“Besides—­out there, other chances might crop up.  Thea, Grandfather, Dyan....  And Tara would be in in it all, heart and soul,” he concluded—­remembering, with a twinge, a certain talk with Rose.  “And it would do you all the good on earth—­which isn’t the least of its virtues, in my eyes!”

The look on his father’s face was reward enough—­for the moment.

“Well done, Roy,” said Sir Nevil very quietly.  “That year in Rajputana shall be my wedding present—­to you two——­”

* * * * *

Later on the ‘inspired plan’ was expounded to Tara—­with amplifications.  She had merely run home—­escorted, of course, through the perils of the wood—­to impart her great news and bring her mother back to lunch, which Roy persistently called ‘tiffin.’  Food disposed of, they stepped straight out of the house into a world of their own—­the world of their ‘Game-without-an-End’; the rose garden, the wood, the regal splendours of the moor, gleaming and glooming under shadows of drifting cloud:  on and on, in a golden haze of content, talking, endlessly talking....

The reserve and infrequency of their letters had left whole tracts, outer and inner, unexplored.  Here, thought Roy—­in his mother’s beautiful phrase—­was ‘the comrade of body and spirit’ that his subconsciousness had been seeking all along:  while he looked over the heads of one and another, lured by the far, yet emotionally susceptible to the near.  Once—­unbidden—­the thought intruded:  “How different!  How unutterably different!”

Reading aloud to Tara would seem pure waste of her; except when it came to the novel, of which he had told her next to nothing, so far....

And Tara carried her happiness proudly, like a banner.  The deliciousness of being loved; the intoxication of it, after the last spark of hope had been quenched by that excruciating engagement!  Her volcanic heart held a capacity for happiness as tremendous as her capacity for daring and suffering.  But the first had so long eluded her, that now she dared scarcely let herself go.

She listened half incredulous, wholly entranced, while Roy drew rapid word-pictures of the cities they would see together—­Udaipur, Chitor, Ajmir; and, not least, Komulmir, the hill fortress crowned with the ‘cloud-palace’ of Prithvi Raj and that distant Tara, her namesake.  Together, they would seek out the little shrine—­Roy knew all about it—­near the Temple of the Mother of the Gods, that held the mingled ashes of those great lovers who were pleasant in their lives and in death were not divided....

* * * * *

It was much later on, in the evening, when they sat alone near the twin beeches, under a new-lighted moon, that Roy at last managed to speak of Rose.  In the dimness it was easier, though difficult at best.  But all day he had been aware of Tara longing to hear; unable to ask; too sensitive on his account; too proud on her own.