thanity he now loved and supported
Britain and the British Empire for Mrs. Dearman's sake. Often as he
(like most other non-officials) had occasion to detest and desire to
kick the Imperial Englishman, championship of England and her Empire
was now his creed. And as there was probably not another England-lover
in all India who had his knowledge of under-currents, and forces within
and without, he was perhaps the most anxiously loving of all her lovers,
and the most appalled at the criminal carelessness, blind ignorance,
fatuous conceit, and folly of a proportion of her sons in India.

Knowing what he knew of Teutonic intrigue and influence in India,
Ceylon, Afghanistan, Aden, Persia, Egypt, East Africa, the Straits
Settlements, and China, he was reminded of the men and women of Pompeii
who ate, drank, and were merry, danced and sang, pursued pleasure and
the nimble denarius, while Vesuvius rumbled.

Constantly the comparison entered his mind.

He had sojourned with Indian "students" in India, England, Germany,
Geneva, America and Japan, and had belonged to the most secret of
societies. He had himself been a well-paid agent of Germany in both Asia
and Africa; and he had been instrumental in supplying thousands of
rifles to Border raiders, Persian bandits, and other potential troublers
of the _pax Britannica_. He now lived half his double life in Indian
dress and moved on many planes; and to many places where even he could
not penetrate unsuspected, his staunch and devoted slave, Moussa Isa,
went observant. And all that he learnt and knew, within and without the
confines of Ind, _by itself_ disturbed him, as an England-lover, not at
all. Taken in conjunction with the probabilities of a great European War
it disturbed him mightily. As mightily as unselfishly. To him the
dripping weapon, the blazing roof, the shrieking woman, the mangled
corpse were but incidents, the unavoidable, unobjectionable concomitants
of the Great Game, the game he most loved (and played upon every
possible occasion)--War.

While, with one half of his soul, John Robin Ross-Ellison might fear
internal disruption, mutiny, rebellion and civil war for what it might
bring to the woman he loved, with the other half of his soul, Mir
Ilderim Dost Mahommed Mir Hafiz Ullah Khan dwelt upon the joys of
battle, of campaigning, the bivouac, the rattle of rifle-fire, the
charge, the circumventing and slaying of the enemy, as he circumvents
that he may slay. Th