h spirits. "But fancy finding our goddess in the
temple of Vishnu! How strange of George to have been able to go into
the thing again in the midst of such different and such powerful
solicitations!"

"He hasn't gone into it, I know; it's the thing itself, let severely
alone for six months, that has simply sprung out at him like a tigress
out of the jungle. He didn't take a book with him--on purpose; indeed
he wouldn't have needed to--he knows every page, as I do, by heart.
They all worked in him together, and some day somewhere, when he wasn't
thinking, they fell, in all their superb intricacy, into the one right
combination. The figure in the carpet came out. That's the way he knew
it would come and the real reason--you didn't in the least understand,
but I suppose I may tell you now--why he went and why I consented to
his going. We knew the change would do it, the difference of thought, of
scene, would give the needed touch, the magic shake. We had perfectly,
we had admirably calculated. The elements were all in his mind, and in
the _secousse_ of a new and intense experience they just struck light."
She positively struck light herself--she was literally, facially
luminous. I stammered something about unconscious cerebration, and she
continued: "He'll come right home--this will bring him."

"To see Vereker, you mean?"

"To see Vereker--and to see _me_. Think what he'll have to tell me!"

I hesitated. "About India?"

"About fiddlesticks! About Vereker--about the figure in the carpet."

"But, as you say, we shall surely have that in a letter."

She thought like one inspired, and I remembered how Corvick had told
me long before that her face was interesting. "Perhaps it won't go in a
letter if it's 'immense.'"

"Perhaps not if it's immense bosh. If he has got something that won't go
in a letter he hasn't got _the_ thing. Vereker's own statement to me was
exactly that the 'figure' _would_ go in a letter."

"Well, I cabled to George an hour ago--two words," said Gwendolen.

"Is it indiscreet of me to inquire what they were?"

She hung fire, but at last she brought them out. "'Angel, write.'"

"Good!" I exclaimed. "I'll make it sure--I'll send him the same."

VII

My words however were not absolutely the same--I put something instead
of "angel"; and in the sequel my epithet seemed the more apt, for when
eventually we heard from Corvick it was merely, it was thoroughly to
be tantalised. He was magnificen