Carmichael. That's what's the matter with you. You are beginning to look upon it as a very ordinary, everyday place. If you only knew what it is to come to it with a virgin heart and mind-thirsting for impressions, as it were. That is how we feel, do we not, Beatrice?" She half turned to the girl standing at her side, as though seeking to draw her into the conversation.

"It is indeed new for me," the latter answered shortly, and with slight emphasis on the personal pronoun.

"I was about to remark that this is scarcely your first visit to India," Mrs. Carmichael put in. "I understood that your late husband had a government appointment somewhere in the South?"

Mrs. Cary's heavy face flushed, though whether with heat or annoyance it was not easy to judge.

"Of course—a very excellent appointment, too—but the place and the people!" She became confidential and her voice sank, though beyond her daughter there was no one within hearing. "Between you and me, Mrs. Carmichael, the people were dreadful. You know, I am not snobbish—indeed I must confess to quite democratic tendencies, which my family always greatly deplores—but I really couldn't stand the people. I had to go back to England with Beatrice. The place was filled with subordinate railway officials. Don't you hate subordinates, dear Mrs. Carmichael?"

Mrs. Carmichael stared, during which process her eyes happened to fall on Beatrice Cary's half-averted face. She was surprised to find that the somewhat thin lips were smiling—though not agreeably.

"I really don't know what you mean by 'subordinates,'" Mrs. Carmichael said, in her uncompromising way. "Most people are subordinates at some time or other. My husband was a lieutenant once. I don't remember objecting to him. At any rate," she continued hastily, as though to cut the conversation short, "I hope you will like the people here."

"I'm sure I shall. A military circle is always so delightful. That is what I said to Beatrice when I felt that I must revisit the scene of my girlish days. 'We must go somewhere where there is military.' Of course, we might have gone to Simla—I have influential friends there, you know—but I wanted my girl to see a real bit of genuine India, and Simla is so modern. Really a great pity, I think. I am so passionately fond of color and picturesqueness—comfort is nothing to me. As my husband used to say, 'Oh, Mary, you are always putting your artistic feelings before material necessities.' Poor fellow, he used to miss his creature comforts sometimes, I fear."

Her laugh, painfully resembling a giggle, interrupted her own garrulity, which was finally put to an end by a fresh arrival. A slight, daintily-clad figure had detached itself from a group of guests and came running toward them. Mrs. Carmichael's deeply lined, somewhat severe face lighted up.

"That is my husband's ward, Lois Caruthers," she said. "She has been with me all her life, practically. As you are so fond of genuine India, you must let her show you over the place. She knows all the dirtiest, and I suppose most interesting corners, with their exact history."

"Delightful!" murmured Mrs. Cary, with a gracious nod of her plumed headgear. Nevertheless, she studied the small figure and animated features of the new-comer with a critical severity not altogether in accordance with her next remark, uttered, apparently under pressure of the same irresistible enthusiasm, in an audible side whisper: "What a sweet face—so piquant!"

An adjective is a pliable weapon, and, in the hands of a woman, can be made to mean anything under the sun. Mrs. Cary's "piquant"—pronounced in a manner that was neither French nor English, but a startling mixture of both—had a background to it of charitable patronage. It was meant, without doubt, to be a varnished edition of "plain," perhaps even "ugly," though Lois Caruthers deserved neither insinuation. Possibly too small in build, she was yet graceful, and there was a lithe, elastic energy in her movements which drew attention to her even among more imposing figures. Possibly, also, she was too dark for the English ideal. Her black hair and large brown eyes, together with the unrelieved pallor of her complexion, gave her appearance something that was exotic but not unpleasing. Enfin, as most people admitted, she had her charm; and her moods, which ranged from the most light-hearted gaiety to the deepest gravity, could be equally irresistible. She was light-hearted enough now, however, as she smiled from one to the other, including mother and daughter in her friendly greeting, though as yet both were strangers to her.

"I have come to fetch you, Aunt Harriet," she said, addressing Mrs. Carmichael. "Mr. Travers has got some great scheme on hand which he will only disclose in your presence. We are all gasping with curiosity. Will you please come?"

Mrs. Carmichael nodded.

"I will come at once," she said. "I'm sure it's only one of Mr. Travers' breakneck schemes, but they are always amusing to listen to. Lois, come and be introduced. My adopted niece—Mrs. Cary—Miss Cary."

They shook hands.

"Lois, when there is time, I want you to do the honors of Marut. Miss Cary especially has as yet seen nothing, and there is a great deal of interest. You know—" turning to her visitors—"Marut is supposed to have been the hotbed of the last rising."

"Indeed!" murmured Mrs. Cary vaguely. "How delightful!"

Lois Caruthers laughed, not without a shadow of bitterness.

"It was hardly delightful at the time, I should imagine," she observed. "But what there is to see I shall be very glad to show you. Will any day suit you?"

"Oh, yes, any day," Beatrice Cary assented, speaking almost for the first time. "I have nothing to do here from morning to night."

"That will soon change," Lois said, walking by her side. "I am always busy, either playing tennis, or riding, or getting up some entertainment. The difficulty is to find time to rest."

"You must be a very much sought-after person," Beatrice observed, in the tone of a person who is making a graceful compliment. The hint of irony, however, was unmistakable.

"I am not more sought after than any one else," Lois returned, unruffled.
"Every one has to help in the work of frivolity."

"I shall be rather out of it, then," Beatrice said coolly. "I am not amusing."

"It is quite sufficient to be willing, good-natured and good-humored,"
Lois answered.

They had by this time reached the group under the trees, where Mrs. Carmichael and her companion had already arrived, under the escort of a tall, stoutly built man, who was talking and apparently explaining with great vigor. As Lois entered the circle, he glanced up and smiled at her, revealing a handsome, cheerful face, singularly fresh-colored in comparison with the deep tan of the other men.

"That is Mr. Travers," Lois explained. "He is a bank director or something in Madras, and has been on a long business visit north. He is awfully clever and popular, and gets up everything."

"Rich, I suppose?"

Lois glanced up at her companion. The beautiful profile and the tone of the remark seemed incongruous.

"I don't know," she said rather abruptly. "He has four polo ponies.
Nobody else has more than two."

"Do you calculate wealth by polo ponies, then?"

Lois laughed.

"Yes, we do pretty well," she said—"that is, when we bother about such things at all. Most people are poor, and if they aren't, they have to live beyond their income, so it comes to the same in the end."

"Everybody looks cheerful enough," Beatrice Cary observed. "I always thought poverty and worry went together."

"Who is that talking about poverty and worry?" asked a voice behind them. "Is it you, Miss Caruthers? If so, I shall arraign you as a disturber of the peace. Who wants to be bothered with the memory of his empty purse on such a lovely day?"

Lois turned with a smile to the new-comer.

"No, I am innocent, Captain Stafford," she said. "It was Miss Cary who brought up the terms you object to."

"Well, won't you introduce me, then, so that I can express my displeasure direct to the culprit?"

The ceremony of introduction was gone through, on Beatrice Cary's side with a sudden change of manner. Hitherto cold, indifferent, slightly supercilious, she now relaxed into a gentleness that was almost appealing.

"This is a new world for me," she said, looking up into Captain Stafford's amused face, "and I have so many questions to ask that I am afraid of turning into a mark of interrogation, or—as you said—a disturber of the peace."

"You won't ask questions long," he answered, with a wise shake of the head. "Nobody does. Wherever English people go they take their whole paraphernalia with them; and you will find that, with a few superficial differences, Marut is no more or less than a snug little English suburb. A little more freedom of intercourse—a little less Philistinism, perhaps—but the foundations are the same. As to India itself, one soon learns to forget all about it."

He then turned to Lois, who was intent on watching Mr. Travers.

"You weren't on the race-course this morning," he said in an undertone.
"I missed you. Why did you not come?"

"I couldn't," she said. "There was too much to be done. We are rather short of servants just now, for reasons—well, that, according to you, ought not to be mentioned on a fine day."

He laughed, but not as he had hitherto done. There was another tone in his voice, warmer, more confidential. It attracted Beatrice Cary's attention, and she looked curiously from Lois to the man beside her. About thirty-five, with a passably good figure, irregular, if honest, features, and an expression usually somewhat grave, he made no pretensions to any exterior advantage. He could apparently be gay, as now, but his gaiety did not conceal the fact that it was unusual. Altogether, he had nothing about him which appealed to her, but Beatrice Cary was inclined to resent Lois' obvious intimacy with him as something which accentuated her own isolation.

"Can you make out what Mr. Travers is saying?" Lois asked, turning suddenly to her. "I can't hear a word, and I'm sure it's awfully interesting. Captain Stafford, do you know?"

"I can guess," he answered, half smiling. "When Travers has a suggestion to make, it usually means that some one has to stump up."

There was a general laugh. Travers looked around.

"Some one has accused me falsely," he declared. "I have a prophetic sense of injury."

"On the contrary, that is what I am suffering from," Stafford retorted. "Since hearing that you have a new scheme, I have been hastily reckoning how many weeks' leave I shall have to sacrifice to pay for it."

Travers shook his head.

"As usual—wrong, my dear Captain," he said. "My scheme has two parts. The first part is known to you all, though for the benefit of weak memories, I will repeat it. Ladies and gentlemen, in this Station we have the honor of being protected from the malice of the aborigine by two noble regiments. We count, moreover, at least thirty of the fair sex and forty miscellaneous persons, such as miserable civilians like myself, and children. Hitherto, we have been content to meet at odd times and odd places. When hospitality has run dry, we have resorted to a shed-like structure dignified with the name of club. Personally, I call it a disgrace, which should at once be rectified."

"I have already contributed my mite!" protested a young subaltern from the
British regiment.

"I know; so has everybody. With strenuous efforts I have collected the sum of five hundred rupees. That won't do. We require at least four times that sum. Consequently, we must have a patron."

"The second part of your programme concerns the patron, then?" Captain Webb inquired, with an aspect of considerable relief. "Not yourself, by any chance?"

"Certainly not. If I had any noble inclinations of that sort I should have discovered them a long time ago. No, I content myself with taking the part of a fairy godmother."

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Stafford put in. "What is the fairy godmother going to do for us? Produce a club-house, a patron, or a cucumber?"

"A patron, and one, my dear fellow, whom I should have entirely overlooked had it not been for you."

"For me!"

"It was you who made the discovery that the present Rajah is not, as we thought, an imbecilic youth, but a man of many parts and splendidly adapted to our requirements."

"I protest!" broke in Stafford, with unusual earnestness. "It was by pure chance that, in an audience with the Maharajah Scindia, the late regent of Marut, I got to hear that his whilom ward was both intelligent and cultured. I believe it was a slip on his part, and, seeing that Rajah Nehal Singh has shunned all English intercourse, I can not see that there is any likelihood of his adapting himself or his purse to your plans."

"Oh, bosh!" exclaimed Travers impatiently. "You are too cautious, Stafford. Other rajahs interest themselves in social matters—why not this one? He is fabulously rich, I understand, and a little gentle handling should easily bring him around."

There was a chorus of bravos, in which only one or two did not join. One was Colonel Carmichael, who stood a little apart, pulling his thin grey moustache in the nervous, anxious way peculiar to him, his kindly face overshadowed.

"On principle," he began, after the first applause had died down, "I am against the suggestion. Of course, I have no deciding voice in the matter, but I confess that the idea has not my approval. I know very well that, as you say, other native princes have proved themselves useful and valuable acquisitions to English society. In some cases it may be well enough, though in no case does it seem to me right to accept hospitality from a man to whom we only grant an apparent equality. In this particular case I consider the idea—well, repulsive."

"May I ask why, Colonel?" Travers asked sharply.

"By all means. Because less than a quarter of a century ago the father of the man from whom you are seeking gifts slaughtered by treachery hundreds of our own people."

An uncomfortable, uneasy silence followed. Captain Stafford and Lois exchanged a quick glance of understanding.

"I know of at least two people who will agree with me," continued the
Colonel, who had intercepted and possibly anticipated the glance.

"You are right, Colonel," Stafford said. "I bear no malice, and any idea of revenge seems to me foolish. As far as I know, the present Rajah is all that can be desired, but I protest against a suggestion—and what is worse, a practice, which must inevitably lower our dignity in the eyes of those we are supposed to govern."

The awkward silence continued for a moment, no one caring to express a contrary opinion, though a contrary opinion undoubtedly existed.

Beatrice looked up at Captain Webb, who happened to be standing at her side. Her acquaintance with him dated only from an hour back, but an uncontrollable irritation made her voice her opinions to him.

"I think all that sort of thing rather overstrained and unnecessary," she said. "Your chief business is to get the best out of life, and quixotic people who worry about the means are rather a nuisance, don't you think?"

Captain Webb's bored features lighted up with a faint amusement.

"O, Lor', you mustn't say that sort of thing to me, Miss Cary!" he said in a subdued aside. "Superior officer, you know! If you want an index to my feelings, study my countenance." He pretended to smother a gigantic yawn, and Beatrice's cool, unchecked laughter broke the constraint.

Travers look around with a return of his old good-humor.

"Well," he said, "I have two votes against my plans, but, with due respect to those two, who are, perhaps, unduly influenced by unfortunate circumstances, I feel that it is only just that the others should be given a voice in the matter. Do you agree, Colonel?"

Colonel Carmichael had by this time regained his placid, gentle manner.

"Certainly," he agreed, without hesitation.

"Hands up, then, for letting Rajah Nehal Singh go his way in peace!"

Three hands went up—Colonel Carmichael's, Stafford's and Lois'. Beatrice glanced at the latter with a smile that expressed what it was meant to express—a supercilious amusement. Her indifference was rapidly taking another and more decided character.

"Hands up for drawing the bashful youth into Circe's circle!" called Travers, now thoroughly elated. A forest of hands went up. Captain Webb and his bosom comrade, Captain Saunders, who, for diplomatic reasons had remained neutral, exchanged grins. "You see," Travers said, turning with deferential politeness to the Colonel, "the day is against you."

"The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders!" quoted the Colonel good-humoredly.

"The next question is, on whose shoulders shall the task of beguilement fall?" Travers went on, glancing at Stafford. "I suppose you, O, wise young judge—?"

"It is out of the question," Stafford answered at once. "I consider I have done enough damage already."

"What about your serpent's tongue, Travers?" suggested Webb. "When I think of the follies you have tempted me to commit, I feel that you should be unanimously elected."

Travers bowed his acknowledgments with mock gravity.

"Since there are no other candidates, I accept the onerous task," he said, "but I can not go about it single-handed. The serpent's tongue may be mine, but I lack, I fear, the grace and personal charm necessary for complete conquest. I need the help of Circe, herself." His bright, bird-like eye passed over the laughing group, resting on Lois an instant with an expression of woebegone regret. Beatrice Cary was the next in line, and his search went no farther than her flushed, eager face. "Ah!" he exclaimed, "I have found the enchantress herself! Miss——" He hesitated, for an instant unaccountably shaken out of his debonair self-possession. Webb sprang to the rescue with a formal introduction, and Travers proceeded, if not entirely with his old equanimity. "I beg your pardon, Miss Cary," he apologized. "Your face is, strangely enough, so familiar to me that I took you for an old acquaintance—perhaps, indeed, you are, if in our modern days Circe finds it necessary to travel incognito."

Beatrice joined in the general amusement, her unusually large and beautiful eyes bright with elation.

"May I claim your assistance?" Travers went on. "Instinct tells me that we shall be irresistible."

"Willingly," Beatrice responded, "though I can not imagine how I can help you."

"Leave that to me," he said, offering her his arm. "My plans are Napoleonic in their depth and magnitude. If you will allow me to unfold them to you before the dancing begins—?"

She smiled her assent, and walked at his side toward the Colonel's bungalow. On their way they passed Mrs. Cary, who, strangely enough, did not respond to the half-triumphant glance which her daughter cast at her. She turned hastily aside.

"Mr. Travers is no doubt—" she began, in a confidential undertone; but her companion, Mrs. Carmichael, had taken the opportunity and vanished.

The light-hearted, superficial discussion, with its scarcely felt undercurrent of tragic reminiscence, had lasted through the swift sunset, and already dusk was beginning to throw its long shadows over the gaily dressed figures that streamed up toward the bungalow.

On the outskirts of the garden lights were springing up in quick succession, thanks to the industry of Mrs. Carmichael, who hurried from one Chinese lantern to the other, breathless but determined. The task was doubtless an ignominious one for an Anglo-Indian lady of position, but Mrs. Carmichael, who acted as a sort of counterbalance to her husband's extravagant hospitality, cared not at all. England, half-pay and all its attendant horrors, loomed in the near future, and economy had to be practised somehow.

Of the late group only Lois and John Stafford remained. They had not spoken, but, as though obeying a mutual understanding, both remained quietly waiting till they were alone.

"Shall we walk about a little?" he asked at last. "I missed our morning ride so much. It has put my whole day out of joint, and I want something to put it straight again. Do you mind, or would you rather dance? I see they have begun."

"No," she said. "I would rather be quiet for a few minutes. Somehow I have lost the taste for that sort of thing to-night."

"I also," he responded.

They walked silently side by side along the well-kept path, each immersed in his own thoughts and soothed by the knowledge that their friendship had reached a height where silence is permitted—becomes even the purest form of expression. At the bottom of the compound they reached a large, low-built building, evidently once a dwelling-place, overgrown with wild plants and half in ruins, whose dim outlines stood out against the darkening background of trees and sky. The door stood open, and must indeed have stood open for many years, for the broken hinges were rusty and seemed to be clinging to the torn woodwork only by the strength of undisturbed custom.

Stafford came to a halt.

"That is where—" he began, and then abruptly left his sentence unfinished.

"Yes," she said, "it is here. I don't think, as long as we live in India, that my guardian will ever have it touched. He calls it the Memorial. My father was his greatest friend, and the terrible fact that he came too late to save him has saddened his whole life."

Stafford looked down at her. The light from a lantern which Mrs. Carmichael, with great dexterity, had fixed among some overhanging branches, fell on the dark features, now composed and thoughtful. She met his glance in silence, with large eyes that had taken into their depths something of the surrounding shadow. He had never felt so strongly before the peculiarity of her fascination—perhaps because he had never seen her in a setting which seemed so entirely a part of herself. The distant music, the hum of voices, and that strange charm which permeates an Indian nightfall—above all, the ruined bungalow with its shattered door and silent memories—these things, with their sharp contrasts of laughter and tragedy, had formed themselves into a background which belonged to her, so that she and they seemed inseparable.

"Oh, Lois, little girl!" Stafford said gently. "I have always thought of you as standing alone, different from everything and everybody, a stranger from another world, irresistible, incomprehensible. I have just understood that you are part and parcel of it all, child of the sun and flowers and mysteries and wonders. It is I who am the stranger!"

"Hush!" she said, in a voice of curious pain. "Hush! Let us go back. We must dance—whether we will or not."

He followed her without protest. The very rustle of her muslin skirts over the fallen leaves made for his ears a new and fantastic music.

Close behind them wandered the two captains, Webb and Saunders, arm in arm. At the entrance to Colonel Carmichael's Memorial Webb stopped, and, striking a match against the door, proceeded to light his cigar. The tiny flame lit up for an instant the languid patrician features.

"A cigar is one's only comfort in a dull affair like this," he remarked, as they resumed their leisurely promenade. "Awful wine, wasn't it?"

"Awful. The Colonel is beginning to put on the curb—or his lady. It's the same thing."

