As soon as she had closed and carefully bolted the door on Pussy's pretty entreating face, Verona turned down the smoky lamp and sat for a considerable time in the dark, alone with her own thoughts. Presently these thoughts became so terrible--so unbearably painful, like some intense physical agony, that she rose, unfastened the window and wandered into the verandah and down a path by the bank of the river. The river was wide and swift, being swollen by the recent rains; on the further side it was bordered by a high jungle of reeds and rushes, and beyond it, as seen through a filmy veil of gauze, lay the spreading moonlit plain which seemed to stretch away into the infinite, which was also India! Behind rose the bungalow, large and straggling: on the left towered the factory; to the right lay the office, with the light still burning in the window. Verona noticed these details as she paced the pathway, flitting to and fro like some distracted spirit on the banks of the Styx; and was she not a creature suddenly transported to an unknown world? She was no longer Verona Chandos, who had fared delicately all her life, who had a carefully cultivated taste in music and literature, definite ideas respecting bindings and coloured prints, who collected book plates, was discriminating in her choice of associates, dainty in her tastes, a much-desired partner for golf, bridge or cotillon, a girl who had found her world a pleasant place to live in, and had tried to share with others some of the sunshine which had fallen to her lot. And she was not a bad girl--though she might have been better; was inclined to be quick-tempered and a little supercilious, but she had endeavoured to be sincere, to be kind to the sick and poor, and to champion dumb animals. Well, that Verona was dead; she had passed away for ever, with all her little vanities and tempers and love of pretty clothes and interesting pursuits. And here was the other, the real original Verona, a poor half-caste, whose life and thoughts must be confined to the limits of her parents' purse and wishes, who must keep in step with her two sisters and look for nothing beyond the horizon of her home. And what had she in common with her relations? Nothing beyond the mere fact of her existence and name. Apparently their aim in life was to climb into station society; and her aim in life?--what was her dearest wish at the present moment? Her dearest wish--she scarcely dared whisper it even to her inner soul. Verona was making acquaintance with the truth, the hideous, hard-hearted truth, and her thoughts were so disordered that she did not realise what time of night it was, or even that it was night! But at last her tired body refused to co-operate with her restless mind, and completely exhausted, she was compelled to drag herself to her bed--where sleep immediately claimed her.