As the weeks wore on he devoted his spare time more exclusively to polo and Persian; continuing his lessons to Honor; and rarely spending his evenings in the drawing-room, unless the girl's music held him spellbound, and ensured the avoidance of dangerous topics. Evelyn retorted by a renewed zest for tennis and tea-parties; an increasing tendency to follow the line of least resistance, regardless of results. Thus Honor found herself thrown more and more upon the companionship of Mrs Olliver, Mrs Conolly, and Paul Wyndham, whose anxiety for Theo she guessed at, even as they guessed her own, though never a word on the subject passed between them. Evelyn's anxiety was reserved exclusively for herself. She had sense enough to perceive that nothing could defer the day of reckoning much longer; and on a certain afternoon in early December she exhumed her detested sheaf of bills and sat down at her bureau to a reconsideration of the hopelessness of things in general. A panel of winter sunshine, flung across the room from the verandah door, enveloped her in a glow of light and warmth. The drowsiness of an Indian noon brooded over the compound. Honor was out riding with Paul Wyndham; Theo busy in the next room, and very unlikely to interrupt her, she reflected with a pang of regret. In an hour's time she was going over to tea and tennis with the Kresneys; and had decided that, after six months of silence, some mention must be made of a fixed scale of repayment, to begin with the New Year. But in that event, what hope of meeting any of those other demands, that were again being urgently brought to her notice? What possibility of ordering the two new gowns--bare necessities, in her esteem--to grace the coming Christmas week at Lahore? This same "week" is the central social event of the Punjab cold weather, when most officers on the Border are certain of their fifteen days' leave; when from all corners of the Province men and women gravitate towards its dusty capital--women with dress baskets of formidable size; men armed with polo-sticks, and with ponies, beloved cricket-bats and saddles! Through all the dismal coil of things, this one hour of festivity gleamed on Evelyn Desmond's horizon like a light in a dark room. For one brief blessed week she would be in her element, would escape from the galling restraint of economy; and, more than all, in the background of her mind there lurked a hope that by some means she might recapture that vigorous, self-poised husband of hers, whose love was, after all, the one real necessity of her life; and whom she now saw slipping slowly, surely out of reach. But to recapture she must recaptivate; and to that end faultless frocks were indispensable. She leaned her head upon her hands, and fell to building extravagant air-castles that eclipsed all practical considerations whatsoever.