"Dear man! Of course I'll go and find out all about it from Captain Desmond. I needn't stay long to do that." "No. You can say you want to get back to me. Desmond will understand." "He's rather a fine fellow, isn't he?" "One of the best I know. The last man who ought to be hampered by a woman." "I might take that as a dismissal! How about yourself!" "Ah, that's quite another matter." And he laid a hand upon the soft abundance of her hair. "Mine is only a two years' contract. And, in any case, _I_ would never allow myself to be handicapped by a woman--not even by you. But I don't feel so certain about Desmond." "Poor little Evelyn! Do you mean, ... is there any question of her really hampering him, ... seriously?" Meredith hesitated. A half-smile hovered in his tired eyes. "As I'm strongly against the whole affair, and have hardly forgiven him yet for marrying at all, it is fairer for me to say nothing about her one way or the other. You must judge for yourself." CHAPTER II. I WANT TO BE FIRST. "A breath of light, a pulse of tender fire, Too dear for doubt, too driftless for desire." --SWINBURNE. Sixteen months earlier, Evelyn Dacre--having come out to India with a party of tourist friends--had chanced to spend Christmas week at Lahore: a week which brings half the Punjab together for purposes of festivity and sport. Here, by some mysterious process, which no science will ever be able to fathom or explain, she had cast an instantaneous and unaccountable spell over a man of rare singleness of purpose, whose heart was set to court action, danger, hardship in every conceivable form: a man for whom a girl-wife fresh out from "Home" seemed as hazardous an investment as could well be imagined. But with all his fine qualities of head and heart, Theo Desmond was little given to cool deliberation in the critical moments of life. This chance-met girl, fragile as a flower and delicately tinted as a piece of porcelain, full of enthusiasm for her new surroundings and of a delight half shy, half spontaneous in the companionship of a man so unlike the _blase_, self-centred youths of her limited experience, had, for the time being, swept him off his feet. And men are apt to do unaccountable things during those hot-headed moments when the feet are actually off the ground. A moonlight picnic; an hour of isolated wandering in a garden of tombs; the witchery of the moment; the word too much; the glance that lingered to a look;--and the irrevocable was upon them. Desmond had returned to the Frontier, to a circle of silently amazed brother officers; and in less than three months from their time of meeting the two had become man and wife.