Roy shook his head.  “Impossible.—­Good-night, Colonel.  It’s a relief to feel you know.  For God’s sake, let me do any mortal thing I can for any of you.”

There was another moment of silence, of palpable hesitation; then once again Paul Desmond put his hand on Roy’s shoulder.

“Look here, Roy,” he said.  “Drop calling me Colonel.  You two—­were like brothers.  And—­as Thea’s included, why should I be out of it.  Let me—­be ‘Paul.’”

It was hard to do.  It was inimitably done.  It gave Roy the very lift he needed in that hour when he felt as if they must almost hate him, and never wish to set eyes on him again.

“I—­I shall be proud,” he said; and, turning away to hide his emotion, went back to the bed that drew him like a magnet.

There he knelt a long while, in a torment of mute, passionate protest against the power of so trivial an injury to rob the world of so much gallantry and charm.  Resignation was far from him.  With all the vehemence that was in him, he raged against his loss....

* * * * *

Next morning, they awoke, as from a prolonged and terrible dream, to find Lahore practically isolated; all wires down, but one; the hartal continuing in defiance of orders and exhortations; more stations demolished; more trains derailed and looted; all available British troops recalled from the Hills.  But for five sets of wireless plant, urgently asked for, isolation would have been complete.

By the fourteenth, the position was desperate.  Civil authority flatly defied; the police—­lacking reserves—­fairly played out; the temperature chart of rebellion at its highest point.  The inference was plain.

Organised revolt is amenable only to the ultimate argument of force.  Nothing, now, would serve but strong action, and the compelling power of Martial Law.

Happily for India, the men who had striven their utmost to avoid both did not falter in that critical hour.

At Amritsar strong action had already been taken; and the sobering effect of it spread, in widening circles, bringing relief to thousands of both races; not least to men whose nerve and resource had been strained almost to the limit of endurance.

In Lahore, notices of Martial Law were issued.  The suspended life of the city tentatively revived.  Law-abiding men of all ranks breathed more freely; and for the moment it seemed the worst was over....

Roy, having slept off a measure of his utter fatigue, took up the dead weight of life again, with the old sick sensation, of three years ago, that nothing mattered in earth or heaven.  But then, there had been Lance to uphold and cheer him.  Now there was only the hard unfailing mercy of work to be pulled through somehow.

There was also Rose—­and the problem of letting her know that he knew.  And—­their marriage?  All that seemed to have suffered shipwreck with the rest of him.  He was still too dazed and blinded with grief to see an inch ahead.  He only knew he could not bear to see her, who had made Lance suffer so, till the first anguish had been dulled a little—­on the surface at least.