He read on, read of their journey up the river to Srinagar, punted by native boatmen, and again, as she spoke of their sad, droning chant, she compared it all to a dream.  “I wonder if I am really asleep, Tommy,” she wrote, “if I shall wake up in the middle of a dark night and find that I have never left England after all.  That is what I feel like sometimes—­almost as if life had been suspended for awhile.  This strange existence cannot be real.  I am sure that at the heart of me I must be asleep.”

At Srinagar, a native fete had been in progress, and the howling of men and din of tom-toms had somewhat marred the harmony of their arrival.  But it was all interesting, like an absorbing fairy-tale, she said, but quite unreal.  She felt sure it couldn’t be true.  Ralph had been disgusted with the hubbub and confusion.  He compared the place to an asylum of filthy lunatics, and they had left it without delay.  And so at last they had come to their present abiding-place in the heart of the wilderness with coolies, pack-horses, and tents, and were camped beside a rushing stream that filled the air with its crystal music day and night.  “And this is Heaven,” wrote Stella; “but it is the Heaven of the Orient, and I am not sure that I have any part or lot in it.  I believe I shall feel myself an interloper for all time.  I dread to turn each corner lest I should meet the Angel with the Flaming Sword and be driven forth into the desert.  If only you were here, Tommy, it would be more real to me.  But Ralph is just a part of the dream.  He is almost like an Eastern potentate himself with his endless cigarettes and his wonderful capacity for doing nothing all day long without being bored.  Of course, I am not bored, but then no one ever feels bored in a dream.  The lazy well-being of it all has the effect of a narcotic so far as I am concerned.  I cannot imagine ever feeling active in this lulling atmosphere.  Perhaps there is too much champagne in the air and I am never wholly sober.  Perhaps it is only in the desert that any one ever lives to the utmost.  The endless singing of the stream is hushing me into a sweet drowsiness even as I write.  By the way, I wonder if I have written sense.  If not, forgive me!  But I am much too lazy to read it through.  I think I must have eaten of the lotus.  Good-bye, Tommy dear!  Write when you can and tell me that all is well with you, as I think it must be—­though I cannot tell—­with your always loving, though for the moment strangely bewitched, sister, Stella.”

Tommy put down the letter and lay still, peering forth under frowning brows.  He could hear Monck’s footsteps coming through the gate of the compound, but he was not paying any attention to Monck for once.  His troubled mind scarcely even registered the coming of his friend.

Only when the latter mounted the steps on to the verandah and began to move along it, did he turn his head and realize his presence.  Monck came to a stand beside him.