She lifted her troubled eyes to his face. He saw in their depths a curious doubt and uncertainty. "I do not know," she said almost to herself. "I only know that you are not the man." The blow had calmed him. Like a good general who has suffered a temporary check, he gathered his forces together and prepared an orderly retreat. "I will not trouble you," he said gently. "I feel now that I did wrong to disturb your peace--God knows I would never willingly cause you an instant's sorrow--but a man who loves as I do must feed himself with hope, however wild and unreasonable. Now I know, and whatever happens--I hope you will be happy--I pray you will be happy. Yes, though I am not given to uttering prayers, I pray, so dear to me is the future which lies before you." "I am very grateful," she said with bowed head. Something in his broken, disjointed sentences brought the tears to her eyes and made her voice unsteady. She knew he was suffering--she knew why, and her heart went out to him in friendship and womanly pity. "You need not be grateful," he answered. "It is I who have to be grateful. In spite of it all, you do not know what good you have brought into my life nor how you have unconsciously helped me. I shall never be able to help you as you have helped me--and yet--will you promise me something?" "Anything in my power," she said faintly. "It is not much--only this. If the time should ever come when you are in trouble, if you should ever be in need of a true and devoted friend, will you turn to me? Will you let me try to pay my debt of gratitude to you?" She lifted her head and looked at him with tear-dimmed eyes. Every good woman sympathizes with those whose suffering she has inadvertently caused, and in that moment Lois would have done anything to alleviate Travers' pain. "If it should ever be necessary, I will turn to you," she said gently. "I promise you." "Thank you!" he said, and, taking her out-stretched hand, raised it reverently to his lips. CHAPTER X AT THE GATES OF A GREAT PEOPLE Although Travers lost no time in setting to work on the task of calling a new and suitable club-house into existence, he realized immediately that, do what he would, he could not hope for completion before the lapse of a considerable time, and this period of waiting did not suit his plans. Already on the day after the Rajah's reception he had arranged for a return of hospitality which was to take place in his own grounds and to be on an unusually magnificent scale. The European population of Marut shrugged its shoulders as it saw the preparations, and observed that if Travers had been as generous in the first place there would never have been any need to have sought for support from a foreign quarter--at which criticism Travers merely smiled. The club-house was, after all, only a means to a very much more important end of his own.