was counting on him to readjust the scales. Thank goodness for
Lance--giving up the Lahore 'week' and the Polo Tournament to spend
Christmas with her and Roy in the wilds of Rajputana. Just to have him
about the place again--his music, his big laugh, his radiant certainty
that, in any and every circumstance, it was a splendid thing to be
alive--would banish worries and lift her spirits sky-high. After the
still, deep waters of her beloved Vinx--whose strain of remoteness had
not been quite dispelled by marriage--and the starlit mysteries of Aruna
and the intriguing complexities of Roy, a breath of Lance would be tonic
as a breeze from the Hills. He was so clear and sure; not in flashes and
spurts, but continuously, like sunshine; because the clearness and
sureness had his whole personality behind them. And he could be counted
on to deal faithfully with Roy; perhaps lure him back to the Punjab. It
would be sad losing him; but in the distracting circumstances, a clean
cut seemed the only solution. She would just put in a word to that
effect: a weakness she had rarely been known to resist, however complete
her faith in the man of the moment.

She simply dared not think of Aruna, who trusted her. It seemed like
betrayal--no less. And yet...?

CHAPTER XIII.

"One made out of the better part of earth,
A man born as at sunrise."
--SWINBURNE.

It was all over--the strenuous joy of planning and preparing. Christmas
itself was over. From the adjacent borders of British India, five lonely
ones had been gathered in. There was Mr Mayne, Commissioner of Delhi,
Vincent's old friend of Kohat days, unmarried and alone in camp with a
stray Settlement Officer, whose wife and children were at Home. There
was Mr Bourne--in the Canals--large-boned and cadaverous, with a
sardonic gleam in his eye. Rumour said there had once been a wife and a
friend; now there remained only work and the whisky bottle; and he was
overdoing both. To him Thea devoted herself and her fiddle with
particular zest. The other two lonelies--a Mr and Mrs Nair--were medical
missionaries, fighting the influenza scourge in the Delhi area;
drastically disinfected--because of the babies; more than thankful for a
brief respite from their daily diet of tragedy, and from labours
Hercules' self would not have disdained. For all that, they had needed a
good deal of pressing. They had 'no clothes.' They were very shy. But