Six Women

The following afternoon, directly his work at the office was finished, he went out to the oasis in the desert to look at his new possession, his bungalow in the palms.

The moment he saw it peeping out from amongst them, and surrounded by roses, he expressed himself satisfied, and named the place Saied-i-stan, or the place of happiness.

The butler met him there; he was bursting with self-importance.

"You leave everything to me, Sahib-everything. I know all the Sahib wants. He shall have all. Let him come, ten o'clock, nine o'clock, no matter when; all quite ready. I am here. I have everything waiting for the Sahib."

Hamilton smiled and praised him, and went back to the station; took a pretence of dinner and a hurried cup of coffee, and then went down into the bazaar with the precious bit of paper containing the directions to Saidie's dwelling-place in his breast pocket.

He found the house at last, and, going in at the doorless entrance, climbed patiently the wooden stairs that ran straight up from it in complete darkness. On the topmost landing-a frail wooden structure that creaked beneath his feet-he paused, and rapped twice on the door opposite him.

His heart beat rapidly as he stood there; the blood seemed flying through it. All the strength of his vigorous body seemed gathering itself together within him, all the fire of his keen, hungry brain leapt up, and waiting there in the dark on the narrow landing he knew the joy of life.

The door was opened. In a moment his eye swept round the interior of the high windowless room. The floor was bare, with mats here and there, and in the centre stood a flat pan of charcoal, glowing under a closed and steaming cooking-pot. At one end a coarse chick, suspended from a wooden bar, dropped its long lines to the floor, and behind this, on some cushions, sat Saidie with another of the dancing-girls.

The old woman who had opened the door, salaamed, touching the floor with her forehead as Hamilton walked in, and then securely shut and fastened the door behind him. Saidie rose and looked through the shimmering lines of the chick at him as he entered.

Very handsome the tall commanding figure looked in the mean, bare room: the long neck and well-modelled head, with its black, close-cut hair, stood out a noble relief against the colourless wall, and the clear brown skin, with the warm tint of quick blood in it that showed above the English collar, arrested the girl's eyes with a keen thrill of joy. Looking at him, she felt rushing through her the passionate delight that self-surrender to such a man would be. Without waiting to be summoned, she parted the lines of the chick, came out from them, and fell on her knees at his feet.

The heat in the shut-up room was very great, and she was wearing only a straight white muslin tunic, through which all the soft beauty of her form could be seen, as an English face is seen through a veil. Her hair was looped back from her brows and tied simply with a piece of green ribbon, as an English girl's might have been, and flowed in its thick, black glossy waves to her waist.

Hamilton bent over her and raised her in his arms, feeling in that moment, though the whole universe were reeling and rocking round him to its ruin, he would care nothing while he pressed that soft breast to his.

The old woman sat down cross-legged by the charcoal, and began to fan it.

The other girl behind the chick looked out curiously, but her eyes never noted the strength and beauty of Hamilton's figure, nor the bright glow in the oval cheek: she looked to see if he wore rings on his fingers, and tried to catch sight of the links in his cuffs to see if they were silver or gold.

Saidie had the divine gift of passion: all the fire of the gods in her veins. Zenobie had none, and Saidie's joy now was something she could not understand.

"Have you come to take me away, now at once?" Saidie murmured in a soft, passionate whisper close to his ear, and the accent of joy and delight went quivering down through the deepest recesses of the man's being.

"Yes: are you ready to come with me?" Needless question! put only for the supreme pleasure of listening to its answer.

"Oh, more than ready," whispered the soft voice back. "How shall the slave explain her longing to her lord?"

Zenobie had come round the chick, while they stood by the door, and drawn forward the one little low wooden stool that they possessed. She came up now, and pulled at Saidie's sleeve.

"Let the Sahib be seated," she said reprovingly, and Saidie let her arms slip from his neck and drew him forward to the stool by the charcoal pan.

With some difficulty Hamilton drew up his long legs and seated himself cautiously on the small seat; Saidie and Zenobie sat cross-legged on the ground close to his feet. The old woman ceased to fan the fire; the bright red glow of the coals fell softly on the strong, noble beauty of the man's face, and Saidie, looking up to it, sat speechless, her bosom heaving, her lips parted, her dark eyes full of mysterious fires, melting, swimming, behind their veil of lashes.

Zenobie watched her with curiosity: what did she feel for this infidel who wore no rings and only silver in his cuffs?

Hamilton, as soon as he was seated, drew out his pocket-book-old and worn, for he spent little on himself-and opened it.

The old woman sat up. Zenobie's eyes gleamed: the business was going to commence. Only Saidie did not stir nor move her eyes from his face.

"Two thousand rupees was the price agreed upon; here it is," he said, taking out a thick bundle of notes that occupied the whole inside of the poor, limp pocket-book; and as the old woman stretched out a skinny claw for them and began to slowly count them, he turned his gaze away, on to the upturned face of the girl watching him with sensual adoration.

The old woman counted through the notes, and then securely tied them into the end of her chudda.

"The sum is the due sum, well counted," she said, looking up; "and when will my lord take his slave?"

"To-night," Hamilton replied briefly, but not without a swift enquiring glance into the girl's eyes. Though he had bought and paid for her, he could not get out of the Western knack of considering that the girl's desires had to be consulted.

The old woman raised her hands in affected horror.

"To-night! But she is not well clothed, she is not bathed and anointed; the bridal robes are not prepared. My lord, it cannot be!"

Hamilton looked at Saidie; she crept to his side and put her head on his breast.

"Yes, to-night, take me to-night," she murmured eagerly; he smiled, and put his arm around her.

"The bridal clothes are of no consequence," he answered decisively. "My camel waits below. I will take her to-night."

"She has no shoes," objected the old woman. "She cannot descend the stairs."

"I will carry her down," replied Hamilton, and, springing up from the little stool, he stooped over the lovely form at his feet, raising her into his arms, close to his breast. Saidie clung to his neck with a little cry of pleasure, her bare, warm-tinted feet hung over his arm.

The old woman gasped: Zenobie laughed. The Englishman looked so big, so immensely strong. The weight of Saidie, tall and well-developed as she was, seemed as nothing to him.

"Zenobie, will you hold the lamp at the doorway, that he may see his way?" Saidie cried out, slipping off a thin gold circlet she wore on her arm, and letting it drop into the other's hands.

"Farewell, Zenobie; may you be always as happy as I am now."

Zenobie caught the bracelet and ran to the wall, unhooked the lamp that hung there, and came to the door.

"Farewell, my mother," Saidie said, as they turned to it.

"Farewell, my daughter; be submissive to the Sahib, and obey him in all things."

The door was opened, and by the dim, uncertain light of Zenobie's lamp, Hamilton, clasping his warm, living burden, went slowly and heavily down the bending stairs, feeling the life brimming in every vein.

Outside, in the tranquil splendour of the starry Eastern night, knelt the camel, peacefully awaiting its lord, and as Hamilton approached it with his burden, it turned its head and large, liquid eyes upon him with a gurgle of pleasure.

"The camel loves Hamilton Sahib," murmured the girl, as he set her on the soft red cloth laid over the animal's back, which formed the only saddle. He took his own place in front of her.

"Hold to my belt firmly," he told her, gathering into his hand the light rein. "Are you ready for him to rise?"

He felt her little, soft hands glide in between his belt and waist.

"Yes, I am quite ready," she answered, and at a word of encouragement, the great beast rose with its slow, stately swing to its feet, and Hamilton guided it towards the Meidan. The soft, hot air stirred against their faces as they moved through the night.

Nothing could present a more lovely picture than the bungalow that evening. A low, white house, looking in the moonlight as if built of marble, surrounded by masses of palms which threw a delicate tracery of shadow upon it and drooped their beautiful, fan-like, feathery branches over it, between it and the jewelled sky.

A light verandah ran around the lower of the two stories, completely covered by the white, star-like bloom of the jessamine that poured forth floods of fragrance like incense on the hot, still air, and a giant pink magnolia rioted over the wide porch of lattice-work. Within it was brightly lighted, and a warm glow from shaded lamps came out from each window, stealing softly through the veil of scented jessamine and falling on the masses of pink roses surrounding the house.

The deep peace, the sweet scent in the silence, the kiss of the moonlight and the starlight on the sleeping flowers, the exquisite form of the shadows on the white wall, filled Hamilton with pleasure: each sense seemed subtly ministered to; he felt as if invisible spirits round him were feeding him with ambrosia.

He turned round to Saidie as the camel slowly and majestically entered the compound gate, and saw her clearly framed in the soft silver light; all this wondrous beauty round them seemed to be to her beauty but as the harmonies that in an opera float round the central air. And she smiled as he turned upon her.

"How do you like your new house, Saidie?" he said, half laughing as he leant back to her.

"Surely it is Paradise, Sahib," she murmured back in awestruck tones.

Within the door waited the servants to welcome them in a double line, and as Saidie entered, they fell flat with their faces on the floor. She passed through the prostrate row saluting them, and on to the foot of the stairs. The ayah that the butler had engaged rose and followed her mistress upstairs, where she was ushered into her bath and dressing-room; while the butler, swelling with importance and joyous pride, led Hamilton to the large room he had prepared as a bedroom on the first floor. As they went in Hamilton gave a murmur of approval very dear to the man's heart, as he heard it, standing respectfully by the door.

The room was large, and two windows, draped with curtains, stood open to the soft night.

The bed in the centre of the room was one of the wide Indian charpais which are unrivalled for comfort, and glimmered softly white beneath its filmy mosquito curtains in the lamplight shed by four handsome rose-shaded lamps. Small tables stood everywhere, bearing vases of fresh flowers, roses, and stephanotis; a rich, deep rose-coloured carpet spread all over the floor, with only a small border of chetai visible round the walls; and two easy-chairs of the same colour and numerous smaller ones piled up with cushions completed the equipment of the room. The air was full of scent, and the scheme of colour in the room perfect. Nothing but rose and white was allowed to meet the eye. The flowers were selected with this view, and the great bowls of roses all blushed the same glorious tint through the snowy whiteness of the stephanotis.

