lose to the
hotel, and dined there when he felt convivially disposed.

"Yes; two new fellows came up this week. A doctor from Mooltan and a
Gunner from 'Dera Dismal,'--the Thibet man,--Lenox, who seems to be
making a reputation of sorts. But he looks a wreck. Smokes like a
chimney; and is apparently working himself to death; a thankless form
of folly."

"Perhaps. Yet India needs a few unsparing workers--like Captain Lenox."

She spoke with studied indifference; but her fingers were busy
uprooting a patch of moss.

"Oh yes, India has a healthy appetite for unsparing workers! She is a
grasping harridan, who demands all and offers nothing. She devours the
lives of men who are foolish enough to lose their hearts to her, and
wrecks their bodies by way of thanks."

Quita's lips lifted in the merest shadow of a smile. "Aren't you a
little ungrateful to her? She has been fairly merciful to you!"

"I have never given her the ghost of a chance to be otherwise! I don't
believe in overwork, plus the Indian climate. More men kill themselves
by a happy mixture of both than the importance of their achievements
justifies. I was chaffing Lenox only last night about his leaning
towards that unrecognised form of suicide; and all the answer I got was
that a man might die of a more degrading disease. You never by any
chance get a rise out of old Lenox!"

"Do you know him well?"

"As well as it's possible to know a fellow who lives with all his
shutters up. And in any case an anchorite, and a woman-hater, would
never be much in my line. The symptoms appear to have developed in the
last few years. Not without reason, as I happen to know."

"_What_ do you happen to know?"

The question came almost in a whisper; but Garth, who had all a woman's
weakness for other people's affairs, was too intent upon his ill-gotten
scrap of gossip to observe his companion's slight change of manner.

"Why, that it's simply a case of _cherchez la femme_, as usual," he
answered, lightly. "I believe it's a fact that he went so far as to
marry one of these women he affects to despise, when he was on leave
five years ago."

Quita started, and bit her lips. "What reason can you have for
believing anything . . . so improbable?"

"My dear lady, marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of
tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the
details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the
s