"It will be better when the club comes into existence," said Webb, blowing consolatory clouds of smoke into the quiet air.

"It is to be hoped so. Spunky devil, that Travers. Wonder how he means to do the trick. He knows how to pick out a pretty partner, anyhow."

"That Cary girl? Yes. Wait till the heat has dried her up, though. She'll be a scarecrow, like the rest of them. By the way, what were her people?"

"Heaven knows—something in the D.P.W., I believe. The mother was dressed in the queerest kit."

"I heard her talking about 'the gentlemen,'" remarked Webb, laughing, as they went up the steps of the bungalow together.

The Memorial was once more left to its shadows and silence. At the edge of the compound a group of natives peered through the fencing, watching and listening. Their dark faces expressed neither hatred nor admiration, nor sorrow, nor pleasure—at most, a dull wonder.

When they were tired of watching, they passed noiselessly on their way.

CHAPTER III

NEHAL SINGH

The Royal apartment was prepared for the suffocating midday heat. Heavy hangings had been pulled across the door which led on to the balcony, and only at one small aperture the sunshine ventured to pierce through and dance its golden reflection hither and thither over the marble floor. The rest was hidden in the semi-obscurity of a starlit night, which, like a transparent veil, half conceals and half reveals an untold richness and splendor.

At either side slender Moorish pillars rose to the lofty ceiling, and from their capitals winking points of light shimmered through the shadows. Fantastic designs sprang into sudden prominence on the walls, shifting with the shifting of the sunshine, and at the far end, raised by steps from the level of the floor, stood a throne, alone marked out against the darkness by its bejeweled splendor. Of other furniture there was no trace. To the left a divan formed of silken cushions had been built up for temporary use, and on this, stretched full length on his side, lay an old man whose furrowed visage appeared doubly dark and sinister beneath the dead white of his turban. His head was half supported on a pillow, and thus at his ease he watched with unblinking, unflagging attention the tall, slight figure by the doorway.

It was the Rajah himself who had let in the one point of daylight. It fell full upon his face and set into a brilliant blaze the single diamond on the nervous, muscular hand which held the curtain aside. Apparently he had forgotten his companion, and indeed everything save the scene on which his eyes rested. Beneath the balcony, like steps to a mighty altar, broad and beautiful terraces descended in stately gradations to a paradise of rare exotic flowers, whose heavy perfume came drifting up on the calm air to the very windows of the palace. This lovely chaos extended for about a mile and then ended abruptly. As though cultivated nature had suddenly broken loose from her artificial bounds, a dark jungle-forest rose up side by side with the flowers and well-kept walks, and like a black stain spread itself into the distance, swallowing up hill and valley until the eye lost itself in the haze of the horizon. Within a few hundred yards of the palace a ruined Hindu temple lifted its dome and crumbling towers into the intense blue of the sky. And on garden, jungle, and temple alike the scorching midday sun blazed down with pitiless impartiality.

For an hour the Rajah had remained watching the unchanging scene, scarcely for an instant shifting his own position. One hand rested on his hip, the other held back the curtain and supported him in a half-leaning attitude of dreamy indolence. Against the intensified darkness of the room behind him his features stood out with the distinctness of a finely cut cameo. A man of about twenty-five years, he yet seemed younger, thanks, perhaps, to his expression, which was extraordinarily untroubled.

Thought, poetic and philosophic, but never tempestuous, sat in the dark, well-shaped eyes and high, intellectual forehead. Humor, sorrow, care, anxiety and doubt, the children of a strenuous life, had left his face singularly unscarred with their characteristic lines. For the rest, beyond that he was unusually fair, he represented in bearing and in feature a Hindu prince of high caste and noble lineage. Between him and the old man upon the divan there was no apparent resemblance. The latter was considerably darker, and lacked both the refinement of feature and dignity of expression which distinguished the younger man. Nevertheless, when he spoke it was in the tone of familiarity, almost of paternal authority.

"Art thou not weary, my son?" he asked abruptly. "For an hour thou hast neither moved nor spoken. Tell me with what thy thoughts are concerned. I would fain know, and thy face has told me nothing."

Nehal Singh let the curtain fall back into its place, and the yellow patch of sunshine upon the marble faded. He looked at his companion steadfastly, but with eyes that saw nothing.

"My thoughts!" he repeated, in a low, musical voice. "My thoughts are valueless. They are like caged birds which have beaten their wings against the bars of their cage and now sit on their golden perches and dream of the world beyond." He laughed gently. "No, my father. You, who have seen the world, would mock at them as dim, unreal reflections of a reality which you have touched and handled. For me they are beautiful enough."

The old man lifted himself on his elbow.

"Thinkest thou never of thyself?" he asked. "In thy dreams hast thou never seen thine own form rise at the call of thy waiting people?"

"My waiting people!" Nehal Singh repeated, with a smile and a faint lifting of the eyebrows. "No people wait for me, my father. So much I have learned. I bear a title, a tract of land acknowledges my rule—but a people! No, like my title, like my power, like myself, so is the people that thou sayest await me—a dream, my father, a dream!" He spoke gravely, without sadness, the same gentle, wistful smile playing about his lips.

The other sank back with a groan.

"The All-Highest pity me!" he exclaimed bitterly. "A child of blood and battle, without energy, without ambition!"

Nehal Singh, who had paced forward to the foot of the throne, turned and looked back.

"Ambition I have had," he answered, "energy I have had. Like my thoughts, they have beaten themselves weary against the bars of their cage. What would you have me do?" He strode back to the door, and, pulling aside the curtain, let the full dazzling sunshine pour in upon them. "See out there!" he cried. "Is it not a sight to bring peace to the soul of the poet and the dreamer? But for the warrior? Can he draw his sword against flowers and trees?"

The old man smiled coldly, but not without satisfaction.

"There is a world that awaiteth thee beyond," he said.

"A world of which I know nothing."

"The time cometh."

Nehal Singh studied the wrinkled face with a new intentness.

"Hitherto thou hast always held a barrier between the world and me," he said. "When the call to the Durbar came, it was thou who bade me say I was ill. When the Feringhi sought my presence, it was thou who held fast my door, first with one excuse, then with another. And now? I do not understand thee."

Behar Asor struggled up into a sitting posture, his features rendered more malignant by a glow of fierce triumph.

"Ay, the barrier has been there!" he cried. "It is I who have held it erect all these years when they thought me dead and powerless. It is I who have kept thee spotless and undefiled, Nehal Singh, thou alone of all thy race and of all thy caste! The shadow of the Unbeliever has never crossed thy man's face, his food thy lips, nor has his hand touched thy man's hand. Thou art the chosen of Brahma, and when the hour striketh and the Holy War proclaimed from east to west and from north to south, then it shall be thy sword—"

Nehal Singh held up his hand with a gesture of command.

"Thou also art a dreamer," he said firmly. "Thy heart is full of an old hatred and an old injury. My heart is free from both. Seest thou, my father, there were years when thy words called up some echo in me. Thou toldest me of the Feringhi, of the bloody battles thou foughtest against them because they had wronged thee; how, after Fortune had smiled faintly, thou wert driven into exile, and I, thy son, bereft of all save pomp and title, placed upon thy empty throne. These things made my blood boil. In those days I thought and planned for the great hour when I should seek revenge for thee and for myself. That is all past."

"Why all past?" Behar Asor demanded.

"Because the truth drifted in to me from the outer world. I saw that everywhere there was peace such as my land, even after thy account, has rarely known. Law and order reigned where there had been plundering and devastation, prosperity where there had been endless famine. More than this, I saw that in every conflict, whether between beast and beast or man and man, it was always the strongest and wisest that conquered. The triumph of the fool and weakling is but a short one, nor is the rule of crime and wickedness of long duration. Why, then, should I throw myself against a people who have brought my people prosperity, and who have proved themselves in peace and war our masters in courage and wisdom?"

Behar Asor struggled up, galvanized by a storm of passion which shook his fragile frame from head to foot.

"Thou art still no more than an ignorant boy," he exclaimed. "What knowest thou of these things?"

"I have read of Englishmen whose deeds outrival the legends of Krishna,"
Nehal Singh answered thoughtfully. "They fought in your time, my father.
Thou knowest them better than I."

The old man ground his teeth together.

"They are dead." There was a reluctant admiration in his tone.

"Nevertheless, their sons live."

"The sons inherit not always the courage of their fathers," Behar Asor answered, with a bitter significance.

Nehal Singh had wandered back to the throne, as though drawn thither by some irresistible attraction, and stood there motionless, his arms folded across his breast.

"Do not blame me," he said at last. "No man can go against himself. Were it in my power, I would do thy will. As it is, without cause or reason I can not draw my sword against men whose fathers have made my heart beat with sympathy and admiration."

Behar Asor sank back in an attitude of absolute despair.

"I am accursed!" he said.

With a smothered sigh, Nehal Singh mounted the steps and seated himself. In his attitude also there was a hopelessness—not indeed the hopelessness of a man whose plans are thwarted, but of one who is keenly conscious that he has no plans, no goal, no purpose. As he sat there, his fine head thrown back against the white ivory, his eyes half closed, his fingers loosely clasping the golden peacocks' heads which formed the arms of his throne, there was, as he had said, something dreamlike and unreal about his whole person, intensified perhaps by the dim atmosphere and shadowy splendor of his surroundings.

Behar Asor had ceased to watch him, but lay motionless, with his face covered by the white mantle which he wore about his shoulders. The first storm of angry disappointment over, he had relapsed into a passive oriental acceptance of the inevitable, which did not, however, exclude an undercurrent of bitter brooding and contempt.

Some time passed before either of the two men spoke. At last Behar Asor lifted his head and glanced quickly sidewise at the figure seated on the throne. Nehal Singh's eyes were now entirely closed and seemed to sleep. Such a proceeding would have been excusable enough in the suffocating heat, but the sight drove the old man into a fresh paroxysm of indignation.

"Sleepest thou, Nehal Singh?" he demanded, in a harsh, rasping voice. "Is it not sufficient that thou hast failed thy destiny, but in the same hour thou must close thine eyes and dream, like a child on whose shoulders rest no duty, no responsibility? Awake! I have more to say to thee."

Nehal Singh looked up.

"I have not slept," he said gravely, "though, as to what concerns duty and responsibility, I might well have done so, for I have neither the one nor the other. Speak, I pray thee. I listen."

Behar Asor remained silent a moment, biting his forefinger. There was something in the action strongly reminiscent of a cunning, treacherous animal.

"Thou hast laughed at thine own power," he said at last, "though I have sworn to thee that, as in my time, so today, the swords that sleep in a hundred thousand sheathes would awake at thy word. They sleep because thou sleepest. Well—thou hast willed to sleep. I can not force thee, and mine own hand has grown too feeble. But since thou hast chosen peace, remember this, that it can last only with thy lifetime. So long thy people will be patient. Afterward—" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.

"Thou hast more to tell me," Nehal Singh said.

"If thou wilt keep peace in thy land, see to it that thou hast children who will carry it on for thee after thou hast passed into the shadow," Behar answered. "Hitherto thou hast led a strange and lonely life, preparing as I willed for the destiny thou hast cast aside. Take now unto thee a companion—a wife."

As though clumsy, untutored fingers which had until now tortured some fine instrument had suddenly, perhaps by chance, perhaps by instinct, struck a pure harmonious chord, Nehal Singh rose to his feet, his weary dreamer's face transfigured with a new light and new energy.

"A wife!" he said under his breath. "A woman! I know nothing of women. In all my life I have seen but two—my mother and a nautch-girl—who cringed to me. I should not like my wife to cringe to me. Are there not such as could be my companion, my comrade? Or are they all servile slaves?"

Behar Asor laughed shortly and contemptuously.

"They are our inferiors," he said, "hence they can not be more than companions for our idle hours. But you will have idle hours enough, and there would be many who would call themselves blessed to share themselves with thee. A great alliance—"

Nehal Singh interrupted him with the old gesture of authority.

"Thou hast said enough, my father," he said. "I will think upon it. Until then—leave me my peace."

With a slow, meditative step he went back to the curtained doorway and, pulling aside the hangings, went out on to the balcony. It was four o'clock, and already the heat of the day had broken. Long rays of sunlight struck eastward across the garden and touched with their faded golden fingers the topmost turrets of the temple. In the distance the shadows of the jungle had advanced and, like the waves of a rising tide, seemed to swallow up, step by step, the brightness of the prospect. Nehal Singh descended the winding stair that led to the first terrace. Thence three paths stretched themselves before him. He chose the central one, and with bowed head passed between the high, half-wild, half-cultivated borders of plants and shrubs. A faint evening breeze breathed its intangible perfume against his cheek, and he looked up smiling.

"A woman!" he murmured dreamily. "A woman!"

CHAPTER IV

CIRCE

The dominion over which Rajah Nehal Singh exercised his partial authority was a tract of unfruitful land extending over about two hundred square miles and sparely inhabited by a branch of the Aryan race which through countless generations had kept itself curiously aloof from its neighbors. The greater number were Hindus of the strictest type, and perhaps owing to their natural conservatism they had succeeded in keeping their religion comparatively free from the abuses and distortions which it was forced to undergo in other regions. Up to the year 18—the state had been to all practical purposes independent. Its poverty and unusual integral cohesion made it at once a dangerous enemy and an undesirable dependent, which it was tacitly agreed to let alone until such time when action should become imperative. That time had come under the reign of Behar Asor—then Behar Singh. This prince, who, his followers declared, could trace his descent from Brahma himself, unexpectedly, after he had been living in hand-in-glove friendship with his European neighbors, proclaimed a Holy War, massacred all foreigners within his reach, and for eighteen long months succeeded, by means of a species of guerrilla warfare, in keeping the invading armies at bay. Partly owing to the unflagging determination of the English troops, partly owing also to the intense hatred with which he was regarded by all Mohammedans, he was eventually overcome, though he himself was never captured. It was believed that he died while fleeing through the vast jungles with which his land was overgrown, and this idea was strengthened by the fact that, though a large reward for his capture was offered, nothing further had ever been heard of him.

From that time the land came under the more or less direct control of the Government. As a concession to the population, Behar Singh's one-year-old son was placed upon the throne under a native regency, but English regiments were stationed at the chief towns, and a political agent resided at the capital. Neither the regiments nor the political agent, however, found any work for their hands to do. A calm, as unexpected as it was complete, seemed to descend upon the whole country, and the officers who had taken up their posts with a loaded revolver in each hand, figuratively speaking, began very quickly to relapse instead into pig-sticking, polo and cards.

The climate was moderate, the vegetation beautiful if unprofitable, and the sport excellent. Thus it came about that a danger spot on the map of the Indian Empire became a European paradise, and that to be ordered to Marut was to become an object of envious congratulations. Not, as Mr. Archibald Travers had with justice complained, that the reigning prince, as in other states, took any part in the general gaiety or in any way enhanced the agreeableness of his capital. As far as was known, no European eyes had ever lighted on him since his childhood. Under one excuse and another he had been kept persistently in the background, his place being taken first by the regent and then by succeeding ministers, until it was generally supposed that the young Rajah was either afflicted with some loathsome disease or mentally deficient, probabilities which the Government, with unpleasant recollections of Behar Singh's too great intelligence, accepted with unusual readiness. There were no causes for suspicion. The Rajah never left the precincts of his palace garden, a piece of land whose cultivation had cost untold sums, and which, together with the Hindu temple, was supposed to stand as the eighth wonder of the world. Fabulous stories were told of the beauty and rarity of the vegetation, and of the value of the jewels which were supposed to decorate the temple and royal apartments. As there was no opportunity of confirming or refuting the statements, they were allowed to grow unhindered.

It was in this small sphere that Nehal Singh spent his childhood, his youth and early manhood. Of the outer world he had seen nothing, though he had read much, his education extending over all European history and penetrating deep into that of his own country. Nevertheless, the picture his mind had formed had little in common with the reality—it was too overshadowed by his own character. As a blind man may be able, through hearsay, to describe his surroundings detail by detail and yet at the bottom be possessed by an entirely false conception, so Nehal Singh, to all appearances well instructed, was in reality as ignorant as a child. The heroes whose figures peopled his imagination were too heroic, the villains too evil, and both heroes and villains were either physically beautiful or hideous, according to their characters.

He had no comrade against whose practical experience he might have rubbed this distorted picture into a more truthful likeness. His only companions had been his native instructors and the priests—men separated from him by a gulf of years and a curious lack of sympathy which he had in vain striven to overcome. Thus he had been intensely lonely, more lonely than he knew, though some dawning realization crept over him on this particular evening as he passed through the temple gates. For a moment he stood with his hands crossed over his breast, absorbed in prayer to Brahma, the Creator, in whose presence he was about to stand. In such an hour, amidst the absolute stillness, under the stupendous shadows of the walls, which had, unchanging, seen generation after generation of worshipers drift from their altars into the deeper shades of Patala, the young prince felt the wings of divine spirits brush close past him, bearing his prayer on unseen hands to the very ear of the golden-faced Trinity who, from his earliest years, had seemed to look down upon him with solemn kindness.

This evening, more perhaps than ever before, every fiber in him vibrated beneath the touch of the holy charm, and the prayer which passed soundlessly over his lips came from a soul that worshiped in fiery earnestness and truth. A minute passed as he stood there, then, removing his shoes, he stepped over the threshold and walked forward between the gigantic granite columns which supported what was left of the dome-shaped roof. There was no altar, no jewel, no figure cut in the hard stone that was not known to him with all their mysterious significance. Here had been spent all his leisure hours; here had been dreamed his wildest dreams; beneath this column he had seen as in a vision how Vishnu took nine times human form and a tenth time came, according to the Holy Writings, with a winged horse of spotless white, and crowned as conqueror.

To-day these things pressed down upon him with all the weight of a tremendous reality. With beating heart he entered at last into the Holy of Holies and stood before the god's high altar, visible only to those of purest caste. His head was once more bowed. He did not venture to look up at the golden figure whose ruby eyes, he knew, stared straight through his soul into every corner of the world and beyond into Eternity. His belief, pure, unsoiled from contact with the world, was a power that had gone out into the darkness and conjured thence the spirits that shrank back from the cold prayer of the half-believer. They stood before him now—these wonderful spirits. He believed surely that, should he dare to raise his eyes, he would see them, definite yet formless, arising glorious out of the cloud of golden reflection from Brahma's threefold forehead.

Thus he prayed, not kneeling, since the god cared only for his soul:

"Oh, Lord Brahma, Creator, hear me! Thou who madest me knowest whither I came and whither I go; but I, who am as the wind that bloweth as thou listeth, as a flower that springeth up in the night and unseen fadeth in the midday heat, I know not thy purpose nor the end for which I am. Lord Brahma, teach me, for my soul panteth after knowledge. Show me the path which I must tread, for I am weary with dreams. Teach me to serve my people—be it hand in hand with the Stranger and his gods, be it alone. Teach me to act, and that right soon; for my childhood days are spent and my man's arm heavy with idleness. Send me forth—but not alone—not alone, Lord Brahma, for I am heart-sick of loneliness. Give me my comrade, my comrade who shall be more to me than—"

He stopped and, obeying an impulse stronger than himself, lifted his face to the idol. It had vanished. In its place stood a woman.

At another and cooler moment, with a mind filled with other thoughts, with a heart untroubled by new and all-powerful emotions, he would have known her, if only from hearsay, for what she was. But with that passionate prayer upon his lips, she was for him the answer, a divine recognition of his need and of his lately recognized loneliness.

