er, willingly
enough. What were sunsets or local devils to him compared with stables
and gram?

And as they sped on, as trees on either side slid by like stealthy
ghosts, the sunset splendour died, only to rise again in a volcanic
afterglow, on which trunks and twigs and battlemented hills were printed
in daguerreotype; and desert voices were drowned in the clamour of
cicadas, grinding their knives in foolish ecstasy; and, at last, he
swerved between the friendly gate-posts of the Residency--the richer for
a spiritual adventure that could neither be imparted, nor repeated, nor
forgotten while he lived.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Joy of my heart.]

CHAPTER VII.

"The deepest thing in our nature is this dumb region of the heart,
where we dwell alone with our willingnesses and unwillingnesses,
our faiths and our fears."--WILLIAM JAMES.

Not least among the joys of Aruna's return to the freer life of the
Residency was her very own verandah balcony. Here, secure from
intrusion, she could devote the first and last hours of her day to
meditation or prayer. Oxford studies had confused a little, but not
killed, the faith of her fathers. The real trouble was that too often,
nowadays, that exigent heart of hers would intrude upon her sacred
devotions, transforming them into day-dreams, haloed with a hope the
more frankly formulated because she was of the East.

For Thea had guessed aright. Roy was the key to her waverings, her
refusals, her eager acceptance of the emergency plan:--welcome in
itself; still more welcome because it permitted her simply to await his
coming.

They had been very wonderful, those five years in England; in spite of
anxieties and disappointed hopes. But when Dyan departed and
Mesopotamia engulfed Roy, India had won the day.

How unforgettable that exalted moment of decision, one drenched and
dismal winter evening; the sudden craving for sights and sounds and
smells of her own land. How slow the swiftest steamer to the speed of
her racing thoughts! How bitter, beyond belief, the--how first faint
chill of disappointment; the pang of realising reluctantly--that, within
herself, she belonged whole-heartedly to neither world.

She had returned qualified for medical work, by experience in a College
hospital at Oxford; yet hampered by innate shrinking from the sick and
maimed, who had been too much with her in those years of war. Not less
innate was the urge of her whole being