subdue. With leisurely
deliberation he filled his pipe, and surrendered himself to the
enchantment of the hour, before it slipped from him into the region of
accomplished things. And it is this very evanescence, this rainbow
quality of our hill-top moments, that adds such poignant intensity to
their charm.

Much of their brief courtship had been spent in such wordless
companionship: the man smoking beside her, with, or without, a book,
while she worked; and he never wearied of watching that abiding
miracle, a picture springing to life under an artist's fingers.

"You're not likely to give up this sort of thing, I suppose?" he asked
suddenly; and she turned upon him with blank astonishment in her eyes.

"Give it up? . . . You might as well ask if I shall ever give up
seeing, or hearing, or feeling. It is a part of me. You don't want me
to give it up, do you?"

"Far from it. I was merely thinking that it seems suicidal for an
artist of your quality to bury herself alive in a little Frontier
station, on the edge of a desert, more than a hundred miles from
anywhere."

"Rubbish! It simply means a new range of subjects for my brush. Tell
me a little about it, please. I like to try and picture things in
advance; and I am lamentably ignorant about this remarkable Frontier
Force, to which I now have the honour to belong. Are we all on the
wrong side of the Indus, always?"

"Yes, for ever and ever; except when we get away on leave."

"And then we go camping and climbing in the far hills beyond Kashmir,
don't we?"

"Yes, invariably! For the rest of the time we keep 'cave' along six
hundred miles of heart-breaking Border country."

"In other words, you are watch-dogs guarding the gates of an Empire?"

"That sounds far more imposing; and it's no less true. We are also
actively engaged in helping the Indian Government to cultivate friendly
relations with the tribes at the point of the bayonet!"

"And don't the tribes respond?"

"Yes, vigorously, to the tune of bullets and cold steel; so that we
manage to keep things pretty lively between us! Since we annexed the
Frontier, nearly forty years ago, the Piffers have taken part in more
than thirty Border expeditions, all told, to say nothing of the Afghan
War."

Quita's attention had been diverted from her picture to her husband's
face.

"You get your fill of fighting at that rate," she said, "And I think
you must be rather magnificent when you are fightin