"Theo--Theo," she protested, "if you really persist in this, and carry it through, I don't think I shall ever forgive you." The pain in her voice was more than he could bear. "For God's sake spare me that!" he pleaded. "I am losing enough as it is." And now his hands went out to her irresistibly, in the old impulsive fashion, that seemed an echo from a former life. With superlative courage she turned and surrendered both her own. She wanted to prove herself, at all points, simply his friend; and he gave her no cause to repent of her courage, or to suspect the strong restraint he put upon himself during that brief contact, which, at a moment so charged with emotion, might well have proved fatal to them both. "Thank you, Honor," he said quietly. But for her, speech was impossible. She bowed her head, and left him standing alone, with the dregs of victory. On reaching the blessed shelter of her own room she bolted the door; and for once in her life grief had its way with her unhindered. She could not guess, while railing against Desmond's tenacity of purpose, that the same passionate self-reproach which had urged her to go all lengths for Evelyn, was urging him now to a supreme act of self-devotion to his wife's happiness. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE ONE BIG THING. "The sky that noticed all makes no disclosure; And earth keeps up her terrible composure." --BROWNING. His wife herself was, in the meanwhile, journeying hopefully back to the Kresneys' bungalow, on the shoulders of four long-suffering jhampanis, who murmured a little among themselves, without rancour or vexation, concerning the perplexing ways of Memsahibs in general. For the native of India the supreme riddle of creation is the English "Mem." They had but just cast aside their liveries and, squatting on their heels in a patch of shadow, had embarked on leisurely preparations for the evening hookah and the evening meal. The scent of curry was in their nostrils; the regular "flip-flap" of the deftly turned chupattie was in their ears; when a flying order had come from the house--"The Memsahib goes forth in haste!" With resigned mutterings and head-shakings they had responded to the call of duty, and the _mate_,[30] who was a philosopher, had a word of comfort for them as they went. "Worse might have befallen, brothers, seeing that it hath pleased God to make our Memsahib light as a bird. Had it been the Miss Sahib, now----" A unanimous murmur testified that the Miss Sahib would have been a far weightier affair! [30] Headman. And on this occasion they must have found their mistress even lighter than a bird; for instead of lying back among her cushions, she sat upright, in strained anticipation, pressing between her hands the miraculous envelope which was to buy back for her all that she had so lightly flung away.