t you."

"You made no promise when you took it."

"It was a gift without conditions hinted or implied."

Violet Oliver took the world lightly on the whole. Only this one passion
for jewels and precious stones had touched her deeply as yet. Of love
she knew little beyond the name and its aspect in others. She was
familiar enough with that, so familiar that she gave little heed to what
lay behind the aspect--or had given little heed until to-night. Her
husband she had accepted rather than actively welcomed. She had lived
with him in a mood of placid and unquestioning good-humour, and she had
greatly missed him when he died. But it was the presence in the house
that she missed, rather than the lover. To-night, almost for the first
time, she had really looked under the surface. Insight had been
vouchsafed to her; and in remorse she was minded to put the thing she
greatly valued away from her.

She rose suddenly, and, lest the temptation to keep the necklace should
prove too strong, laid it away in its case.

A post went every day over the passes into Chiltistan. She wrapped up the
case in brown paper, tied it, sealed it, and addressed it. There was need
to send it off, she well knew, before the picture of Shere Ali, now so
vivid in her mind, lost its aspect of poignant suffering and faded out of
her thoughts.

But she slept ill and in the middle of the night she rose from her bed.
The tent was pitch dark. She lit her candle; and it was the light of the
candle which awoke her maid. The tent was a double one; the maid slept in
the smaller portion of it and a canvas doorway gave entrance into her
mistress' room. Over this doorway hung the usual screen of green matting.
Now these screens act as screens, are as impenetrable to the eye as a
door--so long as there is no light behind them. But place a light behind
them and they become transparent. This was what Violet Oliver had done.
She had lit her candle and at once a part of the interior of her tent was
visible to her maid as she lay in bed.

The maid saw the table and the sealed parcel upon it. Then she saw Mrs.
Oliver come to the table, break the seals, open the parcel, take out a
jewel case--a jewel case which the maid knew well--and carry it and the
parcel out of sight. Mrs. Oliver crossed to a corner of the room where
her trunks lay; and the next moment the maid heard a key grate in a lock.
For a little while the candle still burned, and every now and then a
distor