passionate heart to the Bracelet-bound Brother,
unseen for years, yet linked with her by an imperishable memory; and now
linked closer still by a mutual grief.

The comfort to Roy of that spontaneous, Tara-like outpouring had been
greater than she knew--than he could ever let her know. For the old
intimacy had never been quite re-established between them since the day
of his tactless juvenile proposal--for so he saw it now. They had only
met that once, when he was home for Christmas. On the second occasion,
they had missed. Throughout the War they had corresponded fitfully; but
her letters, though affectionate and sisterly, lacked an unseizable
something that affected the tone of his response. He had been rash
enough, once, to presume on their special relation. But he was no longer
a boy; and he had his pride.

He wondered sometimes how it would be if they met again. Would he fall
in love with her? She was supreme. No one like her. But he knew now--as
she had instinctively known then--that his conviction on that score did
not amount to being in love. Conviction must be lit and warmed with the
fire of passion. And you couldn't very well fall in love across six
thousand miles of sea. Certainly none of the girls he had danced with
and ridden with since his arrival in India had affected him that way.
And for him marriage was an important consideration. Some day he
supposed it would confront him as an urgent personal issue. But there
was a tremendous lot to be done first; and girls were kittle cattle.

Unsuspected by him, the ultimate relation with his mother--while it
quickened his need for woman's enveloping tenderness and sympathy--held
his heart in leash by setting up a standard, to which the modern girl
rarely aspired, much less attained.

And now she was gone, in some strange, enthralling way, she held him
still. At rare intervals, she came again to him in dreams; or when he
hovered on the verge of sleep. Dreams, or visions--they persisted as
clearly in memory as any waking act; and unfailingly left a vivid
after-sense of having been in touch with her very self. More and more
conviction deepened in him that she still had joy in 'the blossom and
fruit of his life'; that even in death she was nearer to him than many
living mothers to their sons.

A strange experience: strangest of all, perhaps, the simplicity with
which he came to accept it as part of the natural order of things. The
intuitive brain is rarely analyt