Before she left her room she heard Tommy and Barnes departing, and when she entered the dining-room Monck came in alone at the window and joined her.

She met him somewhat nervously, for she thought his face was stern.  But when he spoke, his voice held nought but kindness, and she was reassured.  He did not look at her with any very close criticism, nor did he revert to what had passed an hour before.

They were served by Peter, swiftly and silently, Stella making a valiant effort to simulate an appetite which she was far from possessing.  The windows were wide to the night, and from the river bank below there came the thrumming of some stringed instrument, which had a weird and strangely poignant throbbing, as if it voiced some hidden distress.  There were a thousand sounds besides, some near, some distant, but it penetrated them all with the persistence of some small imprisoned creature working perpetually for freedom.

It began to wear upon Stella’s nerves at last.  It was so futile, yet so pathetic—­the same soft minor tinkle, only a few stray notes played over and over, over and over, till her brain rang with the maddening little refrain.  She was glad when the meal was over, and she could make the excuse to move to the drawing-room.  There was a piano here, a rickety instrument long since hammered into tunelessness.  But she sat down before it.  Anything was better than to sit and listen to that single, plaintive little voice of India crying in the night.

She thought and hoped that Monck would smoke his cigarette and suffer himself to be lulled into somnolence by such melody as she was able to extract from the crazy old instrument; but he disappointed her.

He smoked indeed, lounging out in the verandah, while she sought with every allurement to draw him in and charm him to blissful, sleepy contentment.  But it presently came to her that there was something dogged in his refusal to be so drawn, and when she realized that she brought her soft nocturne to a summary close and turned round to him with just a hint of resentment.

He was leaning in the doorway, the cigarette gone from his lips.  His face was turned to the night.  His attitude seemed to express that patience which attends upon iron resolution.  He looked at her over his shoulder as she paused.

“Why don’t you sing?” he said.

A little tremor of indignation went through her.  He spoke with the gentle indulgence of one who humours a child.  Only once had she ever sung to him, and then he had sat in such utter immobility and silence that she had questioned with herself afterwards if he had cared for it.

She rose with a wholly unconscious touch of majesty.  “I have no voice to-night,” she said.

“Then come here!” he said.

His voice was still absolutely gentle but it held an indefinable something that made her raise her brows.

She went to him nevertheless, and he put his hand through her arm and drew her close to his side.  The night was heavy with a brooding heat-haze that blotted out the stars.  The little twanging instrument down by the river was silent.