Tall, slender, with a pale, transparent complexion, touched like a young rose with the faintest color, dark, grave eyes and hair that seemed a part of the obscured god, whose pure lines, though foreign, harmonized in every detail with the classic beauty of her surroundings, she stood and watched him, as he watched her, in perfect silence.

"Lakshmi!" he murmured at last; and, as though the one word had broken a charm which held them both paralyzed, she smiled, and the smile lit up the Madonna face and made it as human as it had seemed divine.

[Illustration: "Lakshmi!" he murmured at last.]

"Forgive me," she began, speaking in English, "I am afraid I have disturbed you, but—" She paused, apparently confused by the directness of his gaze. The faint pink upon her cheek deepened.

"Who are you?" he demanded in his own tongue.

Her look of non-comprehension steadied him, at least outwardly, though it did not check the fierce, painful beating of his pulses. He repeated the question in pure though hesitating English.

"I am an Englishwoman," she answered at once, "and have lost my way. For hours—it seems hours, at any rate—I have been wandering hither and thither, trying to find my party, with whom I was enjoying an excursion. By some chance I came across this temple, and hoped to meet some one who might help me. You see, I am a stranger in this part of the world. I—I hope I have done no wrong?"

She looked at him pleadingly, but he ignored her question. It never occurred to him to doubt her explanation, or wonder at the unlikeliness of the chance which should have led her through the intricate paths to this hallowed spot.

"You are English?" he echoed. The fever in his blood was subsiding, but, like some great crisis, it was leaving him changed. It had swept him out of the world of languorous, enchanted dreams into a world of not less enchanted reality.

"I fear I am presumptuous," she began again; "but are you not the Rajah? If so, I am certain you must be very, very angry. For the Rajah—so I have been told—does not love the English."

She smiled again, meeting his unwavering gaze with a frank good-humor which for him was more wonderful even than her beauty. No woman—and for that matter, no man—had ever dared to look him in the eyes with such a laughing, fearless challenge.

"Yes, I am the Rajah," he answered. Then, after a pause, he added with great simplicity, "You are very beautiful."

She laughed outright, and the laugh, which rang like the peal of a silver bell through the vaulted chamber, filled him with a sudden sense of her danger. She stood with her back turned indifferently on the golden image, an Unbeliever whose shod feet were defiling the sacred precincts, an object, then, for hatred and revenge—not for him, truly. In his eyes she was still an emissary from Brahma, and thus in herself half sacred; but he knew well enough that such would not be the opinion of the few fierce priests who worshiped in the temple.

"You are not safe here," he said, with an energy which was new to him.
"Come!"

He led her hurriedly out of the sanctuary into the great entrance hall.
There he slackened speed and waited until she reached his side.

"For a foreigner it is not safe to enter the temple," he explained. "Had any one but myself found you, I could not answer for the consequences."

"They would have harmed me?"

"It is possible."

"That would have been terrible!" she said, glancing at him with eyes that expressed rather a daring courage than fear.

"Most terrible," he assented earnestly.

"Yet—you also, Your Highness, you have also the same reasons for anger. My intrusion, innocent though it was, must have been equally offensive to you."

"No," he said. "That is quite different."

He offered no further explanation, and together they passed out of the two immense gopuras into the evening sunshine.

"I will bring you to the gates which lead on to the highroad," he went on. "Thence one of my servants will conduct you back to the town, where I trust you will find your friends."

"You are most good," she answered gratefully.

They walked side by side between the high walls of cypress and palm. The path was a narrow one, and once his hand brushed lightly against hers. The touch sent a flood of fire through his young veins. He drew back with a courtesy which surprised himself. He had never been taught that courtesy toward a woman could ever be required of him. Of women he had heard little save that they were inferior, in intellect and judgment no more than slaves, and his curiosity had at once been satiated. He sought things above him—those beneath him excited no more than indifference. But this woman was neither an inferior nor a slave. Her free, erect carriage, steadfast, fearless eyes proclaimed the equal. So much his instinct taught him in those brief moments, and his eager curiosity concerning her grew and deepened. Every now and again his gaze sought her face, drinking in with an almost passionate thirst the fine detail of her profile, compared to which his dreams were poor and lifeless. Once it chanced that she also glanced at him, and that they looked at each other for less than a breathing space full in the eyes.

"I fear you are angry, Your Highness," she said earnestly. "I must have offended against your laws even more than I know."

"Why do you think I am angry?" he asked.

"You have scarcely spoken."

"Forgive me! That is no sign of anger. I am still overcome with the strangeness of it all. You are the first English person I have ever met."

She stood still, with an exclamation of surprise.

"Is that possible? I thought all Indian princes mixed with English people.
Many, indeed, go to England to be educated—"

"So I have heard," he broke in, with a faint haughtiness. "I am not one of them."

"Yet you speak the language so perfectly!" she said.

A gleam of naive pleasure shone out of his dark eyes.

"I am glad you think so. My—one of my ministers taught me."

They walked on again. Here and there she stopped to look at some curious plant—always a little in advance of him—so that he had opportunity to study the hundred things about her which confirmed his wondering, increasing admiration. Slight as she was, there was yet a gracefully controlled strength in every movement. In his own mind, poor as it necessarily was in comparisons, he compared her to a young doe he had once startled from its resting-place. There was the same fragile beauty, the same grace, the same high-strung energy. In nothing was she like the women painted for him by his father's hand—things for idle, sensuous pleasure, never for serious action.

Plunged in a happy confusion of thought, he had once more relapsed into silence, from which she startled him with a question evidently connected with their previous conversation.

"And so you have lived all your life in this lovely garden?" she said, looking up at him with a grave wonder in her eyes.

"All my life," he answered.

"You have never seen anything of the world?"

"Never." He felt the pity in her tone, and added, with a shamefacedness curiously in contrast with his former hauteur: "But I have read much."

"That is not the same thing," she returned. "No book could make you understand how wonderful and beautiful things are."

He looked at her, and for a second time their eyes met.

"You are right," he said. "Hitherto I have thought myself all-wise. I have studied hard, and I believed there was nothing I did not know. Now I see that there are wonders in the world of which I have never even dreamed."

Her glance wavered beneath the undisguised admiration in his eyes and voice. Then she asked gently:

"Now that you have seen, will you not leave your hermitage? Surely it is wrong to shut one's heart against the world in which one lives. There is so much work to be done, so much to learn, and you have been granted power and wealth, Your Highness. The call upon your help is greater than upon others."

His brows knitted.

"Do you hate us so?" she asked.

"Hate you?" he repeated wonderingly. "Why should I hate you?"

"Yet, from your tone, I judged that you had kept seclusion because intercourse with my country-people meant defilement," she said boldly.

A flush crept up under his dark skin.

"Those are things I can not explain," he said; "but they have nothing to do with hatred. I have heard much of the English heroes. Their deeds of daring and self-sacrifice have filled my heart with love and veneration. I know that they are the greatest and noblest people of the earth. I love great and noble people. I do not hate them."

"I am glad," she said.

They had reached the gates which opened out on to the highroad, and as though by mutual consent both came to a standstill.

"Your Highness has been most good to me," she went on. "I can find my way perfectly now. I am only puzzled to know how I should ever have lost it so much as to have wandered into your garden."

"Some sentry must have slept," he remarked grimly.

"But you will not punish any one?"

"Whoever it was, he was only the servant of destiny, like us all," he said. "No harm shall come to him." He paused, and then added with a slight effort: "One of the sentries shall accompany you."

"No, no," she answered energetically. "That is not necessary. I would rather go alone."

He pointed upward to the sky, whose blue was deepening into the violet shades of night.

"It will be dark before you reach your destination," he said. "Are you not afraid?"

She laughed merrily.

"Of what should I be afraid? There are no maneaters about here, as I understand. As for men, I am prepared to encounter at least six of them. Look!" She drew from the bosom of her dress a small revolver of exquisite workmanship, and held it out to him. "It has all six chambers loaded," she added.

He took the weapon, pretending to examine it; but his pulses had recommenced their painful beating, and he saw nothing but her face.

"Are all Englishwomen so brave and beautiful?"

This time she did not laugh at the simplicity of the question.

"Come and see," she answered boldly. He said nothing, and she went on: "At any rate, I must go now. My people will be very anxious, and I have so much to tell them. They will envy me the privilege I have enjoyed of seeing your wonderful gardens. I shall tell them how kind you have been to a foolish wanderer."

"If the gardens please you, they are always open to you," he said.

She shook her head sadly.

"I am afraid it is not possible. You see, I could not come alone. Propriety will forgive me this once, because it was an accident—a second time, and my reputation would be gone for ever." She held out her hand frankly. "So it must be good-by for ever!"

An instant he hesitated, torn between a deep ingrained principle and desire. Then he took the small hand in his own.

"It will not be good-by for ever," he said. "We shall meet again."

"I should be glad. We have been quite good friends, haven't we? But you see, you will be in a garden into which I may not enter, and I in a world which for you is forbidden ground. I am afraid there is no hope."

"Nevertheless, we shall meet again," he repeated.

"Why are you so certain?"

He smiled dreamily.

"Nothing in this world happens without purpose," he answered. "So much my books and eyes have taught me. We do not drift aimlessly into each other's lives. We are borne on the breast of a strong current which flows out of the river of Fate, and whether we meet for good or evil is according to the will of God. But of one thing I am sure: it must be for good or evil."

For a moment she said nothing. Her face was turned away from him, and when at last she spoke, her voice had lost something of its daring certainty.

"I hope, then, our meeting is for our good," she said.

"I feel that it is," he answered.

He led her past the bewildered, terrified sentry on to the grey, dusty highroad. It was the first time that his feet had crossed the threshold.

"I shall watch you till you are out of sight," he said. "Good-by."

"Good-by—and thank you!"

According to his word, he stood where she had left him, his eyes fixed immovably, like those of a bronze statue, on the slight, elastic figure, as it hurried toward the lights of the distant Station. When at last the purple mist had swallowed her from his sight, he looked up toward the heavens.

Just where the mist ended and the clear sky began, the evening star rose in its first splendor and shone through the dry atmosphere, signaling to its fellows that night was come. One by one others followed. As time passed, the moon in a cloud of silver lifted herself in stately progress above the black outline of the jungle and touched with her first beams the filigree minarets of the temple.

Nehal Singh bowed his head in prayer.

"Oh, Lord Brahma, I thank thee!"

A short-lived breath of evening air caught up the passionate murmur of his voice and mingled it with the rustling of the Sacred Tree whose restless, shimmering, silver leaves hung above his head. He understood their whisper as he listened. It was the accents of the god to whom he prayed, and all the poetic mysticism of his nature responded to the call.

"Oh, Lord Brahma, Creator, I thank thee!" he repeated; then turned, and with head still bowed, passed back through the high marble gates.

CHAPTER V

ARCHIBALD TRAVERS PLAYS BRIDGE

The ayah put the last touches to Beatrice Cary's golden hair, drew back a little to judge the general effect, and then handed her mistress the handglass.

"Is that well so, missy?" she asked. "Missy look wonderful to-night—wonderful!"

Beatrice examined herself carefully and critically, without any show of impatience. Only a close observer would have noticed that her eyes had the strained, concentrated look of a person whose thoughts are centered elsewhere than on the immediate subject.

"Yes, that will do," she assented, after a moment. "You have done extra well to-night. You can go."

"Not help missy with dress?"

"No, you can go. I shall only want you again when I come back."

The ayah fidgeted with the garments that lay scattered about the room, but an imperative gesture hastened her exit, and she slipped silently from the room, drawing the curtains after her.

Beatrice watched her departure in the glass, and then, turning in her chair, looked at the languid, exhausted figure upon the couch.

"Now, if you have anything to say, mother, say it," she said. "We are quite alone."

"I have a great deal to say," Mrs. Cary began, in a tone of extreme injury, "and first of all, I must ask you not to interrupt me in the way you did just now before the—the what-do-you-call-it?—the ayah. I can not and will not stand being corrected before my own servants."

"I did not correct you," Beatrice returned coldly. "I stopped you from making disclosures to ears which know enough English to understand more than is good for either of us, and whose discretion is on a par with that of our late friend, Mary Jane. It seems impossible to make you realize that English is not a dead language."

"You are very rude to me!" Mrs. Cary protested, in high, quavering tones that threatened tears. "Very rude! Beatrice, you ought to be ashamed—"

"I am not rude. I am only telling you the simple truth."

"Well, then, you are not respectful."

"Respectful!" The reiteration was accompanied with a laugh which brought into use all the harsh, unpleasing notes in the girl's voice. She turned away from her mother, and with one white elbow resting on the dressing-table, began to play idly with the silver ornaments. "No, I suppose I am not respectful," she went on calmly. "I think we are too intimate for that, mother. We know each other too well, and have spoken about things too plainly. People, I imagine, only retain the respect of their fellow-creatures so long as they keep themselves and their projects a haloed mystery. That isn't our case. There are no haloes or mysteries between us, are there?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Cary declared plaintively.
"There are moments, Beatrice, when I think you talk nonsense."

"I am sure you do!" An ironical smile played an instant round the small mouth, then she went on calmly: "Let us put our personal grievances against each other aside, mother. Revenons a nos moutons. You were saying, when I interrupted you, that you were afraid of Mr. Travers. Why?"

"Why! You know as well as I do. I recognized him at once, and the sight of his face nearly gave me a heart stroke. Of course you remember him. He gave evidence against your poor, dear father when—"

Beatrice Cary held up her hand.

"That is one of the advantages of having discarded the mystery and halo," she said. "We do not need to go into any details concerning ourselves or the past. I know quite well to what you refer. To be quite honest, I did recognize him, only I did not let him see that I did."

"And then you ask why I am afraid!"

"I fail to see what harm he can do us."

"He can tell the truth."

Beatrice Cary rose and began to slip into the white silk dress which hung across the back of her chair.

"The truth!" she said meditatively. "That is something, mother, of which, I fear, you and I will never rid ourselves. It has chased us out of England and out of all possible parts of Europe; and, large though India is, it seems already to have tracked us down. It has a good nose for fugitives, apparently."

Mrs. Cary sat up, mopping her florid face free from tears of irritability.

"You will drive me mad one of these days!" she cried. "You laugh at everything. You laugh even at this, though it concerns our whole future here—"

"Excuse me for interrupting you again. I take the matter very much to heart—so much so that there are moments when I am thoroughly weary of it, and feel inclined to write on a large placard: 'Here standeth Beatrice McConnel, alias Cary, daughter of the—'"

"Be silent!" broke in the elder woman furiously. "Do you really want the whole Station to be taken into our confidence?"

"I am sorry!" with half-sincere, half-mocking contrition. "I am as bad as you are. But, as I say, there are times when I should like to shriek the truth in the world's face, and see what it would do. I don't think anything could be worse than our present life."

"If you did anything of the sort, I should take poison," Mrs. Cary declared.

"No, you wouldn't. We should move on to another continent, and try our luck there, that's all. It's the very futility of truth-telling which prevents me from experimenting in that direction. Perhaps, as you suggest, Mr. Travers will take the task from my shoulders."

Mrs. Cary rose to her feet and came ponderously over to her daughter's side. Her voice, when she spoke, was troubled with genuine emotion.

"Beatrice," she said, "I don't ask respect of you—I don't suppose it would be any sort of good if I did. You haven't any respect in you. But at any rate have some consideration for me. You needn't make my life worse than it is. It's no use your saying to me, 'Give up the money, and hide your head.' I can't. I never could hide my head, and at the bottom I don't believe you could either. It's the way we are made. Ever since I was a little child, and played about in my father's shop, I wanted people to bow down to me and respect me. I meant that one day they should. When I married they did—for a time at least. When the crash came, and—and all the shame, I just ran away from it. I couldn't have done anything else. Ever since then I have been trying to build things up elsewhere, and I had to have money for it. You can't blame me, Beatrice. You aren't any better. You always want to be first in your singing and your painting, you always want the best of what's going. You always want to be admired and successful in everything you do. You take after me in that." A note of curious pride crept into her voice. "So it's just like this, Beatrice—I can't live without position. I may not take poison, but I shall die all the same if I can't play a part in the world. All I ask is that you help me all you can. It's not much. I've been a pretty decent mother to you. You can't say that there was ever a time when I grudged you a pretty frock or a dance—" She stopped in her long speech, yielding to Beatrice's irrepressible gesture of impatience.

"You needn't have gone into so much explanation," the girl said, fastening a small diamond pendant round her white neck. "I know you and I know myself. As to my gratitude, I am fully aware of what I owe you, and am ready to pay. What do you want me to do?"

"Don't go against me."

"I haven't done so yet. I don't mean to. As far as I can recollect, I've pulled us both out of as many scrapes as you have landed us into," Beatrice replied.

"I know. That's why I want you to do your best now."

"To do what?"

"To keep Marut tolerable for us."

"I can't prevent Mr. Travers gossiping if he wants to."

A smile flitted over Mrs. Cary's fat face, robbing it of its good-nature and leaving it merely vulgarly cunning.

"You could if you wanted to."

"How?"

"Oh, you know! You have a way with men. You could shut his mouth."

Beatrice laughed outright.

"There are moments when you betray your origin in the most painful way, mother," she said cruelly. "A remark like that in Mrs. Carmichael's hearing, and we should find Marut too hot for us without any assistance from Mr. Travers."

"I'm sorry," Mrs. Cary apologized humbly. "It slipped out. What I meant was, that I am sure you could manage him. And you know you could, Beatrice."

Beatrice looked at her reflection in the glass. There was little feminine vanity in the glance—rather a cool judging and appraising, untempered with any personal prejudice.

"I suppose I could," she admitted.

"Won't you?"

"Would it make you very happy?"

"It would be my first moment's real peace since I saw Mr. Travers at the garden-party."

"Well, I'll do my best."

"You promise?"

"Yes, I'll promise if you want me to."

Mrs. Cary drew a deep sigh of relief.

"That's one thing about you, you keep your promises, Beatrice," she said.

"It is rather curious, under the circumstances, isn't it?" the younger woman returned, submitting to the mother's grateful embrace with an indifference which seemed to indicate more than an indifference—rather a stoic, smothered antipathy. When it was over, and Mrs. Cary had once more ensconced herself on the lounge, Beatrice shook her shoulders as though thrusting something intensely disagreeable away from her.

"In any case, it may be too late," she said, putting the finishing touches to her toilet. "If Mr. Travers meant to tell, he has probably done so already. I shall be able to judge by Mrs. Carmichael's hand-shake to-night."

"We must hope for the best," returned Mrs. Cary, with pious resignation.

The two women relapsed into silence. Beatrice hovered lightly about the room, collecting her fan, handkerchief and gloves, every now and again casting the same curious, unloving glance at herself in the long mirror. Presently she went to the window and pulled aside the muslin curtain.

"Some one is driving up the avenue," she said. "It's a dog-cart. I wonder who it is."

"A dog-cart!" Mrs. Cary repeated thoughtfully. "Now, who has a dog-cart in
Marut? Not many people, I fancy." A dull flush mounted her coarse cheeks.
"Why," she exclaimed, "I believe Mr. Travers has!"

Beatrice dropped the curtain back into its place.

"That would be a coincidence, wouldn't it?" she remarked, with a faint irony from which her tone had never been wholly free.

A minute later the ayah entered the room.

"Travers Sahib is here," she announced. "He asks if missy drive with him to the Colonel Sahib in his cart. Travers Sahib waiting."

