Stafford looked down at her. The light from a lantern which Mrs. Carmichael, with great dexterity, had fixed among some overhanging branches, fell on the dark features, now composed and thoughtful. She met his glance in silence, with large eyes that had taken into their depths something of the surrounding shadow. He had never felt so strongly before the peculiarity of her fascination--perhaps because he had never seen her in a setting which seemed so entirely a part of herself. The distant music, the hum of voices, and that strange charm which permeates an Indian nightfall--above all, the ruined bungalow with its shattered door and silent memories--these things, with their sharp contrasts of laughter and tragedy, had formed themselves into a background which belonged to her, so that she and they seemed inseparable. "Oh, Lois, little girl!" Stafford said gently. "I have always thought of you as standing alone, different from everything and everybody, a stranger from another world, irresistible, incomprehensible. I have just understood that you are part and parcel of it all, child of the sun and flowers and mysteries and wonders. It is I who am the stranger!" "Hush!" she said, in a voice of curious pain. "Hush! Let us go back. We must dance--whether we will or not." He followed her without protest. The very rustle of her muslin skirts over the fallen leaves made for his ears a new and fantastic music. Close behind them wandered the two captains, Webb and Saunders, arm in arm. At the entrance to Colonel Carmichael's Memorial Webb stopped, and, striking a match against the door, proceeded to light his cigar. The tiny flame lit up for an instant the languid patrician features. "A cigar is one's only comfort in a dull affair like this," he remarked, as they resumed their leisurely promenade. "Awful wine, wasn't it?" "Awful. The Colonel is beginning to put on the curb--or his lady. It's the same thing." "It will be better when the club comes into existence," said Webb, blowing consolatory clouds of smoke into the quiet air. "It is to be hoped so. Spunky devil, that Travers. Wonder how he means to do the trick. He knows how to pick out a pretty partner, anyhow." "That Cary girl? Yes. Wait till the heat has dried her up, though. She'll be a scarecrow, like the rest of them. By the way, what were her people?" "Heaven knows--something in the D.P.W., I believe. The mother was dressed in the queerest kit." "I heard her talking about 'the gentlemen,'" remarked Webb, laughing, as they went up the steps of the bungalow together. The Memorial was once more left to its shadows and silence. At the edge of the compound a group of natives peered through the fencing, watching and listening. Their dark faces expressed neither hatred nor admiration, nor sorrow, nor pleasure--at most, a dull wonder. When they were tired of watching, they passed noiselessly on their way. CHAPTER III NEHAL SINGH