“I say, old chap, that’s awfully bitter,” said Crocker, with a sort of wondering sadness.

“It ’s enough to make any one bitter the way we Pharisees wax fat, and at the same time give ourselves the moral airs of a balloon.  I must stick a pin in sometimes, just to hear the gas escape.”  Shelton was surprised at his own heat, and for some strange reason thought of Antonia—­surely, she was not a Pharisee.

His companion strode along, and Shelton felt sorry for the signs of trouble on his face.

“To fill your pockets,” said Crocker, “is n’t the main thing.  One has just got to do things without thinking of why we do them.”

“Do you ever see the other side to any question?” asked Shelton.  “I suppose not.  You always begin to act before you stop thinking, don’t you?”

Crocker grinned.

“He’s a Pharisee, too,” thought Shelton, “without a Pharisee’s pride.  Queer thing that!”

After walking some distance, as if thinking deeply, Crocker chuckled out: 

“You ’re not consistent; you ought to be in favour of giving up India.”

Shelton smiled uneasily.

“Why should n’t we fill our pockets?  I only object to the humbug that we talk.”

The Indian civilian put his hand shyly through his arm.

“If I thought like you,” he said, “I could n’t stay another day in India.”

And to this Shelton made no reply.

The wind had now begun to drop, and something of the morning’s magic was stealing again upon the moor.  They were nearing the outskirt fields of cultivation.  It was past five when, dropping from the level of the tors, they came into the sunny vale of Monkland.

“They say,” said Crocker, reading from his guide-book—­“they say this place occupies a position of unique isolation.”

The two travellers, in tranquil solitude, took their seats under an old lime-tree on the village green.  The smoke of their pipes, the sleepy air, the warmth from the baked ground, the constant hum, made Shelton drowsy.

“Do you remember,” his companion asked, “those ‘jaws’ you used to have with Busgate and old Halidome in my rooms on Sunday evenings?  How is old Halidome?”

“Married,” replied Shelton.

Crocker sighed.  “And are you?” he asked.

“Not yet,” said Shelton grimly; “I ’m—­engaged.”

Crocker took hold of his arm above the elbow, and, squeezing it, he grunted.  Shelton had not received congratulations that pleased him more; there was the spice of envy in them.

“I should like to get married while I ’m home,” said the civilian after a long pause.  His legs were stretched apart, throwing shadows on the green, his hands deep thrust into his pockets, his head a little to one side.  An absent-minded smile played round his mouth.