its must be kept up at all costs, if only as an antidote to
the moral microbes of the land; and the usual small sociabilities
flourished accordingly.

Evelyn took part in these at first with a chastened air. Not that she
assumed what she did not feel; but that her grief, when it reached a
less acute stage, gave her a soothing sense of importance; a kind of
dismal distinction, such as a child feels in the possession of a badly
cut finger or a loose tooth. The wind bloweth where it listeth; and
such thistledown natures are entirely at its mercy. They cannot take
deep root, even where they would. For them the near triumphs over the
far. Like Esau, they will sell their birthright cheerfully for a mess
of pottage; and they are the raw material of half the tragedies in the
world.

Thus, with the passing of uneventful days, Evelyn began to find it
rather uninteresting to be quietly and comfortably unhappy; and the
aspect of subdued plaintiveness which she half consciously adopted
was, in truth, singularly becoming. She was one of those favoured
women who have the good fortune to do most things becomingly. Her very
tears became her, as dewdrops do a rose.

Frank commented on the fact to Honor, in characteristic fashion.

"Sure, 'tis a thousand pities we can't all of us look so pretty when
we put on a melancholy face! It makes me look such a scarecrow meself,
that I'm bound to keep on smiling, out o' sheer vanity, even if me
heart's in two!"

"That's one way of putting it," Honor answered, with a very soft light
in her eyes. She had begun to understand lately that this brave woman
was by no means so inured to the hardship and danger of the men she
loved as she would fain have them and the world believe: and the two
drew very near to one another in these weeks of eager looking for news
from the hills.

It is not to be supposed that Kresney failed to observe the gradual
change in Evelyn's bearing. The man displayed remarkable tact and
skill in detecting the psychological moment for advance. He contented
himself at first with conversations in the Club Gardens and an air of
deferential sympathy, which was in itself a subtle form of flattery.
But on a certain afternoon of regimental sports, when Evelyn appeared,
radiant and smiling, in one of her most irresistible Simla frocks,
with an obviously appreciative Pioneer subaltern in attendance,
Kresney perceived that the time to assert himself had arrived.

After a short but dec