Many miles away a dusty, haggard-faced rider urged his weary horse over the great highroad. Danger lurked in every shadow, but he heeded nothing--was scarcely conscious of what went on about him. He, too, suffered, but no remorse mingled itself with his tight-lipped grief. He had done the right and--according to his code and way of thinking--the only merciful thing. CHAPTER XV THE GREAT HEALER "Yes, it's a fine building," Travers said, looking about him with an expression of satisfaction. "The Rajah hasn't spared the paint in any way. You see, it was all native work, so he killed two birds with one stone--pleased us and gave the aborigines a job. He has gone quite mad on reforms, poor fellow!" He laughed, not in the least contemptuously, but with a faint pity. "And it's all your doing, Miss Beatrice," he went on, turning to her with an elaborate bow. "You should be very proud of your work." She looked him straight in the face. They were in the new ballroom of the clubhouse which the Rajah of Marut had just opened. In the adjacent tearoom she heard voices raised in gay discussion, but for the moment they were quite alone. "You give me more credit in the matter than I deserve," she said. "Is that generosity on your part, or--are you shirking your share of the responsibility?" "I--shirk my share of the responsibility!" he exclaimed with a good-tempered lifting of the eyebrows. "My dear lady, have you ever known me to do such a thing?" She smiled rather sarcastically. "No, Mr. Travers, but I own that the idea does not seem to me wholly impossible." "And even if you were right, why should I in this particular case 'shirk the responsibility,' as you put it? Surely it is not responsibility we have incurred, but gratitude." She walked by his side over to the open windows which looked out on to the as yet uncultivated and barren gardens. "The question is this," she said at last: "Does the superficial gratitude of a crowd in any way compensate for the fact that, in order to obtain it, a whole life's happiness has been incidentally sacrificed?" "I know to whom you are alluding," he said, looking earnestly at her, "although, as a matter of fact, the two things have nothing to do with each other, except in your imagination. You mean Lois. Yes, of course she has had a hard time. Who doesn't? But it's rubbish to talk of a 'life's happiness.' In the first place, there isn't such a thing--nothing lasts so long as a lifetime, I assure you. In the second, Lois has not sustained any real loss--not any which I can not make good to her." "Do you imagine yourself so all-sufficient?" she asked. "I have confidence in my own powers," he admitted. "That is the first condition of success. I believe that in a few hours I shall have Lois on the road to recovery."