was cowed by him.  If she answered it was probably some small commonplace which with an exaggerated politeness he would nag at her to repeat.  In the end, with her cheeks on fire, she would repeat it and bend her head under the brutal sarcasm with which it was torn to rags.  Once or twice Thresk was on the point of springing up in her defence, but she looked at him with so much terror in her eyes that he did not interfere.  He sat and watched and meanwhile his plan began to take shape in his mind.

There came an interval of silence during which Ballantyne leaned back in his chair in a sort of stupor; and in the midst of that silence Stella suddenly exclaimed with a world of longing in her voice: 

“And you’ll be in England in thirteen days!  To think of it!” She glanced round the tent.  It seemed incredible that any one could be so fortunate.

“You go straight from Jarwhal Junction here at our tent door to Bombay.  To-morrow you go on board your ship and in twelve days afterwards you’ll be in England.”

Thresk leaned forward across the table.

“When did you go home last?” he asked.

“I have never been home since I married.”

“Never!” exclaimed Thresk.

Stella shook her head.

“Never.”

She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she finished she raised her head.

“Yes, I have been eight years in India,” she added, and Thresk saw the tears suddenly glisten in her eyes.  He had come up to Chitipur reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself that it seemed to belong to an earlier life.  But his reproaches became doubly poignant now.  She had been eight years in India, tied to this brute!  But Stella Ballantyne mastered herself with a laugh.

“However I am not alone in that,” she said lightly.  “And how’s London?”

It was unfortunate that just at this moment Captain Ballantyne woke up.

“Eh what!” he exclaimed in a mock surprise.  “You were talking, Stella, were you?  It must have been something extraordinarily interesting that you were saying.  Do let me hear it.”

At once Stella shrank.  Her spirit was so cowed that she almost had the look of a stupid person; she became stupid in sheer terror of her husband’s railleries.

“It wasn’t of any importance.”

“Oh, my dear,” said Ballantyne with a sneer, “you do yourself an injustice,” and then his voice grew harsh, his face brutal.  “What was it?” he demanded.

Stella looked this way and that, like an animal in a trap.  Then she caught sight of Thresk’s face over against her.  Her eyes appealed to him for silence; she turned quickly to her husband.

“I only said how’s London?”

A smile spread over Ballantyne’s face.

“Now did you say that?  How’s London!  Now why did you ask how London was?  How should London be?  What sort of an answer did you expect?”