are, and a haze
of pungent dust, found himself speculating vaguely--as though the
question concerned some unknown entity in another world--how he was
going to drag a protesting body and brain through the rest of the day's
work.

"Got to be done somehow, though. That's flat," was his final verdict
as he passed into the twilight of the hall.

Every door in the house was shut against the furnace without; had been
shut since seven of the morning; and would so remain till after sunset.
Yet, the mercury hovered between ninety-seven and a hundred all day,
and most of the night. In India the thermometer supersedes the
barometer; and in the hot weather it becomes an obsession. There is
always a mild satisfaction in knowing exactly what one has endured.

Desmond was not yet back, and the study was empty; a friendly-looking
room, its simple haphazard furniture unified by the rich colour
harmonies of Indian carpets and curtains; while a liberal supply of
books, unusual for the country, proclaimed it the room of a soldier who
found time for study and thought.

Too weary to get out of uniform, Lenox laid aside his helmet and
accoutrements; shouted to the punkah coolie, sleeping in the verandah,
chin on chest; sorted his geographical papers, and sat down to the
table. Then he took out his pipe, eyed it thoughtfully, and flung it
aside with a curse. Each relapse resulted in a renewed access of
self-distrust; and this morning the cloud upon his spirit fell heavier
than ever, because he foresaw that if the work ahead of him were to be
pulled through, in the teeth of the grinding headaches consequent on
his fall, last night's programme must be repeated, not once, but many
times, And at that rate, what was to be the end of it? The degradation
of submitting to the drug itself? A thousand times, no. The soldier
in him sprang to arms at the mere suggestion. Like all men capable of
greatness, he believed, not in the mastery of circumstance, but in the
mastery of will. Yet, unhappily, the will, like all spiritual forces,
is ignominiously dependent on bodily conditions. Pain, sheer pitiless
pain, will have its way with the bravest of us.

The man was ill without realising it. The nerves in his head throbbed
to a devil's hornpipe of their own, and mental effort was beyond him.
In vain he contracted his heavy brows, and tried to gather up the
threads of the chapter he had been working at. Black depression
overpowered him, oblite