“Well, Olga,” he said, “how do you like India?”

They stood together by the fretted marble balustrade, looking down upon the illuminated gardens that stretched away dim and mysterious into the night.

Olga did not directly answer the question.  “I am not really acquainted with her yet,” she said.

He uttered a short sigh.  “She is a hard mistress.  I don’t advise you to get too intimate.  She has a way of turning and rending her slaves, which is ungrateful, to say the least of it.”

“But you are not sworn to her service for ever,” said Olga.

He laughed with a touch of sadness.  “Until she kicks me out.  Like Kipling’s Galley Slave, I’m chained to the oar.  It’s all very well so long as one remains in single blessedness, but it’s mighty hard on the married ones.  Take my advice, Olga; never marry an Indian man!”

“I’m never going to marry anyone,” said Olga, with quiet decision.

“Really!” said Will Musgrave.

She turned her head towards him.  “You sound surprised.”

He smiled a little.  “I beg your pardon.  I was only surprised at the way in which you said it—­as if you had been married for years, and knew the best and the worst.”

There was a slight frown on Olga’s face.  She looked as if she were trying to remember something.  “Oh, no, it wasn’t like that,” she said.  “But somehow I don’t feel as if I could ever like a man well enough to marry him.  I don’t want to fall in love.”

“Too much trouble?” suggested Will.

She nodded, the frown still between her eyes.  “It doesn’t seem worth while,” she said rather vaguely.  “It’s such a waste.”

Will looked at her with very kindly eyes.  “I see,” he said gently.

She met the look and read his thought.  Almost involuntarily she answered it.  “I’ve never been in love myself,” she told him simply.  “But somehow I know just what it feels like.  It’s a wonderful feeling, isn’t it?  Like being caught up to the Gates of Paradise.”  She paused, and the puzzled frown deepened.  “But one comes back again—­nearly always,” she said.  “That’s why I don’t think it seems worth while.”

“I see,” Will said again.  He was silent for a moment while a great green rocket rushed upwards with a hiss and burst in a shower of many-coloured stars.  Then as they watched them fall he spoke very kindly and earnestly.  “But it is worth while all the same—­even though one may be turned back from Paradise.  Remember—­always remember—­that it’s something to have been there!  Not everyone gets so far, and those who do are everlastingly the richer for it.”  He paused a moment, then added slowly, “Moreover, those who have been there once may find their way there again some day.”

Another rocket soared high into the night and broke in a golden rain.  From a few yards away came Nick’s cracked laugh and careless speech.

“Here comes the chota-bursat, Daisy!  It’s high time you went to the Hills.”