When she reached the privacy of her own tent, and had dismissed her maid, she unlocked one of her trunks and took out from it her jewel case.  She had been careful not to wear her necklace of pearls that night, and she took it out of the case now and laid it upon her knees.  She was very sorry to part with it.  She touched and caressed the pearls with loving fingers, and once she lifted it as though she would place it about her neck.  But she checked her hands, fearing that if she put it on she would never bring herself to let it go.  Already as she watched and fingered it and bent her head now and again to scrutinise a stone, small insidious voices began to whisper at her heart.

“He asked for nothing when he gave it you.”

“You made no promise when you took it.”

“It was a gift without conditions hinted or implied.”

Violet Oliver took the world lightly on the whole.  Only this one passion for jewels and precious stones had touched her deeply as yet.  Of love she knew little beyond the name and its aspect in others.  She was familiar enough with that, so familiar that she gave little heed to what lay behind the aspect—­or had given little heed until to-night.  Her husband she had accepted rather than actively welcomed.  She had lived with him in a mood of placid and unquestioning good-humour, and she had greatly missed him when he died.  But it was the presence in the house that she missed, rather than the lover.  To-night, almost for the first time, she had really looked under the surface.  Insight had been vouchsafed to her; and in remorse she was minded to put the thing she greatly valued away from her.

She rose suddenly, and, lest the temptation to keep the necklace should prove too strong, laid it away in its case.

A post went every day over the passes into Chiltistan.  She wrapped up the case in brown paper, tied it, sealed it, and addressed it.  There was need to send it off, she well knew, before the picture of Shere Ali, now so vivid in her mind, lost its aspect of poignant suffering and faded out of her thoughts.

But she slept ill and in the middle of the night she rose from her bed.  The tent was pitch dark.  She lit her candle; and it was the light of the candle which awoke her maid.  The tent was a double one; the maid slept in the smaller portion of it and a canvas doorway gave entrance into her mistress’ room.  Over this doorway hung the usual screen of green matting.  Now these screens act as screens, are as impenetrable to the eye as a door—­so long as there is no light behind them.  But place a light behind them and they become transparent.  This was what Violet Oliver had done.  She had lit her candle and at once a part of the interior of her tent was visible to her maid as she lay in bed.