Beatrice and her mother exchanged glances.

"Very well," Beatrice then said quietly. "Tell Travers Sahib I shall be delighted. Paul need not bring round the carriage."

The ayah retired, and with an undisturbed calm Beatrice proceeded to slip into her evening cloak.

"At any rate, he hasn't spoken yet," she said. "Fate seems to mean well with you, mother."

"It all depends on you, Beatrice," the other returned impressively.

"Do you think so? Well, I have half-an-hour's drive before me—tete-a-tete. I dare say I shall manage. Good night!" She patted her mother lightly on the hand as she passed her on the way to the door.

"Good-by, my dear. Do your best, won't you?"

"Haven't I been brought up to do my best?" Beatrice answered with a laugh.

She hurried on to the verandah which faced out on the drive, the ayah accompanying her with numerous wraps and shawls. Archibald Travers, who had remained seated, greeted her with a cheerful wave of the whip.

"Please excuse my getting down, Miss Cary," he said. "My horse is in a state of mind which does not allow for politeness. Can you trust yourself to his tender care?"

"I am not in the least nervous," she answered, scrambling up to his side, "and a drive through this lovely air is worth a few risks. I was dreading the half-hour alone in our stuffy brougham."

"I'm glad I came, then," he said. "I heard that Mrs. Cary was ill and could not go, but I was not sure whether you would care for it. There, are you tucked in all right? Can we start?"

"Yes, by all means."

He cracked his whip, and immediately the impatient chestnut sprang forward into the darkness. They swayed dangerously through the compound gates on to the broad, straight highroad.

Beatrice laughed with excitement.

"That was splendid!" she exclaimed, pulling her cloak closer round her.
"How well you drive!"

"You seem to enjoy danger," he said, with an amused smile.

"Yes, I enjoy it," she answered, more gravely. "It is the only flavoring which I have hitherto discovered in life. The rest is rather insipid, don't you think?"

"You talk like a man," he said.

"I have been brought up to be independent and fight for myself," she returned. "That sort of thing does away with the principal differences between the sexes."

As she spoke they dashed suddenly into an avenue of high trees through whose branches the moonlight played fantastic, uncanny shadows on the white road. Travers' horse shied violently, and for some minutes his work was cut out for him in pacifying the excited animal. When they were once more bowling smoothly over the open plain, he glanced down at the girl beside him.

She was smiling to herself.

"You have nerve!" he remarked admiringly.

"I have lots more when it is wanted," she answered, looking up at him. The light struck full on their faces, and they could read each other's expressions as clearly as if it had been midday.

"How much farther is it at the rate we are going?" she asked.

"Another twenty minutes."

"Another twenty minutes!" she repeated thoughtfully. "That is quite a long time, isn't it?"

He flicked his whip across the horse's ears.

"Yes, and I'm glad," he said. "Otherwise, I shouldn't have seen much of you. I happen to know that I am taking in Miss Caruthers to dinner, and dinner takes up most of the evening at these functions."

"You are taking in Lois Caruthers!" she said, laughing. "I know of some one who will be annoyed."

"Stafford, you mean?"

"And Lois herself."

He joined in her amusement.

"Yes, I suppose so."

"You have a good-natured hostess. I dare say the arrangement could be altered if you wished it."

"But I don't. They happen to be my arrangements, you see."

"Oh!" she ejaculated, somewhat taken back.

"On my left there will be Mrs. James, who, as you perhaps know, is stone deaf," he went on calmly. "On Miss Caruthers' right will be Mr. James, who from long custom never opens his mouth except to put something into it. Stafford will be right at the other end of the table."

"You are malicious," she said.

"Not a bit. I only go hard for what I want, that's all." He chuckled to himself and then went on: "I've confided to you my subtle underground plans—why, goodness knows. I'm not usually of a confiding nature. But really, Miss Cary, I feel as though I had known you all my life."

"We have already plotted together," she said. "Possibly that forms some sort of link between us."

He glanced down at her, and this time, as she did not return his gaze, he was free to study her calm, undisturbed profile.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, half under his breath, "I don't blame the young fool for being taken in."

Her brows contracted sharply.

"Thank you. I suppose that is a compliment."

"It is meant for one. By the way, are you really sure of your success?"

"Perfectly sure."

"That's a good thing. We shall have the laugh over old Stafford and his grandmother's ideas if it comes off. All I fear is that the youth's impressionable mind may lose its impressions as quickly as it receives them."

"I don't think so. He did not seem that sort."

"Besides," added Travers, with a sudden drawl, "your face is not one that a man forgets easily, Miss Cary."

She stirred very slightly in her seat. It was the instinctive movement of a woman bracing herself secretly for a coming shock.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. That was what I meant to tell you the other day, but there was no fitting opportunity. I recognized you at once."

"And I you," she returned.

He whistled.

"So we recognized each other and didn't recognize each other. Rather a queer thing, eh?"

Again there was that scarcely noticeable stiffening of her whole body.

"I see nothing queer about it. We were both taken aback, and after the first shock we realized that to acknowledge a previous meeting was not to either of our advantages. You were ashamed; and I—well, you can guess my reasons."

"By Jove! You know, you really are plucky!" he burst out, with genuine admiration.

"Thank you. You have intimated that to me already, and, as a matter of fact, there is no question of pluck. I'm taking the bull by the horns because I must. Mr. Travers, I can't live in the same place with you and not know if you are going to explode the mine under our feet or not. I may have nerve, but I haven't got nerve enough for that."

"I see. You want to know whether I am going to gossip or hold my tongue.
Is that it?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Suppose I gossip?"

"I see no reason why you should be our enemy, so I don't mind admitting to you that it would spoil our plans."

"What may they be?"

"Firstly, to get clear of everything that has happened. We've tried to do that in different places all over Europe, without success. Something or somebody has always cropped up and driven us away. It was just as though every one least concerned in the matter had made up their minds to track us down. At last mother thought of India, and of Marut in particular. My father held a small post somewhere about here before we left for England, and we make out that it is tender associations and all that sort of thing. Of course, we might be found out any day, but perhaps people are not so curious out here, and it gives us a rest."

"Might I ask why you take all this trouble?"

"I was going to tell you. Because my mother wants what she calls position—she wants to mix with the best. We couldn't do that in England, for the reasons I have given you. As for me—I fulfil my destiny. I am seeking a suitable husband."

He drew in his breath in something that was not unlike a gasp.

"My dear Miss Cary, do you know what the world—particularly the woman world—would call you?"

"Does call me, you mean? Of course. An adventuress."

"To be quite frank, you've hit it. But I don't. I call you a jolly extraordinary and clever woman."

"Please don't pay me compliments," she said coldly. "My cleverness—if I have any—is not more than that of any hunted animal who seeks cover where best he can. As to my being extraordinary, I do not see that you have any reason to call me so. You might as well say that it is extraordinary when a weed springs up where a weed has been sown—"

"Or a flower," he interposed suavely.

She sank back in her seat, saying nothing. Her silence was a weary sort of protest.

Travers pulled out his watch with his free hand.

"We have only five minutes more," he said. "We are splendidly up to time. I tell you what, Miss Cary—you can eat Colonel Carmichael's dinner in peace." She looked quickly at him. "I mean that I shall hold my tongue. I don't know that I ever intended doing anything else. I am not responsible to society, and in any case, no direct blame for the past can attach itself to you. As it is, after your confidence, I give you my word that I'll do my best to see you through here. You deserve it, and I have always had a sneaking sympathy for the hunted fox and the much-abused weed. You can be quite easy in your mind."

"Thank you," she said without much warmth.

"I have only one condition—" he went on, and then hesitated.

"I was waiting for that," she said.

He laughed good-naturedly.

"You know me very well already."

"I know men," she retorted.

"Well, then, I have a condition. Please don't look upon me as a sort of blackmailer. If you don't choose to agree to the condition, you needn't. I shan't on that account go round gossiping about your affairs. At the same time, I expect you would rather drive a fair and square bargain with me than be in any way in my debt."

"You are quite right," she said quickly.

"My condition is merely this: I want you, if the time and opportunity ever present themselves, to lend me a hand with my plans. I confess privately to you I have one or two irons in the fire up at Marut, and that it is pretty hard work single-handed. You are a clever woman, say what you like, and your help would be invaluable."

"In what way?"

"I will put it as short as possible. You know, Miss Cary, I am not a rich man, but I have got some big ideas and one at least of them requires wealth to be carried out. I have every reason to believe that considerable mineral treasure lies buried under the native Bazaar in Marut, but I can do nothing unless some one comes to my assistance both with authority and money. The Rajah is the very man, if only I can get him interested in my project. Will you help me?"

"As I have gone so far I might as well go on," she assented indifferently.

"Thanks. Then there is something else—I want to marry Lois Caruthers."

Beatrice started and looked up at him as though she thought he might be joking. His face had indeed undergone a change, but there was something stern, resolute, almost brutal in the hard-set profile.

"Indeed? Will that not be more difficult? There is Stafford in the way, and Stafford—"

"Stafford must be cleared out of the way," he interrupted, with a cool decision which his expression partly belied. "I believe she is fond of him and he of her in a Platonic sort of fashion which might lead to marriage and might not. He is not the danger. There is a fellow, Nicholson, though—"

He stopped short and seemed for an instant to be plunged in his own thoughts.

"Who is this Nicholson?" she asked curiously. "I have heard his name constantly since I have been here. People talk of him as though he were a demigod. Why are you afraid of him?"

"Just because of his godlike qualities," Travers explained, with a laugh. "In earlier ages, no doubt, he would have been a god and among the natives he is one. In reality, he is an ordinary mortal blessed with an extraordinary influence. I believe he is a captain in some native regiment on the frontiers and has done grand work there. I heard today that he is coming down to Marut on leave."

"Oh—?"

"He was Lois' old playfellow," Travers added pointedly.

"And so you are afraid of him?"

"All women adore heroes of that type," he remarked without mockery or bitterness, "and when Nicholson appears I have a fair idea that Stafford and I will have to be content with the back seats in Lois' affections. You see, they were great friends, and moreover the Carmichaels have their matrimonial eye on him. So it's now or never as far as I am concerned."

"And Stafford—?"

He looked down at her with a jolly laugh.

"He must find consolation elsewhere. I thought he would do for you, Miss
Cary."

"Thanks!"

"Don't be ungrateful. Rich, good position, good family, worthy character, a trifle slow, not to say stupid—what more do you want?"

"You talk as though—"

"—As though he were being given away with a pound of tea? Well, so he is to all intents and purposes. One can do anything with an honest, pig-headed man like that if only one takes him the right way. He would suit you clear down to the ground, and if you will help me I will help you. Is that a bargain?"

They were now in sight of their destination, and he pulled his horse into a walk.

"Well, what do you say, Miss Cary?"

He tried to look into her face, but it was turned resolutely away, and all he could see was a grave profile which might have belonged to a much older woman.

"Well?" he repeated.

They were entering the drive which led up to the brightly lighted bungalow before she answered.

"It's a bargain then," she said. "I promise."

He pressed her hand with his left.

"That's all right," he said cheerily. "You won't find yourself overburdened. The case is just this: we're partners, you and I, with some good cards between us. Just at present it's my call, and your hand goes down. Do you understand?"

"Pretty well," she answered.

They pulled up at the open doorway, and flinging the reins to the waiting syce, Travers sprang to the ground.

"By the way, I believe you go in to dinner with Stafford," he remarked casually as he helped her to alight. "I hope you will get on well together."

CHAPTER VI

BREAKING THE BARRIER

The Colonel's dinner-party was Beatrice's first great triumph in the face of her enemies. They were all there and all armed to the teeth with spite and envy. There was, for instance, Mrs. Berry with her marriageable if somewhat plain daughter, and many more women besides to whom the beautiful girl was of necessity an unforgivable opponent. The more the men laughed at her quick and occasionally rather pointed observations, the more an obvious admiration shone out of their criticisms, the more determined the hatred became. Among themselves they had already fulfilled Travers' prophecy and had christened her "the Adventuress" for no other reason than that she was a woman with the same ambitions as themselves, but better accoutred for success. Truly, she had made no bid for their favor, choosing to stand alone and without their support; but even had she done so it would have been useless. She wore an enemy's color in her face, and keen, pitiless eyes had already probed into the innermost depths of her plans and found them dangerous.

In the middle of the dinner the Colonel broke the news that the whole of the English community had been invited by the Rajah to a reception in the palace grounds. He made the announcement with evident reluctance, and Beatrice was conscious that Stafford, who sat beside her, stiffened and frowned. The sense of opposition and disapproval on the part of the man whom she had set out to conquer put her on her metal, and with the verve and sang-froid of a woman too sure of her own power to know fear, she related her adventure in the temple. Her hearers listened, according to their sex, with amusement, curiosity and pious horror. Some were unreservedly delighted, others—such as the Colonel and Stafford—struggled between a certain admiration for her and a decided disapproval of her action and its results. Yet Stafford at least was a soldier before he was a conventionalist, and her bold, well-played comedy in the temple of Vishnu, told simply, but with fire and energy, could not fail to stir to flame the embers of his own daring. From that time he ceased to rivet his attention to the other end of the table, where Lois was sitting, and Beatrice was conscious that she had won the first move in the great game which she had set herself to play. The next day the whole Station was made aware of the startling change in the Rajah's attitude and the means by which it had been brought about, but no one, not even those who were disposed to judge the matter in its most serious light, guessed what passed within the palace previous to the sending out of the now famous invitation. For the greater part of the English community the whole thing was rather a bad joke, with the Rajah for its victim. That a pretty woman should have unbarred the gates which no other force, diplomacy or cunning had been able to stir was a matter for light, somewhat contemptuous laughter. Rajah Nehal Singh was nicknamed the Impressionable Swain. He and Beatrice Cary were linked together either in good-natured chaff or malicious earnest, and curiosity, thanks to the dullness of the season, strained itself in expectation.

Thus, beyond the marble gates the world laughed, and inside Life and Death had faced each other and for a moment hung in the balance.

It was toward the cool of the evening. Behar Asor and the prince paced slowly backward and forward in the chief entrance hall of the palace, plunged in a conversation which was to mark a final stage in their relationship toward each other. Both knew it, and on both faces was written the same determination—a determination curiously tempered and moulded by the character of the man himself. On Behar Asor's furrowed, withered face it was resolve, armed with treachery and all the hundred and one weapons of oriental cunning. Nehal Singh's head was lifted in calm, unshakable confidence. He had no need of weapons. He had seen his destiny, and the obstacle which would be thrown in his path would, with equal certainty, be thrown out of it. He felt himself extraordinarily strong.

His very surroundings seemed to fortify him with their splendor. Other parts of the palace bore the grievous traces of a past devastating race-hatred; crumbling pillars, images whose jeweled eyes had been made dark and lifeless by robber hands; broken pavements, defaced carvings—all these pointed to a period in human life which was gone for ever, a period of mad fanaticism and passionate clinging to the Old in defiance of the New. Here the New was triumphant. Hands still living had raised the mighty golden dome; the fountain whose waters bubbled up from the Sacred Tank within the temple was his own creation. The whole place became a sort of outward and visible sign of the New Life, New Era, which was opening out before him, and the old man at his side was nothing more than a relic, a piece of clinging wreckage. Yesterday he had been a wise man whose judgment and guidance was a thing to be considered.

But between Yesterday and Today there is occasionally a long night in which much may happen. A life may go out, a life may come in; a devil may become a saint, or a saint a devil; a man may swing from one pole of opinion to another, and this last is perhaps the easiest of all. For it does not require much to change a man's standpoint. A very little thing will make him turn on his heel and look at a piece of the landscape which he has hitherto chosen to ignore or despise, and probably acknowledge that it is finer than his hitherto obstinately retained outlook. A very little thing—like Columbus' egg—if one only knew just what it was! The little thing in Nehal Singh's life had been a woman's face. It shone between him and his old gods; it smiled at him from amidst the shadows of his imagination, beckoning him unceasingly to follow. And he was following—with the reckless speed of a man who had been kept inactive too long at the starting point of life.

"I am weary of all that has hitherto been," he told Behar Asor. "My palace has become a prison from which I must free myself. The very air I breathe is heavy with sleep and dreams. It suffocates me. I must have life—here and without."

"I understand thee too well," came the answer from compressed lips. "The curse is on thee. Thou wilt go among my enemies, and it is I, with my mistaken wisdom, who have opened thy path to them. It was I who taught thee their tongue, their knowledge, their law, that when the time came thou shouldst stand before them more than their equal. This is my punishment."

"It is no punishment. It is the will of God."

"The will of God!" The old man threw up his hands with a wild laugh that echoed among the pillars. "It is the will of the devil, who has been my curse and shall be thine! Ay, ay, look not at me! It is true. Thinkest thou that I have brought thee up in solitude without cause? Thinkest thou that I have hidden thee like a miser his treasure, in the dark, unseen places, for a whim? Son, I have suffered as I pray thou mayst not have to suffer, and I have within my heart a serpent of hatred whose sting I would thou couldst feel." He paused, biting his lip as though the pain he described was actual and physical. "Go not among the Unbelievers!" he continued vigorously. "Let not their shadow defile thee! For their breath is poison, and in their eyes is a deadly flame—or if thou goest, let it be with steeled breast and in thy right hand a sword of vengeance!"

"I can not," Nehal Singh answered impatiently. "Nor do I believe what thou sayest. This people is surely brave and good. I know, for I have read—"

"Read!" the old man interrupted, with another burst of stormy laughter. "What is it to read? To see with the eyes and feel with the body—that alone can bring true wisdom. And I have seen and felt! Callest thou a people 'good' who drink our hospitality and spit upon us—who hail us with their unclean right hand and steal our honor with their left?"

Nehal Singh stopped short.

"What meanest thou?" he demanded.

"I have a meaning!" was the stern answer. "I will tell thee now what I have never told thee before—I will tell thee of a young man who, like thyself, was fearless, impetuous, a lover of the new and strange, who went out into the world, and welcomed the White People as a deliverer and friend. I will tell thee how he flung down caste and prejudice to welcome them, drank in their Thought and Culture, trembled on the brink of their Religion. Already the path had been broken for him. His mother's sister had married out of her race—an Englishman—I know not how it came about—and their child followed in her steps. I will tell thee how the young man came to know this cousin and her husband, also an Unbeliever. How often these two became his guests I will not tell thee. He took pleasure in their presence, partly for his mother's sake, partly because the white race had become dear to him. They brought others with them, and among them an English officer. Hear now further.

"This young man had one wife, following the English custom—one wife more beautiful than her sisters, whom he loved as a man loves but once in life. In his madness, in spite of warnings of his priests, he gave her the freedom almost of an English-woman. Wheresoever he went she followed him; with her at his right hand he received his English guests; it was she who sang to them—" He ground his teeth in a sudden outburst of rage. "Mad, mad was I! Mad to trust a woman, and to trust the stranger! Son, the night came when my wife sang no more to me, and the stranger's shadow ceased to darken my threshold. Three years I sought them—three years; then one night she came back to me. He had cast her from him. She lay dead at my feet." His voice shook. "In vain I sought justice. There is no justice for such things among the White People—not for themselves and not for us. I drew my sword and in hatred and scorn as deep as my love and reverence had been high, I slew my way to the false devil who had betrayed me. Him I slew—and his pale wife I—"

"Who was this man?" Nehal Singh asked heavily.

