As the man’s patent sincerity had warmed the hearts of his hearers, so the pointed truth of that last pricked them sharply and probed deep.  For they knew themselves powerless; mere atoms of the whirling dust-cloud, raised, in passing, by the chariot-wheels of Progress—­or perdition?

The younger men rose briskly, as if to shake off some physical discomfort.  Dyan—­very much aware of Aruna and the subaltern—­approached them with a friendly remark.  Roy and Lance said, “Play up, Thea!  Your innings,” almost in a breath—­and crooked little fingers.

Thea needed no second bidding.  While the men talked, an insidious depression had stolen over her spirit—­and brooded there, light and formless as a river mist.  Half an hour with her fiddle, and Lance at his best, completely charmed it away.  But the creepiness of it had been very real:  and the memory remained.

* * * * *

When all the others had dispersed, she lingered over the fire with Roy, while Lance, at the piano, with diplomatic intent, drifted into his friend’s favourite Nocturne—­the Twelfth; that inimitable rendering of a mood, hushed yet exalted, soaring yet brooding, ’the sky and the nest as well.’  The two near the fire knew every bar by heart, but as the liquid notes stole out into the room, their fitful talk stopped dead.

Lance was playing superbly, giving every note its true value; the cadence rising and falling like waves of a still sea; softer and softer; till the last note faded away, ghostlike—­a sigh rather than a sound.

Roy remained motionless, one elbow on the mantelpiece.  Thea’s lashes were wet with the tears of rarefied emotion—­tears that neither prick nor burn.  The silence itself seemed part of the music; a silence it were desecration to break.  Without a word to Roy, she crossed the room; kissed Lance good-night; clung a moment to his hands that had woven the spell, smiling her thanks, her praise; and slipped away, leaving the two together.

Roy subsided into a chair.  Lance came over to the fire and stood there warming his hands.

It was a minute or two before Roy looked up and nodded his acknowledgments.

“You’re a magician, old chap.  You play that thing a damn sight too well.”

He did not add that his friend’s music had called up a vision of the Home drawing-room, clear in every detail; Lance at the piano—­his last week-end from Sandhurst—­playing the ‘thing’ by request; himself lounging on the hearthrug, his head against his mother’s knee; the very feel of her silk skirt against his cheek, of her fingers on his hair....  Nor did he add that the vision had spurred his reluctant spirit to a resolve.

The more practical soul of Lance Desmond had already dropped back to earth, as a lark drops after pouring out its heart in the blue.  In spite of concern for Roy, he was thinking again of his Sikhs.

“I suppose one can take it,” he remarked thoughtfully, “that Vinx and Mayne and that good old Moslem johnny know what they’re talking about?”