"Oh yes, India has a healthy appetite for unsparing workers! She is a grasping harridan, who demands all and offers nothing. She devours the lives of men who are foolish enough to lose their hearts to her, and wrecks their bodies by way of thanks." Quita's lips lifted in the merest shadow of a smile. "Aren't you a little ungrateful to her? She has been fairly merciful to you!" "I have never given her the ghost of a chance to be otherwise! I don't believe in overwork, plus the Indian climate. More men kill themselves by a happy mixture of both than the importance of their achievements justifies. I was chaffing Lenox only last night about his leaning towards that unrecognised form of suicide; and all the answer I got was that a man might die of a more degrading disease. You never by any chance get a rise out of old Lenox!" "Do you know him well?" "As well as it's possible to know a fellow who lives with all his shutters up. And in any case an anchorite, and a woman-hater, would never be much in my line. The symptoms appear to have developed in the last few years. Not without reason, as I happen to know." "_What_ do you happen to know?" The question came almost in a whisper; but Garth, who had all a woman's weakness for other people's affairs, was too intent upon his ill-gotten scrap of gossip to observe his companion's slight change of manner. "Why, that it's simply a case of _cherchez la femme_, as usual," he answered, lightly. "I believe it's a fact that he went so far as to marry one of these women he affects to despise, when he was on leave five years ago." Quita started, and bit her lips. "What reason can you have for believing anything . . . so improbable?" "My dear lady, marriage is never improbable. You women have a knack of tripping up the most unlikely subjects! In this case, I had the details from an old friend of mine. She happened to be stopping at the same hotel as Lenox at Zermatt. Then one morning he disappeared; and, as she had taken rather a fancy to him, she tried to find out what had become of him. After a good deal of questioning, it transpired that he had been seen coming out of the English church with a lady; and further inquiry revealed the fact that an officer named Lenox had been quietly married there the day before. Naturally, she scented a romance, and was keen to know more. But he seemed to have vanished outright. Then ten days later she met him on the station platform, travelling alone, and obviously down on his luck. He told her he was off to join his battery in India: nothing more. Problem: What, in the name of mystery, had he done with the lady?" At that Quita rose abruptly, her cheeks on fire, her whole frame tense with suppressed agitation. "Oh, stop--stop. I can't stand any more!" she protested, in a smothered voice; and at once Garth was beside her, contrite and amazed. "Miss Maurice--what have I said to upset you so?"