"By the way," Desmond remarked, as he dissected a fowl, cooked--by the mercy of the gods--in that elusive interval between toughness and putrescence, the pursuit of which gives to hot-weather housekeeping an excitement peculiarly its own, "there's bad news from the Infantry camp this morning. Poor old Buckley. A cramp seizure at midnight. Went out in three hours; and was buried at dawn, Mackay showed me a note from Dr Lowndes saying he believed it was one of those odd freaks of disease, a spurious case. Sheer funk; and nothing else. Camp was in a flourishing condition. No deaths for nearly a week. Then, yesterday, the Colonel's bearer must needs appropriate an unattached germ; and it seems that this got on the poor chap's nerves. He dined chiefly off whisky; and afterwards yarned away to Lowndes about his wife and children. Hadn't seen 'em for eight years. Never mentioned 'em to Lowndes in his life before: and from what one has heard, the wire that goes home this morning will barely spoil her appetite for dinner; which only seems to add a finishing touch to the pity of it all. Mysterious thing . . . marriage . . ." He broke off short on the word. The thought of his own first venture, and the misery that might have come of it, but for an accident so strange as to seem unreal, sealed his lips on the subject of the eternal riddle of the universe: and Paul, being blest with understanding, unobtrusively shifted the talk to another channel. There could be no thought of polo for Desmond that afternoon; though Major Olliver came and reasoned with him forcibly in the verandah. He devoted himself, instead, to the exhaustive disinfection of the sick-room and dressing room. It was hot work; unpleasant work. But it was good to be through with it; to have rid the house of the last vestige of an uninvited and unwelcome guest. With which reflection Desmond sat down finally in the sanctuary of his study; lit a cheroot; and opened a battered original of Omar Khayyam, whose stately quatrains and exquisite imagery were less hackneyed then, than they have since become among modern devotees of culture. A great silence pervaded the house. He had left Lenox in the blessed borderland between sleeping and waking, with Zyarulla on guard; and looking in on Paul, had found him dozing also, after the morning's unwonted exertion. No doubt Frank would drive Honor back for tea: and even while he read Desmond's ear was strained to catch the sound of wheels. This capacity for sustained ardour is a very rare quality in love that has attained its object, and the woman who does not succeed--unwittingly enough--in extinguishing it within the first few years of marriage is rarer still. The sound he waited for came at length; and he sprang out of his chair. But in hurrying through the drawing-room, towards the hall, another sound arrested him; the unmistakable clink of the tonga bar.