"I know not. His name has passed from me. But the hate remains. For with that act of treachery he drew back the veil from my blind eyes, and I saw that they were all as he—bad, cruel, hypocrites—"

"Not all—not all!" Nehal Singh interrupted. He stopped by the splashing fountain and gazed dreamily into the clear waters. His own face he saw there—and another which was neither bad, cruel, nor hypocritical, but wholly beautiful. "Not all," he repeated. "You judge by one man. There are others, and it is those I will see and know, and—"

"I would rather see thee dead at my feet!"

"My father, I will judge them as I find them,"

Nehal Singh went on imperturbably. "If they be good and noble, I will serve and love them. If they be bad, as thou sayest—then thou shalt live to see me do thy will."

He heard a shrill cry, and his eyes, still fixed on the water, saw a hand that swept upward, the flash of steel falling swiftly through the sunshine. He swung round and tore the dagger from the nerveless hand.

"Thou dost wrong, my father," he said, with unshaken calm. "To learn treachery from treachery is a poor lesson. And thou canst not stay me. What I will do I will do. Do not cross me again."

The old man, who had shrunk back, gasping and staring, against the marble basin, pulled himself painfully upright.

"Ay, I did wrong," he said. "With my old hands I tried to forestall the sword of Fate. For, mark me, the hour will come when thou wilt curse thyself that thou didst stay my knife!"

He tottered slowly away, vanishing like a curious twisted shadow amidst the deeper shadows of the columns.

Nehal Singh watched him till he was out of sight, and then, snapping the dagger across his knee, flung the pieces into the water. They lay there, at the bottom of the marble basin, sparkling and twinkling in the sunshine. When he looked in, trying to conjure up once more the beautiful face, it was always the dagger he saw. It was always the dagger he saw when the memory of that short, violent scene came back to him—and it came back often, springing up out of his subconscious self like an evil, slinking shade that could never be wholly brought to rest. Yet he went on resolutely. One barrier had given way—one more remained, and he flung himself against it with a reckless determination which would have overcome any resistance. But there was none. The old priest who had been his guide and teacher welcomed him as he had always done, seated cross-legged at the edge of the Sacred Tank, motionless, rigid, like some handsome bronze statue of Buddha, whose eyes alone spoke of a fierce flowing life within. He bowed his head once in return to Nehal's greeting, but as he began to speak he interrupted him, and in a low, chanting voice uttered the last words he was ever heard to address to any living creature:

"Speak not to me, Son of the Night and Day, for the Spirit of the Holy Yog is on me, and his tongue speaketh through my lips. Behold, mine eyes see with his into the wells of the future—my heart stands still for fear of the things that are to be. I see a Holy Temple and hear the ring of Accursed Footsteps. I see a young man at daybreak, beautiful, strong and upright, and I see him stand beneath the high sun like a blade of withered grass. I see him go forth in the morning with laughter on his lips, and at nightfall his eyes run blood. A voice calleth him from the thicket, and wheresoever the voice calleth him he goeth. He standeth on the banks of Holy Ganges, and behold! the waters burst from their course and pour westward to the ocean. Behold, then shall he draw his sword against his people, and from that hour he shall serve them and become theirs. Then shall the doors of the temple be closed for ever, and the lips of Vishnu silent. Go forth, son of the Evening and Morning Star! That which is to be shall be till the stream of the Future ceaseth to flow from the mouth of Heaven!"

Nehal Singh listened to this strange, disjointed prophecy in perfect silence, his eyes following the fierce stare of the old Brahman into the oily waters of the Sacred Pool. Amidst the hundred reflections from the temple he seemed to see each separate picture as the monotonous voice called it up before his mind, and always it was his own face which shimmered among the shadowy minarets, and always it was a familiar voice calling him through the ages which whispered to him from the trembling leaves of the Bo-Tree as it hung its branches down to the water's edge.

"Tell me more, for thy words have drawn the veil closer about the future!"

His pleading received no response. The priest remained motionless, passive, indifferent, seemingly plunged in an ecstatic contemplation; and from that moment his lips were closed, and he passed his once loved pupil with eyes that seemed fixed far ahead on a world visible only to himself. Neither in his words or manner had there been any anger or reproach, but a perfect resignation which walled him off from every human emotion, and Nehal Singh went his way, conscious that the world lay before him and that he was free. The great dividing wall had turned to air, and he had passed through, satisfied but not a little troubled, as a man is who finds that he has struck at shadows.

Afterward he told himself that the walls had always been shadows, the links that bound him always mere ghostly hindrances, part of the vague dreams that had filled his life and bound his horizon. Now that was all over. The more perfect reality lay before him and was his. The dim figures of his childhood's imagination gave place to definite forms. And each bore the same face, each face the same grave goodness—that of the woman destined for him by Heaven.

CHAPTER VII

THE SECOND GENERATION

Thus it came to pass that after more than a quarter of a century the gates of the palace were thrown open, and strange feet crossed the threshold in apparent peace and friendship.

A crowd of memories flooded Colonel Carmichael's mind as he followed the guide along the narrow paths. There was a difference between his last entry and this—a difference and an analogy whose bizarre completeness came home to him more vividly with every moment. Then, too, he had been led, but by a dark figure whose flaming torch had sprung through the darkness like an unearthly spirit of destruction. Then, too, he had followed—not, as now, old and saddened—but impetuously, and behind him had raced no crowd of laughing pleasure-seekers, but men whose bloody swords were clasped in hands greedy for the long-deferred vengeance. He remembered clearly what they had felt. For a year they had been held at bay by a skill and cunning which outmatched their most heroic efforts, and now, at last, the hour of victory was theirs. He remembered how the thirst for revenge had died down as they stormed the marble steps. No living being barred their course. Stillness greeted them as they poured into the mighty hall, and a chilly awe sank down upon their red-hot rage as they searched an emptiness which seemed to defy them. It was the Colonel himself, then only a young captain, who had heard the piteous wailing cry issuing from a side apartment. He had rushed in, and there a sight greeted him which engraved itself on his memory for ever. The place was almost in darkness, save that at the far end two torches had been lit on either side of what seemed to be a throne—a beautiful golden chair raised from the floor by ivory steps. Here, too, at first all had seemed death and silence; then the cry had been repeated, and they saw that a tiny child lay between the high carved arms and was watching them with great, beautiful eyes. Around his neck had hung a hastily-written message:

"This is my son, Nehal Singh, whose life and heritage I intrust to my conquerors in the name of justice and mercy."

And he had taken the boy in his arms and borne him thence as tenderly as if he had been his own.

Since then twenty-five years had passed. The throne had been given to the tiny heir under the tutelage of a neighboring prince, and the spirit of forgotten things brooded over the wreck of the tempest that for over a year had raged about Marut. But the Colonel remembered as if it had been but yesterday. Others had forgotten the little child, but, perhaps because he had no children of his own, the memory of the dark baby eyes had never been banished from his mind. He caught himself wondering, not without a touch of emotion, what sort of man had grown out of the minute being he had rescued; but curiously enough—and typically enough of the contrariness of human sympathy—from the moment he caught sight of the tall figure advancing to meet him from the steps of the palace, all kindly, gentle feelings died out of him, and his old prejudice of race awoke. Possibly—nay, certainly—the child had had less need of sympathy than the man, but the Colonel's heart froze toward him, and his formal response to his host's greeting was icy with the unconquerable consciousness of the gulf between them.

Yet, for eyes unblinded by preconceived aversion, Nehal Singh was at that moment good to look upon. He was simply dressed in white, with no jewels save for a great diamond in his turban, and this very simplicity threw into strong relief his unusually well-built figure and the features to whose almost classical perfection was added a strength, a force of intellect which classical beauty is too often denied. Quietly and modestly, conscious of his own worth, ignorant and inexperienced of the world, he was utterly unaware of the stone barrier that his guests presented to his own open-hearted welcome. For him the whole of his past life concentrated itself on this moment when the gates of the Universe rolled back, and he advanced to meet the representatives of its Greatest People. He thought, in the simple, natural egoism of a man who has lived a life cut off from others, that they would understand this and feel with him.

What his own feelings were he hardly knew—perhaps among them, though unrecognized, was the faintest chill of disappointment. He had had no definite expectations, but his imagination had unconsciously been at work, and touched with its illuminating fire the sons of the heroes whose deeds had filled his quiet existence with romance, painting his picture of them with colors which the reality did not justify. Certainly the little Colonel had nothing either romantic or heroic in his appearance, and what was good and kindly in his bronzed face was hidden behind the mask of his racial pride.

His first words were delivered in a harsh voice, which betrayed only too clearly his real feelings, though Nehal Singh recognized nothing but its disagreeableness.

"Rajah Sahib, you have honored us with the wish to become acquainted with the English people dwelling in your State," he began, "and it is therefore my pleasure and duty to present to you the officers of the regiments—" He stumbled awkwardly, the strangeness of the situation, the direct and searching gaze of his host, throwing him completely out of whatever oratory powers he possessed. It was Nehal Singh himself who saved the situation.

"It is my pleasure to receive you," he said, in his slow, painstaking English, "and I am honored by the readiness with which you have complied with my desire to meet the Great People to whom my land owes so much. Though hitherto I have lived apart from them, I am not wholly ignorant of their greatness. I know, for my fathers and my books have shown me, that there is no other nation so powerful nor whose sons are so noble. Therefore I welcome you with all my heart as a brother, and if such entertainment as I have tried to prepare for your pleasure is not to your taste, I pray you to forgive me, for therein am I indeed ignorant."

For a few among the English party his words, spoken slowly and with a simple sincerity, were not without their charm. Yet, little as he knew it, he had succeeded in one short speech in touching two dangerous spots in his relationship to his guests—his ancestry and his equality. But here again his ignorance veiled from him what was written clearly enough on a dozen frozen faces.

"I should be glad to be made personally acquainted with each of your officers," he went on. "For men who serve under one flag should know each other well."

Colonel Carmichael obeyed, thankful for any occupation which saved him the necessity of replying; and one by one the solemn, unmoved faces came under Nehal Singh's eager gaze, bowed, and passed on. Each resented in turn the intense scrutiny of their host, and none guessed its cause. For them it was the insolent stare of a colored man who had ventured to place himself on an equality with themselves. They could not have known that he was seeking familiar features, nor that, as one after another passed on, a cold chill of disappointment was settling on a heart warm with preconceived admiration and respect. They could not have known that his unconscious presumption had hidden a real desire to find among them the hero to whom his man's worship of courage and greatness could have been dedicated. He was too young—and especially too young in worldly wisdom—to realize that the outside man is not of necessity the man himself. He merely felt, as each wooden face confronted his own, that here was surely no Great Man, no Hero. Only when it came to the civilians his eyes rested with some degree of satisfaction on Travers' well-knit figure and fresh-colored face. For the first time during the whole proceedings the prince smiled, and in turn received a smile.

The ladies had by this time arrived, and the presentations continued. There was no change in Nehal Singh's demeanor when he stood before Beatrice Cary—no change, at least, visible to the curious eyes that watched. If there was any hidden meaning in his expression during the brief instant that they looked at each other, only she herself could have read it; and this she apparently did not do, for her face retained its Madonna peace and dignity.

"I think Rajah Sahib and Miss Cary have already met?" remarked Travers, who was acting as master of the ceremonies.

"Yes, we have met," Nehal Singh answered, and passed on.

If any hesitation showed itself in his manner, it was before Lois
Caruthers. A swift shade of puzzled surprise clouded his features.

"You have been a long time in India?" he asked, after the first words of introduction. The question sounded as though he merely sought her affirmation to something he already knew.

"Almost all my life, Rajah Sahib," she answered. Possibly it was a natural shyness which made her voice sound troubled and nervous. She seemed to heave a sigh of relief when he once more moved on. Yet he had impressed her agreeably.

"Is he not handsome?" she said in an undertone to her companion, Stafford. "I think he is quite the handsomest man I have seen, and he has the manners of an Englishman. I wonder where he got them from."

"I don't know," Stafford returned. "These people have a wonderful trick of picking up things. At any rate he realizes Miss Cary's curious description—beautiful; though, with Miss Berry, I do not care for the word as applied to a man. He seems a nice sort of fellow, too, quiet and unaffected, and that is more to me than his good looks. It's rather a pity."

"What is a pity?" she asked, surprised.

"Oh, well, that he is what he is. Don't look so pained. It's not only my 'narrow-hearted prejudice,' as you call it. It's more than that. I'm sorry for the man himself. It all confirms my first opinion that it is rather bad luck."

"Why?" she demanded obstinately.

"Don't you understand? If you had seen Webb's face when he talked about 'as a brother a brother,' you would have understood well enough. He has been made a fool of, and sooner or later he will have his eyes roughly opened. As I say, it seems bad luck."

"You mean he would have done better to keep to his old seclusion?" she said thoughtfully.

"That's about it." He smiled down at her, and they suddenly forgot the Rajah in that curious happiness of two beings who need no words to tell them that each is understood by the other, and that a secret current of thought and feeling flows beneath every word and touch. "Come," he went on. "It seems that we are to have the run of the place. Shall we explore?"

She nodded a quick agreement, and they started off, thus following the example of others of the party who had already made use of the Rajah's suggestion that they should visit the chief and most interesting portions of the palace. Nehal Singh himself stood alone, and thankful for his loneliness. For the last ten minutes Colonel Carmichael and he had stood side by side, and found no word to say to each other. The past, which might have been a link, proved itself a barrier which neither could scale, and presently, on some excuse, the Colonel had hurried off to join his wife. As though guided by a sure instinct, Nehal Singh turned in the direction where Beatrice was standing with her mother and Travers. Without hesitation he went up to her.

"I have waited to be your guide," he said. His words sounded amusingly decided and matter-of-course, and a smile of not very sympathetic meaning passed over the faces of those within earshot.

"You can be sure she went a lot further than she cared to say," Mrs. Berry whispered to her daughter. "You can see how everything was made up beforehand. I wonder what she expects to get out of him?"

Though the remark did not reach her, Beatrice's instinct and bitter experience supplied her with a sure key to the look that was exchanged between the two women. She smiled gaily.

"I shall be only too pleased," she said. "What I have seen has made me thirst for more."

"Indeed, Your Highness," Mrs. Cary broke in eagerly. "I must not forget to thank you for the really very kind assistance you lent my reckless daughter the other day. I do not know what would have happened to her if it had not been for you!"

Nehal Singh looked at her with a grave wonder.

"You are her mother—?" he said, and then stopped short. The wonder was reflected so clearly in his tone that an angry flush mounted to Mrs. Cary's fat cheeks.

"I have that honor, Your Highness," she said acidly.

"Mrs. Cary!" Travers called from the flower-bed over which he was leaning. "If the Rajah Sahib can spare you, do come and look at these flowers. They are extraordinary."

With her head in the air, her plumes waving, a picture of ruffled dignity,
Mrs. Cary swayed her way in the direction indicated, and Nehal Singh and
Beatrice found themselves alone.

"Will you come with me now?" he asked. "I have still so much to show you."

She saw the look of self-satisfied "I-told-you-so" horror written on the faces of Mrs. Berry and her friends, who stood a little farther off whispering and nodding, and if she had felt the slightest hesitation, she hesitated no longer.

"Lead the way, Rajah Sahib," she said coolly. "I follow."

CHAPTER VIII

THE IDEAL

On either side of them tall palm-trees raised their splendid heads high above the shrubs and sweet-smelling plants that clustered like a protecting wall about their feet, and as Beatrice and her companion passed a sharp bend it seemed as though they had been suddenly cut off from the chattering crowd behind them and had entered into a wonderful, silent world in which they were alone.

Was it the beauty of her surroundings, or was it the man beside her, which sent the curious, almost painful emotion through her angry heart? For she was angry—angry with her mother, with herself and him—chiefly with him. He had been too sure. And yet she was flattered. Also, it was a pleasure for the first time to be with some one with whom she could drop her weapons and have no fear. She looked up at him, and found that he was watching her.

"It was not good-by for ever," he said. "We have met again."

Her anger suddenly subsided. His slow English, with its foreign accent, his dark features and native dress reminded her vividly that he was of another (implied, inferior) race, and therefore not to be judged by ordinary standards. She gave herself up to the pleasure of the moment.

"You have overthrown destiny," she said, smiling. "You have made the impossible possible. How was I to know all that when I prophesied we should not meet again?"

"I have not overthrown destiny," he answered. "I have fulfilled it."

"Are you sure of that?"

"Quite sure."

She looked away from him up to the golden dome of the temple which rose before them against the unclouded sky. Because she had thrown down her weapons, and in the irresponsible pleasure of the moment become herself, she acquired a power of penetration and understanding which is denied to those who with their own hearts closed seek to know the hearts of others.

"Do you know," she said suddenly, "when Colonel Carmichael presented himself to you, and all the others, I watched you, and I rather fancy I read something on your face which you didn't want to show. I wonder if I am right."

"It is possible," he answered gravely. "In this last hour I have already begun to regret that I have never studied to control my emotions. I show when I am surprised, disappointed, or—startled. Hitherto, there has been no reason why I should not do so. But now that I am among my equals, it is different."

She bit her lip, not in anger but in an almost pained surprise at this man's ignorance of the world into which he was entering. He was not presuming to place himself on the level with the Englishman; it seemed as if he were inoffensively lifting the Englishman up to himself. She was sorry for him as one is sorry for all kindly fools.

"Tell me what you read!" he begged, after a moment. "Perhaps you will know better than I myself. I am almost sure you will."

"I read disappointment," she answered. "Was that so?"

His brows contracted slightly.

"I was disappointed," he admitted, "but that was my own fault. I had never met English people—only heard of them. What I had heard made me imagine things which it seems have no reality."

"Did you expect demigods?" she asked.

"I do not know what I expected—but it was something different. You know the men I have met to-day. Are they all great-hearted and brave?"

She did not laugh at the question, though there was cause enough to have excused it.

"I can not tell you," she answered. "Only circumstances can bring such virtues to light, and hitherto the circumstances have been lacking. All men do not wear their heart on their sleeve," she answered, not without malice.

He nodded.

"I am glad to hear you say that, for no doubt you are right. I am very ignorant, I fear, and was foolish enough to expect heroes to have the face and figure of heroes. It grieved me for a moment to find that I was the tallest and best-looking among them. Now that you have explained, I see that the greatness lies beneath."

This time she laughed, and laughed so heartily that he joined in with her, though he did not know what had caused her amusement. He took pleasure in watching her when she laughed. Her statuesque beauty yielded then to a warm, pulsating life, which transformed her and made her seem to him more human, more attainable. For he had never shaken off the belief that she and a divine agency were closely linked together.

"You must not compare yourself with Englishmen," she said, when she had recovered, "neither in face, nor stature, nor ideals. You must always remember that we are of another race."

"And yet you fulfilled my highest ideal."

"Perhaps I am the exception," she retorted, dangerously near another outburst. "Did all the women this afternoon fulfil your ideal?"

"No!" very decidedly.

"There! You see, then, that I am the exception. Besides, I am not a man.
Men require to be differently judged, and we have perhaps other ideals."

"That also is possible," he assented, "and I know that, because the English are such a great people, their ideals must be very high, perhaps higher than mine. Since I am now to go among them, I wish to know what they consider necessary in the character of a great man.".

"That is too hard a question," she said hurriedly. "I can not describe the national ideal to you, because I am too ignorant and have never thought about it. You must ask some one else."

They had come to the end of the path and stood before a square opening, on the other side of which the two massive gopuras of the temple rose in their monumental splendor two hundred feet above them. They were still alone. None of the sightseers seemed to have found the sacred spot, and for a moment she stood still, awed in spite of herself.

