The unfortunate man gradually realised that he had no choice but to settle down and make the best of his lot. By degrees he had grown terribly apathetic, and, also, he had become bitterly ashamed of his family. Nevertheless, he toiled for them incessantly, like an ox in a sugar mill, but now and then human nature asserted itself, and the miserable automaton felt that he must have some relief--or succumb. He was not a human being, but a mechanism under a pith helmet. Paul Chandos found his sole consolation in dreams. Occasionally he read in the papers the names of former associates, his school-fellows and brother officers. Oh, how he envied them! One was a famous soldier, another a diplomatist, a third a writer--and what was he?--a worm, and no man. With abject horror he shrank instinctively from whatever recalled his former profession; he never entered the cantonment, and the chance sound of a gun, the sight of a mounted officer clanking by, was like the sudden pressure on some aching nerve. With respect to his domestic affairs, he both hated and feared his wife--precisely as a captive animal hates and fears a cruel keeper. She was strong, and he felt himself to be helpless. His daughter Dominga inspired him with a peculiar mixture of mystification and awe. Pussy he was fond of--also of poor Nicky, his son and heir, and of dear old Nani Lopez. According to her lights she was an upright, good creature; but Blanche, figuratively, set his teeth on edge, and even the sleek and fawning Monty, filled him with a sense of unchristian repulsion. When he surveyed Blanche and Dom, as they leant across the table bawling at one another, Paul Chandos breathed an inward prayer, that in a future state his relations would neither recognise nor claim him. He had a secret--those little dark-brown pills, which a trusty native apothecary prepared. The secret was called "opium"; he took it in order to dream, and to banish misery and care; and the gracious alchemy of the drug transmuted his poor surroundings like an enchanter's wand. Once more he was at home in England. * * * * *