"Well, I _won't_ stay any longer in her house. I won't eat her food----"

He pushed aside his plate so impatiently that Rose felt almost angry.

But she saw his hand tremble; and covered it with her own.

"Roy--my dear! You're ill; and you're being rather exaggerated over things----"

"Well, you put me in such a false position. You ought to have told me."

She winced at that and let fall her hand.

"That's all one's reward for trying to save you from jars when you were knocked up and unhappy. And I told you ... I defied her ... I ... I would have married you...."

He looked at her, and his heart contracted sharply.

"Poor Rose--poor darling!" He was his normal self again. "What a beast of a time you must have had! But--how _did_ you propose to accomplish it----?"

She told him, haltingly, of the Kashmir plan; and he listened, half incredulous, leaning back again; thinking: "She's plucky; but still, all she troubled about really was to save her face."

And she, noting his impatient frown, was thinking: "He's like a sensitive plant charged with gunpowder. Is it the touchiness of----?"

"I'm afraid I'd have kicked at that." His voice broke in upon her thought. "Such a hole-and-corner business. Hardly fair on my father...."

"Well, there's no question of it now," she reminded him, with a touch of asperity. "I've told you--the whole thing's defunct. Later--we'll be glad, perhaps, that I discovered in time that part of me could not be coerced--by the other part, which still wants you as much as ever. We should have been landed in disaster--soon or late. Better soon--before the roots have struck too deep. But you're so furiously angry with the _reason_--that you seem almost to forget ... the fact."

His eyes brooded on her, full of pain and the old, half-unwilling infatuation. He could not so hurt her pride as to confess that their discovery had been mutual. Let her glean what satisfaction she could from having taken the lead--first and last. Part of him, also, still wanted her; though in the depths, he felt a glimmer of relief that the thing was done--and by her.

"No," he said, "I don't forget the fact. But--the reason cuts deep. I want to know----" he hesitated--"is all this ... antipathy you can't get over--you and your mother--the ordinary average att.i.tude? Or is it ...

exceptionally acute?"

She drew in her lip. Why _would_ he force her to hurt him more? For they had got beyond polite evasion. Clearly he wanted the truth.

"Mother's is acute," she said, not looking at him. "Mine--I'm afraid--is ... the ordinary average feeling against it. The exception would be to find a girl--especially out here--who could honestly ... get over it----"

"_Unless_--she cared in the real big way," Roy interposed; his own pain goading him to an unfair hit at her. "To be blunt, I suppose it's the case--of Lance over again. You've found ... you don't love me enough----?"

"And _you_----?" she struck back, turning on him the cool deliberate look of early days. "Do _you_ love me enough? Do you care--as he did?"

"No--not as he did. I've cared blindly, pa.s.sionately--somehow we didn't seem to meet on any other plane. In fact, it ... it was realising how magnificently Lance cared ... and how little you seemed able to appreciate the fact, that made me feel--as I did, down there. In a sense, he's been barring the way ... ever since...."

"_Roy!_ How strange!" She faced him now, the mask of repression flung aside. "It's been the same--with me!"

"With _you_?"

"Yes. Ever since I heard ... he was gone, he has haunted me to distraction. I've seemed to see him and feel him in quite a different way."

"Good Lord!" Roy murmured--incredulous, amazed. "Human beings _are_ the queerest things. If only ... you'd felt like that ... sooner----?"

"Yes--if only I had----!" she lamented frankly, looking straight before her.

"I'm glad--you told me," said her unaccountable lover.

"I nearly--didn't. But when you said that, I felt it might--ease things.

And that was his great wish--wasn't it?--to ease things ... for us both.

Oh--was there ever any one ... _quite_ like him?"

Tears stood in her eyes, and Roy contemplating her--seeing, for the first time, something beyond her beauty--felt drawn to her in an altogether new way; and sitting there they talked of him quietly, like friends, rather than lovers on the verge of parting for good.

As real to them, almost, as themselves, was the spirit of the man who had loved both more greatly than they were capable of loving one another; who, in life, had refused to stand between them; yet, in death, had subtly thrust them apart....

Then there came a pause. They remembered....

"We're rather a strange pair--of lovers," she murmured shakily. "I feel, now, as if I can't bear letting you go. And yet ... it wouldn't last.--Dearest, _will_ you be sensible ... and finish your tea?"

"No. It would choke me," he said with smothered pa.s.sion. "If I've got to go--I'm going."

He stood up, bracing his shoulders. She stood up also, confronting him.

Neither could see the other's face quite clear.

Then: "Only six weeks!" she said very low. "Roy--we ought to be ashamed of ourselves."

"I am--heartily," he confessed. "I was never more so."

She was looking down now, twisting her ring. "I'm afraid ... I'm not talented in that line. Somehow ... except for Lance, I can't regret it."

She slid the ring over her knuckle.

"Oh, _keep_ the beastly thing!" he flung out in an access of pain. "Or throw it down the khud. I said it would bring bad luck."

She sighed. "All the same--poor thing! It's too lovely...."

"Well then, don't wear it; but keep it"--his tone changed--"as a reminder. We have been something to one another ... if it couldn't be everything."

Her eyes were still lowered, her lips not quite steady.

"You've been ... very near it to me. Yet--it seemed, the more ... I cared, the less I could get over ... that. And I felt as if you--wouldn't get over.. Lance."

"My G.o.d! It's been a bitter, contrary business all round! I can't bear hurting you. And--the talk and all that----" She nodded. For her that was not the least bitter part of it all. "And you----? Oh, Lord--will it be Hayes to the fore again?"

"_No!_" Reproach underlay her vehemence. "Mother may rage. I shall go with Dolly Smyth to Kashmir.--And you----?"

"Oh, I'll go out to Narkhanda."

"Alone? But you're ill. You want looking after."

"Can't be helped. Azim Khan's a treasure. And really I don't care a d.a.m.n what comes to me."

"Oh, but _I_ do----!"

It was a cry from her heart. The strain of repression snapped. She swayed, just perceptibly----