"You are really intimate with these Desmonds,--both of them?" "Yes. Both of them. I dine there about once a-week, just myself and Desmond's inseparable pal, Wyndham, who is over there most days. You must call at once. She is Colonel Meredith's sister, a magnificent woman in every way." "A miraculous one, I should say, to have dragged such an adjective out of you!" Lenox smiled. "No. Only one of the right sort. The sort that makes fine sons. She has one already; splendid little chap. The three of 'em are off to Dalhousie early in May, and they have just persuaded me to spend my two months there instead of beyond Kashmir. Mrs Desmond has a misguided notion that I am knocking myself to bits over my work in the interior." "Deuced sensible woman!" laughed Richardson. "It'll give me the greatest pleasure in life to shake hands with her." "Come and do it to-morrow then. I'll go along with you." While he talked Lenox had filled a long German pipe with a bowl of generous dimensions. Now he set a match to it, and as the first blue clouds curled upward a peculiarly aromatic fragrance filled the room. "That stuff of yours is A1," Richardson remarked, with an appreciative sniff. "Pretty costly, I suppose?" "Yes. My one extravagance. A special brand that I get out from home, a big batch at a time. Nothing like it for settling a man's nerves in the small hours." "Do you still sit up over that sort of thing till the small hours?" "Yes, most nights. What moonshine are you bothering your head about now?" "Strikes me that sleeplessness of yours must be becoming serious. You look several degrees less fit than you did a year ago, and that's saying a good deal." Lenox took his pipe from between his teeth, and regarded his subaltern steadily for a few seconds. "When I need medical advice I'll send for Courtenay," he said, a hint of authority in his bantering tone. "We were discussing tobacco, and a woman; and the conjunction reminds me of an inspired German proverb I happened on the other day. 'God made man first; then He made woman; then He felt so sorry for man that He made--tobacco.' Supreme, isn't it?" Lenox chuckled with keen appreciation over the characteristically Teuton bit of cynicism, and Richardson laughed aloud. "Rather rough on woman, that. You might almost have originated it yourself." "Wish I had. I'd be proud of it. Stick to tobacco, Dick, and you'll never be tempted to blow your brains out. You may take my word for it, that jar of Arcadian mixture," he specified it with his pipe-stem, "is worth all the women in creation put together." The bitterness that of late years had so puzzled and distressed his friend sounded again in his tone, and the laughter went out of Richardson's eyes. But Lenox, absorbed in his own reflections, noticed nothing.