The room suggested, in its softly-lighted glow of pink and white, a bridal chamber.

Hamilton turned to his servant with a pleased smile on his handsome, animated face.

"You are an artist, Pir Bakhs, and a sort of magician, to do all this in twelve hours."

Pir Bakhs bowed and salaamed by the door, his well-formed polished face wreathed in many smiles.

Downstairs the girl was already waiting for her lord, bathed, and with her long hair shaken out and brushed after the dust of the desert ride, and looped back from her forehead by a fresh green ribbon. She did not sit down, but stood waiting.

This room showed the same care as the upper one, and the table was laid out with Hamilton's plate and glass and four beautiful epergnes held the flowers.

Natives are artists, particularly in colour arrangements; the whole colour scheme here was white and green, and any table in Belgravia would have had hard work to equal this one. Saidie stood looking at it, and the servants, already ranged by the sideboard, stood with their eyes on the ground, yet conscious of her wonderful beauty, and pleased by it in the same way that they would have felt pride and pleasure in the beauty and good condition of a new horse or camel acquired by their master.

After a few minutes Hamilton came down. He had put on his evening clothes as they had been laid out for him by the bearer, and looked radiant as he entered.

Saidie gave a little cry as she saw him. His present dress, well cut and close-fitting, showed his splendid figure to greater advantage than the loose suit she had seen him in hitherto. His long neck carried his fine, spirited head erect, and the masses of thick, black hair, with just the least wave in it, shone in the lamplight. His well-cut face, with its gay animation and charming, debonair, unaffected expression, made a kingly and perfect picture to the girl's dazzled eyes.

As they took their places and their soup was served, she could not detach her gaze from his face.

He laughed as he looked at her.

"Come, you must be hungry. Take your soup while it's hot; don't waste your time looking at me."

"Sahib, I cannot help looking at you. You are so wonderful to me! Please give me leave to. I do not want any soup."

Hamilton, who by this time had finished his own, leant back in his chair and laughed again, looking at her with eyes blazing with mirth and passion. This innocent, genuine admiration was very pleasing to him in its flattery; this worship offered to himself, rather than his gifts, was something new to him, and the girl's beauty sent all the fires of life in quick streams through his frame as he looked on it. He was alive for the first time in his existence, and filled with a surprised happiness as great as the girl's. He was as virgin to joy as she was to love. "You are the dearest little girl I ever knew," he said; "but if you won't take soup, you must eat fish. Yes, I positively refuse you my permission to look at me till you have finished that whole plate."

Saidie dropped her eyes to her fish very submissively at this, while Hamilton himself filled her glass.

"Have you ever tasted wine?" he asked. "This is champagne; drink it, and tell me what you think of it."

"All my people are Mahommedans; we do not drink wine," Saidie replied, taking up the glass and sipping from it.

"Perhaps you won't like it," he suggested, watching her.

"If the Sahib gives it to me I shall like it," replied Saidie, smiling at him over the delicate golden glass: it threw its light upwards into her great gleaming eyes, and Hamilton kissed the little hand that put the glass gently down on the table again.

Next after the fish came game and joints, course after course, more food in that one meal than Saidie was accustomed to see for many people for a week. Her own appetite was soon satisfied, and she sat for the most part gazing at Hamilton, with her hands tightly locked together in her lap: such a nervous delight filled her, such a strange joy in knowing herself to be alive, to be possessed of a beautiful body that by reason of its beauty was worthy the caresses of a man like this; such a pure rapture animated every fibre, to realise that it was in her power to give pleasure to him. With such feelings as these no faintest hint of humiliation or degradation could mingle. Saidie felt only that superb and joyous pride that Nature originally intended the female to have in her surrender to the male.

Her very breath seemed to flutter softly with joyous trepidation and excitement as it passed over her lips. That she was to be his, held in his arms, admitted to his embrace, seemed to her to be the crown of her life, an honour given by special divine favour.

So must Rhea Sylvia have felt praying before her Vestal altar when Mars first appeared to her startled eyes.

And Hamilton, with his keen, sensitive temperament, saw into her mind clearly, and was fully aware of all this fervent adoration, this intense passionate worship springing within her; and an immense tenderness and reverence grew up within him, enclosing all his passion as the crystal vessel encloses the crimson wine.

That she would not in her present state have shrunk or flinched from a knife, if only his hand held it while it wounded her, he knew quite well, and this wonderful voluntary self-sacrifice which is the soul of all female passion appealed to him as a very holy thing.

He knew that constantly this adoring love was poured out by women for men, that almost every virgin heart beats with this same worship as the first pain of love enters it, but ah! for how short a time! How quickly the man tears open those eyes that would so willingly be closed to his vileness! how soon come the infidelity, the lies and the meanness, the trickery and the treachery! How assiduously the man teaches the woman who loves him that there is nothing in him worthy of adoration, not even admiration, not even decent respect! How little confidence, how little credence she soon gives to his word that was once so sacred to her! How in her heart, though her lips say nothing, is that once rapturous worship changed into a measureless contempt!

Men persistently teach women that they must not expect the best from them, but the lowest. And the women cry in pain as they see the white mantle of their love trampled upon and dragged in the mire of lies and falseness, and they take it back from the base hands and burn it in the fires kindled in their outraged hearts. Something of this flashed through Hamilton's brain as he met the adoring trust and love in the girl's eyes, and an unspoken vow formed itself within him that he would not deceive and betray it, that his lips should not lie to her, that to the end he would be to her as she now saw him in the glamour of those first hours.

When he had tempted her to every sweet and bon-bon on the table, and made her drink all the wine he thought good for her, he sent the servants away, and they remained alone together in the dining-room with their coffee before them. He put his arm round her, and drawing her out of her own chair, took her on to his knees and pressed her head down on his shoulder.

"Are you not tired with that long ride on the camel?" he asked.

"No, Sahib, I am not tired."

The soft weight of her body pressed upon him; her lids drooped over her eyes as her head leaned against his neck.

"I think you are tired and very sleepy," he repeated, pinching the glowing arm in its transparent muslin sleeve.

"If the Sahib says so, I must be," responded Saidie quite simply.

"Come, then, and sleep," he said in her ear, and they went upstairs.

Saidie gave a little cry of delight as they entered together the rose-filled room, and beyond its soft shaded lights she saw the great flashing planets in the dark sky.

"This is a different and a better home for love than we had last night," said Hamilton softly, as he closed the door.

A great peace reigned all round them. Within and without the bungalow there was no sound. The lights burned steadily and subdued, the sweet scent of the flowers hung in the air like a silent benediction upon them.

He put his arm round her, and felt her tremble excessively as his hand unfastened the clasp of her tunic. He stopped, surprised.

"Why do you tremble so? Are you afraid of me?" he asked, looking down upon her, all the tenderness and strength of a great passion in his eyes.

"No, no," she returned passionately, "I tremble because great waves of happiness rush over me at your touch. I cannot tell you what I feel, Sahib; the love and happiness within me is breaking me into fragments."

"Then you must break in my arms," he murmured back softly, drawing her into his embrace, "so that I shall not lose even one of them."

* * *

In the morning a flood of sunlight rushing into the room through the open windows, bringing with it the gay chatter of birds, roused the lovers. Hamilton opened his eyes first, and, lifting his head from the pillow, looked down upon Saidie still asleep beside him. In the rich mellow light of the room her loveliness glowed under his eyes like a jewel held in the sun. He hardly drew his breath, looking down upon her. Her heavy hair, full of deep purplish shades, and with the wave in it not unusual in the Asiatic, was pushed off the pale, pure bronze of the forehead, on which were drawn so perfectly the long-sweeping Oriental brows. The nose, delicately straight, with its proud high-arched nostrils, and the tiny upper lip, led the eye on to the finely-carved Eastern mouth, of which the lips now were softly, firmly folded in repose. How exquisitely Nature had fashioned those lips, putting more elaborate work in those lines and curves of that one feature than in the whole of an ordinary English face. Hamilton hung over her, filled with a passion of tenderness, watching the gentle breath move softly the warm column of bronze throat and raise the soft, full breast.

Passion, in its highest phase, is indeed the supreme gift of the gods. In giving it to a mortal for once they forget their envy: for once they raise him to their level; for that once they grant him divinity.

Hamilton now marvelled at himself. The whole fruit of his forty years of life-all that accomplished work, success, wealth, rewarded worth, satisfied ambition, all the pleasures his youth, his health and strength, and powers had always brought him, crushed together-could not equal this: the charm and ecstasy with which he gazed down on this warm beauty of the flesh beside him.

And yet he knew that it was not really in that flesh, not even in that beauty, that lay the delight. It was in himself, in his own intense desire, and the gratification of it, that the joy had birth; and if the gods give not this desire, no matter what else they give, it is useless.

The girl might have been as lovely, Hamilton himself, and all the circumstances the same, yet waking thus he might have been but the ordinary poor, cold, clay-like mortal a man usually is. But the great desire for this beauty that had flamed up within him, now in its possession, gave him that fervour and fire, those wings to his soul, that seemed to make him divine. It was for him one of those moments for which men live a life-time, as he indeed had done, but they repay him when they come. To some, they come never. To these life must indeed be dark.

Suddenly the girl opened her eyes; the fire in his bent upon her seemed to electrify and thrill her into life, and with a little murmur of delight she stretched up her rounded arms to him.

At breakfast Hamilton regretted he should have to leave her all day; what would she do?

