"Yes--I've noticed. It's a pity...." Words simply would not come, on this theme of all others. Was she indirectly ... telling him ...?

"And you disapprove--tooth and nail?" she queried gently. "I hoped you were different. You don't know _how_ tired we are of eternal disapproval from people who simply know nothing--nothing----"

"But I don't disapprove," he blurted out vehemently. "It always strikes me as a rather middle-cla.s.s, puritanical att.i.tude. I only think--it's a thousand pities to take the bloom off ... the big thing--the real thing, by playing at it (you can see they do) like lawn tennis, just to pa.s.s the time----"

"Well, Heaven knows, we've _got_ to pa.s.s the time out here--_some_how!"

she retorted, with a sudden warmth that startled him: it was so unlike her. "All very fine for people at home to turn up superior noses at us; to say we live in blinkers, that we've no intellectual pursuits, no interest in 'this wonderful country.' I confess, to some of us, India and its people are holy terrors. As for art and music and theatres--where _are_ they, except what we make for ourselves, in our indefatigable, amateurish way. Can't _you_ see--you, with your imaginative insight--that we have virtually nothing but each other? If we spent our days bowing and sc.r.a.ping and dining and dancing with due decorum, there'd be a boom in suicides and the people in clover at Home would placidly wonder why----?"

"But do listen. I'm not blaming--any of you," he exclaimed, distracted by her complete misreading of his mood.

"Well, you're criticising--in your heart. And your opinion's worth something--to some of us. Even if we _do_ occasionally--play at being in love, there's always the offchance it may turn out to be ... the real thing." She drew an audible breath and added, in her lighter vein: "You know, you're a very fair hand at it yourself--in your restrained, fakirish fashion----"

"But I don't--I'm not----" he stammered desperately. "And why d'you call me a fakir? It's not the first time. And it's not true. I believe in life--and the fulness of life."

"I'm glad. I'm not keen on fakirs. But I only meant--one can't picture you playing round, the way heaps of men do with girls ... who allow them ..."

"No. That's true. I never----"

"What--never? Or is it 'hardly ever'?"

She leaned a shade nearer, her beautiful pale face etherealised by starshine. And that infinitesimal movement, her low tone, the sheer magnetism of her, swept him from his moorings. Words low and pa.s.sionate came all in a rush.

"What _are_, you doing with me? Why d'you tantalise me. Whether you're there or not there, your face haunts me--your voice. It may be play for you--it isn't for me----"

"I've never said--I've never implied--it was play ... for _me_----"

This time perceptibly she leaned nearer, mute confession in her look, her tone; and delicate fire ran in his veins....

Next moment his arms were round her; trembling, yet vehement; crushing her against him almost roughly. No mistaking the response of her lips; yet she never stirred; only the fingers of her right hand closed sharply on his arm. Having hold of her at last, after all that inner tumult and resistance, he could hardly let her go. Yet--strangely--even in the white heat of fervour, some detached fragment, at the core of him, seemed to be hating the whole thing, hating himself--and her----

Instantly he released her ... looked at her ... realised.... In those few tempestuous moments he had burnt his boats indeed ...

She met his eyes now, found them too eloquent, and veiled her own.

"No. You are not altogether--a fakir," she said softly.

"I'd no business. I'm sorry ..." he began, answering his own swift compunction, not her remark.

"_I'm_ not--unless you really mean--_you_ are?" Faint raillery gleamed in her eyes. "You did rather overwhelmingly take things for granted.

But still ... after that...."

"Yes--after that ... if _you_ really mean it?"

"Well ... what do you think?"

"I simply _can't_ think," he confessed, with transparent honesty. "I hardly know if I'm on my head or my heels. I only know you've bewitched me. I'm infatuated--intoxicated with you. But ... if you _do_ care enough ... to marry me----"

"My dear--Roy--can you doubt it?"

He had never heard her voice so charged with emotion. For all answer, he held her close--with less a.s.surance now--and kissed her again....

In course of time they remembered that a pause only lasts five minutes; that there were other partners.

"If we're not to be too flagrant, even for India," she said, rising with unperturbed deliberation, "I suggest we go in. Goodness knows where they've got to by now!"

He stood up also. "It matters a good deal more ... where _we_'ve got to.

I'll come over to-morrow and see ... your people...."

"No. You'll come over--and see me! We'll descend from the dream ... to the business; and have everything clear to our own satisfaction before we let in all the others. I always vowed I wouldn't accept a proposal after supper! If you're ... intoxicated, you might wake sober--disillusioned!"

"But I--I've kissed you," he stammered, suddenly overcome with shyness.

"So you have--a few times! I'm afraid we didn't keep count! I'm not really doubting either of us--Roy. But still.... Shall we say tea and a ride?"

He hesitated. "Sorry--I'm booked. I promised Lance----"

"Very well--dinner? Mother has some bridge people. Only one table. We can escape into the garden. Now--come along."

He drew a deep breath. More and more the detached part of him was realising....

They walked back rather briskly, not speaking; nor did he touch her again.

They found Lah.o.r.e still dancing, sublimely unconcerned. Instinctively, Roy looked round for Lance. No sign of him in the ballroom or the card-room. And the crowded place seemed empty without him. It was queer.

Later on, he ran up against Barnard, who told him that Lance had gone home.

CHAPTER VII

"Of the unspoken word thou art master. The spoken word is master of thee."--_Arab Proverb_.

Roy drove home with Barnard in the small hours, still too overwrought for clear thinking, and too exhausted all through to lie awake for five minutes after his head touched the pillow. For the inner stress and combat had been sharper than he knew.

He woke late to find Terry curled up against his legs, and the bungalow empty of human sounds. The other three were up long since, and gone to early parade. His head was throbbing. He felt limp, as if all the vigour had been drained out of him. And suddenly ... he remembered....

Not in a lover's rush of exaltation, but with a sharp reaction almost amounting to fear, the truth dawned on him that he was no longer his own man. In a pa.s.sionate impulse, he had virtually surrendered himself and his future into the hands of a girl whom he scarcely knew. He still saw the whole thing as mainly her doing--and it frightened him. Looking backward over the past weeks, reviewing the steps by which he had arrived at last night's involuntary culmination, he felt more frightened than ever.

And yet--there sprang a vision of her, pale and gracious in the starshine, when she leaned to him at parting....

She was wonderful and beautiful--and she was his. Any man worth his salt would feel proud. And he did feel proud--in the intervals of feeling horribly afraid of himself and her. Especially her. Girls were amazing things. You seized hold of one and spoke mad words, and nearly crushed the life out of her, and she took it almost as calmly as if you had asked for an extra dance. Was it a protective layer of insensibility--or super-normal self-control? Would she, Rose, have despised him had she guessed that even at the height of his exultation he had felt ashamed of having let himself go so completely; and that before there had been any word of marriage--any clear desire of it even in the deep of his heart?

That was really the root of his trouble. The pa.s.sing recoil from an ardent avowal is no uncommon experience with the finer types of men.

But, to Roy, it seemed peculiarly unfitting that the son of his mother should, as it were, stumble into marriage in a headlong impulse of pa.s.sion, on a superficial six weeks' acquaintance; and the shy, spiritual side of him felt alarmed, restive, even a little repelled.