The music ceased.  They were merely partners again.  He led her out into starry darkness, velvet soft; very quiet and contained to the outer eye; inwardly, of a sudden, afraid of himself, still more afraid of the serenely beautiful girl at his side.

He knew perfectly well what he wanted to do; but not at all what he wanted to say.  For him, as his mother’s son, marriage had a sacredness, an apartness from random emotions, however overwhelming; and it went against the grain to approach that supreme subject in his present fine confusion of heart and body and brain.

They wandered on a little.  Like himself, she seemed smitten dumb; and with every moment of silence, he became more acutely aware of her.  He had discovered that this was one of her most potent spells.  Never for long could a man be unaware of her, of the fact that she was before everything—­a woman.

In a sense—­how different!—­it had been the same with Aruna.  But with Aruna it was primitive, instinctive.  This exotic flower of Western girlhood wielded her power with conscious, consummate skill....

Near a seat well away from the Hall she stopped.  “We don’t want any more exercise, do we?” she said softly.

“I’ve had enough for the present,” he answered.  And they sat down.

Silence again.  He didn’t know what to say to her.  He only craved overwhelmingly to take her in his arms.  Had she a glimmering idea—­sitting there, so close ... so alluring...?

And suddenly, to his immense relief, she spoke.

“It was splendid.  A pity it’s over.  That’s the litany of Anglo-India.  It’s over.  Change the scene.  Shuffle the puppets—­and begin again.  I’ve been doing it for six years——­”

“And—­it doesn’t pall?” His voice sounded quite natural, quite composed, which was also a relief.

“Pall?—­You try it!” For the first time he detected a faint note of bitterness.  “But still—­a cotillon’s a cotillon!”—­She seemed to pull herself together.—­“There’s an exciting element in it that keeps its freshness.  And I flatter myself we carried it through brilliantly—­you and I.”  The pause before the linked pronouns gave him an odd little thrill.  “But—­what put you off ... at the end?”

Her amazing directness took him aback.  “I—­oh, well—­I thought ... one way and another, you’d been having enough of me.”

“That’s not true!” She glanced at him sidelong.  “You were vexed because I chose the Lister boy.  And he was all over himself, poor dear!  As a matter of fact, I’d meant to have you.  If you’d only looked at me ...!  But you stared fiercely the other way.  However, perhaps we’ve been flagrant enough for to-night——­”

“Flagrant—­have we?”

Daring, passionate words thronged his brain; and through his inner turmoil, he heard her answer lightly:  “Don’t ask me!  Ask the Banter-Wrangle.  She knows to an inch the degrees of flagrance officially permitted to the attached and the unattached!  You see, in India, we’re allowed ... a certain latitude.”