Jack Raymond shook his head. 'Not till daylight--it never is. I don't mean for the hospital. If nothing happens at midnight, nothing will; but there are lots of other games--at least I should fancy so,' he added as he sat down again, resuming his dinner and his indifference. 'That is one of the most able men in India!' remarked the Commissioner to Sir George; 'it is a thousand pities he allowed----' And then, hurriedly, he changed the subject. It would have been less significant if he had not done so, and Sir George felt inclined to ask him to finish the sentence. But even that defiance would have been significant in its turn, so he gave in resignedly to the awkwardness of the situation--for he could not help feeling it was awkward--and sat down to write his note to Grace before returning to the city. She had been hoping for some message all the evening, and Lesley realised how great a strain the waiting for news had been on Lady Arbuthnot's nerves when she saw the sudden relief the note brought with it. Till then the Sunday dinner-party had been unusually dull. Now, just as people were beginning to wonder if they had not ordered their carriage to come a trifle late, a new life seemed to spring up. The hostess herself started music by going to the piano, and as she did so, she found time for a whisper to Lesley--'It's all right! The troops caught the up-mail and came back in it--sharp work, wasn't it? and George says everything is settling down, but I am not to expect him home till one or two. Oh! I feel so happy!' She looked it, and--good singer as she was--she sang as few had ever heard her sing. Lesley for one, who listened to the quaint little French _chansons_, half-laughter half-tears, and the pretty, comic-opera trills and runs with a new perception of the woman who sang them--the woman who was, as a rule, so unlike most of her sex in her calm intelligence. And now? Now every man in the room was crowding round the piano. She was holding them there by something that was not beauty or intelligence, not by her looks or her singing, but by the woman's desire to have and hold the admiration of her world by making it depend on her for pleasure--the desire which made Eve share her apple with Adam! Yes! that was it! The woman's desire to have and to hold for herself alone.