She stood very still, like one magnetised, her gaze riveted on the carpet. His steadfast aloofness had chilled her first headlong impulse of surrender; and she knew now that he was right:--that, dearly as she loved him, independence in thought, word, and act were still the breath of life for her and for her art. He had put the matter to practical proof with a sledge-hammer directness all his own; had opened her eyes to the humiliating truth that never in all her thirty years of living had she given up anything that mattered for any one. And now---- She raised her head with a start, Zyarulla had brought in a telegram, and Lenox stood reading it with a transfigured face, an eager light in his eyes. "What is it?" she wondered, not daring to ask. "He is going away somewhere--he is delighted. And he says I come absolutely first." Then Lenox raised his eyes, and a lightning instinct told her that for the moment he had forgotten her existence. "Well, Quita," he said, unconscious elation in his tone, "I think the Foreign Office must have known we had got to a difficult corner, and decided to give us a helping hand. They want me to undertake an exploration north of Kashmir, and remonstrate with a small chief who has been misbehaving up there. I am to report myself at Simla _ek dum_,[1] to receive detailed instructions of the mission, and we shall have time enough to think things out very thoroughly before I get back." "Time? How long?" Her colour had ebbed; but the change in him had steeled her to unreasoning hardness of heart. "Six months, certain. Possibly more." "And you are as glad as you can be. One sees that quite plainly." Her tone stung him to sharp retort. "Yes, I am glad--since you insist, and since I am no hypocrite." Pride would not suffer her to remind him of his assurance, "You stand absolutely first." Instead she asked him in a repressed voice-- "Doesn't it occur to you, after your eloquence about what each of us should give up, that this is precisely where your share of the compromise comes in?" "It occurred to me nearly a year ago," he said simply. "After our talk at Kajiar, I faced the fact that there was an end of my exploring as a hobby;--at least on the big scale that appeals to me most. It was just the price one had to pay for getting you back again; and I paid it--willingly. In fact, I should never have mentioned it, if you hadn't dragged it out of me." The quiet of his tone, and the kindliness in the blue eyes that challenged her own, brought the blood into her face. He shamed her every way, this big husband of hers. He had counted the cost and paid it--willingly. He would not even have mentioned it. There you have the essence of the man. Her lids fell, and her incurable instinct for comedy set a faint dimple in her cheek. Here he was at his old trick of dragging her on to higher ground; and the perverse spirit of her loved and hated him for it in one breath.