"I should be quite content with your ideal," he said gently, breaking in upon her admiration. "I feel that it will be the highest."

"You ask of me more than I can answer."

"I beg of you!" he pleaded earnestly. "I have my reasons."

Again she bit her lip. It was too absurd, too ridiculous! That she, of all people, who had seen into the darkest, most sordid depths of the human character, and long since learned to look upon goodness and virtue as exploded myths, should be set to work to draw up an ideal which she did not and could not believe in, seemed a mockery too pitiful for laughter. Yet something—perhaps it was a form of national pride—stung her to the task, moreover stung her to do her best and place beyond the reach of these dark hands a high and splendid figure of English ideals.

To help herself, she sought through the lumber-rooms of her memory, and drew thence a hundred ideas, thoughts and conceptions which had belonged to a short—terribly short—childhood. Like a middle-aged woman who comes suddenly upon a hoard of long since forgotten toys, and feels an emotion half pitying, half regretful, so Beatrice Cary displayed to her companion things that for years had lain forsaken and neglected in the background of her mind. The dust lay thick upon them—and yet they were well enough. They would have been beautiful, had she believed in them, but, like the toys, they had lost the glamour and illusionary light in which her youth and imagination had bathed them.

"Our highest ideal of a man we call a gentleman," she said slowly. "It is a much-abused term, but it can mean a very great deal. What his appearance is does not so much matter—indeed, when one looks into it, it does not matter at all, save that you will find that the ugliest face can often give you an index to a lovely character. The chief thing that we require of him is that he should be above all meanness and pettiness. He must be great-thinking and great-feeling for himself and others, especially for others. You will find that a good man is always thinking or working for those others whose names he may not even know. Whatever power or talent he has—however little it may be—he concentrates on some object which may help them. It is the same with his virtues. He cultivates them because he knows that there is not a high thought, or generous impulse, or noble deed which does not help to lift the standard of the whole world."

"Of what virtues are you speaking?" Nehal Singh interposed.

"Oh, the usual things," she returned, with a note of cynicism breaking through her sham enthusiasm. "Honesty, purity, generosity, loyalty—especially loyalty. I do not think a man who is true to himself, to his word, to his friend, and to his country can ever fall far below the ideal." She took a deep breath. "It is a very poor description that I have given you. I hope you have understood?"

"Yes, I have understood," he answered. "And this man—this gentleman—can be of all nations?"

So deeply ingrained is national prejudice, even in those who profess to regard the whole world with an equally contemptuous eye, that for an instant she hesitated.

"Of course," she said then. "Nationality makes no difference."

They crossed over the broad square, through the gopura, into the inner temple. Nehal Singh, who had sunk into a deep meditation, roused himself and called to her notice many curious and beautiful things which she would otherwise have passed by without interest. Whether it was his loving description, or whether it was because she was calmer, she could not say, but the place impressed her with its stately magnificence as it had not done before.

"The ages seem to hang like ghosts in the atmosphere," she told her companion, in a hushed undertone.

He assented, and the dreamer's look which had haunted his eyes for twenty-five years crept back into its place.

"Who knows what unseen world surrounds us?" he said quietly.

They had already left the first court behind them and passed the Sacred Pool, a placid, untroubled mirror for the overhanging trees and towering minarets. There they had paused a moment, watching their own reflections which the warm evening sunshine cast on to the smooth surface. Then they had moved on, and now stood before the entrance of the Holy of Holies. Beatrice drew back with a gesture of alarm. A tall, white-clad figure had suddenly stepped out of the shadowy portal and stood erect and threatening, one hand raised as though to forbid their entrance. Long afterward, Beatrice remembered the withered face, and always with a shudder of unreasonable terror.

"Do not be afraid," Nehal Singh said. "He defends the entrance against strangers. He will let you pass."

He went up to the old priest and spoke a few words in Hindustani, which Beatrice did not understand. Immediately the Brahman stood aside, and though his stern, piercing gaze never left her face, she felt that by some means or other his animosity had been disarmed.

"What did you say to him?" she asked.

Nehal Singh shook his head.

"One day I will tell you," he answered; and some instinct made her hesitate to press the question further.

Thus they stood once more before the great golden statue, this time side by side. The sanctuary was built in the shape of a half-circle, the high, vaulted roof supported by slender pillars of carved black marble. There was no other attempt at ornamentation. The three-headed figure of the god reigned in the center from a massive altar in solitary splendor, and from a small opening overhead a frail ray of evening light mingled its pale yellow with the brilliant crimson flame of the Sacred Lamp which burnt before the idol, casting an almost unearthly reflection about the passionless chiseled features. In spite of herself, Beatrice felt that the place was charmed, and that the charm was drawing into its ban her very thoughts and emotions. She felt subdued, quieted. It was as she had said—the ages seemed to hover like ghosts about them, and her hard, worldly skepticism could make no stand against the hush and mystery of the past. Here generation after generation, amidst danger, battle and death, men had bowed down and poured out their hottest, most fervent prayers, and their sincerity and faith had sanctified the ground for Christian, Brahman and skeptic alike.

Beatrice looked at the man beside her. She had the feeling that, while she had stood and wondered, he had been praying; and possibly she was right, though he returned her glance immediately.

"This is a holy place," he said. "It is holiest of all for me. Here I have spent my most solemn happy hours; here God spoke direct to me and answered me."

It seemed quite natural that he should speak thus so openly and directly to her of his nearest concerns. The barrier which separated them perhaps, after all, made the intercourse between them easier and less constrained than it would otherwise have been. They had no responsibility toward each other. They lived in different worlds, and if for a moment they exchanged messages, it was only for a moment. When it was over, the dividing sea would once more roll between them, leaving no trace of their brief intercourse.

Remembering all this, she threw off the momentary sense of trouble.

"Tell me how and when that was," she said.

"I can not tell you—not now. One day I will. One day I shall have a great deal to tell you, and you will have a great deal to tell me. You will tell me of your faith. I know nothing of your God. All that has been kept secret from me."

"How do you know I have a God?" she demanded sharply.

They had passed out of the sanctuary and were walking back toward the entrance. He half stopped and looked at her in grave surprise.

"How do I know? How, rather, is it possible that it should be otherwise? You are too good and beautiful not to have learnt at the feet of a great teacher."

His naivete and confidence set her once more in a state between indulgent amusement and anger. Another man she would have laughed at straight in the face, but this simple belief in her goodness threw her out of her usual stride, and in the end she left him without answer, save that which he chose to interpret from her silence.

As they reached the great doorway through the gopura, a tall figure advanced to meet them which Beatrice at once recognized in spite of the gathering twilight. She had been expecting this new-comer for some time, yet his appearance disturbed her as something undesirable.

"There is a man I like," Nehal Singh remarked, with a sudden pleasure. "Is not Travers his name? He disappointed me least of all."

"You have an excellent judgment," Beatrice returned.

If there was an undercurrent of sarcasm in her approval, Nehal Singh did not notice it. He advanced quickly to meet Travers.

"I am glad you have found your way here," he said. "It is the most beautiful part of all, and perhaps I should have acted as guide to my other guests. But my first duty was here." He turned to Beatrice with a grave inclination.

Travers laughed.

"You need be in no alarm, Rajah Sahib," he said. "We have been enjoying ourselves immensely, and no wonder, considering all the glories that have been laid open to us. I have seen much wealth and splendor in India, but not as here. I feel overwhelmed."

"There is still much for you to see," Nehal Singh answered with a proud pleasure.

Other members of the party had by this time joined them, and Beatrice dropped back to her mother's side. The whole thing had been, as Mrs. Berry said, arranged, but not in the way the good lady supposed, and Beatrice's task was at an end.

Travers hastened his step imperceptibly, so that the distance between him and the rest was increased beyond hearing distance.

"Of course," he began, with a frank confidence which fell pleasingly on his companion's ears, "I am a business man, and a great deal of my admiration is from a business standpoint. You will perhaps hardly understand me when I say that my flesh simply creeps when I think of all the wealth that lies here inactive. Wealth is power, Rajah Sahib, and in your hand there lies a power for good or evil which dazzles the senses of a less fortunate man."

Nehal Singh lifted his face thoughtfully toward the evening sky.

"Power for good or evil!" he echoed. "It may be that you are right. But power is a great clumsy giant, who can accomplish nothing without the experienced guiding brain."

"I imagine you have both, Rajah Sahib."

"Not the experience. I have led a life apart. I feel myself helpless before the very thought of any effort in the world. Yet I should be glad to accomplish something—to help even a little in the general progress."

"You will learn easily enough," Travers broke in, with enthusiasm. "It is only necessary to go outside your gates to find a hundred outlets for energy and purpose. If you traveled two days among your people, you would come back knowing very well what awaited your power to accomplish."

"I am glad to hear you say so," Nehal returned, smiling, "for I am ambitious."

"Ambition and power!" exclaimed Travers. "You are indeed to be envied,
Rajah Sahib!"

"What would you do in my place?" Nehal asked, after a moment, in a lighter tone, which concealed a real and eager curiosity.

Travers shook his head.

"The greater the power the greater the responsibility," he answered. "I couldn't say on the spur of the moment. If I were given time, no doubt I should be able to tell you."

"I give you till our next meeting, then," Nehal said gravely.

"Our next meeting? I trust, then, Rajah Sahib that you will condescend to be the guest of the English Station?"

Nehal turned his head to hide the flash of boyish satisfaction which shone out of his eyes. It was that he wanted—to go among this people, from their own hearth to judge them, and to probe down into the source of their greatness.

"It would give me much pleasure," he answered quietly.

It was Travers' turn to hide the triumph which the willing acceptance aroused. Nevertheless, his next words were whimsically regretful.

"Unfortunately, we have no place in which to offer you a fitting welcome, Rajah Sahib," he said. "For a long time it has been the ambition of the Station to build some place wherein all such festivities could be properly celebrated. But alas!"—he shrugged his shoulders—"it is the fate of the Anglo-Indian to work for the richness and greatness of his country and himself remain miserably poor."

"How much money would be required?" Nehal Singh asked.

"You will no doubt be amused at the smallness of the sum—a mere four thousand rupees—but it is just so much we have not got."

Nehal Singh smiled.

"Let me at once begin to make use of my power," he said graciously. "It would be a pleasure to me to mark my first meeting with you by the gift of the building you require. I place the matter in your hands, Sahib Travers. For the time being, until I have gained my own experience, yours must be the guiding brain."

The good-looking Englishman appeared to be considerably taken aback—almost distressed.

"You are too generous, Rajah Sahib!" he protested. To himself he commented on the rapidity with which this fellow had picked up the lingo of polite society.

All further conversation was cut short by a cry of admiration from the crowd behind them. They had reached the chief entrance to the palace, and suddenly, as though at a given signal, every outline of the building became marked out by countless points of light which sparkled starlike against the darkening sky. At the same instant, the temple to their left took form in a hundred colors, and a burst of weird music broke on the ears of the wondering spectators. It was a strange and beautiful scene, such as few of them had ever seen. Fairy palaces of fire seemed to hover miraculously in the evening air, and over everything hung the curious, indefinable charm of the mysterious East.

Nehal Singh turned and found Lois Caruthers standing with Stafford a little behind him. Both their names were forgotten, but the dark eager face of the girl attracted him and at the same time puzzled him as something which struck a hitherto unsuspected chord in his innermost self.

"You find it well?" he asked her.

"It is most beautiful," she answered. "It is good of you, Rajah Sahib, to give us so much pleasure."

That was all she said, but among all his memories of that evening she remained prominent, because she had spoken sincerely, warmly, enthusiastically. Others thanked him—the Colonel's little speech at the end was a piece of studied rhetoric, but it left him cold where her thanks had left him warm, almost gratefully so.

On the whole, the first meeting between the English residents of Marut and the young native prince was classified as a success. As they drove through the darkness, the returning guests called terse criticisms to one another which tended to the conclusion that the whole thing had not been at all bad, and that for the circumstances the Rajah was a remarkably well-mannered individual.

Beatrice Cary took no part in the light-hearted exchange. Her mother had gone off with Mrs. Carmichael in her carriage, and Travers having offered to drive her home, she had accepted, and now sat by his side, thoughtful, almost depressed, though she did not own it, even to herself.

Try as she would she could not throw off the constantly recurring memory of her parting with Nehal Singh. She made fun of it and of herself, and yet she could not laugh over it—her power of irresponsible enjoyment had been taken suddenly from her.

"You will not now say that we shall never meet again," he had said, pressing something into her hand. "Now you will never forget," he had added. "It is a talisman of remembrance."

What he had given her she did not know. It lay tightly clutched in the palm of her hand—something hard and cold which she dared not look at.

She had not even been able to remonstrate or thank him. She had been spellbound, hypnotized.

"It really has been splendid!" she heard Travers say in her ear. "Things went just like clockwork. Five minutes' conversation got the whole clubhouse out of him, and what you managed in your quarter of an hour, goodness knows. You are a clever woman and no mistake!"

"Please—don't!" she burst out irritably.

"Hullo! What's the matter? What are you so cross about?"

"I'm not cross—only tired, tired, tired and sick of it all. Do drive on!"

Far behind them a solitary figure stood on the broad steps of the palace, amidst the dying splendors of the evening and gazed in the direction which the merry procession had taken. A long time it had stood there, motionless, passive, the fine husk of the soul which had wandered out into a new world of hope and possibilities following the woman whose hand had flung the gates wide for him to enter in.

Another figure crept out of the shadows and drew near. Twisted and bent, it stood beside the bold, upright form and lifted its face, hate-filled, to the pale light of the stars.

"Nehal Singh, Nehal Singh—oh, my son!"

The prince turned coldly.

"Is it thou? Hast thou a dagger in thy hand?"

"I have no dagger—would to God I had! Nehal Singh, I have seen mine enemy's face."

"How meanest thou? Thy enemy is dead."

"Nevertheless, his face is among the living. As a servant, I crept among the strangers, and saw him straight in the eyes. He has grown younger, but it is he. It is the body of the son, but the soul of his father in his eyes—and, father or son, their blood is poison to me."

Nehal Singh knit his brows.

"Knowest thou his name?"

"Ay, now I know his name. It came back to me when I saw his face. Stafford he was called—Stafford!" He crept closer, his thin hand fell like a vise on Nehal's arm. "Kill him!" he whispered. "Kill him—the son of thy father's betrayer!"

Nehal Singh shook himself free.

"I can not," he answered proudly, and a warm thrill of enthusiasm rang in his voice. "I can not. They are all my brothers. I can not take my brother's blood."

With a moan of anger the twisted figure crept back into the shadow, and once more Nehal Singh stood alone.

Unconsciously he had accepted and proclaimed Beatrice Cary's ideal as his own. The hour of bloodshed was gone, mercy and justice called him in its stead. And in that acceptance of a new era his gaze pierced through the obscurity into a light beyond. The jungle which had bound his life was gone; all hindrances, all gulfs of hatred and revenge, were overthrown and bridged. The world of the Great People stood open to him, and to them he held out the casteless hand of love and fellowship.

CHAPTER IX

CHECKED

Lois and Stafford had arrived at that stage of friendship when conversation becomes unnecessary. They walked side by side through the Colonel's carefully tended garden and were scarcely conscious that they had dropped into a thoughtful silence. Yet, as though in obedience to some unspoken agreement, their footsteps found their way to the ruined bungalow and there paused.

As a look can be more powerfully descriptive than a word, so these shot-riddled walls had their own eloquence. Each shot-hole, each jagged splinter and torn hinge had its own history and added its pathetic detail to the whole picture of that disastrous night when the vengeance of Behar Singh had burst like a hurricane over the defenseless land.

After a moment's hesitation Stafford stepped forward and, pushing aside the heavy festoons of creeper which barred the doorway, passed through into the gloomy interior.

"I should like to see the place from the inside," he explained to Lois, who, with an uncontrollable shudder, had followed him. "One can imagine better then how it all happened."

"I think of it all—often," she answered in a hushed voice, "and every time I seem to see things differently. My poor mother!"

"You never knew her?" he asked.

"No, I was too young—scarcely more than a year old. Yet her loss seems to have overshadowed my whole life."

"Was she like you?"

"Yes, I believe so. She was dark—not so dark as I am—but she was stately and beautiful. So she has always been described to me, and so I always seem to see her."

Stafford turned and looked about him.

"It must be almost as it was then," he said wonderingly, pointing to the rusty truckle-bed in the corner. "And there is the broken over-turned chair! It might have been yesterday."

She nodded.

"So my guardian found it," she said. "It had been my father's bungalow and he never allowed it to be touched. When I came of age I gave it to him. It seemed to belong to him, somehow. They say that it nearly broke his heart when he found that he had come too late to save my father. My father was his dearest, almost his only friend."

"Were they killed at once?" Stafford asked with hesitating curiosity. "I have never known the rights of the case. It has always been a painful subject for me—with you I don't mind."

It was the faintest allusion to a bond between them which both silently recognized, and Lois turned away to hide the signal of happiness which had risen to her cheeks.

"No one knows," she answered. "The bodies were never found. It was part of Behar Singh's cruelty to hide the real fate of his victims. For a long time people used to hope and hope that in some dungeon or prison they would find their friends, but they never did. One can only pray that the end was a mercifully quick one."

"And Behar Singh died in the jungle?"

"So the natives said. No one really knows," she replied.

"I wish he hadn't," Stafford said, his good-natured face darkening.
"It seems unfair that he should have caused our people to suffer so
much and we have never had the chance to pay back. Whatever made the
Government give his son the power, goodness only knows."

"The present Rajah was a baby then," she said in a tone of gentle remonstrance. "It would have been hard to have punished him for the sins of his father."

Nothing appeals to a man more than a woman's undiplomatic tenderness for the whole world. Stafford looked down at Lois with a smile.

"You dear, good-hearted little girl!" he said. "And yet, blood is blood, you know. Somehow, one can't get over it. In spite of his good looks, it always seems to me as though I could see his father's treachery in Nehal Singh's eyes. It made me sick to think that I was enjoying his hospitality—it makes me feel worse that we have to accept the club-house at his hands. Travers behaved pretty badly, according to my ideas."

"It was mostly Miss Cary's doing," Lois objected. She liked Travers, and was inclined to take up the cudgels on his behalf.

Stafford's eyes twinkled. On his side he had the rooted and not unfounded masculine notion that all women are jealous of one another.

"Miss Cary is young and inexperienced and probably did not realize what she was doing," he retorted. "From what she told me, she takes the whole matter as a big joke, and now that the fat is in the fire it's no use enlightening her."

Lois made no immediate answer, though she may have had her doubts on the subject of Beatrice Cary's inexperience.

"The poor Rajah!" she said, after a pause, as Stafford walked curiously about the room. "I could not help being sorry for him. He seemed so eager and enthusiastic and anxious to please us, and we were so cold and ungrateful. Tell me, does it really make so much difference?"

He came back to her side. Something in her voice had touched him and stirred to life a warmth of feeling which was more than that of friendship.

"What makes so much difference?" he asked, smiling down at her small troubled face. "What are you worrying yourself about now?"

"Oh, it has always troubled me," she answered with the impetuosity which characterized her. "I have often worried about it. I mean," she added, as he laughed at her incoherence, "all that race distinction. Does it really mean so much? Will it never be bridged over?"

"Never," he said. "It can't be. It is a justified distinction and to my mind those who ignore it are to be despised."

