A following had gathered in their rear, bringing up the little procession of Englishmen and women, with a knot of dark faces, and from it a man in dust-coloured drill stepped, and saluted. "Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half." Erda caught so much in the order given as she walked on. _Two inches, or, say, an inch and a half!_ No more than that wrong in this dream city; and over yonder? Her eyes travelled past the snowdrift of the camp, rising against the blue background of wide water, to Eshwara, rising against its background of blue hill. "I thought so; a good inch and a half," said Lance exultantly, coming up with measured strides. "It makes a lot of difference though." She looked at him critically. Older by some months than he, full of strong character, almost overfull of strong convictions, she was yet--as women must be until experience of work-a-day life teaches them, as it has taught men, the value of subordination--curiously undisciplined, curiously lawless. And this striving after uniformity impressed her. "I suppose you learn that sort of thing in the army," she said, with a new respect. He laughed. "I should think so; buttons and bootlaces all to pattern. It's an awful bore, but it keeps things going. Now, here we are! Now, you can see properly." They stood in the centre of the camp, in front of the huge _durbar_ tent, that wandering throne of an empire fixed and immovable as the stars. In front of them, rising out of a wilderness of roses, blossoming where nothing but sand had shown since the primeval sea receded from the hills, was the flag of that empire, its folds drooping round the mast. And beyond it, past the two brass guns pointing down the long vista, was an avenue of palms, bordered by green grass and beds of flowers, and intersected by broad paths leading back to the solid white squares of the tents. At the farther end, a quarter of a mile or more from the flagstaff, a triumphal arch at the entrance showed, until the palm-leaves cut it short, a legend: "WELCOME TO THE LORD----" and above it, far at the feet of those distant snows, lay that wreath of white mist hiding the "Cradle of the Gods." Erda's eyes travelled to it, and from it to the other vistas, similar yet smaller, stretching to the right and left of her. Then to the orderly rows on rows of tents, looking like solid blocks of marble behind her. The whole shut in from the world by a high white wall; still, silent, empty, waiting for the Hosts of the Lord. A snow-drift facing that mist-drift on the hills. And between them? Eshwara, and all that Eshwara held of evil and of good.