"You must not think of it, Sahib," she answered. "Have I not the garden? I shall be quite happy. I shall sing all day long to the flowers about my lord, and count the minutes till he comes back."

The office did not attract Hamilton at all that day, yet he felt it was better to attend there as usual, to make no break in his usual routine.

Scandal there was sure to be, sooner or later, about his desert-bungalow, but at least it was better not to give to the scandal-mongers the power to say he had neglected his duties. Yet he lingered over his departure, and took her many times into his arms to kiss her before he went, keeping his impatient Arab waiting at the door. He would not use the camel again this morning, but left it resting in its corner of the compound beneath the palms.

After Hamilton had gone, Saidie stepped through the long window into the verandah, full of green light, completely shaded as it was by the giant convolvulus that spread all over it. The chetai crushed softly under her feet, and she went on slowly to the end where it opened to the compound. Here she stood for a moment gazing into the wilderness of beauty of mingled sun and shade before her.

Against the dazzling blue of the sky the branches of the palms stood out in gleaming gold, throwing their light shade over the masses of crimson and white and yellow roses that rioted together beneath. Groves of the feathery bamboo drooped their delicate stems in the fervent, sweet-scented heat, over the white, thick-lipped lilies, from one to other of which passed languidly on velvet wings great purple butterflies.

The pomegranate trees made a fine parade of their small, exquisite scarlet flowers, and pushed them upwards into the sparkling sunlight through the veils of white starry blossoms of the jessamine that climbed over and trailed from every tree in the compound.

The girl went forward dreaming. How completely, superbly happy she was! And she had nothing but the gifts of Nature, such as she, the kindly one, gives to the gay bird swinging on the bough, the butterfly on the flower, the deer springing on the hills: health and youth, beauty and love.

These only were hers; nothing that man ordinarily strives for-neither wealth nor fame, fine houses, costly garments, jewels, slaves, power; none of these were hers. Over her body hung simply a muslin tunic worth a few annas; of the garden in which she stood not a flower belonged to her, no weight of jewels lay on her happy heart. She had no name; she was only a dancing-girl from the Deccan. With the animals she shared that wonderful kingdom of joy that they possess: their food and mate secured, their vigorous health bounding in their limbs, their beauty radiant in their perfect bodies.

Are they not the Lords of Creation in the sense that they are lords of joy? Man is the slave of the earth, doomed by his own vile lusts to bondage of the most dismal kind. All of those gifts that Nature gives, and from which alone can be drawn happiness, he tramples beneath his feet, putting his neck under the yoke of ceaseless toil, striving for things which in the end bring neither peace nor joy.

All within the compound under the reign of Nature rejoiced. The parroquets swung on the trees, and the butterflies floated from the marble whiteness of the lily's cloisters to the deep, warm recesses of the rose, and the dancing-girl walked singing through the sparkling, scented air thinking of her lord.

Hamilton, speeding down the dusty, burning road to his office in the native city, felt a strange bounding of his heart as his thoughts clung to the low, white bungalow amongst the palms outside the station, and all that it held for him.

He went through his work that day with a wonderful energy, born of the new life within him. Nothing fatigued, nothing worried him. The court-house air did not oppress him. He heard the pleadings and made his decisions with ease and promptitude. His patience, gentleness, his clearness and force of brain were wonderful. The whole electricity of his body was satisfied: the man was perfectly well and perfectly happy. Who cannot work under such conditions? In the evening his horse was brought round, and with a wild leaping of the heart he swung himself into the saddle. The animal felt instantly the elation of his master, and at once broke into a canter; as this was not checked, he threw up his lovely head, and as Hamilton turned across the plain, let himself go in a long gallop towards where the palms glowed living gold against the rose-hued sky.

Hamilton had hardly passed through the white chick into the interior of the house before he heard the sound of bare feet upon the matting, and through the soft magnolia-scented, pinky gloom of the room, shaded from the sunset light, Saidie came and fell at his knees, taking his dusty hands and kissing them.

Hamilton lifted her up, and held her a little from him, that he might feast his eyes on the delicate beautiful carving of the lips, and on the great velvet eyes, soft, round throat, and breasts swelling so warmly lovely under the transparent gauze.

Then he crushed her up in his arms close to his breast, and carried her to their own room with the golden and green chicks all round it, where the servants did not come without a summons. The garland she had twisted on her head smelt sweetly of roses, and the masses of her silky hair of sandal-wood; her soft lips, that knew so well instinctively the art of kissing, were on his; the warm, tender arms clasped his neck. All the way that he carried her she murmured little words of passion in his ear.

After dinner the servants carried chairs for them into the verandah, with a small table laden with drinks and sweetmeats, that they might sit and watch the moon rising behind the palms in the compound, and see the hot silver light pour slowly through their exquisite branches and foliage.

"How did you amuse yourself all day?" he asked her as she sat on his knee, his arm round the flexible, supple waist pulsating under the silky web of her tunic.

"I was so happy. I had so much to do, so much to think of," she answered, gazing back into his eyes bent upon her, and eagerly drawing in their fire. "I wandered in the compound and made garland after garland, then I sang to my rabab and practised my dancing. In the heat I went in and slept on my lord's bed dreaming of him-ah! how I dreamt of him!" She broke off sighing, and those sighs fanned the blazing fires in the man's veins.

"You were quite contented, then, with your day?"

"How could I not be contented when I had my lord to think about, his love of last night, his love of the coming night?"

Hamilton sighed and smiled at the same time.

"English wives need more than that to make them content," he answered.

"English wives," repeated Saidie, with her laugh like the sound of a golden bell; "what do they know of love?"

"Not much certainly, I think," replied Hamilton.

For a moment the vision of a thin blonde face, with its expression of sour discontent, rose before him. What had he not given that woman-what had she not demanded? Extravagant clothes to deck out her tall lean body, a carriage to drive her here and there, a mansion to live in, all the money he could gain by constant work-these things she demanded because she was his wife, and he had given them, and yet she was always discontented, simply because she was one of those women who do not know desire nor the delight of it. This one had nothing but that divine gift, and it made all her life joy.

"Dance for me now in the cool," murmured Hamilton in the little fine curved ear with the rose-bud just over it.

Saidie slipped off his knee, and fastening the little gilt link at her neck more securely, drew her soft filmy garment more closely to her, and commenced to dance before him in the screened verandah, with the hot moonlight, filtered through the delicate tracery; of innumerable leaves falling on her smooth, warm-tinted body.

To please him, to please him, her lord, her owner, her king: it was the one passion in her thoughts, and it flowed through every limb and muscle, glowed in her eyes, quivered on her parted lips, and made each movement a miracle of sweet sinuous grace.

The soft, hot night passed minute by minute, the scents of a thousand flowers mingled together in the still violet air. Some white night-moths came and fluttered round the exquisite form on whose rounded contours the light played so softly, and Hamilton lay back in his chair, silent, absorbed, hardly drawing his breath through his lungs, shaken by the nervous beating of his heart. Motionless he lay there, almost breathless, for the wine of life was in all his veins, mounting to his head, intoxicating him.

"I am very tired; may I stop now?" came at last in a low murmur from the curved lips so sweetly smiling at him, and the whole soft body drooped like a flower with fatigue. Hamilton opened his arms wide. She saw how the fresh colour glowed in the handsome cheek, how his splendid neck swelled as the red deer's in November, how the dark eyes blazed upon her.

"Come to me," he commanded, and she flew to his arms as the love-bird flies upward to her mate in the pomegranate tree.

For three months Hamilton and Saidie lived in the white bungalow in the palms, and drank of the wine of life together, and were happy in the overwhelming intoxication it gives.

For three months Saidie lived there, never going beyond the precincts of the house and the palace of flowers that was the compound.

Why should she leave them? What had she to gain by going out into the dusty way? What had she to seek? Her garden of Eden, her Paradise, was here. She was too wise to go beyond its limits.

Pedlars and merchants of all sorts brought their best and richest wares to her, and Hamilton sat by her in the verandah, commanding her to buy all that pleased her, though she protested she needed nothing.

Jewels for her neck, and gold anklets and bracelets, and robes and sweetmeats were laid out before her. Only the best of the bazaar was brought, and of this again only the best was chosen. And when Hamilton was not there she walked from room to room singing, clothed in purple silken gauze, with his jewels blazing on her breast, his kisses still burning on her lips. Then she would take her rabab and play to the listening flowers, or practise her dancing, the source of his pleasure, or lie in the noonday heat on the edge of the bubbling spring that rose up in the moss under the boughain-villia and look towards the East and dream of his home-coming. What did she want more?

Hamilton now lived the enchanted life of one who is wholly absorbed in a secret passion. He was wise-more wise than men generally are-and made no effort to parade his treasure. This wonderful exotic, this flower of happiness, that bloomed so vividly in the dark, secluded recesses of his heart, how did he know that the destructive heat and light of publicity might not fade and sear its marvellous petals? He told no one of his life; took no one out into the desert with him, to the bungalow among the palms.

He was away a great deal. His work and certain social duties claimed a large part of his day, and during all that time he had to leave her alone with her flowers, but this gave him no anxiety. It was not a dangerous experiment, as it always is to leave a European woman alone. He knew that Saidie, the Oriental, would spend the whole time dreaming of him, longing for him, singing to the flowers of him, talking to her women-attendants of him, filling the whole garden and house with his image till the longed-for moment of his return.

And to Hamilton, full of unspoiled life and vigour, this security, this certainty of her complete fidelity was a wondrous charm.

Unlike a man of jaded passions, who requires his love to be constantly stimulated by the fear of imminent loss, Hamilton, full of unused strength, and thirsty after the joy of life, now that the cup was offered him, drank of it naturally and with ecstasy, needing no salt and bitter olives of jealousy between the draughts.

