you are not blaming me?" he cried deprecatingly, afraid that he
had injured himself for ever in her sight.

"It is not a question of blame; you have failed me, that is all."

"That's a cruel thing to say, dearest!" he cried kissing her
unresponsive lips at last, in the hopes of melting her hardness. "It is
only that you are in a mood to be unjust, that you say so. You know I am
happiest with you."

"This is a cruel country which I shall hate to the end of my days," she
returned miserably. "It is trying at every turn to rob me of my little
baby."

Meredith winced almost as though he had been struck. It was not the
first time that she had expressed disgust for her life in India, which
gave them their living, and every time her words gained in feeling.
Early in the summer he had sent her to the hills because of an episode
with a snake that had unnerved her and imperilled her condition as an
expectant mother. He had not forgotten that her first arrival at the
Station had synchronised with an outbreak of cholera, so virulent, that
half the community of Europeans among whom she was to live were
demoralised. It was a crying shame that Life should be so perverse. He
yearned for her to settle down and take kindly to Station ways and
doings, but fate eternally intervened. Muktiarbad was a merry little
station, full of friendly souls eager to accept the youthful bride as a
social leader for her husband's sake, he being the most popular of men.

Meredith was aware of his own popularity and enjoyed it as a
healthy-minded individual usually does when success has crowned his
efforts to govern a large District with sympathy and tact. But already
the young wife and mother was pining for "home," and was declaring that
the India he loved was a "cruel country," which she would hate to the
end of her days. How should he be able to pin her down to his side in a
land she detested and feared? She was too young and uninformed to
appreciate his position in the Government and her possibilities as a
_Bara Memsahib_; and too delicately nurtured to endure the rough and
tumble of life far from towns and cities, where money could not buy
immunity from inconvenience and climatic ills.

He had expected, as many another husband of a very young wife, to mould
her ideas to fit his own; instead, his peace of mind was being steadily
whittled away.

"There is not even any ice to be had in this God-forsaken spot!" his
wife's voice was saying helplessly