no lightest tremor about her close-set lips.

"Great God! _You_!" he ejaculated under his breath, and involuntarily
took a backward step away from her.

At the shock of their encountering glances her cheeks flamed, and she
lowered her lids.

"I suppose I may say thank you for that," she said, and her voice shook
ever so little. "A minute later, I should have gone over."

He nodded, keeping his teeth close, his eyes down; and a deadweight of
silence fell between them.

Small sounds became suddenly self-assertive. The rustle of squirrels
along the pine-stems, the monotonous music of the cuckoo, varied by a
charge of toy pistol-shots when an inexperienced monkey alighted on a
dead twig. Brutus, standing squarely between them, eyed each in turn
with critical speculation, his ugly head cocked very much to one side.
He instinctively mistrusted all wearers of petticoats, and had found
the buffalo incident very much more to his taste.

At length, in desperation, Quita made a movement as if to pass on. But
Lenox laid a peremptory hand upon her bridle.

"Tell me, how do you come to be _here_ of all impossible places on
earth?"

His voice was harder than he knew, and a slight shadow passed across
her face.

"Is it really necessary to explain?" she asked, coldly.

He relinquished her bridle at that.

"As you please, of course. Only--it is a little awkward our being here
together; and it might be as well to come to some sort of understanding
before we separate. Are you up here for the season?"

"Yes, we have been up all the winter, Michael and I, except for two
months at Lahore. When the snow melted we moved to the highest cottage
on Bakrota. It is beautiful up there. We came out here eighteen
months ago," she went on a trifle hurriedly, grateful, now that the ice
was broken, for the relief of commonplace speech. "I had heard a good
deal about India, you know. I wanted to see it for myself, and if
possible put a little of it on canvas."

"And you are not disappointed?"

"No, indeed. It is wonderful beyond words."

They had themselves well in hand now. Each had given the other a false
impression at the start, and when two people are living at
cross-purposes it is easier to move mountains than to remove that most
intangible of all barriers, a false impression.

"And are you--up for the season?" Quita added, after a pause, with a
natural touch of hesitancy.

"No. Two months' leave. I am free, ther