For years he had longed for love and happiness: at last he had found both, and with simple, uncavilling thankfulness he clasped them to his breast and held them there, content.

Saturday and Sunday were their great days. Hamilton left the office at two on Saturday afternoon, and was back at the bungalow by five.

They went to bed early that night, and rose on the Sunday morning with the first glimmer of dawn. Everything would be prepared overnight for a day's excursion and picnic in the desert, which Saidie particularly delighted in.

The great brown camel, fat and sleek like all Hamilton's animals, and with an enormous weight of rich hair on his supple neck, would be kneeling waiting for them below in the dewy compound, while the early tender light stole softly through the palms; and they would mount and go swinging out through the great open spaces of the desert, full of delicate white light, towards the sister-oasis of Dirampir, where masses of cocoanut palms grew round a set of springs, and waved their branches joyfully as they drew in the salt nourishment of the air from the amethystine sea not fifty miles distant.

Into the shelter of these palms they would come as the first great golden wave of light from the climbing sun broke over the desert, and, descending from the camel, walk about in the groves by the spring, and select a place for boiling their kettle and having their breakfast. The long ride in the keen air of the morning gave them great appetites, and they enjoyed it in the whole joyous beauty of the scene round them. The palm branches over them grew gold against the laughing blue of the sky, a thousand shafts of sunlight pierced through the fan-like tracery, the golden orioles at play darted, chasing each other from bough to bough, the spring bubbled its cool musical notes beside them, and the sense of the blighting heat of the ravening desert round them seemed to accentuate the beauty of the peace and shade in the oasis.

Saidie enjoyed these days beyond everything, and would sit singing at the foot of a palm, weaving a garland of white clematis for Hamilton's handsome head as it rested on her lap.

No English people ever came to the oasis; as a matter of fact, the English generally do avoid the best and most beautiful spots in or near an Indian station; but the place was greatly beloved by the natives who came there to doze and dream, play, sing, and weave garlands in the usual harmless manner in which a native takes his pleasure. Looking at them standing or sitting in their harmonious groups against a background of golden light and delicate shade, Hamilton often thought how well this scene compared with that of the Britisher taking a holiday-Hampstead Heath, for instance, with its noisy drunkenness, its spirit of hateful spite, its ill-used animals, its loathsome language. The Oriental endeavours to enjoy himself, and his method is generally peaceful and poetic: the singing of songs, the weaving of garlands, and the letting alone of others. The Briton's idea of enjoying himself is extremely simple; it consists solely in annoying his neighbours.

To see a handsome English Sahib here was to the habitual frequenters of the oasis something rather remarkable, but these people are early taught the custody of the eyes and to mind their own business. Therefore Hamilton and Saidie were not troubled by offensive stares, or in any other way. All there were free, gathered to enjoy themselves, each man in his own way; and the natives in their gay colours added to the beauty, without disturbing the peace of the scene, much as the bright-plumaged birds that flitted from tree to tree absorbed in their own affairs.

How Hamilton enjoyed those long, calm, golden hours-the golden hours of Asia, so full of the enchantment of rich light and colour, soft beauty before the eyes, sweet scent of the jessamine in the nostrils, the warbling of birds, and Saidie's love songs in his ears!

Not till the glorious rose of the sunset diffused itself softly in the luminous sky, and all the desert round them grew pink, and the shadows of the palms long in the oasis, and the great planets above them burst blazing into view into the still rose-hued sky, did they rise from the side of the spring and begin to think of their homeward ride. And what a delight it was that night ride home through the majestic silence of the desert, where their own hearts' beating and the soft footfall of the camel were the only sounds! the wild flash of planet and star, and sometimes the soft glimmer of the rising moon, their only light! Eros, the god of passion, seated with them on the camel, their only companion!

To Saidie, cradled in his arms, looking upwards to his face above her, its beauty distinct in the soft light, feeling his heart beating against her side, it seemed as if her happiness was too great for the human frame to bear, as if it must dissolve, melt into nothingness, against his breast, and her spirit pass into the great desert solitudes, dispersed, almost annihilated, in the agony and ecstasy of love.

Week after week passed lightly by in their brilliant setting, the hours on their winged feet danced by, and these two lived independent of all the world, wrapped up in their own intimate joy.

One morning, just as he was about to leave the bungalow, he heard Saidie's voice calling him back. He turned and saw her smiling face hanging over the stair-rail above him. He remounted the stairs, and she drew him into their room. Her face was radiant, her eyes blazed with light as she looked at him.

"I have something to tell you, Sahib! I could not let you go without saying it. Only think! is not Allah good to me? I am to be the mother of the Sahib's child," and she fell on her knees, kissing his hands in a passion of joy. Hamilton stood for the moment silent. He was startled, unprepared for her words, unused to the wild joy with which the Oriental woman hails a coming life.

Her message carried a certain shock to him: it augured change; and his happiness had been so perfect, so absolute, what would change, any change, even if wrought by the divine Hand itself, mean to him but loss?

Saidie, terrified at his silence, looked up at him wildly.

"What have I done? Is not my lord pleased?" Her accent was one of the acutest fear.

Hamilton bent down and raised her to his breast.

"Dearest one, light of my soul, how could I not be pleased?" and he kissed her many times on the lips, and on the soft upper arm that pressed his throat, and on her neck, till even she was satisfied.

"Come and sit with me for a moment that I may tell you all," she said. Hamilton sat beside her on the bed, and she told him many things that an Englishwoman would never say, nor would it enter into her mind to conceive them.

Hamilton was greatly moved as he sat listening. The wonderful imagery, the vivid language in which she clothed her pure joyous thoughts appealed to his own poetic, artistic habit of mind.

On his way across the desert to the city, Hamilton pondered deeply over the news and the girl's unaffected joy. Since all those whispered confidences poured into his ear while they sat side by side on the bed, the throb of jealousy he had first felt at her words had passed away. Saidie had made it so clear to him that her joy was not so great at being the mother of a child as that she was to be the mother of his child, and similarly Hamilton felt in all his being a curious thrill at the thought that his child was hers, that this new life was created in and of her life that had become so infinitely dear to him.

He was glad now that his wife had refused to have a child. The bitter pain he had felt then, those years ago, how little he had thought it was to be the parent of this present joy. Now the woman he loved as he had loved no other would be the one to bear his child. Still the thought of the suffering the mother would go through depressed his sensitive mind, and the idea of the risk to her life that came suddenly into his brain made him turn white to the lips as he rode in the hot sunlight. Such intense happiness as he had known for the last three months can turn a brave man into a coward. For a moment he faced the horrid thought that had come to him-Saidie dead! And the whole brilliant plain, laughing sky, and dancing sunlight and waving palms became black to him. To go back to that dreary existence of nothingness of his former life, after once having known the delight that this bright, eager, ardent love, these delicate little clinging hands had made for him, would be impossible.

"No," he murmured to himself, "if she goes, then it's a snuff out for me too. I have never cared for life except as she has made it for me."

And the cloud rolled off him a little as he met the idea of his own death. Besides, Saidie had declared so positively that she could come to no harm, that it would all be pure delight, that pain and suffering could not exist for her in such a matter since she would be all joy in making him this gift, that gradually he grew calmer as he thought over her words.

"But I didn't want any change," he burst out a little later, talking to the still golden air round him. "Confound it! I was perfectly happy. How impossible it is to keep anything as it is in this world! All our actions drag in upon us their consequences so fast! There is no getting away from this horrible change, no enjoying one's happiness peacefully when one has obtained it."

When he arrived at his office in the city he found that a far heavier cloud had arisen on his horizon than that created by Saidie's words. The English mail was in, and a long thin envelope, impressed with a much-hated handwriting, faced him on the top of the pile of his correspondence as he entered.

He picked it up and opened it.

"DEAR FRANK,-You often used to invite me to come to India, and I have really at last made up my mind to. I am coming out by next month's boat to stay with you for a time. I have been very much run down in health lately, and my doctor says a sea-voyage and six months in India will be first-rate for me. I hope you have a nice comfortable house and good servants.

-Yours affectionately, JANE."

Hamilton stared at the letter savagely as he put it down before him on the table, a sort of grim smile breaking slowly over his face. He felt convinced that in some way his wife had learned of his new-found happiness, and that had given birth to her sudden desire to visit India after twenty years of persistent refusal to do so. He sat motionless for a long time, then stretched out his hand for an English telegraph form and wrote on it-

"Regret unable to receive you now. Defer visit. FRANK."

He did not for one moment think that his wife would obey his injunction, or that his wire would have the least effect on her; but he wished to have a good ground to stand on when she arrived, and he declined to receive her. His teeth set for a moment as he thought of the interview.

"This is a sort of wind-up day of my happiness," he muttered, as he took his place at the office table. "Well, I suppose no one could expect such pleasure as I have had these last three months to continue; but, whatever happens, Saidie and I will stick together." He sat musing for a moment, staring with unseeing eyes at the pile of work in front of him.

"Saidie, my Saidie! I shall never part from her; therefore I can never part from my happiness." He smiled a little at the play on the words, and then commenced his day's labours.

That evening, when he returned, Saidie noticed at once the depression in his usually gay, bright manner. When they were alone at dinner she laid her hand on his.

"What has darkened the light of my lord's countenance?" she asked softly.

Hamilton drew from his pocket his wife's letter, and laid it beside her plate.

"Can you read that, Saidie? If so, you will know all about it."

The girl leaned one elbow on the table and bent over the letter, studying it. She had been trying hard to improve herself in the language, of which she knew already something, and with Oriental quickness, had acquired much in the past three months. She made out the sense now easily enough.

"This lady is a wife of yours?" she said quickly, with a swift upward glance at him, when she had finished reading the letter.

Hamilton laughed a little.

"She was my wife till I saw you, Saidie. No one is my wife now, nor ever will be, but you."

