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less grotesque, I should not be so much afraid. I mean that the absolute indefensibility of it might bring her a recklessness and a momentum which might—"

"Send her over the verge," I said. "Well, go home and ask her to dinner."

There was a good deal more to say, of course, than I have thought proper to put down here; but before Anna went I saw that she was keyed up to the heroic part. This was none the less to her credit because it was the only part, the dictation of a sense of expediency that despaired while it dictated. The noble thing was her capacity to take it, and, amid all that warred in her, to carry it out on the brave, high lines of her inspiration. It seemed a literal inspiration, so perfectly calculated that it was hard not to think sometimes, when one saw them together, that Anna had been lulled into a simple resumption of the old relation. Then from the least thing possible, the lift of an eyelid, it flashed upon one that between these two every moment was dramatic, and one took up the word with a curious sense of detachment and futility, but with one's heart beating like a triphammer with the mad excitement of it. The acute thing was the splendid sincerity of Judy Harbottle's response. For days she was profoundly on her guard; then suddenly she seemed to become virtually, vividly aware of what I must go on calling the great chance, and passionately to fling herself upon it. It was the strangest cooperation, without a word or a sign to show it conscious, a playing together for stakes that could not be admitted, a thing to hang upon breathless. It was there between them, the tenable ground of what they were to each other; they occupied it with almost an equal eye upon the tide that threatened, while I from my mainland tower also made an anguished calculation of the chances. I think, in spite of the menace, they found real beatitudes; so keenly did they set about the business that it brought them moments finer than any they could count in the years that were behind them—the flat and colorless years that were gone. Once or twice the wild idea even visited me that it was, after all, the projection of his mother in Somers that had so seized Judy Harbottle, and that the original was all that was needed to help the happy process of detachment. Somers himself at the time was a good

deal away on escort duty; they had a clear field.

I cannot tell exactly when, between Mrs. Harbottle and me, it became a matter for reference more or less overt - I mean her defined problem, the thing that went about between her and the sun. It will be imagined that it did not come up like the weather; indeed, it was hardly ever to be envisaged and never to be held; but it was always there, and out of our joint consciousness it would sometimes leap and pass, without shape or face. It might slip between two sentences, or it might remain a dogging shadow for an hour. Or a week would pass while, with a strong hand, she held it out of sight altogether, and talked of Anna, always of Anna. Her eyes shone with the things she told me then; she seemed to keep herself under the influence of them, as if they had the power of narcotics.

At the end of a time like this she turned to me in the door as she was going, and stood silent, as if she could neither go nor stay. I had been able to make nothing of her that afternoon; she had seemed preoccupied with the pattern of the carpet, which she traced continually with her riding-crop; and finally I too had relapsed. She sat haggard, with the fight forever in her eyes, and the day seemed to grow somber about her in her corner. When she turned in the door I looked up with sudden prescience of a crisis.

"Don't jump," she said; "it was only to tell you that I have persuaded Robert to apply for furlough. Eighteen months. From the 1st of April. Don't touch me." I suppose I made a movement toward her. Certainly I wanted to throw my arms about her-with the instinct, I suppose, to steady her in her great resolution.

"At the end of that time, as you know, he will be retired. I had some trouble, he is so keen on the regiment; but I think I have succeeded. You might mention it to Anna.”

"Have n't you?" sprang past my lips. "I can't. It would be like taking an oath, to tell her, and—I can't take an oath to go. But I mean to."

"There is nothing to be said," I brought out, feeling indeed that there was not. "But I congratulate you, Judy."

"No; there is nothing to be said. And you congratulate me, no doubt."

She stood for a moment quivering in the

isolation she made for herself, and I felt a primitive angry revolt against the delicate trafficking of souls that could end in such ravage and disaster. The price was too heavy. I would have denuded her, at the moment, of all that led her into this, and turned her out a clod with fine shoulders, like fifty other women in Peshawar. Then, perhaps because I held myself silent and remote, and she had no emotion to fear from me, she did not immediately go.