He had answered her question with only a part seriousness, his whole interest concentrated on the charm of her personality. But for once her gravity resisted the suppressed merriment in his eyes.

"Are the natives, then, so contemptible?" she asked.

"Not exactly contemptible, but inferior. They have not our culture, and whatsoever they borrow from us is only skin-deep. Beneath the varnish they are their elemental selves—lazy, cruel, treacherous and unscrupulous. No, no. Each race must keep to itself. Our strength in India depends on our exclusiveness—upon keeping ourselves apart and above as superior beings. So long as they recognize we are superior, so long will they obey us."

"It is superiority, then, which prevents every one except professors from taking any interest in the natives?"

"Possibly," he returned, not quite so much at his ease. "One feels a natural repugnance, you know."

"You would never have anything to do with them?"

"Not if I could help it."

She sighed and turned away as though his gaze troubled her.

"I don't know why—it makes me sad to hear you talk like that," she said. "It seems so terribly hard."

"It is hard," he affirmed, following her out of the curious, heavy atmosphere into the evening sunshine. "There are a great many things in life which, as far as we know, are inevitable, so that there is no use in worrying or thinking about them." Her more serious mood had conquered his good spirits, and for a moment he stood at her side looking at the disused bungalow with eyes as thoughtful as her own. "Isn't it strange?" he went on. "Our parents came together from different ends of the earth, doomed to die in the same spot and in the same hour, and we children, far away in England, knowing nothing of each other, have drifted back to the fatal place to find each other there and to—"

"Yes," she said as he hesitated, "it is strange. I could almost think that this bungalow had some mysterious influence over our lives."

He smiled in half confirmation of her fancy.

"It may be. But come! We have had enough gloom for one evening. Let me gather some flowers for you before we go back."

She assented, and they followed the winding paths, stopping here and there to cut down some of the most tempting of Mrs. Carmichael's tenderly loved blossoms and always turning aside when they came in sight of the Colonel's verandah. No word of tenderness had ever passed between them, and yet they were happy to be together. It was as though a bond united them which had grown up, silent and unseen, from the first hour they had met, and in a quiet, peaceful way they knew that it existed and that they loved each other.

From the verandah where she was sewing by the fading light Mrs. Carmichael could watch their appearing and disappearing figures amidst the trees with the satisfaction of a confirmed match-maker. She, too, knew of this bond, and though she was a trifle impatient with the slowness of the development, she was content to bide her time.

"I don't usually pay any attention to Station gossip," she said to her husband, who was trying to read the newly arrived English paper, "but for once in a way I believe there is something in it. According to my experience, they should be engaged in less than a fortnight."

Colonel Carmichael started.

"Who? Lois and Stafford?"

"Yes, of course. Who else? Everybody looks upon it as practically settled. Why do you look like that? You ought to be pleased. You said yourself that you were very fond of Stafford—"

Carmichael made a quick gesture as though to stop the threatening torrent of expostulation. He had turned crimson and his whole manner was marked by an unusual uneasiness.

"Of course, I am fond of Stafford," he began. "I only meant—"

He was saved the trouble of explaining what he did mean by a sudden exclamation from his wife, who had let her work fall to the ground with a start of alarm.

"Good gracious, Mr. Travers!" she cried in her sharp way. "What a fright you gave me! I thought you were a horrible thug or something come to murder us all. There, how do you do!" She gave him her hand. "Will you have a cup of tea? We have just had ours, but if you would, I am quite ready to keep you company. Tea, as you know, is a weakness of mine. That is why my nerves are so bad."

Travers bowed, smiling. He was rather paler than usual and the hand which held a large bouquet of freshly cut flowers trembled as though the shock his sudden appearance had caused Mrs. Carmichael had recoiled on himself.

"Thank you—no," he said. "As a matter of fact, I came to bring these for Miss Caruthers, but as she is not here I should be very grateful if I might have a few words with you alone. I have something of importance, which it would be perhaps better to tell you first."

"Certainly," the Colonel said, clearing his throat and settling himself farther back in his chair. "There is no time like the present."

Travers looked at him in troubled surprise. The elder man's tone and attitude were those of some one confronted with a not unexpected but unpleasant crisis.

"It concerns your ward, Colonel Carmichael," Travers said, taking the chair offered him. "I think you must have known long ago that I cared very dearly for her. I have come now to ask her to be my wife."

He spoke quickly and abruptly, as though to hide a powerful emotion, and there was an instant's uncomfortable silence. Mrs. Carmichael's head was bent over her work. She did not dislike Travers, but this unexpected proposal upset all her plans and though it flattered her pride in Lois, she felt disturbed and thrown out of her course.

"I think you have made a mistake, Mr. Travers," she said at last, as her husband remained obstinately silent. "I have every reason to believe that Lois' heart is given elsewhere. However, we have no right to interfere—Lois must decide for herself. She is her own mistress. What do you say, George, dear?"

The Colonel shifted his position. Evidently he was at a loss to express himself, and his brow remained clouded.

"If it is Lois' wish, I shall put no obstacle in the way of her happiness," he said slowly.

"Have you any personal objection, Colonel?"

"I? O, dear, no!" was the hurried answer.

There was a second silence, in which Mrs. Carmichael and Travers exchanged baffled glances. The Colonel seemed in some unaccountable way to have lost his nerve and, as though he felt and feared the questioning gaze of his wife, he leaned forward so that his face was hidden.

"Personally I have no objection at all," he repeated, as if seeking to gain time. "Like my wife, I had other ideas on the subject, but that has nothing to do with it. At the same time, I feel it—eh—my duty to—eh—tell you before you go further—for your sake, and—eh—every one's sake—certain details concerning Lois which I have not thought necessary to give to the world in general. You understand—I consider it my duty—only fair to yourself and Lois."

"I quite understand," Travers said. He seemed in no way surprised, and his expression was that of a man waiting for the explanation to a problem which had long puzzled him.

"Really, George!" expostulated Mrs. Carmichael, not without indignation, "one would think you were about to disinter the most horrible family skeleton. You are not to be alarmed, Mr. Travers. It is all a little mysterious, perhaps, but nothing to make such a fuss about."

The Colonel looked up under the sting of her reproach and tried to smile.

"I dare say my wife is right," he said. "I am rather foolish about the matter—possibly because it is all linked together with a very painful period of my life. Mr. Travers, my dearest friend, Steven Caruthers, had no children. The baby girl whom by his will he intrusted to my care was not his child, nor have I ever been able to discover whose child she really was. His will spoke of her as his adopted daughter, who was to bear his name and in fault of any other heir to inherit both his own and his wife's large fortune. More I can not tell you, for I myself do not know more."

He laid an almost timid emphasis on the word "know," as though somewhere at the back of his mind there lurked a suspicion which he dared neither deny nor express openly, and, in spite of his attempt at cheerfulness, his features were still disturbed and gloomy.

"You know one thing more, which you haven't mentioned," Mrs. Carmichael said, "and that is that Lois is of good family on both sides. Steven Caruthers told you so."

"Yes, that's true—I forgot," the Colonel assented. "He assured me that on both sides she was of good, even high birth, and that he had adopted her partly because he had no children of his own and partly because of a debt of gratitude which he owed her father. It does not seem to me that it makes much difference."

"It makes all the difference in the world, George," retorted Mrs.
Carmichael, who for some reason or another was considerably put out.
"You don't want Mr. Travers to think that Lois was picked up in the
street, do you?"

"Of course not," her husband agreed, "but then—" He broke off, and all three relapsed into an awkward silence. Travers was the first to speak. He had been looking out over the garden and had seen Lois' white dress flash through the bushes.

"For my part," he began quietly, "I can not see that what you have told me can have an influence on the matter. I love Lois. That is the chief thing—or rather the chief thing is whether or not she can learn to love me. Whether she is the child of a sweep or a prince, it makes no difference to my feelings toward her."

Mrs. Carmichael held out her hand.

"Well, whatever happens, you are a man before you are a prig," she said, "and that is something to be thankful for in these degenerate days. Why, there is the child herself! Come here, my dear."

Lois came running up the verandah steps with Stafford close behind her. Her eyes were full of laughter and sunshine, and in her hand she held a mass of roses which Stafford had gathered during their ramble.

"Good-evening, Mr. Travers," she exclaimed with pleased surprise, as he rose to greet her. "I did not expect to find you here. How grave you all look! And what lovely flowers!"

Travers considered his bouquet with a rueful smile.

"I brought them from my garden, Miss Caruthers," he said. "They were meant for to-night's festivity. But it seems they have come too late—you are already well supplied."

"Flowers never come too late and one can never have too many of them!" Lois answered gratefully. "Please bring them in here and I will put them in water."

She led the way into the drawing-room and he followed her eagerly. Whether it was the sight of her charm and youth, or the warm greeting which he had read in her eyes, or the satisfied calm on Stafford's face, Travers himself could not have told, but in that moment he lost his usual self-possession. He was white and shaken like a man who sees himself thrust suddenly to the brink of a chasm and knows that he must cross or fall.

"Miss Caruthers!" he said.

She turned quickly from the flowers which she was arranging in a bowl. The smile of pleasure which still lingered about her lips died away as she saw his face.

"Miss Caruthers," he repeated earnestly, "it is perhaps neither wise nor right of me to speak now, but there are moments when anything—even the worst—is better than uncertainty, when a man can bear no more. Forgive me—I am not eloquent and what I have to tell can be encompassed in one word. I love you, Lois. I think you must know it, though you can not know how great my love is. Is there any hope for me?"

She drew her hand gently but firmly from his half-unconscious clasp.

"I am sorry—no," she said.

"Lois—I can't give up hope. Is there some one else?"

She lifted her troubled eyes to his face. He saw in their depths a curious doubt and uncertainty.

"I do not know," she said almost to herself. "I only know that you are not the man."

The blow had calmed him. Like a good general who has suffered a temporary check, he gathered his forces together and prepared an orderly retreat.

"I will not trouble you," he said gently. "I feel now that I did wrong to disturb your peace—God knows I would never willingly cause you an instant's sorrow—but a man who loves as I do must feed himself with hope, however wild and unreasonable. Now I know, and whatever happens—I hope you will be happy—I pray you will be happy. Yes, though I am not given to uttering prayers, I pray, so dear to me is the future which lies before you."

"I am very grateful," she said with bowed head. Something in his broken, disjointed sentences brought the tears to her eyes and made her voice unsteady. She knew he was suffering—she knew why, and her heart went out to him in friendship and womanly pity.

"You need not be grateful," he answered. "It is I who have to be grateful. In spite of it all, you do not know what good you have brought into my life nor how you have unconsciously helped me. I shall never be able to help you as you have helped me—and yet—will you promise me something?"

"Anything in my power," she said faintly.

"It is not much—only this. If the time should ever come when you are in trouble, if you should ever be in need of a true and devoted friend, will you turn to me? Will you let me try to pay my debt of gratitude to you?"

She lifted her head and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. Every good woman sympathizes with those whose suffering she has inadvertently caused, and in that moment Lois would have done anything to alleviate Travers' pain.

"If it should ever be necessary, I will turn to you," she said gently.
"I promise you."

"Thank you!" he said, and, taking her out-stretched hand, raised it reverently to his lips.

CHAPTER X

AT THE GATES OF A GREAT PEOPLE

Although Travers lost no time in setting to work on the task of calling a new and suitable club-house into existence, he realized immediately that, do what he would, he could not hope for completion before the lapse of a considerable time, and this period of waiting did not suit his plans. Already on the day after the Rajah's reception he had arranged for a return of hospitality which was to take place in his own grounds and to be on an unusually magnificent scale. The European population of Marut shrugged its shoulders as it saw the preparations, and observed that if Travers had been as generous in the first place there would never have been any need to have sought for support from a foreign quarter—at which criticism Travers merely smiled. The club-house was, after all, only a means to a very much more important end of his own.

Rajah Nehal Singh of course accepted the invitation sent him, and scarcely a week passed before the eventful evening arrived toward which more than one looked forward with eager anticipation—not least Mrs. Cary, who saw in every large entertainment a fresh opportunity for Beatrice to carry out her own particular campaign. It was therefore, as Mrs. Cary angrily declared, a fresh dispensation of an unfriendly Providence that on the very same day Beatrice fell ill. What malady had her in its clutches was more than her distracted and aggrieved mother could say. She sat before her writing-table, playing idly with a curiously cut stone, and appeared the picture of health. Yet she was ill—she repeated it obstinately and without variation a dozen times in response to Mrs. Cary's persistent protests.

"You don't look ill," Mrs. Cary exclaimed in exasperation as, arrayed in her newest wonder from Paris, she came to say good-by. "I can't think what's the matter with you, and you won't explain. Have you got a pain anywhere?—Have you a headache? For goodness' sake, say something, child!"

Beatrice looked at her mother calmly, and a curious mixture of bitterness and amusement crept into her expression as her eyes wandered over the bulk in mauve satin to the red face with the indignant little eyes.

"What do you want me to say?" she asked. "I can't explain pains I haven't got."

"If you haven't got any pains, then you aren't ill."

Beatrice laughed.

"That shows how ignorant you are of the human constitution, my dear mother," she said. "The worst illnesses are painless—at least, in your sense of the word."

"I am not so ignorant as not to know one thing—and that is you are simply shamming!" burst out the elder woman, with a vicious tug at her straining gloves. "Shamming just to aggravate me, too! You do it to spite me. You are a bad daughter—"

Beatrice turned round so sharply that Mrs. Cary broke off in the middle of her abuse with a gasp.

"I do nothing to aggravate or spite you," Beatrice said, with a calm which her eyes belied. "I have never gone against you in the whole course of my life. What have I done since we have been here but play an obedient fiddle to Mr. Travers' will, in order that your position might not be endangered—"

"Our position," interposed Mrs. Cary hurriedly.

"No, your position. There may have been a time when I cared, too, but I don't now. I have ceased caring for anything. To suit Mr. Travers, I have fooled, and continue to fool, a man who has never harmed me in his life. I move heaven and earth to come between two people for whom alone in this whole place, I have a glimmer of respect."

"Respect!" jeered Mrs. Cary.

"Yes, respect—not much, I confess, but still enough to have made me leave them alone if I had had the chance. Lois has been kind to me. I happen to know that, little as she likes me, she is about the only one in the Station who keeps her tongue from slander and—the truth. As for John Stafford, if he is a narrow-minded bigot, he is at least a man, and that is something to appreciate."

"That is just what I think!" Mrs. Cary said conciliatingly. "And therefore he is the very husband for you, dear child."

"You think so, not because he is a man, but because he has a position in which it would suit you excellently to have a son-in-law. Well, I have promised to do my best, though I am convinced it is too late."

"There is no official engagement between them," Mrs. Cary said hopefully, "and you know your power, Beaty. He already likes you more than enough, and what with Mr. Travers on the other side—All the same," she continued, becoming suddenly petulant, "it's too bad of you to throw away a chance like this."

Beatrice covered her face with her hand with a gesture of complete weariness.

"I have promised to do my best," she reiterated. "Let me do it my own way. I can not go to-night—I feel I can not. If I went, it would only be a failure. Let me for once be judge of what is best."

Her mother sighed resignedly.

"Very well. I suppose I can't force you. You can be as obstinate as a mule when you choose. I only hope you won't live to regret it. Good night."

This time she did not give her daughter the usual perfunctory and barely tolerated kiss. At the bottom of her torpid, selfish soul she was bitterly hurt and disappointed, as those people always are who have hurt and disappointed others their whole lives, and only a glimmer of hope that Beatrice's determination might have softened made her hesitate at the door and glance back. Beatrice sat just as she had sat the whole evening, in an attitude of moody thought, her fingers still playing with the blood-red ruby, and Mrs. Cary went out, slamming the door violently after her.

In consequence of her long and futile appeal, Mrs. Cary had made herself very late, and when she entered the large marquee which Travers had had erected in his garden she found that all the guests had arrived, including Rajah Nehal Singh himself. He stood facing the entrance, and she felt, with a consoling sense of spiteful triumph, how his glance hurried past her, seeking the figure which no doubt above all else had tempted him thither.

The senior lady, Mrs. Carmichael, was at his side, and as Mrs. Cary in duty bound went up to pay her respects, she added satisfaction to satisfaction by relating loudly that her daughter had a slight headache which she had not thought it worth while to increase by a form of entertainment which, between you and me, dear Mrs. Carmichael, bad taste as it no doubt is, has no attractions for Beatrice. Now, anything outdoor, and nothing will keep her from it! She turned to Stafford, who was standing with Lois close at hand. "That reminds me to tell you, Captain, how tremendously my daughter enjoyed her ride with you yesterday. If you promise not to get conceited, I will tell you what she said."

"I promise!" he said, with a mock gravity which concealed a very real amusement.

"She said that in her opinion there wasn't a better horseman in Marut, and that it was more pleasure to ride with you than any one else. Now, are you keeping your promise?" She tapped him playfully on the arm. Stafford bowed, looking what he felt, hot and uncomfortable. There are some people who have the knack of making others ashamed of them and of themselves. Mrs. Cary was just such a person.

"It was very kind of Miss Cary to say so," Stafford said stiffly. "I am afraid her praise is not justified."

All this time Nehal Singh had been standing at Mrs. Cary's elbow, and she had persistently ignored him. Deeper than her reverence for any form of title was her wounded conviction that he had once laughed at her and made her ridiculous, and to this injury was added the insult that it came from a man whom, as an Englishwoman, she had the privilege of "tolerating." A true parvenu, she had quickly learned to suspect and despise the credentials of other intruders.

He turned away from her and for the first time there was something hesitating and troubled in his manner. Hitherto there had been songs and music for his entertainment; it was now the turn of the Europeans to follow their usual form of pleasure, yet they looked at one another questioningly. It was the custom of the chief guest of the evening to open the dancing, but this could hardly be expected of a native prince who was as yet ignorant of such things and who must still be bound and fettered by caste and religion.

The pause of uncertainty lasted only a moment, but for those at least whose eyes were open, it was a moment symbolical of a great loneliness. In the midst of a gay and crowded world of people, linked together by a common tie of blood, Nehal Singh stood isolated. He did not know it, but it was that loneliness which cast a transitory chill upon his enthusiasm and made him draw himself stiffly upright and face the hundred questioning eyes with a new hauteur. An instant and it was gone—that illuminating flash vanished, like a line drawn across a quicksand, beneath the surface, never to be seen again, perhaps never even to be remembered.

Stafford led Lois out into the center, and one pair after another followed his example. With Travers still at his side, the Rajah drew back from the now crowded floor of dancers, and watched the scene with glistening, eager eyes, happy at last to be in the midst of them—the Great People of the world. It was a brilliant scene, for Travers had spared nothing. The sides of the marquee banked with flowers, the music, the brilliant dresses and uniforms, were all calculated to impress a mind as yet curiously unspoiled by the pomp and magnificence of the East. They impressed Nehal Singh deeply; his mind was filled with a wonder and pleasure which did something toward soothing the first bitter disappointment that the evening had brought him.

But above all else, he wondered at himself and the rapidity of the fate which in two short weeks had swept him out of his solitude into the very vortex of a world unknown to him save through his books. He asked himself what power it was that had flung aside caste, religion, education, like a child's sandcastle before the onrush of a mighty tide. Caste, religion, hatred of the foreigner, these things had been sown deep into him, had been fostered and trained like precious plants, and now they were dead at the first contact with European ideas. They were gone as though they had never been. He had made no resistance. He had drifted with the stream, regardless of the entreating, threatening hands held out to him; yielding to a divine power stronger than himself, stronger far than the implanted principles of his life.