A soft glow of supreme pleasure and pride lighted up Saidie's great lustrous eyes. She bent her head and put her soft lips to his hand.

"Have you forbidden this wife to come to you?" she asked after a minute.

"Yes, I have; but she will come all the same. English wives think it foolish to obey their husbands."

He laughed sardonically, and Saidie looked bewildered and horrified.

* * *

A month later, a long, lean woman sat in a deck chair on board an Indian liner as it crossed the enchanted waters of the Indian Ocean. Enchanted, for surely it is some magician's touch that makes these waters such a rich and glorious blue! How they roll so gently, full of majestic beauty, crested with sunlight, under the ships they carry so lightly! How the gold light leaps over them, how the azure sky above laughs down to their tranquil mirror! how the gleaming flying-fish rise in their glinting cloud, whirl over them, and then softly disappear into their mysterious embrace!

The long, lean woman saw none of the magic round her. Her dull, boiled-looking eyes gazed through the soft sunlight without seeing it. In her lap lay a thin foreign letter and a telegram, together with a copy of "Anna Lombard" that she was reading with the strongest disapproval. She picked up the letter and glanced through it again, though she knew it nearly by heart, especially one passage:

"Your husband is leading such a life here! He has built a wonderful white marble palace in the desert for an Egyptian dancing-girl. They say it's a sort of Antony and Cleopatra over again, and she goes about loaded with jewels and golden chains. I don't know if you are getting your allowance regularly, but I should think your husband is pretty well ruining himself. I never saw a man so changed. He used to be so melancholy, but now he is as bright as possible, and looks so well and handsome. I hear the woman is expecting a child, and they are both as pleased as they can be. I hear all about it, as our cook's cousin is sister to the ayah your husband hired for the woman, and my ayah gets it all from our cook. I really should, my dear, come out and look into the matter, as after a time he will probably want to stop sending home his pay."

The thin sheet fell into the woman's lap again, and she seemed to ponder deeply. Then she read Hamilton telegram again-

"Regret unable to receive you now. Defer visit," and a disagreeable laugh broke from her thick, colourless lips.

"I will go out and see her first," she thought, smoothing down with a large, bony hand the folds of her rather prim white cambric dress. She was a very stupid woman, and not a passionate one; therefore the agony of pain of a loving, jealous wife was quite unknown to her. But she was malignant, as such people usually are. She loved making other people uncomfortable in a general way, and taking away from them anything she could that they valued. She also felt a peculiar curiosity such as those who cannot feel passion themselves have usually about the intense happiness it gives to others. The picture of this other woman, who had found joy apparently in the arms she herself years ago had thrust aside, interested her profoundly. She told herself that this Egyptian loved Hamilton's money, but some instinct within her held her back from believing this.

The little bit about the child went deeply into her mind. It rested there like an arrow-head, and her thoughts grew round it. When the ship came into port a week or two later, Mrs. Hamilton was one of the first passengers to land, and after careful enquiries and well-bestowed tips she was expeditiously conveyed by ticker-gharry[2] and sedan chair across the desert to the bungalow at Deira. She was considerably pleased on seeing that the white marble palace resolved itself into an ordinary white bungalow, but the garden, was unutterably lovely, and, as she saw in a moment, represented something quite unusual in cost and care.

It was just high noon when she arrived, and she thankfully escaped from the suffocating heat and glare of the desert into the cool shaded hall, and gave her card with a throb of spiteful elation to the butler.

The Oriental servant read the name, and hurried with the card to his mistress's room. On hearing of the arrival of the Mem-Sahib, Saidie descended from the upper room, where she had been lying in the noonday heat, and, pushing aside the great golden chick that swung before the drawing-room entrance, went in.

Her dress was of the most exquisite Indian muslin that Hamilton could obtain, heavily and wonderfully embroidered in gold, and peacocks' eyes of vivid deep blue and green; her feet were bare, for Hamilton, in his revolt from English ways, had kept up Oriental traditions as far as possible in the clothing of his new mistress, and weighty anklets of solid gold gleamed beneath the border of her skirt. Round the perfect column of her neck, full and stately as the red deer's, were twisted great strings of pearls, throwing their pale irridescent greenish hue onto the velvet skin. Above the splendour of her dress rose the regal and lovely face, its delicate carving and the marvel of its dark, flashing, enquiring eyes vividly striking in the clear mellow light of the room.

Mrs. Hamilton, dressed in a plain, grey alpaca dress, rather hot and dusty after her long drive, sat on one of the low divans awaiting her. As Saidie entered, the glory of her youth and beauty struck upon the seated woman like a heavy blow, under which she started to her feet and stood for a second, involuntarily shrinking.

"Salaam, be seated," murmured Saidie, indicating a fauteuil near the one on which she sank herself.

Mrs. Hamilton came forward, her hands closing and unclosing spasmodically in their grey silk gloves, and sat down again, her eyes riveted on the other's face.

"Do you know who I am?" she said at last in a stifled voice.

Saidie smiled faintly; one of those liquid, lingering smiles that made Hamilton's heaven.

"Yes, I know; you are Mem Sahib Hamilton, the first, the old wife.".

Saidie, according to her own Eastern ideas, was in the position of a superior receiving an unfortunate inferior. She was the latest acquired-the darling, the reigning queen-confronted with the poor cast-off, old, unattractive first wife; and being of a nature equally noble as the type of her beauty, she felt it incumbent on her, in such a situation, to treat the unfortunate with every consideration, gentleness, and tenderness.

The British matron's views of the relative positions of first and subsequent wives differs, however, from Saidie's, and Mrs. Hamilton's face grew purple as she heard Saidie's answer, and some faint comprehension of Saidie's view was borne in upon her.

"Where is my husband?" she demanded fiercely.

"The Sahib is in the city to-day," returned Saidie calmly. How odious they were, these Englishwomen, with their short skirts and big boots, and red, hot faces, with great black straw houses over them, and their curt manners, and the impertinent way they spoke of their lords!

"When will he be back?" pursued the other, sharply.

Saidie glanced towards the clock.

"In a few hours; perhaps more. He returns at sunset."

"And what do you do all day, shut up by yourself?" questioned her visitor, with a sort of contemptuous surprise.

"I think of him," returned Saidie, quite simply, with a sort of proud pleasure that made the Englishwoman stare incredulously.

"Silly little fool!" she ejaculated, with a harsh, disdainful laugh.

"Does he give you all those things, and dress you up like that?" she added, staring at the pearls on Saidie's neck.

"He has given me everything I have," she replied, seriously.

That Hamilton was wasting his substance on another went home far more keenly to his lawful wife than that he was wasting his love on the same. She got up, and went close to the girl, with a face of fury.

"They are all mine! I should like to drag them off you! Do you understand that an Englishman's money belongs to his wife, and I am his wife? You! What are you? He belongs to me, and, whatever you may think, I can take him from you. By our laws he must come back to me."

Saidie rose and faced the angry woman unmoved.

"No law on earth can make a man stay with a woman he does not love," she said calmly, "nor take him from one he does. You must know little, or you would know that love is stronger than all law. I give you leave to withdraw. Salaam."

And she herself moved slowly backwards towards the hanging chick, passed through it, and was gone, leaving the Englishwoman alone in the room.

* * *

Three hours later Hamilton, sitting in his own private office, surrounded with papers, started suddenly as he heard a well-known and hated voice say, outside the door.

"Thanks, I'll go in myself."

The next minute the door had opened and his wife stood before him. He sat in silence, regarding her.

"Well, Frank, I suppose you were expecting me? You saw the boat came in, doubtless. You don't look particularly pleased to see me!"

There was only one chair in the room, and Hamilton remained seated. His wife stood in front of him.

"I do not know of any reason why I should be pleased, do you?" he said calmly, gazing at her with eyes full of concentrated hostility.

"No, considering you've got that black woman up at your house, I don't suppose you do want your wife back very badly; but I've come to stay, my dear fellow, some time, so you've got to make the best of it."

"You will not stay with me," returned Hamilton quietly. His face was very white, his eyes had become black as they looked at her. One hand played idly with a paper-knife on his table.

"And a nice scandal there'll be when I go to stay at the hotel here, and it's known I'm your wife, and you are living out in the desert with a woman from the bazaar!"

"The fear of scandal has long since ceased to regulate my life," answered Hamilton calmly. "Be good enough to make your interview short; I have a great deal of work to-day."

"You are a devil!" replied the woman, white, too, now with impotent rage, "to desert your own wife for that filthy native woman. I-"

But Hamilton had sprung to his feet; his face was blazing; he seized his wife's wrists in both hands.

"Be quiet," he said, in a low tone of such fury that she cowered beneath it. "One word more and I shall kill you; do you understand?"

Then he raised one hand and brought it down on his gong. Instantly two stalwart, bronze giants, his chuprassis, entered the room and stood by the door.

"Take this woman out, and keep her out," he said to them. "Never let her in again. She annoys me."

The chuprassis put their hands to their foreheads, and then impassively approached the Englishwoman. She looked at her husband wildly as they took her arms.

"Frank! you will not surely-" she expostulated. "Your own wife!" and she struggled to release her arms.

Hamilton waved his hand, and the natives forced her to the door. For a moment she seemed inclined to scream and struggle. Then her face changed. A look of intense malevolence came over it. She walked between the men quietly to the door. As she passed through it, she looked back.

"You and she shall regret this," she said. Then the door shut, and Hamilton was alone.

