stood beside her.

"Not quite yourself this morning, old lady?" he asked. "Anything
really wrong? Fever? Headache?"

She caught the note of anxiety, and with a quick turn of her head
kissed the fingers resting on her shoulder.

"No, darling, neither. Don't worry yourself. I'm perfectly well."

"Sure?"

"Quite sure."

"Good." And he departed, whistling softly; clear sign that all was
well with his world.

But twenty minutes later when Paul came in to look for a strayed pipe,
he found Honor, quite oblivious of 'things,' crying quietly behind her
hands. He retreated hastily; but she heard him and looked up.

"Don't go, Paul. I want you."

No three words in the language could have pierced him with so keen a
thrust of happiness.

"Do you mean . . . can I help you?" he asked eagerly. "I felt sure
something was wrong."

"Did you? I'm a bad actress! But . . it's about Baby,--the other
Paul," she added, smiling through wet lashes. "I have just had a
letter from Mrs Rivers that makes me want to pack my boxes and go
straight back to Dalhousie."

"And shall you? Is it serious enough for that?"

"Oh, how _can_ one tell?" she cried desperately, her voice breaking on
the words. "It mightn't seem serious to you. He has fever, and a
touch of dysentery, and terrible fits of crying with his double teeth.
Mrs Rivers seems anxious; and of course one thinks . . . of
convulsions. It all sounds rather a molehill, doesn't it, after the
horrors we have been living in here? And perhaps only a mother would
make a mountain out of it. But I think mothers must have God's leave
to be foolish . . . sometimes!"

Fresh tears welled up, and she hid her face again. Paul could only
wait beside her tongue-tied, half-sitting on the edge of the
writing-table, wondering what dear, unfathomable impulse had led her to
admit him to the sanctuary of her sorrow; realising, so far as a
masculine brain can realise, something of the struggle involved in
woman's twofold responsibility--to the man, and to the gift of the man.

It is the eternally old, eternally new tragedy of Anglo-Indian
marriage; none the less poignant because it is repeated _ad infinitum_.
Love him as she may, it costs more for a wife, and still more for a
mother, to stand loyally by her husband in India than the sheltered
women of England can conceive. For to read of such contingencies in
print, is by no means the same thing as having one's heart of flesh
pie