can turn a brave man into a coward.  For a moment he faced the horrid thought that had come to him—­Saidie dead!  And the whole brilliant plain, laughing sky, and dancing sunlight and waving palms became black to him.  To go back to that dreary existence of nothingness of his former life, after once having known the delight that this bright, eager, ardent love, these delicate little clinging hands had made for him, would be impossible.

“No,” he murmured to himself, “if she goes, then it’s a snuff out for me too.  I have never cared for life except as she has made it for me.”

And the cloud rolled off him a little as he met the idea of his own death.  Besides, Saidie had declared so positively that she could come to no harm, that it would all be pure delight, that pain and suffering could not exist for her in such a matter since she would be all joy in making him this gift, that gradually he grew calmer as he thought over her words.

“But I didn’t want any change,” he burst out a little later, talking to the still golden air round him.  “Confound it!  I was perfectly happy.  How impossible it is to keep anything as it is in this world!  All our actions drag in upon us their consequences so fast!  There is no getting away from this horrible change, no enjoying one’s happiness peacefully when one has obtained it.”

When he arrived at his office in the city he found that a far heavier cloud had arisen on his horizon than that created by Saidie’s words.  The English mail was in, and a long thin envelope, impressed with a much-hated handwriting, faced him on the top of the pile of his correspondence as he entered.

He picked it up and opened it.

     “Dear frank,—­You often used to invite me to come to India,
     and I have really at last made up my mind to.  I am coming out
     by next month’s boat to stay with you for a time.  I have been
     very much run down in health lately, and my doctor says a
     sea-voyage and six months in India will be first-rate for me. 
     I hope you have a nice comfortable house and good servants. 
       —­Yours affectionately, Jane.”

Hamilton stared at the letter savagely as he put it down before him on the table, a sort of grim smile breaking slowly over his face.  He felt convinced that in some way his wife had learned of his new-found happiness, and that had given birth to her sudden desire to visit India after twenty years of persistent refusal to do so.  He sat motionless for a long time, then stretched out his hand for an English telegraph form and wrote on it—­

     “Regret unable to receive you now.  Defer visit.  Frank.”

He did not for one moment think that his wife would obey his injunction, or that his wire would have the least effect on her; but he wished to have a good ground to stand on when she arrived, and he declined to receive her.  His teeth set for a moment as he thought of the interview.