Another month went by, and Mrs. Hamilton began to tire of her position.  She felt she was not making Hamilton half unhappy enough.  She had had but one idea, and that was to separate him from Saidie, and in this she had failed.  He had not even been turned out of his post.  He had been expelled from the social life of the station; but she knew he would not feel that, that he would only welcome the greater leisure he had to spend in his Eden with her.  To play the martyr for a time had been interesting, but its pleasure was beginning to wane; moreover, she could not stay permanently with the Commissioner’s wife.  She grew restless:  she must carry out her plan somehow.  When Hamilton’s life was completely wrecked, she would be ready to return to England—­not till then; and she lay awake at nights grinding her long, narrow, wolf-like teeth together as she thought of Hamilton in the desert bungalow.

One morning, after a nearly sleepless night, she got up and looked critically at her face in the glass.  Old and haggard as usual it looked; but to-day, in addition to age and care, a specially evil determination sat upon it.

“Life is practically done with,” she thought, looking at it.  “I have only this one thing to care about now, and I’ll do it somehow before I go.  If I can’t enjoy my life, he shan’t enjoy his.”

She turned from the glass, and commenced dressing.  The evil look deepened on her face from minute to minute, and the word “Beast!” came at intervals through her teeth.

Outside the window of her charming room all was waking in the joyous dawn of the East.  Long shadows lay across the velvet green slopes of the Commissioner’s lawn as the sun rose behind the majestic palms that shaded it; floods of golden light were rippling softly over roses and stephanotis, opening bud after bud to the azure above them; the gay call of the birds rang through the clear morning air; the perroquets swung in ecstasy on the bamboo branches, crying out shrill comments on each other’s toilet.  The scent of a thousand blossoms rose up like some magic influence, stealing through the sparkling sunlight into the room, and played round the thin face of the woman within, but it could make no message clear to her.  Every sense of hers had long been sealed to all joy by hate.

At breakfast she announced her intention of leaving India by the following mail, and not all the kind pressure brought to bear upon her by the Commissioner’s wife could induce her to postpone her departure.  She was gentle, calm, and resigned in manner, as usual, excessively grateful for all they had done for her, and the kindness shown her.  She spoke very sweetly of her husband, told them how she had hoped by coming out to induce him to leave the evil life he was leading; but she saw now that these things lay in higher hands than hers, and she felt all she could do was to pray and hope for him in silence.

“Why don’t you divorce him?” broke in the Commissioner abruptly and quickly, anxious to get it out before his wife could stop him.  He tugged violently at his moustache, waiting for her answer.  If she would do that, he was thinking, what a relief for that poor devil Hamilton!