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"It will beat itself away, I suppose, like the rest of the unreasonable pain of the world," she said at last; and that, of course, brought me to her side. 'Things will go back to their proportions. This," she touched an open rose, "will claim its beauty again. And life will become-perhaps-what it was before."

Still I found nothing to say; I could only put my arm in hers and walk with her to the edge of the veranda, where the sice was holding her horse. She stroked the animal's neck. "Everything in me answered him," she informed me, with the grave intelligence of a patient who relates a symptom past. As she took the reins she turned to me again. His spirit came to mine like a homing bird," she said, and in her smile even the pale reflection of happiness was sweet and stirring. It left me hanging in imagination over the source and the stream, a little blessed in the mere understanding.

Too much blessed for confidence, or any safe feeling that the source was bound. Rather I saw it leaping over every obstacle, flashing to its destiny. As I drove to the club next day I decided that I would not tell Anna Chichele of Colonel Harbottle's projected furlough. If to Judy telling her would be like taking an oath that they would go, to me it would at least be like assuming sponsorship for their intention. That would be heavy indeed. From the 1st of April-we were then in March. Anna would hear it soon enough from the general; would see it soon enough, almost, in the "Gazette," when it would have passed into irrecoverable fact. So I went by her with locked lips, kept out of the way of those eyes of the mother that asked and asked, and would have seen clear to any depth, any hiding-place, of knowledge like that. As I pulled up at the club I saw Colonel Harbottle talking concernedly to the wife of our second in com

LXVI.-11

mand, and was reminded that I had not heard for some days how Major Watkins was getting on. So I too approached Mrs. Watkins in her victoria to ask. Robert Harbottle kindly forestalled her reply. "Hard luck, is n't it? Watkins has been ordered home at once. Just settled into their new house, too-last of the kit came up from Calcutta yesterday, didn't it, Mrs. Watkins? But it's sound to go; Peshawar is the worst hole in Asia to shake off dysentery in."

We agreed upon this, and discussed the sale-list of her new furniture that Mrs. Watkins would have to send round the station, and considered the chances of a trooper, -to the Watkinses, with two children and not a penny but his pay, it did make a difference not to have to go by a liner, -and Colonel Harbottle and I were half-way to the reading-room before the significance of Major Watkins's sick-leave flashed upon me.

"But this," I cried, "will make a difference to your plans. You won't-"

"Be able to ask for that furlough Judy wants. Rather not. I'm afraid she 's disappointed-she was tremendously set on going; but it does n't matter tuppence

to me.

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I sought out Mrs. Harbottle, at the end of the room. She looked radiant; she sat on the edge of the table, and swung a light-hearted heel. She was talking to people who in themselves were a witness to high spirits, Captain the Hon. Freddy Gisborne and Mrs. Flamboys. At sight of me her face clouded, fell into the old weary lines. It made me feel somehow a little sick; I went back to my cart and drove home.

For more than a week I did not see her except when I met her riding with Somers Chichele along the peach-bordered road that leads to the Wazir-Bagh. The trees were all in blossom, and made a picture that might well catch dreaming souls into a beatitude that would correspond. The air was full of spring and the scent of violets, those wonderful Peshawar violets that grow in great clumps, tall and double. Gracious clouds came and trailed across the frontier barrier; as blue as an idyl it rose about us; the city smiled in her gardens.

She had it all in her face, all the spring softness and more, the morning she came, intensely controlled, to announce her defeat. The wonderful telegram from Simla arrived that was the wonderful part-at

the same time; I remember how the redwhite-and-blue turban of the telegraph peon bobbed up behind her shoulder in the veranda. I signed, and laid it on the table; I suppose it seemed hardly likely that anything could be important enough to interfere at the moment with my impression of what love, unbound and victorious, could do with a face I thought I knew. Love sat there careless of the issue, full of delight. Love proclaimed that between him and Judith Harbottle it was all over,she had met him, alas! in too narrow a place, and I marveled at the paradox with which he softened every curve and underlined every vivid note of personality in token that it had just begun. He sat there in great serenity, and though I knew that somewhere behind lurked a vanquished woman, I saw her through such a radiance that I could not be sure of seeing her at all. "And now," she said, "it is so dear to me and so lovely in my eyes-for a long time I would put it away and could not; now, if I could, I dare not say I would.' "And you go all the way-to the logical conclusion?"

