Stella's eyes were full of tears. "I am afraid I don't know Him well enough to trust Him like that," she said. Bernard leant towards her. "My dear," he said, "it is only by faith that you can ever come to knowledge. You have to trust without definitely knowing. Knowledge--that inner certainty--comes afterwards, always afterwards. You can't get it for yourself. You can only pray for it, and prepare the ground." Her fingers pressed his feebly. "I wonder," she said, "if you have ever known what it was to walk in darkness." Bernard smiled. "Yes, I have floundered pretty deep in my time," he said. "There's only one thing for it, you know; just to keep on till the light comes. You'll find, when the lamp shines across the desert at last, that you're not so far out of the track after all--if you're only keeping on. That's the main thing to remember." "Ah!" Stella sighed. "I believe you could help me a lot." "Delighted to try," said Bernard. But she shook her head. "No, not now, not yet. I want you--to take care of Everard for me." "Can't he take care of himself?" questioned Bernard. "I thought I had taught him to be fairly independent." "Oh, it isn't that," she said. "It is--it is--India." He leaned nearer to her, the smile gone from his eyes. "I thought so," he said. "You needn't be afraid to speak out to me. I am discretion itself, especially where he is concerned. What has India been doing to him?" With a faint gesture she motioned him nearer still. Her face was very pale, but resolution was shining in her eyes. "Don't let us be disturbed!" she whispered. "And I--I will tell you--all I know." CHAPTER IV THE SERPENT IN THE DESERT The battalion was ordered back to Kurrumpore for the winter months, ostensibly to go into a camp of exercise, though whispers of some deeper motive for the move were occasionally heard. Markestan, though outwardly calm and well-behaved, was not regarded with any great confidence by the Government, so it was said, though, officially, no one had the smallest suspicion of danger. It was with mixed feelings that Stella returned at length to The Green Bungalow, nearly three months after her baby's birth. During that time she had seen a good deal of her brother-in-law, who, nothing daunted by the discomforts of the journey, went to and fro several times between Bhulwana and the Plains. They had become close friends, and Stella had grown to regard his presence as a safeguard and protection against the nameless evils that surrounded Everard, though she could not have said wherefore. He it was who, with Peter's help, prepared the bungalow for her coming. It had been standing empty all through the hot weather and the rains. The compound was a mass of overgrown verdure, and the bungalow itself was in some places thick with fungus.