The delight and excitement which is felt by most travellers on a first introduction to the East was dimmed in Katrine's case by the pressure of events past and to come. The shadow of death had loomed too recently to be easily repelled. The thought of what might have been pierced knife-like through the thankfulness for what was, and recovered life seemed a frail and dream-like treasure hardly as yet to be realised. Katrine found some comfort in the fact that she was not alone in absent-mindedness and lack of appreciation, since Nancy Mannering also was far from her normal self. She was restless, and on edge; at once excited and reserved, affectionate and chilling. She would sit through a whole meal in silence, and leave the table chuckling with laughter. She would drag Katrine out for drives through the hot, bright streets, play the part of show-woman with exaggerated fervour, and suddenly, for no apparent reason, stop short in the middle of a sentence, and refuse to speak again. Excitement, reserve, tenderness, and sarcasm, followed each other in rapid sequence, and added not a little to the strain of the waiting days, but Katrine bore patiently with the varying moods, realising that to a woman of intensely practical nature the very fact of having opened her heart in the hour of danger would be enough to close it more tightly than ever when that danger was past. "If we get out of this, your work is to forget!" Those had been Mrs Mannering's own words, but, poor dear soul! she herself was evidently finding the task difficult, lashing herself for her ill-placed confidence! Moreover, she also had a meeting in store... Every time that Katrine's reflections brought her round to this point, Mrs Mannering and her idiosyncrasies were forgotten in the whirl of her own thoughts. So far as was possible she tried to shut her mind to what lay ahead, to encourage, rather than fight against, the languor of mind and body which gave a dream-like unreality to life. As Jim Blair had said, this time was a rest by the way, a No-man's land, when her chief duty was to rest and gather strength. On the third day the two ladies started on their three days' journey up country, under the most luxurious conditions which it was possible to attain. Everything had been thought of, everything arranged; agent and officials waited upon them with an assiduity which the older traveller, at least, had no difficulty in tracing to its source. Short of climatic exigencies the long journey was robbed of discomfort, but the length, the heat, above all the dust, made it nevertheless a trying experience to the English girl.