Mrs. Repton shrugged her shoulders.

"Some of us age quickly here."

"Age was not the new thing which I read in that photograph."

Mrs. Repton did not answer. Only her eyes sounded him. She seemed to be
judging the stuff of which he was made.

"And if I doubted her happiness this afternoon I must doubt it still more
now," he continued.

"Why?" exclaimed Mrs. Repton.

"Because of your reticence, Mrs. Repton," he answered. "For you have been
reticent. You have been on guard. I like you for it," he added with a
smile of genuine friendliness. "May I say that? But from the first moment
when I mentioned Stella Ballantyne's name you shouldered your musket."

Mrs. Repton neither denied nor accepted his statement. She kept looking
at him and away from him as though she were still not sure of him, and at
times she drew in her breath sharply, as though she had already taken
upon herself some great responsibility and now regretted it. In the end
she turned to him abruptly.

"I am puzzled," she cried. "I think it's strange that since you are
Stella's friend I knew nothing of that friendship--nothing whatever."

Thresk shrugged his shoulders.

"It is years since we met, as I told you. She has new interests."

"They have not destroyed the old ones. We remember home things out here,
all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole
life in England, and here's a definite part of it--perhaps a very
important part--of which I am utterly ignorant. She has spoken of many
friends to me; of you never. I am wondering why."

She spoke obviously without any wish to hurt. Yet the words did hurt. She
saw Thresk redden as she uttered them, and a swift wild hope flamed like
a rose in her heart: if this man with the brains and the money and the
perseverance sitting at her side should turn out to be the Perseus for
her beautiful chained Andromeda, far away there in the state of Chitipur!
The lines of a poem came into her thoughts.

"I know; the world proscribes not love,
Allows my finger to caress
Your lips' contour and downiness
Provided it supplies the glove."

Suppose that here at her side was the man who would dispense with the
glove! She looked again at Thresk. The lean strong face suggested that he
might, if he wanted hard enough. All her life had been passed in the
support of authority and law. Authority--that was her husband's
profession. But just for this hour, as she thought of Stella Ballantyne,
lawle