He sat down, collapsed in his chair. Oh, how could he free himself from this millstone at his neck? What relief could he gain anywhere? To what power appeal? He could keep her out of his house, out of his office, but not out of his life. She had come here with the deliberate intention of wrecking that, and she would succeed probably, for she would have the blind, hideous force of conventional morality on her side. She would destroy his life-that life till lately so valueless to him; that dreary stretch made barren so many years by her hateful influence, but which, in spite of it, at Saidie's touch, had now bloomed into a garden of flowers. The thought of Saidie strengthened him. It was true that his wife would probably succeed in breaking up his life here from the conventional and social point of view, and he would be obliged most likely to give up his appointment; but he had a small independent income, and on that he and Saidie could still live together. They would go to Ceylon or to Malabar. Perhaps also he could make money otherwise than officially. Wherever he went his wife would probably pursue him, intent on making his life a misery. Still, Fortune might favour him; he and Saidie might in time reach some corner of the world where their remorseless tracker would lose trace of them. Perhaps to go to England at once and obtain a legal separation would be the best plan, but then it was winter in England now, and he could not with advantage take Saidie to England in winter, for fear his exotic Eastern flower would fade in the northern winds.

His thoughts wandered from point to point, and the minutes passed unheeded. His papers lay untouched, scattered on the floor. The chuprassi brought in from time to time a note, laid it on the table and withdrew. Hamilton noticed nothing; he sat still, thinking.

Meanwhile Mrs. Hamilton had been driven to the hotel, where she engaged very modest quarters and ordered luncheon. While waiting for this she went out into the balcony before her windows, and looked with gloomy eyes into the sunny, laughing splendour of the Eastern afternoon. At the side of the hotel was a luxuriant garden, and the palms and sycamores growing there threw a light shade into the sunny street just below her window; the sky overhead stretched its eternal Eastern blue, and the pigeons wheeled joyfully in and out the eaves in the clear sparkling air, or descended to the pools in the garden to bathe, with incessant cooing. Up and down the road passed the white bullocks with their laden carts, and the gaily-dressed Turkish sweet-meat sellers went by crooning out songs descriptive of their wares, pausing under the shade of the garden to look up at the English Mem-Sahib in the balcony. She leant her arms on the rail, and looked out on the gay scene with unseeing eyes. "Beast!" she muttered at intervals, and her hard-lined face crimsoned and paled by turns.

When her luncheon came in she returned to the room, took off her hat and looked in the glass. The narrow, selfish, petty emotions of twenty years were written all over her face in deep, hideous lines. The mass of yellow hair, newly-dyed, looked glaringly youthful and incongruous above it.

Burning with a sense of malevolent discontent and misery, she turned from the glass and hurried through her luncheon, then ordered it to be cleared away and writing materials to be brought in, and set herself with grim feverishness to the concoction of a long letter to the Commissioner. In it Hamilton's twenty years of patient fidelity, through which time he had regularly transmitted to her half his pay year by year were naturally not mentioned; her own refusal to live with him, her incessant demands for more money, her extravagance, her long, whining letters to him, her debts, her own life in town were, of course, also suppressed. In the letter she figured as the ardent, tender, anxious wife, arriving to find her abandoned husband wasting his substance on a black mistress. The visit to the cruel tyrant in his office was long dwelt on, and the whole closed with a pathetic appeal to the Commissioner to use his influence to restore her dearest boy to her arms. It was not a bad letter from the artist's and the liar's standpoint, and she read it through with a glow of satisfaction, sealed it up with a baleful smile of triumph, and then sounded the gong.

"Take this at once to the Commissioner Sahib," she said, handing the note to the servant, "and let me have some tea; also you can order me a carriage. I shall want to drive afterwards."

When the tea came, she thoroughly enjoyed it after her virtuous labours, and in the cool of the evening drove out to see the city.

* * *

That evening at dinner, seated at their table, laden with flowers, with the light from the heavy Burmese silver lamps falling on her lovely glowing face, and round bangle-laden arms, Saidie told Hamilton of the visit of the white Mem-Sahib. His face darkened and his lips set.

"So she came here, did she? Did she frighten you? attempt to hurt you?"

"Oh, no," returned Saidie; "not at all. Naturally she is very hurt, very sorry; no wonder she longs after the Sahib, and wishes to be taken back to his harem. I was very sorry for her. It is quite natural she should be jealous, of course," and Saidie rested one soft, silken skinned elbow on the table and leaned across the flowers, and her half-filled wine-glass, looking with tender liquid eyes earnestly at the face of her lord.

"The Sahib is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far above other men," she murmured, gazing upon him. "It is no wonder she is unhappy."

Hamilton smiled a little, looking back at her. He had indeed a singularly handsome face, with its straight, noble features and warm colour, and as he smiled the breast of the Eastern girl heaved; her heart seemed to rush out to him.

"Ah, Saidie! you do not understand English wives," he said gently, with a curious melancholy in his voice. "Love and worship such as you give me they think shameful and shocking. To love a man for himself, for his face, for his body is degrading. They are so pure, they love him only for his purse. They tell him to take his passion to dancing-girls like you. They hate to bear him children. They like to live in his house, be clothed at his expense, ride in his carriage, but they care little to sleep in his arms."

Saidie regarded him steadfastly, with eyes ever growing wider as she listened.

"I do not understand ..." she murmured at last, clasping both soft, supple hands across her breast, as if trying to mould herself into this new belief; "it is so hard to comprehend.... Surely it must be right to love one's lord, to bear him sons, to please him, to make him happy every hour, every minute of the day and night."

"Right?" returned Hamilton passionately, getting up from his seat and coming over to her. "Of course it is right! love such as yours is a divine gift to man, straight from the hands of God." He leaned his burning hands heavily on the delicately-moulded shoulders, looking down into her upturned face. How exquisite it was! its fine straight nose, its marvellously-carved mouth and short upper lip, its round, full chin, and midnight eyes beneath their great arching, sweeping brows!

"That woman is a fiend, one of the unnatural creatures our wretched European civilisation has made only to destroy the lives of men. Don't let us speak of her! never let us think of her! She is nothing to me. You are my world, my all. If she drives us away from here, there are other parts of the world for us. Separate us she never shall. Come! why should we waste our time even mentioning her name. Come with me into our garden. Darling! darling!"

He stooped over her, and on her lips pressed those kisses so long refused, uncared for by one woman, so priceless to this one, and almost lifted Saidie from the chair. She laughed the sweet low laughter of the Oriental woman, and went with him eagerly towards the verandah, and out into the compound where the roses slept in the warm silver light.

* * *

For two days nothing happened. Hamilton went as usual to his office for the day. At four he left, and, mounting his camel, went into the desert to the oasis in the palms.

On the third day he received a summons from the Commissioner, and went up to his house in the afternoon. His heart seethed with rage within him, but except for an unusual pallor in the clear warm skin, his face showed nothing as he entered the large, imposing drawing-room.

The Commissioner was a short, pompous little man, rather overshadowed by his grim raw-boned wife, and had under her strict guidance and training developed a stern admiration for conventional virtue, particularly in regard to conjugal relations. He rose and bowed as Hamilton entered, but did not offer to shake hands. Hamilton waited, erect, silent.

"Sit down, Mr. Hamilton." Hamilton sat down. "Er-I-ah-have received what I may term a painful-yes, a very painful communication, and er-I may say at once it refers to you and your concerns in a most distressing manner-most distressing."

The Commissioner coughed and waited. Hamilton remained silent. The Commissioner fidgeted, crossed his knees, uncrossed them again, then turned on him suddenly. The Indian climate is trying to the temper; it means many pegs, and small control of the passions.

"Damn you, sir!" he broke out fiercely. "What the devil do you mean by keeping a black woman in your house, and sending your wife to the hotel here?"

He was purple and furious; in his hand he crushed Mrs. Hamilton's beautiful composition.

"She tells me you called in natives to throw her out of your office: it's disgraceful! Upon my word it is; it's scandalous! And you sent her to the hotel! I never heard of such a thing!"

"Mrs. Hamilton came out uninvited, in defiance of my express wishes, and on her arrival I told her she could not stay with me," returned Hamilton quietly. "Whether she went to the hotel or not, I don't know."

"But your wife, damn it all, your wife, has a right to stay with you if she chooses; naturally she would come to you, and you can't turn her out in this way."

"She has long ago forfeited all rights as my wife," replied Hamilton calmly, in a low tone, with so much weight in it that the Commissioner looked at him keenly.

"Why don't you get a divorce or a separation then?" he asked abruptly. "Do the thing decently-not have her out like this, and make a scandal all over the station."

"I know of no grounds for a divorce," returned Hamilton. "There are many ways of breaking the marriage vows other than infidelity. I married Mrs. Hamilton twenty years ago, and for those twenty years she has practically refused to live with me. For twenty years I have remitted half my income to her every year. During that time I have many times asked her to join me here, sought a reconciliation always to be refused. Recently I found another interest; the moment my wife discovered this, she came out with the sole purpose of annoying me. I have come to the conclusion that twenty years' fidelity to a woman without reward is enough. I shall not alter my life now to suit Mrs. Hamilton."

The Commissioner was silent. He was quite sure Hamilton was speaking the truth, and in reality, in the absence of Mrs. Commissioner, he felt all his sympathies go with him. But his wife's careful training and his official position put other words than his mind dictated into his mouth.

"Well, well," he said at last, "we can't go into all that. You and your wife must arrange your matters somehow between you. But there can't be a scandal like this going on. You, a married man, living with a native woman, and your wife out here at the hotel! Something must be done to make things look all right-must be done," and he knitted his brows, looking crossly at Hamilton from under them.

Hamilton shrugged his shoulders.

"You'd better give up this native woman," snapped the Commissioner.

Hamilton smiled. His was such an expressive face, it told more clearly the feelings than most impassive English faces, and there was that in the smile that held the Commissioner's gaze; and the two men sat staring at each other in silence.

After some moments the Commissioner spoke again but his tone was different.

