A dignified bearer had salaamed gravely, and handed her a chit upon her arrival at the bungalow, where her friend was braving the pestilence of the hot weather in comradeship with her husband, who, in the secret places of his heart, wished to goodness she had gone to the hills with the rest of ’em.

Her luggage, the letter stated, had been shifted to the hotel, where a room had been taken for her, and there would, it seemed, be plenty of accommodation on the City of Sparta which would be sailing in three weeks’ time for home.

And that was all!

It is wise in the hot weather to pull the purdah, which is the Indian way of saying to shut the door, in the face of a young and unattached girl with a tawny head and opalescent eyes; especially if the dust has long been undisturbed upon the threshold of the secret places of the male heart supposed to be entirely in your keeping.

For days she had remained in her room, not daring to face the curious glances, and subdued whispers, of the few visitors to be met with in the marble desolation of the front hall; and not for worlds would she have used the telephone for fear of the direct snub the wire would surely have transmitted.

Food she hardly touched; sleep she did, heavily, waking dull and unrefreshed; and for hours she would sit and stare into the corners, or peer over her shoulder into the stifling shadows, or study her face in the mirror, wondering if her strange eyes were the eyes of a mad woman.

The bearer had caused her long moments of worry.

The morning after her arrival at the hotel, instead of the little, dusky, nimble, monkey-eyed man of the night before, there had entered one, tall and dignified, who had cleared a space on the table beside her bed, deposited a bunch of flowers and the chotar hazri, or early tea, and raising his hand to his turban had departed.

Quite a usual procedure!  But wakeful Leonie, who had indifferently watched him through the mosquito curtain and from under the pillow frill into which she had burrowed her head, frowned when something familiar in the man or his movements had particularly attracted her attention.

Most natives look alike to the newcomer in India, but she frowned again as she chewed the crust of buttered toast and racked her brain fruitlessly for a clue.

One by one she went over each city and place she had visited, each railway journey she had made, each hotel she had stayed in.  Then had poured out a cup of tea and given it up.

Having fruitlessly worried over this seemingly insignificant detail of an Indian day’s routine, she had impatiently countermanded the early tea for the following mornings, and had indifferently left the really lovely flowers which came up regularly on every tray, to the fantastic arranging of the little dusky man who looked at her like a wistful monkey, and slipped nimbly about the room in her service; and who, likewise, rejoiced greatly over certain backsheesch which he, with the joy the native has in all intrigue, imagined to be the outcome of love.