"Sure?" Bernard's eyes suddenly ceased to be quizzical; they looked at him straight and hard. Everard met the look, faintly smiling. "I don't lie about--unimportant things," he remarked cynically. "Light up, man, and fire away!" He struck a match for his brother's pipe and kindled his own cigarette thereat. There fell a brief silence. Bernard did not look wholly satisfied. But after a few seconds he seemed to dismiss the matter and began to talk of himself. "You want to know my plans, old chap. Well, as far as I know 'em myself, you are quite welcome. With your permission, I propose, for the present, to stay where I am." "I shouldn't if I were you." Everard spoke with brief decision. "You'd be far better off at Bhulwana till the end of the rains." Bernard puffed forth a great cloud of smoke and stared at the ceiling. "That is as may be, dear fellow," he said, after a moment. "But I think--if you'll put up with me--I'll stay here for the present all the same." He spoke in that peculiarly gentle voice of his that yet held considerable resolution. Everard made no attempt to combat the decision. Perhaps he realized the uselessness of such a proceeding. "Stay by all means!" he said, "but what's the idea?" Bernard took his pipe from his mouth. "I have a big fight before me, Everard boy," he said, "a fight against the sort of prejudice that kicked me out of the Charthurst job. It's got to be fought with the pen--since I am no street corner ranter. I have the solid outlines of the campaign in my head, and I have come out here to get right away from things and work it out." "Going to reform creation?" suggested Everard, with his grim smile. Bernard shook his head, smiling in answer as though the cynicism had not reached him. "No, that's not my job. I am only a man under authority--like yourself. I don't see the result at all. I only see the work, and with God's help, that will be exactly what He intended it should be when He gave it to me to do." "Lucky man!" said Everard briefly. "Ah! I didn't think myself lucky when I had to give up the Charthurst chaplaincy." Bernard spoke through a haze of smoke. "I'm afraid I kicked a bit at first--which was a short-sighted thing to do, I admit. But I had got to look on it as my life-work, and I loved it. It held such opportunities." He broke off with a sharp sigh. "I shall be at it again if I go on. Can't you give me something pleasanter to think about? Haven't you got a photograph of your wife to show me?" Everard got up. "Yes, I have. But it doesn't do her justice." He took a letter-case from his pocket and opened it. A moment he stood bent over the portrait he withdrew from it, then turned and handed it to his brother. Bernard studied it in silence. It was an unmounted amateur photograph of Stella standing on the creeper-grown verandah of the Green Bungalow. She was smiling, but her eyes were faintly sad, as though shadowed by the memory of some past pain.