observe, being occupied with the difficult task
of releasing himself from Peggy's ardent embraces.

When he finally obtained his freedom and stood up, Olga had passed out
again into the passage. He threw a last kiss to his small sweetheart,
and hurried after her.

CHAPTER III

THE NEW LIFE

"It isn't in the least what I thought it would be," said Olga.

"Nothing ever is," said Nick.

He was sprawling on a _charpoy_ on the verandah of their new abode,
smoking a cigarette with lazy enjoyment.

Though within sound of the native city, their bungalow stood well
outside. It was surrounded by a compound of many tangled shrubs that
gave it the appearance of being more isolated than it actually was. Not
so very far away from it, down in the direction of Will Musgrave's
growing reservoir, there stood a _dak_-bungalow; and immediately beyond
this were corn-fields and the native village that clustered along the
edge of the river. The cantonments were well out of sight, more than a
mile away along the dusty road, further than the polo-ground and
race-course.

Behind the bungalow, approached only through a dense mass of tall jungle
grass, stretched the jungle, mile upon mile of untamed wilderness, home
of wild pig and jackals, monkeys and flying foxes. Very quiet by day was
that long dark tract of jungle, but at night strange voices awoke there
that seemed to Olga like the crying of unquiet spirits. Neither by day
nor night did she feel the smallest desire to explore it.

The native city of Sharapura held infinitely greater fascinations for
her. Some of its buildings were beautiful, and she was keenly
interested in its inhabitants. She never entered it, however, save under
Nick's escort. He was very insistent upon this point, and he would never
suffer her to linger in the long, narrow bazaar, with its dim booths and
crafty, peering faces.

Down by the river there was a mosque about which pigeons circled and
cooed perpetually, but beggars were so plentiful all round it that it
was next to impossible to pause near the spot without being beset on all
sides, a matter of real regret to the English girl, who longed to wander
or stand and admire at will.

In His Excellency the Rajah she was frankly disappointed. He had been
educated in England, and had acquired a patronizing condescension of
demeanour which she found singularly unattractive. He never treated her
with familiarity, but she did not like the look of his d