His wonder, though he did not know it, was shared by the Englishman at his side. Travers, accustomed as he was to look upon human theories and principles as buyable and saleable appendages, could not suppress a mild surprise at the rapidity with which this Hindu prince had assimilated the ideas and mental attitude of another hemisphere. Possibly it could be traced back to the parrot-like propensities of all inferior races, but Travers, much as the solution appealed to him, could not accept it. A parrot that assumes with apparent ease the ways of his master within a fortnight, and thereby retains a striking originality of his own, is not an ordinary parrot, and the conviction was dawning on Travers that Nehal Singh was not an ordinary Hindu. The unusual simplicity of his dress, which nevertheless concealed a costly and refined taste, his firm though unpretentious bearing, the energy with which he had overthrown what Travers guessed must have been a fairly violent opposition on the part of his priestly advisers, pointed to a decided, interesting and perhaps, under certain circumstances, dangerous personality. The latter part of this deduction had not as yet struck Travers in its full force, but so much he at least felt that he proceeded to go warily, relying on his diplomacy and still more on a weapon which was not the less effective for being kept, as on this occasion, in the background.

"Rajah Sahib, this is our second meeting," he said, after a few minutes' study of the handsome absorbed face. "I have my answer ready."

Nehal Singh turned at once, as though he had been waiting for Travers to broach the subject.

"You have not forgotten, then?"

"Forgotten? No; it lent itself too easily to my fancy and secret ambition for me to forget. Doubtless, though, my answer will not appeal to you, for it is the answer of a business man with a business hobby of immense proportions and of the earth earthy."

"Nevertheless, tell it to me," Nehal Singh said, looking about him as though seeking a way out of the noise and confusion. "Whatever it is, it will interest me so long as it has one object."

"I venture to think I know that object," was Travers' mental comment as he led the way into the second division of the marquee.

The place had been laid out as a refreshment room, with small, prettily decorated tables, and was for the moment empty, save for a few busy native servants. An electric globe hung from the ceiling, and immediately beneath its brilliant light Travers came to a standstill. He put his hand in his pocket and drew out what seemed to be a jewel-case, which he opened and handed to the Rajah.

"Before I say anything further, I want you to look at that and give me your opinion, Rajah Sahib," he said. "I will then proceed."

Nehal Singh took the small white stone from the case and studied it intently. He held it to the light, and it flashed back at him a hundred brilliant colors. He smiled with the pleasure of a connoisseur.

"It is a diamond," he said, "a beautiful diamond. Though smaller, it must surely equal the one I wear in my turban."

"You confirm my opinion and the opinion of all experts," Travers answered enthusiastically, "and I will confess to you that it is that stone which has prolonged my stay indefinitely at Marut. About a year ago a friend of mine, an engineer, who was engaged on some government work at the river, had occasion to make excavations about a quarter of a mile from the Bazaar. He happened to come across this stone, and being something of an expert, he recognized it—and held his tongue. When he came south again to Madras, he confided hit discovery to me, and, impressed by his story, and the stone, I sent a mining engineer to Marut to make secret investigations. I received his report six months ago."

Nehal Singh replaced the stone slowly in its case.

"What did he say?" he asked.

"He reported that there were sure and certain signs that the whole of the Bazaar is built upon a diamond field of unusual proportions, which, unlike other Indian mining enterprises, was likely to repay, doubly repay, exploitation. I immediately came to Marut, and found that the Bazaar was entirely your property, Rajah Sahib, and that you were not likely to be influenced by any representations. Nevertheless I remained, experimenting and investigating, above all hoping that some chance would lead me in your way. Destiny, as you see, Rajah Sahib, has spoken the approving word."

Nehal Singh sighed as he handed the case back, and the sigh expressed a. rather weary disappointment.

"I have stones enough and wealth enough," he said. "I have no need of more."

"It was not of you I was thinking, Rajah Sahib," Travers returned.

"Of whom, then?"

"Of myself, to some extent, as becomes a business man, but also, and I venture to assert principally, of the general welfare of your country and people."

"I fear I do not understand you."

"And yet, Rajah Sahib, you have read, and have no doubt been able to trace through history the source of prosperity and misfortune among the nations. The curse of India is her overpopulation and the inability of her people to extract from the earth sufficient means for existence. If I may say so, the ordinary native is a dreamer who prefers to starve on a treasure hoard rather than bestir himself to unbury it. Lack of energy, lack of initiative, lack of opportunity, lack also of guides have made your subjects suffering idlers whose very existence is a curse to themselves and an unsolved problem for others. Charity can not help them—that enervating poison has already done enough mischief. You could fling away your whole fortune on your state, and leave it with no improvement. The cure, if cure there be, lies in the awakening of a sense of independence and ambition and self-respect. Only work can do this, only work can transform them from beggars into honorable, self-supporting members of the Empire; and the crying misery of the present time calls upon you, Rajah Sahib, to rouse them to their new task!"

He had spoken with an enthusiasm which grew in measure as he saw its effect upon his hearer. For though he did not immediately respond, Nehal Singh's face had betrayed emotions which a natural dignity was learning to hold back from impulsive expression. He answered at last quietly, but with an irrepressible undercurrent of eagerness.

"You speak convincingly," he said; "and though I fear you overrate the hidden powers of activity in my people, you have made me still more anxious for a direct answer to my question—what would you do in my place?"

"If I had the money and the power, I would sweep the Bazaar, with all its dirt and disease, out of existence," Travers answered energetically. "I would build up a new native quarter outside Marut, and enforce order and cleanliness. Where the present Bazaar stands, I would open out a mine, and with the help of European experts encourage the natives into the subsequent employment which would stand open to them. In a short time a mere military Station would become the center of native industry and commercial prosperity."

A faint skeptical smile played around Nehal Singh's mouth, but his eyes were still profoundly grave.

"If I know my people, I fear they will revolt against such changes," he said. "You have described them as dreamers who prefer starvation to effort—such they are."

"Your influence would be irresistible, Rajah Sahib."

Nehal Singh looked at Travers keenly. For the second time he had been spoken of as a power. Was it perhaps true, as his father had said, and this cool Englishman had said, that the thoughts and actions of more than a million people lay at his command? If so, the twenty-five years of his life had been wasted, and he stood far below the high standard which had been set him. He had wandered aimlessly along a smooth path, cut off from the world, plucking such fruits and flowers as offered themselves within his reach, deaf to the cries of those to whom his highest efforts should have been dedicated. He had dreamed where he should have acted, slept where he should have watched and labored unceasingly, yet it was not too late. He felt how his whole dream-world shivered beneath the convulsions of his awakening energies. The vague, futile, uneasy longings of his immaturity took definite shape. His shackled abilities awaited only the signal to throw off their fetters and in freedom to create good for the whole world.

"You have shown me possibilities of which I never dreamed," he said to Travers. "I must speak to you again, and soon, for if things are as you say, then time enough has been wasted. But not tonight. Tomorrow I will see you—or no, not tomorrow—the day after. I must have time to think."

The waltz had died sentimentally into silence, and he made a gesture indicating that he wished to return to the ball-room. Yet on the threshold he hesitated and drew back.

"The light and confusion trouble me," he said, passing his hand over his eyes, "and my mind is full of new thoughts. If you will permit, I will take my leave. My servants are waiting outside, and if you will carry my thanks to my other hosts, I should prefer to go unnoticed."

"It is as you wish, Rajah Sahib," Travers returned, "It is we who have to thank you for partaking of our poor hospitality."

"You have given me more than hospitality," Nehal Singh interposed.
Then he lifted his hand in salute. "In two days I shall expect you."

"In two days."

Travers watched the tall, white-clad figure pass out of the brightly lighted tent into the darkness. From beginning to end, his plans had been crowned with unhoped-for success, and yet he was puzzled.

"I wonder why in two days?" he thought. "Why not tomorrow? I wonder if by any chance—!" He broke off with a smothered laugh. "It is just possible. I'll make sure and send her a line."

Then, as the band began the first bars of a second waltz, he hurried back into the crowded room in time to forestall Stafford at Lois' side.

CHAPTER XI

WITHIN THE GATES

Nehal Singh's servants stood with the horses outside Travers' compound and waited. Their master did not disturb them. Glad as he was to get away from the crowd of strangers and the dazzling lights and colors, it still pleased him to be within hearing of the music which, softened by the distance, exercised a melancholy yet soothing influence upon his disturbed mind. For the dreamy peace had gone for ever—as indeed it must be when the soul of man is roughly shaken into living, pulsating life, and he fevered with a hundred as yet disordered hopes and ambitions. To be a benefactor to his people and to all mankind, to be the first pioneer of his race in the search after civilization and culture—these had been the dreams of his hitherto wasted life, only he had never recognized them, never understood whither the restless impulses were driving him. It had needed the pure soul of a good woman to unlock the best from his own; it had needed the genius of a clear brain to harness the untrained faculties to some definite aim. The soul of a woman had come and had planted upon him the purity of her high ideal; the genius had already shot its first illuminating ray into his darkness. Henceforth the watchword for them all was to be "Forward," and Nehal Singh, standing like a white ghost in the deserted compound, shaken by the force of his own emotions, intoxicated by his own happiness and the shining future which spread itself before his eyes, sent up a prayer such as rarely ascends from earth to Heaven. To whom? Not to Brahma. His mind had burst like a raging tide over the flood-gates of caste and creed and embraced the whole world and the one God who has no name, no creed, no dogma, but whom in that moment he recognized in great thanksgiving as the Universal Father.

Thus far had Nehal Singh traveled in two short weeks—guided by a woman who had no God and a man who had no God save his own ends. But he did not know this. As he began to pace slowly backward and forward, listening to the distant music, he thought of her, and measured himself with her ideal in a humility which did not reject hope. One day he would be able to stand before her and say, "Thus far have I worked and striven for inner worth and for the good of my brothers. I have kept myself pure and honest, I have cultivated in myself the best I have, and have been inexorable against the evil. Thus much have I attained."

Further than that triumphant moment he did not think, but he thanked God for the ideal which had been set him—the Great People's ideal of a man—and for the afterward which he knew must come.

Thus absorbed in his own reflections, he reached Travers' bungalow, and a ray of light falling across his path, brought him sharply back to the present reality. He looked up and saw that a table had been pulled out on to the verandah, and that four officers sat round it, playing cards by the light of a lamp. At Marut there was always a heavy superfluity of men, and these four, doubtless weary of standing uselessly about, had made good their escape to enjoy themselves in their own way. Nehal Singh hesitated. He felt a strong desire to go up and join them, to learn to know them outside the enervating, leveling atmosphere of social intercourse where each is forced to keep his real individuality hidden behind a wall of phrases. Now, no doubt, they would show themselves openly to him as they were; they would admit him into the circle of their intimate life, and teach him the secret of the greatness which had carried their flag to the four corners of the earth. Yet he hesitated to make his presence known. The study of the four faces, unconscious of his scrutiny, absorbed him.

The two elder men were known to him, although their names were forgotten. Their fair hair, regular, somewhat cold, features led him to suppose that they were brothers. The other two were considerably younger—they seemed to Nehal Singh almost boys, though in all probability they were his own age. One especially interested him. He was a good-looking young fellow, with pleasant if somewhat effeminate features and a healthy skin bronzed with the Indian sun. He sat directly opposite where Nehal Singh stood in the shadow, and when he shifted his cards, as he often did in a restless, uneasy way, he gave the unseen watcher an opportunity to study every line of his set face.

Nehal Singh wondered at his expression. The others were grave with the gravity of indifference, but this boy had his teeth set, and something in his eyes reminded Nehal Singh of a dog he had once seen confronted suddenly with an infuriated rattle-snake. It was the expression of hypnotized fear which held him back from intruding himself upon them, and he was about to retrace his steps quietly when the man who was seated next the balustrade turned and glanced so directly toward him that Nehal Singh thought his presence was discovered. The officer's next words showed, however, that his gaze had passed over Nehal Singh's head to the brightly lighted marquee on the other side of the compound.

"I'm glad to be out of that crush," Captain Webb said, as he lazily gathered up his cards. "Fearfully rotten show I call it—not a pretty girl among the lot, and a heat enough to make the devil envious! I can't think what induced our respected Napoleon to make such a fool of himself."

"Napoleon hasn't made a fool of himself, you can make yourself easy on that score," Saunders retorted. "Napoleon knows on which side of the bread his butter lies, even if you don't. When he dances attendance on any one, you can take it on trust that the butter isn't far off. No, no; I've a great reverence for Nappy's genius."

"It's an infernally undignified proceeding, anyhow," Webb went on. "I'm beginning to see that old Stafford wasn't so far wrong. What do we want with the fellow? All this kowtowing will go to his head and make him as 'uppish' as the rest of 'em. He's conceited enough, already, aping us as though he had been at it all his life."

"That's the mistake we English are always making," grumbled Saunders, as he played out. "We are too familiar. We swallow anything for diplomacy's sake, even if it hasn't got so much as a coating of varnish. We pull these fellows up to our level and pamper them as though they were our equals, and then when they find we won't go the whole hog, they turn nasty and there's the devil to pay. In this case I didn't mind so long as he kept his place, but then that's what they never do. That's our rubber, I think. Shall we stop?"

"I've had enough, anyhow," his vis-a-vis answered. "Add up the dern total, will you, there's a good fellow. I must be getting home. There's that boring parade to-morrow at five again, and I've got a headache that will last me a week, thanks to Nappy's bad champagne. Well, what's the damage?"

The young fellow who had sat with his head bowed over his cards looked up with a sickly smile.

"Yes, what's the damage?" he said. "I can't be bothered—I've lost count. You and I must have done pretty badly, Phipps."

"I dare say we shall survive," his partner rejoined carelessly. "We have lost five rubbers. How does that work out, Webb?"

"I'll trouble you for a hundred each," Webb answered, after a minute's calculation. "Quite a nice, profitable evening for us, eh, Saunders. Thanks, awfully, old fellow." He gathered up the rupees which the boy's partner had pushed toward him. The boy himself sat as though frozen to stone. Only when Saunders gave him a friendly nudge, he started and looked about him as though he had been awakened out of a trance.

"I'm awfully sorry," he stuttered; "you and Webb—would you mind waiting till to-morrow? I'll raise it somehow—I haven't got so much—"

Phipps broke into a laugh.

"You silly young duffer!" he said. "What have you been doing with your pocket money, eh? Been buying too many sweeties?"

The other two men roared, but the boy's features never relaxed.

"I tell you I haven't got so much with me," he mumbled. "I'll bring it to-morrow, I promise."

Webb rose from his chair, stretching himself languidly.

"All right," he agreed. "To-morrow will do. By Jove, what a gorgeous night it is!" He leaned over the balustrade, lifting his aristocratic face to the sky. "Saunders, you don't want to go to bed, you old cormorant. Come on with me, and we'll spend the night hours worthily."

"I'm game!" Saunders rejoined. "That is, if it's anything decent. I'm not going to do any more tar-worshipping, that's certain."

"Don't want you to. I'm going to dress up and have a run around the Bazaar, and if you want a little excitement, you had better do likewise. You see things you don't see in the daytime, I can tell you, and some of the women aren't bad. Come on! We can run round to my diggings and change. Are you coming, Phipps and Geoffries?"

The weedy young man addressed as Phipps rose with alacrity.

"Anything for a change," he said. "Wake up, Innocence!" He brought his hand down with a friendly thump on Geoffries' shoulder, but the boy shook his head.

"No," he said, in the same rough, monotonous voice. "I'm done for to-night. You fellows get on without me."

"As you like. Good night."

"Good night."

The three men went into the bungalow. Gradually their voices died away in the distance, but the boy never moved, never shifted his blank stare from the cards in front of him. It was a curious tableau. In the midst of the darkness it was as though a lime-light had been thrown on to a theatrical representation of despair, while beneath, hidden by the shadow, a lonely spectator, to whom the scene was a horrible revelation, fought out a hard battle between indignation and disbelief.

Throughout the conversation Nehal Singh had stood rigid, his hand clenched on the jeweled hilt of his sword, his eyes riveted on the faces of the four men who were thus unconsciously drawing him into the intimate circle of their life. Much that they said was incomprehensible to him. The references to "Napoleon" and to the unknown individual contemptuously dubbed "the fellow" were not clear, but they left him a gnawing sense of insult and scorn which he could not conquer. The subsequent chink of money changing hands had jarred upon his ears—the final dispute concerning their further pleasure made him sick with disgust. These "gentlemen" sought their amusement in a place where he would have scorned to set his foot.

This fact obliterated for a moment every other consideration. Was it to these that his hero-worship was dedicated? Were these the men from whom he was to learn greatness of thought, heroism of action, purity in life, idealism—these blatant, coarse-worded, coarse-minded cynics to whom duty was a "bore" and pleasure an excuse to plunge into the lowest dregs of existence? In vain his young enthusiasm, his almost passionate desire to honor greatness in others fought his contemptuous conviction of their unworthiness. Gradually, it is true, he grew calmer, and, like a climber who has been flung from a high peak, gathered himself from his fall, ready to climb again. He told himself that as an outsider he did not understand either the words or the actions which he had heard and witnessed, that he judged them by the narrow standard of a life spent cut off from the practical ways of the world. He repeated to himself Beatrice Cary's assurance—"All men do not carry their heart on their sleeve." He told himself that behind the jarring flippancy there still could lurk a hidden depth and greatness. Nevertheless the received impression was stronger than all argument. The climber, apparently unhurt, had sustained a vital injury.

Nehal Singh was about to turn away, desirous only to be alone, when a sound fell on his ears which sent a sudden sharp thrill through his troubled heart. It was a groan, a single, half-smothered groan, breaking through compressed lips by the very force of an overpowering misery. Nehal looked back. The blank stare was gone, the boy lay with his face buried in his arms.

In that moment the dreamer in Nehal died, the man of instant, impulsive action took his place. He hurried up the steps of the verandah and laid his hand on the bowed shoulder.

"You are in trouble," he said. "What is the matter?"

As though he had been struck by a shock of electricity, Geoffries half sprang to his feet, and then, as he saw the dark face so close to his own, he sank back again, speechless and white to the lips. For a moment the two men looked at each other in unbroken silence.

"I am sorry I have startled you," Nehal said at length, "but I could not see you in such distress. I do not know what it is, but if you will confide in me, I may be able to help you."

"Rajah Sahib," stammered the young fellow, in helpless confusion, "if
I had known you were there—"

"You would not have revealed your trouble to me?" Nehal finished, with a faint smile. "And that, I think, would have been a pity for us both. If I can help you, perhaps you can help me." He paused and then added slowly: "I have been standing watching you a long time."

"A long time!" A curious fear crept over the boyish face. "You saw us playing, then—and heard what we said?"

"Yes."

"And you wish to help me?"

"If I can."

Geoffries turned his head away, avoiding the direct gaze.

"You are very kind, Rajah Sahib. I'm afraid I'm not to be helped."

The sight of that awkward shame and misery drove all personal grief from Nehal's mind. He drew forward a chair and seated himself opposite his companion, clasping his sinewy, well-shaped hands on the table before him.

"Let us try and put all formalities aside," he said. "If you can treat me as a friend, let nothing prevent you. We are strangers to each other, but then the whole world is stranger to me. Yet I would be glad to help and understand the world, as I would be glad to help and understand you if you will let me."