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"I should like to tell you that quite definitely, and I think I can. The English mail leaves to-night."

"And you have arranged to take it?" "We have arranged nothing. Do you know," she smiled as if at the fresh colors of a dream,-"we have not even come to the admission. There has been between us no word, no vision. Ah, we have gone in bonds, and inarticulate! Hours we have had, exquisite hours of the spirit, but never a moment of the heart. It was mine to give, that moment, and he has waited, I know-wondering whether perhaps it would ever come. And to-day-we are going for a ride to-day, and I do not think we shall come back."

"It is probably from Mrs. Watkins about the victoria," I said, feeling its profound irrelevance; "I wired an offer to her in Bombay. However—" and I read the telegram, the little solving telegram from army headquarters. I turned my back on her to read it again, and then I folded it up very carefully and put it in my pocket. It was a moment to take hold of with both hands, crying on all one's gods for steadiness.

How white you look!" said Mrs. Harbottle, with concern. "Not bad news?" "On the contrary-excellent news. Judy, will you stay to luncheon?"

She looked at me, hesitating. "Won't it seem rather a compromise on your partwhen you ought to be rousing the city?" "I don't intend to rouse the city," I said. "I have given you the chance." "Thank you,” I said grimly; "but the only real favor you can do me is to stay and lunch." It was then just on one.

"I'll stay," she said, "if you will promise not to make any sort of effort. I should n't mind, but it would distress you."

"I promise absolutely," I said, and ironical joy rose up in me, and the telegram burned in my pocket.

She would talk of it, though I found it hard to let her go on, knowing and knowing and knowing as I did that for that day at least it could not be. There was very little about herself that she wanted to tell me; she was there confessed a woman whom joy had overcome. It was understood that we both accepted that situation. But in the details which she asked me to take charge of it was plain that she also kept watchful eye upon fate-matters of business.

We were in the drawing-room. The little tin clock in its Amritsar case marked halfpast three. Judy put down her coffee-cup and rose to go. As she glanced at the clock the light deepened in her eyes, and I, with her hand in mine, felt like an agent of the destroyer; for it was half-past three -consumed myself with fear lest the blow

"Oh, Judy," I cried, catching at her had miscarried. Then, as we stood, suddenly sleeve, "he is only a boy!"

"There were times when I thought that conclusive. Now the misery of it has gone to sleep; don't waken it. It pleases me to believe that the years are a convention. I never had any dignity, you know, and I seem to have missed the moral deliverance. I only want-oh, you know what I want. Why don't you open your telegram ? "

the sound of hoofs at a gallop on the drive, and my husband threw himself off at the door and tore through the hall to his room; and in the certainty that overwhelmed me even Judy, for an instant, stood dim and remote.

"Major Jim seems in a hurry," said Mrs. Harbottle, lightly. "I have always liked your husband. I wonder whether he will say to-morrow that he always liked me."

"Dear Judy, I don't think he will be occupied with you to-morrow."

"Oh, surely, just a little, if I go to-night." "You won't go to-night."

She looked at me helplessly; her eyes filled with tears. "I wish-"

"You 're not going-you 're not! You can't! Look!"

I pulled it out of my pocket and thrust it at her-the telegram. It came, against every regulation, from my good friend the deputy adjutant-general, and it read:

tenant Chichele, who, in one of those feats which it has lately been the fashion to criticize, carried the mortally wounded body of his colonel out of range at conspicuous risk of depriving the Queen of another officer. I helped Judy with her silent packing,-she had forgiven me long before that,—and she settled almost at once into the flat in Chelsea which has since been credited with so delightful an atmosphere. For months after, while the expedition still raged after snipers and riflethieves, I discussed with Lady Chichele the probable outcome of it all. I have sometimes felt ashamed of leaping as straight as I did with Anna to what we thought the inevitable. I based no calculation on all Mrs. Harbottle had gone back to, just as I had based no calculation on her ten years' companionship in arms when "What luck that Bob could n't take his I kept her from the three-o'clock train. furlough!" she exclaimed,single-thoughted. This last was a retrospection in which Anna

Row Khurram 12th probably ordered front three hours' time

Her face changed, -how my heart leaped to see it change!-and that took command there which will command trampling, even in the women of the camp, at news like this.

