eters, the only other wife in the station; a
square, shapeless cushion of a woman, who would rush in for a
breathless half-hour to pour tales of native cunning, and Eurasian
apathy into Desmond's sympathetic ears. Being both plump and
energetic, she suffered cruelly in the heat; mopped her face without
shame between her sentences; and, according to Frank Olliver, lived
chiefly on lime-squash, and a limitless admiration for her missionary
husband,--a large, ungainly man, with the manners of a shy schoolboy,
and the wrapt gaze of a seer; a man who, in an age of fanaticism, would
have walked smiling to the rack. As it was, he walked with no less
equanimity through the pestilential mazes of the city and bazaar. For
although in this age of tolerance run to seed, a man is not called upon
to die for his beliefs, he is occasionally called upon to live for
them; which is not necessarily the easier of the two. But up to his
lights Henry Peters achieved it. At all possible and impossible hours,
his unwieldy white umbrella, pith hat, and badly-cut drill suit
pervaded the dwellings of his scattered converts; while his wife, torn
between pride in him and mortal dread of infection, grieved in secret
over inadequate meals snatched at odd hours; and supplemented tremulous
prayers for his safety with lumps of camphor, screwed up in paper, and
slipped surreptitiously into the pockets of his coats.

Once or twice she dragged him in triumph to the Desmonds,--a reluctant
dishevelled hero,--and 'showed him off' to that little company of
well-groomed, kindly-natured soldiers, with a naive simplicity that
went to Honor's heart.

"Why is it that some of us have a special licence to be so exquisitely
natural?" she wondered, as she stood beside the tea-table, dispensing
iced coffee, and surveying, with satisfaction, a room full of
tobacco-smoke and contented men. "That's just how I feel tempted to
'show off' Theo, sometimes. And wouldn't the dear man crush me to
powder if I tried!"

She glanced approvingly at him where he sat astride on a reversed
chair, in dusty polo kit, reporting progress of the great 'fly
campaign' to Wyndham, who had been newly promoted to a deck-lounge in
the drawing-room at tea-time.

It was a larger gathering than usual; and, in spite of the fact that
for three days the thermometer had recorded a hundred and twenty in the
shade, spirits ran high. The subalterns--for whose exuberant fooling
Honor had a very ten