“Is honour the word for it?  I’ll make a confession to you, Wargrave.  You consider me a bachelor.  Well, I’m not married now; but I was.  When I was a young subaltern I was thrown much with a married woman older than myself.  I was flattered that she should take any notice of me, for she was handsome and popular with men, while I was a shy, awkward boy.  She said she was ‘being a mother’ to me—­you know what a married woman ‘mothering’ boys leads to in India.  She used to tell me how misunderstood she was, neglected, mated to a clown and all that.” (Frank grew red at certain memories.) “Women have a regular formula when they’re looking for sympathy they’ve no right to.  I pitied her.  I felt that her husband ought to be shot.  Looking back now I see that he was just the ordinary, easy-going, indifferent individual that most husbands become; but then I deemed him a tyrant and a brute.  Well, I ran away with her.”

He paused and passed his hand wearily across his brow.

“There was the usual scandal, divorce, damages and costs that plunged me into debt I’m not out of yet.  We married.  In a year we were heartily sick of each other—­hated, is nearer the truth.  She consoled herself with other men.  I protested, we quarrelled again and again.  At last we agreed to separate; and I insisted on her going to England and staying there.  I couldn’t trust her in India.  Living in lodgings and Bayswater boarding-houses wasn’t amusing—­she got bored, but I wouldn’t have her back.  She took to drinking and ran up debts that I had to pay.  Then—­and I selfishly felt glad, but it was a happy release for both—­she died.  Drank herself to death.  Now you know why I’d be sorry that another man should follow the path I trod.”

He was silent.  Wargrave felt an intense sympathy for this quiet, kindly man whose life had been a tragedy.  He had guessed from the first that his senior officer had some ever-present grief weighing on his soul.  He would have given much to be able to utter words of consolation, but he did not know what to say.

Major Hunt spoke again.

“You must dree your own weird, Wargrave.  If the lady wishes to come here—­well, I shall not prevent her; but the General, when he knows of it, will not permit her to remain.  But you have to deal with Colonel Dermot.  You had better tell him.  You might go now.”

Without a word the subaltern left the bungalow.  He went straight to the Political Officer and repeated his story.  Colonel Dermot did not interrupt him, but, when he had finished, said: 

“I have no right and no wish to interfere with your private life, Wargrave, nor to offer you advice as to how to lead it.  Your work is all that I can claim to criticise.  Of course I see, with Major Hunt, the difficulty that will arise over the lady’s remaining in this small station, where her presence must become known to the Staff.  If you are both resolved on taking the irretrievable step it would be wiser to defer it until you were elsewhere.  I don’t offer to blame either of you; for I don’t know enough to judge.”