"But you have known this for hours". there was even something of the colonel's wife, authority, incisiveness. "Why did n't you tell me? Ah-I see."

I stood before her abased, and that was ridiculous, while she measured me as if I presented in myself the woman I took her to be. "It was n't like that," she said.

I had to defend myself. "Judy," I said, "if you were n't in honor bound to Anna, how could I know that you would be in honor bound to the regiment? There was a train at three."

"I beg to assure you that you have overcalculated," said Mrs. Harbottle. Her eyes were hard and proud. "And I am not sure," a deep red swept over her face, a man's blush,-"in the light of this, I am not sure that I am not in honor bound to Anna."

We had reached the veranda, and at her signal her coachman drove quickly up. "You have kept me here three hours when there was the whole of Bob's kit to see to," she said as she flung herself in. "You might have thought of that."

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naturally could not join me. She never knew, poor dear, how fortunate as to its moment was the campaign she deplored, and nothing to this day can have disturbed her conviction that the bond she was at such magnificent pains to strengthen held against the strain as long, happily, as the supreme need existed. Her distress about poor Robert Harbottle was genuine enough, but one could not be surprised at a certain ambiguity-one tear for Robert, so to speak, and two for her boy. And she laid down with some emphasis that Somers was brilliantly entitled to all he was likely to get, which was natural, too.

I HAD been from the beginning so much "in it" that Anna showed me, a year later, though I don't believe she liked doing it, the letter in part of which Mrs. Harbottle shall finally excuse herself.

Somers will give you this [I read], and with it take back your son. You will not find, I know, anything grotesque in the charming enthusiasm with which he has offered his life to me; you understand too well-you are too kind. And if you wonder that I can so render up a dear thing which I might keep, and would once have taken, think how sweet in the desert is the pool, and how fevered are the environs of Balclutha.

Anna had her own interpretation. "Dear Judy!" she said with sentiment. "She could n't exchange me for a mother-inlaw."

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HOW it rains! The streets are running ink. Once we found one of its muslin caps,

rivers, and the torrents that fall from leaden skies divide each man from his fellows and shut us all indoors.

At home, on a day like this, it was our delight, when young, to go into the attic, that we might delve there among the treasures of some old horsehair trunks and some of red deerskin, that had stood under the cobwebbed rafters for nobody knew how long.

What accumulations they held! The jetsam and flotsam of many a gay transport that had once borne beauties long since dead and beaus of another fashion out on to seas of glory, and sometimes on to reefs, alas! We would come across white satin wedding-slippers without heels, and high-crowned hats with uncurled plumes, satin waistcoats of a wonderful cut, knee-buckles studded with brilliants, and fans with pictures after famous French painters. Sometimes, carefully folded away with a knot of golden hair or a faded rose, there would be a pair of tiny blue kid shoes, with the date of the baby's death in faded

and used it for our dolls; but we were only children then.

Deep down at the very bottom of some trunk there would be such queer silhouettes and miniatures-pictures of women, their hair all puffs, and men with high white stocks and dog-eared collars. And then, what letters-yellow-stained and faint with age, but still breathing of past joys and past despairs! Nobody's letters, when we found them, the very names of their writers forgotten, but each showing a heart wide open for the instant, giving up glimpses of innermost chambers, and then, with all their other history, fading away into the past again, like those glimpses that we catch through open doorways or over garden walls, which fade behind us just as we have caught them through the windows cf a railway-train that whirls us by.

But in a town on a rainy day there are never any attics with their treasure-trove of old hair trunks to delve among; and yet the instinct to delve into something is as

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