attachment that did not seem to be tacitly omitted between
them. I hope one did not too cynically observe that they offered these
to their husbands instead; the redeeming observation was their husbands'
complete satisfaction. This they maintained to the end. In the
natural order of things Robert Harbottle should have paid heavily for
interfering as he did in Paris between a woman and what she was entitled
to live for. As a matter of fact he never paid anything at all; I doubt
whether he ever knew himself a debtor. Judy kept her temperament under
like a current and swam with the tides of the surface, taking refreshing
dips only now and then which one traced in her eyes and her hair when
she and Robert came back from leave. That sort of thing is lost in the
sands of India, but it makes an oasis as it travels, and it sometimes
seemed to me a curious pity that she and Anna should sit in the shade of
it together, while Robert and Peter Chichele, their titular companions,
blundered on in the desert. But after all, if you are born blind--and
the men were both immensely liked, and the shooting was good.

Ten years later Somers joined. The Twelfth were at Peshawur. Robert
Harbottle was Lieutenant-Colonel by that time and had the regiment.
Distinction had incrusted, in the Indian way, upon Peter Chichele, its
former colonel; he was General Commanding the District and K.C.B. So
we were all still together in Peshawur. It was great luck for the
Chicheles, Sir Peter's having the district, though his father's old
regiment would have made it pleasant enough for the boy in any case. He
came to us, I mean, of course, to two or three of us, with the interest
that hangs about a victim of circumstances; we understood that he
wasn't a 'born soldier.' Anna had told me on the contrary that he was
a sacrifice to family tradition made inevitable by the General's
unfortunate investments. Bellona's bridegroom was not a role he fancied,
though he would make a kind of compromise as best man; he would agree,
she said, to be a war correspondent and write picturesque specials
for the London halfpenny press. There was the humour of the poor boy's
despair in it, but she conveyed it, I remember, in exactly the same tone
with which she had said to me years before that he wanted to drive a
milk-cart. She carried quite her half of the family tradition, though
she could talk of sacrifice and make her eyes wistful, contemplating
for Somers the limitations of t