sed was he with the aspect of things in
general, that, before reaching Potrain, he headed his pony up another
corkscrew path, that climbed to another doll's house bungalow. Here he
spent a couple of hours, lounging in the drawing-room of one of the
lesser lights in his firmament, flattering her by a delicately conveyed
impression that he found her the only woman in the station worth
talking to. And so, home to his own well-appointed house, where, two
hours after an irreproachable dinner, he slept the sleep of the man
whose conscience has been trained not to make inconvenient remarks.

CHAPTER VII.

"God uses us to help each other so,
Lending our lives out."
--Browning.

Before May was out Honor met her unpromising acquaintance several
times, by chance. But nothing beyond formal greetings passed between
them. Twice she happened to be riding alone with Lenox; the third
time, her husband was with them: and on every occasion Quita's
companion was James Garth,--the only one among them all who enjoyed the
situation. Quita herself found a perverse satisfaction, unworthy of
her best moments, in thus emphasising her indifference to her husband's
presence; ignoring, with characteristic heedlessness, the fact that a
two-edged weapon is an ill thing to handle: and Lenox, accepting her
unspoken intimation _au pied de la lettre_, steeled himself to
half-cynical, half-stoical endurance.

He had returned heartened, and fortified by a week of stirring sport,
and by closer contact with a personality wholesome and invigorating as
a hill wind; a sympathy of the practical order, that found expression
in matter-of-fact service and good fellowship, rather than in speech.
He had given up all thought of leaving the station; had decided to set
his teeth, and go through with his ordeal, sooner than disappoint these
new-found friends, who seemed already to have become a part of his
life. Such rapid intimacies are a distinctive feature of a country
where a guest may come for a night, and stay for a month; where all
white men are brothers, in the widest sense of the word.

And Eldred Lenox did not hold with half measures. Since he stood his
ground in order to please the Desmonds, he held himself ready to fall
in with any joint plans they might choose to make. Thus, he agreed to
share in their arrangements for the June camp, at Kajiar,--a natural
glade hid in the heart of Kalatope Forest: and even accepted, without