in his eyes.

CHAPTER VIII

AT THE DANCE

Audrey saw no more of Phil Turner for some days. She did not enjoy much
of her husband's society, either. He appeared to be too busy to think of
her, and she in consequence spent most of her time with Mrs. Raleigh.
But Phil, who had been one of the latter's most constant visitors, did
not show himself there.

It did not occur to Audrey that he absented himself on her account, and
she was disappointed not to meet him. Next perhaps to the surgeon's
wife, she had begun to regard him as her greatest friend. Certainly the
tie of obligation that bound them together was one that seemed to
warrant an intimate friendship. Moreover, Phil had been exceptionally
kind to her in distress, kinder far than Eustace had ever been.

She was growing away from her husband very rapidly, and she knew it,
mourned over it even in softer moments; but she felt powerless to remedy
the evil. It seemed so obvious to her that he did not care.

So she spent more and more of her hours away from the bungalow that had
been made so dainty for her presence, and Eustace never seemed to notice
that she was absent from his side.

He accompanied her always when she went out in the evening, but he no
longer intruded his guardianship upon her, and deep in her inmost heart
this thing hurt his young wife as nothing had ever hurt her before. She
had her own way in all matters, but it gave her no pleasure; and the
feeling that, though he might not approve of what she did, he would
never remonstrate, grew and festered within her till she sometimes
marvelled that he did not read her misery in her eyes.

She met Phil Turner again at length at a regimental dance. As usual her
card was quickly filled, but she reserved a waltz for him, and after a
while he came across and asked her for one.

"You were very nearly too late," she told him. "Why didn't you come
before?"

He looked awkward for a moment. Then--

"I was busy," he said rather shortly. "I'm one of the stewards."

He scrawled his initials across her card and left her again. Audrey
concluded in her girlish way that something had made him cross, and
dismissed him from her mind.

When at length he came to claim her she was hot and tired and suggested
sitting out.

He frowned at the idea, but, upon Audrey waxing imperious, he yielded.
They sat out together, but not in the cool dark of the veranda as she
had anticipated, but in the full glare of the ba