And always, unfailingly he had obeyed his mother’s parting injunction.  As a British officer, he had fought for the Empire.  As Roy Sinclair—­son of Lilamani—­he had fought for the sanctities of Home and Beauty—­intrinsic beauty of mind and body and soul—­against hideousness and licence and the unclean spirit that could defile the very sanctuaries of God.

And always, when he went into battle, he remembered Chitor.  Mentally, he put on the saffron robe, insignia of ‘no surrender.’  To be taken prisoner was the one fate he could not bring himself to contemplate:  yet that very fate had befallen him and Lance, in Mesopotamia—­the sequel of a daring and successful raid.

Returning, in the teeth of unexpected difficulties, they had found themselves ambushed, with their handful of men—­outnumbered, no loophole for escape.

For three months, that seemed more like years, they had lost all sense of personal liberty—­the oxygen of the soul.  They had endured misery, semi-starvation, and occasionally other things, such as a man cannot bring himself to speak about or consciously recall:  not least, the awful sense of being powerless—­and hated.  From the beginning, they had kept their minds occupied with ingenious plans for escape, that, at times, seemed like base desertion of their men, whom they could neither help nor save.  But when—­as by a miracle—­the coveted chance came, no power on earth could have stayed them....

It had been a breathless affair, demanding all they possessed of bodily fleetness and suppleness, of cool, yet reckless, courage.  And it had been crowned with success; the good news wired home to mothers who waited and prayed.  But Roy’s nerves had suffered more severely than Desmond’s.  A sharp attack of fever had completed his prostration.  And it was then, in the moment of his passing weakness, that Fate turned and smote him with the sharpest weapon in her armoury....

He had not even heard his mother was ill.  He had just received her ecstatic response to his wire—­and that very night she came to him, vividly, as he hovered on the confines of sleep.

There she stood by his bed, in her mother-o’-pearl gown and sari; clear in every detail; lips just parted; a hovering smile in her eyes.  And round about her a shimmering radiance, as of moonbeams, heightened her loveliness, yet seemed to set her apart; so that he could neither touch her nor utter a word of welcome.  He could only gaze and gaze, while his heart beat in long slow hammer-strokes, with a double throb between.

With a gesture of mute yearning her hands went out to him.  She stooped low and lower.  A faint breeze seemed to flit across his forehead as if her lips, lightly brushing it, had breathed a blessing.

Then, darkness fell abruptly—­and a deep sleep....

He woke late next morning:  woke to a startling, terrible certainty that his vision had been no dream; that her very self had come to him—­that she was gone....