The ghastly glamour of the night attracted and repelled her like the swing of a mighty pendulum.  She was trying to pray—­that much had Bernard taught her—­but her prayer only ran blind and futile through her brain.  The hour should have been sacred, but it was marred and desecrated by the stark glare of that nightmare moon.  She was worn out with long and anxious watching, and she had almost ceased to look for comfort, so heavy were the clouds that menaced her.

The thought of Everard was ever with her, strive as she might to drive it out.  At such moments as these she yearned for him with a sick and desperate longing—­his strength, his tenderness, his understanding.  He, and he alone, would have known how to comfort her now with her baby dying before her eyes.  He would have held her up through her darkest hours.  His arm would have borne her forward however terrible the path.

She had Bernard and she had Tommy, each keen and ready in her service.  She sometimes thought that but for Bernard she would have been overwhelmed long since.  But he could not fill the void within her.  He could not even touch the aching longing that gnawed so perpetually at her heart.  That was a pain she would have to endure in silence all the rest of her life.  She did not think she would ever see Everard again.  Though only a few miles lay between them at present he might have been already a world away.  She was sure he would not come back to her unless she summoned him.  The manner of his going, though he had taken no leave of her, had been somehow final.  And she could not call him back even if she would.  He had deceived her cruelly, of set intention, and she could never trust him again.  The memory of Ralph Dacre tainted all her thoughts of him.  He had sworn he had not killed him.  Perhaps not—­perhaps not!  Yet was the conviction ever with her that he had sent him to his death, had intended him to die.

She had given up reasoning the matter.  It was beyond her.  She was too hopelessly plunged in darkness.  Tommy with all his staunchness could not lift that overwhelming cloud.  And Bernard?  She did not know what Bernard thought save that he had once reminded her that a man should be regarded as innocent unless he could be proved guilty.

It was common talk now that Everard’s Indian career was ended.  It was only the trial at Khanmulla that had delayed the sending in of his papers.  He was as much a broken man, however hotly Tommy contested the point, as if he had been condemned by a court-martial.  Surely, had he been truly innocent he would have demanded a court-martial and vindicated himself.  But he had suffered his honour to go down in silence.  What more damning evidence could be supplied than this?