She bent down and kissed my forehead. "Poor boy!" she said; and as I looked up I saw Mary on Redvers' arm not six feet from us. I rose, and Myra Cantilivre leaned back in her chair and put up the big plumes of her fan to her face. Mary turned away without a word, and walked down the passage with her companion. I followed, but dared not speak to her. Old Cramley, the Deputy Quartermaster General, buttonholed me. He was a senior officer, and I submitted. Half an hour later, when I escaped, my wife was gone. I reached home at last. Mary was there, in a dark grey walking dress, a small bag in her hand. I met her in the hall, and she stepped aside as if my touch would pollute her. "Mary," I said, "I can explain all." "I want no explanation: let me pass, please." She went out into the night. In two days all Simla knew of it, and in six months I was a ruined man. There is no help for it--the verdict is against me; and yet for five years I have been through the fire, and I am strong now--there would be no blacksliding if another chance were given to me. Regrets! There is no use regretting--ten times would I give my life to live over the past again. "Mary, my dear, I have killed you: may God forgive me!" Some one stepped out of the shadow into the moonlight as I raised my head with the bitter cry on my lips. "Dick!" "Mary!" And we had met once more. THE MADNESS OF SHERE BAHADUR The mahout's small son, engaged with an equally small friend in the pleasant occupation of stringing into garlands the thick yellow and white champac blossoms that strewed the ground under the broad-leaved tree near the lentena hedge, was startled by an angry trumpet, and looked in the direction of Shere Bahadur. "He is _must_," said one to the other, in an awe-struck whisper, and then, a sudden terror seizing them, they bounded silently and swiftly like little brown apes into a gap in the hedge and vanished.