"Not exactly contemptible, but inferior. They have not our culture, and whatsoever they borrow from us is only skin-deep. Beneath the varnish they are their elemental selves--lazy, cruel, treacherous and unscrupulous. No, no. Each race must keep to itself. Our strength in India depends on our exclusiveness--upon keeping ourselves apart and above as superior beings. So long as they recognize we _are_ superior, so long will they obey us." "It is superiority, then, which prevents every one except professors from taking any interest in the natives?" "Possibly," he returned, not quite so much at his ease. "One feels a natural repugnance, you know." "You would never have anything to do with them?" "Not if I could help it." She sighed and turned away as though his gaze troubled her. "I don't know why--it makes me sad to hear you talk like that," she said. "It seems so terribly hard." "It _is_ hard," he affirmed, following her out of the curious, heavy atmosphere into the evening sunshine. "There are a great many things in life which, as far as we know, are inevitable, so that there is no use in worrying or thinking about them." Her more serious mood had conquered his good spirits, and for a moment he stood at her side looking at the disused bungalow with eyes as thoughtful as her own. "Isn't it strange?" he went on. "Our parents came together from different ends of the earth, doomed to die in the same spot and in the same hour, and we children, far away in England, knowing nothing of each other, have drifted back to the fatal place to find each other there and to--" "Yes," she said as he hesitated, "it is strange. I could almost think that this bungalow had some mysterious influence over our lives." He smiled in half confirmation of her fancy. "It may be. But come! We have had enough gloom for one evening. Let me gather some flowers for you before we go back." She assented, and they followed the winding paths, stopping here and there to cut down some of the most tempting of Mrs. Carmichael's tenderly loved blossoms and always turning aside when they came in sight of the Colonel's verandah. No word of tenderness had ever passed between them, and yet they were happy to be together. It was as though a bond united them which had grown up, silent and unseen, from the first hour they had met, and in a quiet, peaceful way they knew that it existed and that they loved each other. From the verandah where she was sewing by the fading light Mrs. Carmichael could watch their appearing and disappearing figures amidst the trees with the satisfaction of a confirmed match-maker. She, too, knew of this bond, and though she was a trifle impatient with the slowness of the development, she was content to bide her time.