to use it to the utmost, they
had left Murree after a very brief stay and pressed on into Kashmir,
travelling in a _tonga_ through the most glorious scenery that Stella
had ever beheld.

"I only wished you could have been there to enjoy it with me," she
wrote, and passed on to a glowing description of the Hills amidst which
they had travelled, all grandly beautiful and many capped with the
eternal snows. She told of the River Jhelum, swift and splendid, that
flowed beside the way, of the flowers that bloomed in dazzling profusion
on every side--wild roses such as she had never dreamed of, purple
acacias, jessamine yellow and white, maiden-hair ferns that hung in
sprays of living green over the rushing waterfalls, and the vivid,
scarlet pomegranate blossom that grew like a spreading fire.

And the air that blew through the mountains was as the very breath of
life. Physically, she declared, she had never felt so well; but she did
not speak of happiness, and again Tommy's brow contracted as he read.

For all its enthusiasm, there was to him something wanting in that
letter--a lack that hurt him subtly. Why did she say so little of her
companion in the wilderness? No casual reader would have dreamed that
the narrative had been written by a bride upon her honeymoon.

He read on, read of their journey up the river to Srinagar, punted by
native boatmen, and again, as she spoke of their sad, droning chant, she
compared it all to a dream. "I wonder if I am really asleep, Tommy," she
wrote, "if I shall wake up in the middle of a dark night and find that I
have never left England after all. That is what I feel like
sometimes--almost as if life had been suspended for awhile. This strange
existence cannot be real. I am sure that at the heart of me I must be
asleep."

At Srinagar, a native _fete_ had been in progress, and the howling of
men and din of _tom-toms_ had somewhat marred the harmony of their
arrival. But it was all interesting, like an absorbing fairy-tale, she
said, but quite unreal. She felt sure it couldn't be true. Ralph had
been disgusted with the hubbub and confusion. He compared the place to
an asylum of filthy lunatics, and they had left it without delay. And so
at last they had come to their present abiding-place in the heart of the
wilderness with coolies, pack-horses, and tents, and were camped beside
a rushing stream that filled the air with its crystal music day and
night. "And this is Heaven," wrote Stel