eason, to be even remotely understood.

Already earth and air were full of whispered warnings. Roses and
sweet-peas were fading. Social life was virtually suspended between
twelve and two, the 'calling hours' of the cold weather; and at sunset
the tree-crickets shrilled louder than ever--careless heralds of doom.
Human tempers were shorter; and even the night did not now bring
unfailing relief.

Roy had been sleeping badly again; partly the heat, partly the clash of
sensations within him. This morning, after hours of tossing and dozing
and dreaming--not the right kind of dreams at all,--he was up and out
before sunrise, forsaking the bed that betrayed him for the saddle that
never failed to bring a measure of respite from the fever of body and
mind that was stultifying, insidiously, his reason and his will.

Still immersed in his novel, he had come up to Lahore heart-free,
purpose-free; vaguely aware that virtue had gone out of him; looking
forward to a few weeks of careless enjoyment, between spells of work;
and above all, to the 'high old time' he and Lance would have together
beyond Kashmir. Women and marriage were simply not in the picture. His
attitude to that inevitable event was, on his own confession--'not yet.'
Possibly, when he got Home, he might discover it was Tara, after all. It
would need some courage to propose again. For the memory of that
juvenile fiasco still pricked his sensitive pride. A touch of the Rajput
came out there. Letters from Serbia seemed to dawdle unconscionably by
the way. But, in leisurely course, he had received an answer to his
screed about Dyan and the quest; a letter alive with all he loved best
in her--enthusiasm, humour, vivid sympathy, deepened and enlarged by
experiences that could not yet be told. But Tara was far and Miss Arden
was near; and, in the mysterious workings of sex magnetism, mere
propinquity too often prevails.

And all the others seemed farther still. They wrote regularly,
affectionately. Yet their letters--especially his father's--seemed to
tell precious little of the things he really wanted to know. Perhaps his
own had been more reserved than he realised. There had been so much at
Jaipur and Delhi that he could not very well enlarge upon. No use
worrying the dear old man; and she, who had linked them, unfailingly,
was now seldom mentioned between them.

So there grew up in Roy a disconsolate feeling that none of them cared
very much whether he came Home or