Then there was this precious novel simmering at the back of things; his increasing desire to get away alone with the ghostly company that haunted his brain.  As the mother-to-be feels the new life mysteriously moving within her, so he began to feel within him the first stirrings of his own creative power.  Already his poems and essays had raised expectations and secured attention for other things he wanted to say.  And there seemed no end to them.  He had hardly yet begun his mental adventures.  Pressing forward, through sense, to the limitless regions of mind and spirit, new vistas would open, new paths lure him on....

That first bewildering, intoxicating sense of power is good—­while it lasts; none the less, because, in the nature of things, it is foredoomed to disillusion—­greater or less, according to the authenticity of the god within.

Whatever the outcome for Roy, that passing exaltation eased appreciably the pang of parting from them all.  And it was responsible for a happy inspiration.  Rummaging among his papers, on the eve of departure, he came upon the sketch of India that he had written in Delhi and refrained from sending to Aruna.  Intrinsically it was hers; inspired by her.  Also—­intrinsically it was good:  and straightway he decided she should have it for a parting gift.

Beautifully copied out, and tied up with carnation-pink ribbons, he reserved it for their last few moments together.  She was still such a child in some ways.  The small surprise of his gift might ease the pang of parting.  It was a woman’s thought.  But the woman-strain of tenderness was strong in Roy, as in all true artists.

She was standing near the fire in her own sitting-room, wearing the pink dress and sari, her arm still in a sling.  Last words, those desperate inanities—­buffers between the heart and its own emotion—­are difficult things to bring off in any case; peculiarly difficult for these two, with that unreal, yet intensely actual, bond between them; and Roy felt more than grateful to the inspiration that gave him something definite to say.

Instantly her eyes were on it—­wondering ... guessing....

“It’s a little thing I wrote in Delhi,” he said simply.  “I couldn’t send it to Jeffers.  It seemed—­to belong to you.  So I thought——­” He proffered it, feeling absurdly shy of it—­and of her.

“Oh—­but it is too much!” Holding it with her sling hand, she opened it with the other and devoured it eagerly under his watching eyes.  By the changes that flitted across her face, by the tremor of her lips and her hands, as she pressed it to her heart, he knew he could have given her no dearer treasure than that fragment of himself.  And because he knew it, he felt tongue-tied; tempted beyond measure to kiss her once again.

If she divined his thought, she kept her lashes lowered and gave no sign.

He hoped she knew....

But before either could break the spell of silence that held them, Thea returned; and their moment—­their idyll—­was over....