And so presently, lying in his arms, her face hidden low on his breast, she told him all, suppressing nothing, extenuating nothing, simply pouring out the whole bitter story, sometimes halting, sometimes incoherent, but never wavering in her purpose, till, like an evil growth that yet clung about her palpitating heart, her sin lay bare before him—­the sin of a woman who had almost forgotten that Love is a holy thing.

He heard her to the end with scarcely a word, and when she had finished he made one comment only.

“And so you gave him up.”

She shivered with the pain of that memory.  “Yes, I gave him up—­I gave him up.  Nick had made me see the hopelessness of it all—­the wickedness.  And he—­he let me go.  He saw it too—­at least he understood.  And on that very night—­oh, Will, that awful night—­he went to his death.”

His arms grew closer about her.  “My poor girl!” he said.

“Ah, but you shouldn’t!” she sobbed.  “You shouldn’t!  You ought to hate me—­to despise me.”

“Hush!” he said again.  And she knew that with that one word he resolutely turned his back upon the gulf that had opened between them during those twenty months—­that gulf that his love had been great enough to bridge—­and that he took her with him, bruised and broken and storm-tossed as she was, into a very sheltered place.

When presently he turned her face up to his own and gravely kissed her she clung to his neck like a tired child, no longer fearing to meet his look, only thankful for the comfort of his arms.

For a while longer he held her silently, then very quietly he began to question her about her journey.  Had she told him that she had been putting up at the dak-bungalow?

“Oh, only for a few hours,” she answered.  “We arrived this evening, Nick and I.”

“Nick!” he said.  “And you left him behind?”

“He is waiting to take me back,” she murmured, her face hidden against his shoulder.

Again, very tenderly, his hand pressed her forehead.  “He must come to us, eh, dear?  I will sent the khit down with a note presently.  But you are tired out, and must rest.  Lie here while I go and tell Sammy to make ready.”

It was when he came back to her that she began to see wherein lay the change in him that had so struck her.

From her cushions she looked up at him, piteously smiling.  “How thin you are, Will!  And you are getting quite a scholarly stoop.”

“Ah, that’s India,” he said.

But she knew that it was not India at all, and her face told him so, though he affected not to see it.

He bent over her.  “Now, Daisy, I am going to carry you to bed as I used—­do you remember?—­at Simla, after the baby came.  Dear little chap!  Do you remember how he used to smile in his sleep?”

His voice was hushed, as though he stood once more beside the tiny cot.

She sat up, yielding herself to his arms.  “Oh, Will,” she said, with a great sob, “if only he had lived!”