"You're too funny," she said. "When did you think you had the horrid thing down?"

"When I met your husband--and--and liked him."

"You did like him, then?"

"Very much indeed."

"What an odd taste! Those pale eyes of his have an uncanny effect on me.

It's something that goes through walls and floors; and it makes me quite vicious. It brings out all the cat in me. I have an irresistible desire to claw and rend."

"It must have followed you all the way to Simla, that last night," said Andrews, dropping into a chair that faced her.

But Nina shook her golden head and her violet eyes slowly narrowed. He observed that in the dusk, for the room was in the semi-gloom of a single, red-shaded lamp in a far corner.

"No"--her voice was very low and purring--"I wasn't in the least catty then. I was sorry for you. I was, really; but it couldn't go on. You can see now that it couldn't go on."

"It might have gone on," he qualified, "if I hadn't met Colonel Darling."

"You seem to forget that I had met him already--am married to him."

"Yes," he said; "but with you it's different. You joy in hurting him; whereas I--why, I'd never have a moment's peace if I did anything that would give him pain. I know I shouldn't."

She pretended to be surprised; though, for some reason, she was not in the least.

"You're an odd boy," she drawled. "You mean that if I were to tell you now that I had changed my mind, and was quite ready to go away with you, you'd beg to be excused?"

He didn't answer at once. Candor bulked large in his character. Now that she put it that way he wished to be very sure. It was not a matter to be decided offhand, with Darling absent and Nina there before him, temptingly precious in the magic witchery of the tinted half-light.

"No, I--I couldn't. I couldn't do him that injury," he declared at length.

"And you swore you loved me?"

"I did. I do. I swear it still," he cried with sudden vehemence.

Nina laughed at his protestation.

"'Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more,'" she quoted.

"Is that it?"

"No, that isn't it," he denied earnestly. "I--"

"You love me a great deal, but you are so fond of Darling that you would not pain him to make us both happy," she interrupted. And the sneer with which she did it cut him to the quick.

"I don't think you've any right to put it that way," he returned.

"I am putting it your way, really," she came back. "It is as plain as the nose on your face. You made the choice between us, and you took a minute or so to make it. You didn't answer on impulse; you answered after calm deliberation. I really don't see, Gerald, how you can argue it otherwise."

"But it wouldn't make _you_ happy," he caught her up. "You've said it wouldn't."

"Did I?" she asked indifferently. "I don't remember."

"You said it would make you miserable; that you'd never care a straw in your life except for one man. You said that you'd married a man you did not love, and that--"

She lifted a slim white hand as if to ward off a blow.

"Don't! Don't!" she cried. "No matter what I said. That was then, and this is now. Besides, I don't always tell the truth. I am not as deliberate as you are, you see. Sometimes I say things on impulse; sometimes I lie with a direct purpose. And then, that night, I was not quite myself, you know. I had had a silly dream and I allowed it to affect me."

He drew his chair nearer and bent forward. He was by no means so sure of himself as he had been a moment before. It was wonderful--those tones in Nina's voice. They swayed his feelings against his better impulses. Her voice had always been her most effective weapon. Even her beauty was secondary to it.

He was conscious that his heart was pounding. It seemed to rise up chokingly with every bound. And so he stammered:

"You--you mean--you--would reconsider?"

"Ah!" she murmured. "I don't know what I mean. Only--"

"Yes, yes," he hurried her. "Only--only--"

She turned her head aside and covered her face with the hand that had checked his arraignment.

"I am so wretched!" It was little more than a whisper.

"No, no," he pleaded. "Nina, I beg of you."

His emotion swept him away, overriding all law, vaulting honor, trampling scruples. The possibility of possession revived, and the pathetic figure of Darling was forgotten.

He reached out for her, clasped her in his long, hungry arms; and, yielding, she let him draw her close to him, her head nestling against his shoulder.

"There, there," he murmured, smoothing her cheek with a hand nearly as soft as a woman's. "I did not mean it--I swear I didn't mean it. I--I love you more than anything in life."

Her arms wound about his neck, and he drew her up again until her gaze was level with his own. But, even at that moment, he saw her eyes stray across her shoulder and then suddenly grow wide as with alarm.

He felt, too, her whole figure tense, and instinctively there was conveyed to him a contagious sense of lurking danger. He was about to speak, to question, when, between lips barely parted, breathed rather than whispered even, came:

"_A cobra--in the corner--where I'm looking! The pistol--quick--and don't miss!_"

The pistol lay at his left hand, and he must needs swing quite around to aim after getting it. But she slipped swiftly away from him to give him free play, and he managed it very well indeed.

In the dim light he marked the cobra instantly, for a ray had been caught by its glistening brown, upreared body, and its spread hood stood out fairly distinct against the glazed panes of the long cas.e.m.e.nt which stood partly ajar.

Andrews fired, and the report echoed sharply against the dead silence of the room. But there echoed, too, two other sounds, both puzzling and disconcerting. One was a metallic ring, as of a struck gong, only sharper and shorter, and the other was a hoa.r.s.e, but m.u.f.fled and evidently restrained, cry of pain.

Man and woman were on their feet instantly. Three strides took Andrews to the spot, and there he halted in amaze with a little exclamation of astonishment. For the cobra had toppled over, not limp and outlying, but stiffly; its coils intact, facing him, disklike.

It was an admirably modeled bronze.

In the perplexity following the discovery he turned questioningly to Nina, who was close behind him. But she only lifted a warning finger and made a sibilant sound with her lips, adjuring silence. And he noticed, strangely enough, that the look of alarm which he had detected was--in a lesser degree perhaps--still present.

She pa.s.sed him, stepping over the bronze reptile; and, spreading wider the cas.e.m.e.nt, went out onto the veranda.