the shadow gone from his eyes; testing his achievement
and finding that it held good; bending all his energies to the task of
fitting up a home for his wife; a task whereof Honor usurped as large a
share as he would permit. Then, towards the end of the month, he wrote
to Quita: "Come. We are ready, and waiting for you,--the house,
Zyarulla, Brutus, and your impatient husband, who will pick you up at
Lahore."

And on the last day of October, more than six years after their hasty
wedding, Eldred and Quita Lenox entered upon their married life.

"Have you forgotten, darling, the nonsense I talked that day about the
House, and the Enchanted Palace?" she asked, as they stood together on
their first evening in the drawing-room, whose every detail he had
planned with elaborate care.

"Is it likely? Why?"

His arm was round her shoulders; and putting up one hand she touched
his face.

"Why . . because I said we would have to begin with the House. But we
seem to have reached the Enchanted Palace before starting after all?"

"By a very roundabout route," he answered, a suspicion of the old
sadness in his eyes.

"Yes; but we _have_ reached it. That's the main point, dear Pessimist;
and the commonplace House I offered you has tumbled into a dust-heap of
ruins. Don't let's build it up again, whatever else we may do in the
way of foolishness. Retrogression is the one unforgiveable sin!"

It is the instinctive cry of love in the first flush of fulfilment.
The grand impulsion of man to woman brushes aside lesser considerations
like so many flies. But Life and Temperament, standing discreetly in
the background, will have their say in the 'fateful second act' of the
human comedy before the curtain drops.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"Climb high, love high, what matter! Still . . .
Feet, feelings, must descend the hill."
--Browning.

On a certain afternoon of early March, Quita Lenox stood at her easel,
in the small room she had fitted up as a studio, palette in one hand,
long-handled brush in the other, two broken lines of irritation between
her brows.

The verandah door stood wide; and through it the breath of spring came
in to her, velvet soft, compact of a hundred nameless scents, mingled
with the paramount scent of roses. For March is India's rose month:
and in the midst of so much that is unlovely, the roses of Dera Ishmael
Khan are things to marvel at, and thank Heaven for. Quita's rambling
compo