"Hamilton, you know we all have to make sacrifices to our official position, to public opinion, to social usage. Ah! what a Moloch that is that we've created, it devours our best. Yes ... a Moloch!" he muttered half to himself, gazing on the floor.

"Still, it's there, and we all suffer equally in turn. I know what it is myself. I have been through it all." He stopped, gazing fixedly at the beautiful crimson roses in the pattern of his Wilton carpet. What visions swept before him of gleaming eyes and sweeping brows, ruthlessly blotted out by a large, raw-boned figure and face of aggressive chastity. "I am sorry for you, but there it is; whatever the rights of the case, you can't make a scandal like this."

"I am ready to resign my post if necessary," returned Hamilton; "I have enough to live on without my pay."

The Commissioner started, and looked at him.

"Is she so handsome as that?" he asked in a low tone, leaning a little forward. Mrs. Commissioner was not there, and he was forgetting officialdom.

Hamilton hesitated a moment. Then he drew from his pocket a photograph, taken by himself, of Saidie standing amongst her flowers.

The beautiful Eastern face, the lovely, youthful, sinuous figure, veiled in its slight, transparent drapery, taken by an artist and a lover in the clear, actinic Indian light, made an exquisite work of art. It lay in the hand of the Commissioner, and he gazed on it, remembering his long-past youth.

After a long time Hamilton broke the silence.

"Now, you know," he said at last, "why I am ready to resign my post rather than resign that; and it is not only her beauty that charms me, it is her devotion, her love.... Do you know, white or black, superior or inferior, these two women are not to be mentioned in one breath. The one you see there is a woman, the other is a fiend."

The Commissioner tried to look shocked, but failed; the smooth card still lay in his hand, the lovely image impressed on it smiled up at him.

"I don't know but what you are right," he muttered savagely as he handed it back to Hamilton. "These wives, damn 'em, seem to have no other mission but to make a man uncomfortable."

He got up and began to pace the room. He seemed to have forgotten Hamilton and the official r?le he himself had started to play. He seemed absorbed in his own thoughts-perhaps memories. Hamilton sat still, gazing at the card.

Half-an-hour later the interview came to an end. Hamilton went away to his office with a light heart, and a smile on his lips. The Commissioner had given him some of his own reminiscences, and Hamilton had sympathised. The two men had drifted insensibly onto common ground, and the Commissioner finally had promised to help Hamilton as far as he could. Hamilton was pleased. That he had merely been twisting a piece of straw, that would be bent into quite another shape when Mrs. Commissioner took it in hand, did not for the moment occur to him. That night Saidie danced for him in the moonlight, and afterwards ran from him swiftly, playing at hide-and-seek amongst the roses laughing, inviting his pursuit. In and out behind the great clumps of boughain-villia gleamed the lovely form, with hair unbound falling like a mantle to the waist. Through the pomegranate bushes the laughing face looked out at him, then swiftly vanished as he approached, and next a laugh and a flash of warm skin drew him to the bed of lilies where he overtook her, and they fell laughing on the mossy bank together. Wearied with dancing and running and laughter, she sank into his arms gladly, as Eve in the garden of Eden.

"Let us sleep here," she murmured, looking up to the palm branches over them defined against the lustrous sky.

"See how the lilies sleep round us!"

And that night they slept out in the moonlight.

A month had gone by, and during that month, except for the time he was with Saidie in the bungalow, Hamilton, had he been less of a philosopher, would have been extremely uncomfortable.

The Commissioner's wife had completely and entirely espoused the cause of Mrs. Hamilton, and had insisted on her leaving the hotel and coming to stay with her. Everywhere that the Commissioner's wife went, riding or driving, Mrs. Hamilton accompanied her; and whenever he met the two women, his wife threw him a mild, reproachful glance of martyred virtue, while the Commissioner's wife glared upon him in stony wrath.

Hamilton took no notice of either glance, but passed them as if neither existed. The Commissioner looked miserably guilty whenever he encountered Hamilton's amused, penetrating eyes, and avoided him as much as possible. The Commissioner's house was completely shut to him; he never approached it now except on official business, and nearly every house in the station followed its example. The story of Mrs. Hamilton's woes and wrongs had spread all over the community, and proved a theme of delightful and never-ending interest to all the ladies of the station. They were unanimous in supporting her. Not one voice was raised in favour of Hamilton. He was a monster, a heartless libertine, given over to all sorts of terrible vices. Tales of the fearful doings in the desert bungalow, where Hamilton and Saidie lived the gay, bright, joyous life of two human beings, happily mated, as Nature intended all things to be, spread over the station, and the stony stare of the women upon Hamilton, when they met him, mingled insensibly with a shrinking horror that greatly amused him.

Nobody spoke to him except in his business capacity. Every one avoided him. He was practically ostracised. Mrs. Hamilton, on the other hand, went everywhere, and thoroughly enjoyed herself in the r?le of gentle forgiving martyr that she played to perfection. Being plain and unattractive to men, she was thoroughly popular with the women, and they were never tired of condoling with her on having such a brute of a husband. What more natural, poor dear! than that she should refuse to live with him in India, if the climate did not suit her? So unreasonable of him to expect it! The question of a family, too! why, what woman was there now who did not hate to have her figure spoiled, and object to be always in the sick-room and nursery? So natural that she did not wish those disagreeable passionate relationships: a man could not expect that sort of thing from his wife! And then the money, too! she had never had more than half his income all these twenty years! It seemed to them that she had been wonderfully good and resigned.

Such was the talk at the afternoon teas, and the married men at the club, coached by their wives, and being in the position of the fox who had lost his brush, and wished no other fox to retain his, condemned Hamilton quite as freely.

"It was beastly rough on his wife," they agreed, "to set up a black dancing-girl under her eyes."

Hamilton cared not at all for the social life of the station, and was greatly relieved by not having invitations to give or to answer. All that he regretted was the ultimate resignation of his post, which, he foresaw, would be the result of all this scandal sooner or later.

Saidie, with Oriental quickness, had soon grasped the whole situation, and had flung herself at his feet in a passion of tears, begging him to send her away or to kill her rather than let her presence make him unhappy. Hamilton had some difficulty in turning her mind from the resolve to kill herself by way of serving him; and it was only his solemn oath to her that she was the one single joy and happiness of his life, that with her in his arms he cared about nothing else, that if he lost her his life was at an end, which pacified and at last convinced her.

Another month went by, and Mrs. Hamilton began to tire of her position. She felt she was not making Hamilton half unhappy enough. She had had but one idea, and that was to separate him from Saidie, and in this she had failed. He had not even been turned out of his post. He had been expelled from the social life of the station; but she knew he would not feel that, that he would only welcome the greater leisure he had to spend in his Eden with her. To play the martyr for a time had been interesting, but its pleasure was beginning to wane; moreover, she could not stay permanently with the Commissioner's wife. She grew restless: she must carry out her plan somehow. When Hamilton's life was completely wrecked, she would be ready to return to England-not till then; and she lay awake at nights grinding her long, narrow, wolf-like teeth together as she thought of Hamilton in the desert bungalow.

One morning, after a nearly sleepless night, she got up and looked critically at her face in the glass. Old and haggard as usual it looked; but to-day, in addition to age and care, a specially evil determination sat upon it.

"Life is practically done with," she thought, looking at it. "I have only this one thing to care about now, and I'll do it somehow before I go. If I can't enjoy my life, he shan't enjoy his."

She turned from the glass, and commenced dressing. The evil look deepened on her face from minute to minute, and the word "Beast!" came at intervals through her teeth.

Outside the window of her charming room all was waking in the joyous dawn of the East. Long shadows lay across the velvet green slopes of the Commissioner's lawn as the sun rose behind the majestic palms that shaded it; floods of golden light were rippling softly over roses and stephanotis, opening bud after bud to the azure above them; the gay call of the birds rang through the clear morning air; the perroquets swung in ecstasy on the bamboo branches, crying out shrill comments on each other's toilet. The scent of a thousand blossoms rose up like some magic influence, stealing through the sparkling sunlight into the room, and played round the thin face of the woman within, but it could make no message clear to her. Every sense of hers had long been sealed to all joy by hate.

At breakfast she announced her intention of leaving India by the following mail, and not all the kind pressure brought to bear upon her by the Commissioner's wife could induce her to postpone her departure. She was gentle, calm, and resigned in manner, as usual, excessively grateful for all they had done for her, and the kindness shown her. She spoke very sweetly of her husband, told them how she had hoped by coming out to induce him to leave the evil life he was leading; but she saw now that these things lay in higher hands than hers, and she felt all she could do was to pray and hope for him in silence.

"Why don't you divorce him?" broke in the Commissioner abruptly and quickly, anxious to get it out before his wife could stop him. He tugged violently at his moustache, waiting for her answer. If she would do that, he was thinking, what a relief for that poor devil Hamilton!

"Divorce him?" returned Mrs. Hamilton resignedly. "Never! It is a wife's duty to submit to whatever cross Providence lays upon her, but divorce seems to me only the resource of abandoned women."

The Commissioner's wife nodded her head in majestic approval. The Commissioner got up abruptly, breakfast being concluded. He said nothing, but his mental ejaculation was, "Old hag! knows she couldn't get any one else, nor half such a handsome allowance!"

The day for Mrs. Hamilton's departure came, and on its morning Hamilton found a note from her on his office desk. He took it up and opened it with a feeling of repulsion.

"DEAR FRANK,-I am leaving by the noon boat for England. They seem to have altered their time of sailing to twelve instead of seven P.M.

"I am sorry my visit here has caused you trouble. Do not be too hard on me. I am leaving now, and do not intend to worry you again. You must lead your own life until, perhaps, some day you wish to return to me. You will find me ready to welcome you. Good-bye, and forgive any pain I have caused you.-Your affectionate wife,

JANE."

