The sinking of Rose Chantry's sobs brought his mind back to the dim hall. He put his hand gently on her shoulder. "What was it, child?" he said. She raised her head from the crimson silk, leaning towards him against his hand, and mopping her eyes with the ghost of a handkerchief. "It was the fur," she sobbed; "it felt so soft." The explanation explained nothing to Terrington--a woman never seemed so unreasonable to him as when she gave her reasons--but its incomprehensibility absolved him from attempted consolation. "Well," he smiled, "you mustn't cry again till you're across the border. Hukm hai!" She looked up at him, leaning still against his hand. "I'm afraid of your orders," she said shyly. "Well, there's another," he went on with his paternal air; "you must wear everything warm you've got and pack only what you can put on later." "I've nothing warm," she said with half a sob. "Oh, come!" he rallied her; "then I'll have to send round the men who are padding your doolie to pad you too! How about that shooting suit of yours?" His remembrance of it pleased her far more than her possession. "It's not very warm," she murmured. "Well, it's a good deal warmer than these flimsy things," he said, lifting the laces that lay round her neck; "and we'll turn a feather quilt into a petticoat for you, cut you a boa out of the mess-room bearskin, and put the poshteen on top of all. Mind, you'll have to parade in full marching order, or we'll leave you behind for Mir Khan to take care of." An orderly entering with a chit at that moment made an end to the boyish talk that was meant to put fresh heart into her, and Terrington, after a glance at the scrap of paper, left her at once with a smile and a nod and an instant's tightening of his fingers upon her shoulder. At sunset he read the sentences of the burial service over the trench beside the Residency in which the bodies of the three Englishmen were laid. The dusk was spreading under the autumn twilight, while the pale spaces of eternal snow beyond Rashát were veiled with rose in the clear heaven above the purple ramparts of the valley and the flames of the pyres on which the dead Hindus were burned blazed in clear spires of light through the increasing gloom. Rose Chantry stood next to Terrington, in a shooting costume of golden-brown tweed, with a leather hunting-belt, a broad band of leather about the short skirt, brown leather boots that laced half way to the knee, and a brown tam-o'-shanter pinned tight upon her curls. She hardly knew what he was reading as she looked across the miles of evening to the tinted snows, and heard the crackle of the funeral fires on either side of her. Life had been suddenly changed altogether into something hard and glaring and stale and ugly like a ball-room opened to the dawn, and she felt to be growing hard and plain and matter of fact to match it.