Hamilton read this note with amazement, and a sense of its falsity swept over him, as if a wind had risen from the paper and struck his face. But as men too often do, he tried to thrust away his first true instincts, and replace their warning with a lumbering reason. He sat deep in thought, gazing at the table before him. If it were true, if she were really going, if she really meant good-bye, what a relief! But it was impossible, unless, indeed, she had accomplished her plan, and had heard that he had been, or was about to be dismissed from his post.

This seemed to throw a light upon the matter, and with the idea of finding confirmation of this in some of the other letters awaiting him, he started to go through them. It was a heavy post-bag, and gave him much to attend to. He went through the letters, but found nothing relative to himself in them, and settled down to his work. Twelve, one, and two passed, and he looked up at the clock, wondering if she were really gone. He seemed to have no inclination for lunch, so he worked on without leaving the office, and only rose to clear his desk when it was time to leave for the day. To-morrow he would learn definitely what passengers the out-going boat had carried. He would not stay this evening to find out. He felt ill, listless; he only wanted to be back with Saidie in the restful shade of the palms.

As he rode across the desert that evening an indefinable depression hung over him. Never since he had found Saidie had that melancholy, once so natural, come back to him. Her spirit, whether she were absent or present, seemed always with him-a gay, bright, beautiful vision ever before his eyes, giving him the feeling that he was looking always into sunlight. But to-night there seemed emptiness, gloom about him.

"It's the weather," he muttered, and looked upward to the curious sky. It was gold, gleaming gold; but close to the horizon lay two bright purple bars, like lines of writing in the West: the prophecy of a storm, and the heat seemed to hang in the air that not a faintest breath moved.

Swiftly and evenly the great camel bore him, its well-beloved master, over the rippling sand towards the palms in the golden west, but the approaching night travelled faster than they, and it was quite dark, with a sullen heavy darkness, before they reached the bungalow. It seemed very quiet, with an indefinable sense of stillness in the garden and wide hall. Neither Saidie nor any servant came to meet him, and it was quite dark: no lamp had been lighted. With a sudden throb of terror in his heart, Hamilton paused and called "Saidie."

There was no response, no sound. Striking a match, Hamilton deliberately lit a lamp. Some great evil was upon him, and with a curious calmness he went forward to meet it. He went upstairs and pushed open the door of their bedroom, shielding the light with his hand and seeking first with his eyes the bed. Saidie lay there: the exquisite form, in its transparent purple gauze, lay composed upon the bed, a little to one side. The glorious hair, unbound, rippled in a dark river to the floor; the head rested sideways as in sleep, upon the pillow. In silence Hamilton approached; near the bed his foot slid suddenly; he looked down; there was a tiny lake of scarlet blood, blackening at its edges, blood on the wooden bedstead side, blood on the purple muslin over the perfect breasts. Hamilton, his body growing rigid, put out his hand to her forehead; it was cold. He set down the lamp and turned her face towards it, putting his arm under her head. Her lips were stone colour, the lids were closed over the eyes; the face was the face of death.

In those moments Hamilton realized that his own life was over. Saidie was dead-murdered. The world then was simply no more for him. All was finished: he himself was a dead man. Only one thing remained, one duty for him. To avenge her! Then utter rest and blackness. He looked round thinking. The room was quite empty, undisturbed. The great pearls on Saidie's neck were untouched. They gleamed gently in the pale light from his lamp. No robber, no outsider had been here. Then, in the darkened room, leapt up before him the truth: a white, blonde face seemed looking at him from the walls-the thick pale lips, the half-closed sinister eyes, the lean long figure of his wife rose before him.

"But she was to leave by the morning's boat," he muttered. Then ... a thought struck him. He withdrew his arm gently from the passive head, lighted another lamp, putting it on a bracket in the wall, and left the room, descending to the vacant hall. He went to the verandah and called to his servants. They came, a trembling crowd, with upraised hands, and fell flat before him, weeping and striking their heads on the ground.

"It is not our fault, Light of Heaven, Father of the Poor, the Mem-Sahib came-the white Mem-Sahib. We are poor men; we have no fault at all."

Hamilton listened for a moment to the storm of words and protesting cries. Then he raised his hand and there was silence, but for a sound of rising wind without and the sobbing of the natives.

"Pir Bakhs," he said to the head of them all, the butler, "tell me all you know. Your mistress is dead. Who is responsible?"

The butler came forward and fell at his master's feet with clasped hands.

"Lord of the Earth, I know nothing but this. At five all was quiet in the house, and our mistress sat in the garden singing. Then came to the door two runners with a palanquin. They asked to see our mistress. I said wait. I went to the garden. I said the white Mem-Sahib has come in a palanquin. My mistress said, 'I will see her.' She went to the drawing-room, and the white Mem-Sahib came in, and they drank tea together. Your servant is a poor man, and he saw no more till the runners went away with the palanquin. So we said, 'The white Mem-Sahib has gone,' and my mistress said to me she felt drowsy and must sleep, and went upstairs to the Light of Heaven's room and shut the door. And your servant was laying the table in your honour's dining-room a little later, and he went to close the jillmills,[3] for the wind was rising, and your servant saw through the jillmill the white Mem-Sahib again getting into her palanquin that had appeared once more at the back, and the runners ran with it very fast into the desert; then your servant ran out to ask the other servants why the white Mem-Sahib had come back, and the ayah met him at the door and said she had found our mistress killed in her room; and your honour's servant is a poor man, and has wept ever since."

Hamilton listened in perfect silence. The man's face was lined with grief, the tears rolled in streams down his livid cheeks. A wail went up from the other servants at his words. Hamilton and his mistress were their idols, and his grief was very real to themselves.

Hamilton stretched out his hand to the trembling man with a benign gesture.

"Pir Bakhs, I believe you. You have served me many years, and never lied to me. This is another's work, not yours. Be at peace. You have no fault."

The butler wept louder, and the others wailed with him, calling upon Heaven to bless their master and avenge their mistress.

Hamilton turned from them to the dark dining-room, which he crossed to the hall; through this he walked in the darkness as a blind man walks, to the entrance.

He tore the wood-work door open, wrenching it from its hinges, and looked out into the night. A dust-storm was raging in the desert beyond the compound, and its stinging blasts of wind, laden with sand, drove heavily over the exquisite masses of bloom, the glorious and delicate scented blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly destroyed, even as his life had been; it was expiring in agony, even as he would shortly expire: to-morrow it would be desolate, a shattered wreck under the dust, even as he, in a little while-But something should be done first.

Leaving the doorway open, letting the dust-laden wind tear shrieking through the silent house, he plunged into the roaring darkness. He took the centre path that led straight to the compound gate. The unhappy bushes and tortured branches of the trees, bent and twisted by the onrushing wind, lashed his face and body as he went down the path. He did not feel their stinging blows. On, on to the desert he went blindly but steadily in the thick darkness.

When he got beyond the compound gate, out of the shelter of the garden, the weight of the wind almost bore him down; but as he faced its blast, his eyes saw, not so very far, out on the plain, dull in the whirling mist, the dancing uncertain light of a carried lantern. As the tiger darts forward on its prey, as the snake springs to the attack, Hamilton leapt forward into the wall of wind that faced him and ran at the dancing light.

Choked with sand, blinded, suffocated and breathless, but full of power to kill, he was on it at last, and flung himself with sinewy hands on the swaying, covered sedan chair, between the two bearers, who, bewildered and helpless in the sudden storm, were groping slowly across the plain. With a shriek they dropped the handles, as Hamilton flung himself suddenly on the chair; the lantern fell into the sand and went out. The natives, thinking the devil, the actual spirit of the storm, had overtaken them, fled howling into the blackness, their cries swallowed up like whispers in the roar of the wind. As the chair struck the sand, the woman within thrust her head with a cry through the open side. Hamilton seized it by the neck. Out! out of the sedan chair, through the burst-open door, he pulled the wretched creature by her head, and then flung her with all his force upon the sand.

The raging wind swept past them in sheets of dust, bellowing as it went. He knelt on her body; his hands ground into her neck. Through the darkness he saw beneath him the thin, white oval of the face, with its eyes bulging, starting out of the head, its lips writhing in agony; two white hands beat helplessly in the black air beside him. He looked hard into her eyes, bending down to her close, very near, as his hands sank deeper into her neck, his fingers locked more tightly round it. In a few seconds the light of the eyes went out, the hands ceased to beat the air. Saidie was avenged. With a laugh that rang out into the noise of the storm, the man got up from the limp body and stood by it, in the echoing darkness. Then he kicked it, so that it rolled over, and the sand came up in waves eager to bury it.

In an hour woman, sedan chair, lantern would all be beneath a level plain of sand.

He turned back towards the bungalow. "Saidie," he murmured, and the storm-wind seemed to rave "Saidie!" "Saidie!" round him, to whirl the name upwards to the dim stars, glimmering one here and there, far off and veiled in the heavens. He went back; the wind helped him. On its wings he seemed borne back to his house, through the tortured garden, through the gaping doorway, over the shattered door he passed, and then up the stairs to their room.

After the inferno of the desert the inside of the house seemed quiet, and in their room the lamps burned steadily, but low. Their oil was used up, their life, like his, was nearly done. The bed stood there and on its calm white stillness lay Saidie, waiting for him, for him alone, as always.

He went up to her and stood there.

"Saidie?" but she did not answer. He lay down beside her gently, so as not to break her slumber, and then drew her to his breast. Ah his treasure! his world! Surely now all was well since she was safe in his arms! He did not feel the deathly coldness. There was a whizzing in his brain where Nature had laid her finger on a vein, and broken it that he might be released from sorrow and die.

"Saidie?" he murmured again as her breast pressed his, and put his lips to hers.

As his life had first dawned in her kiss, so it went back now to the lips that had given it, and in that kiss he died.