The siren-music of the torrent that dashed below their camping-ground filled her brain day and night.  It seemed to make active thought impossible, to dull all her senses save the one luxurious sense of enjoyment.  That was always present, slumbrous, almost cloying in its unfailing sweetness, the fruit of the lotus which assuredly she was eating day by day.  All her nerves seemed dormant, all her energies lulled.  Sometimes she wondered if the sound of running water had this stultifying effect upon her, for wherever they went it followed them.  The snow-fed streams ran everywhere, and since leaving Srinagar she could not remember a single occasion on which they had been out of earshot of their perpetual music.  It haunted her like a ceaseless refrain, but yet she never wearied of it.  There was no thought of weariness in this mazed, dream-world of hers.

At the beginning of her married life, so far behind her now that she scarcely remembered it, she had gone through pangs of suffering and fierce regret.  Her whole nature had revolted, and it had taken all her strength to quell it.  But that was long, long past.  She had ceased to feel anything now, but a dumb and even placid acquiescence in this lethargic existence, and Ralph Dacre was amply satisfied therewith.  He had always been abundantly confident of his power to secure her happiness, and he was blissfully unconscious of the wild impulse to rebellion which she had barely stifled.  He had no desire to sound the deeps of her.  He was quite content with life as he found it, content to share with her the dreamy pleasures that lay in this fruitful wilderness, and to look not beyond.

He troubled himself but little about the future, though when he thought of it that was with pleasure too.  He liked, now and then, to look forward to the days that were coming when Stella would shine as a queen—­his queen—­among an envious crowd.  Her position assured as his wife, even Lady Harriet herself would have to lower her flag.  And how little Netta Ermsted would grit her teeth!  He laughed to himself whenever he thought of that.  Netta had become too uppish of late.  It would be amusing to see how she took her lesson.

And as for his brother-officers, even the taciturn Monck had already shown that he was not proof against Stella’s charms.  He wondered what Stella thought of the man, well knowing that few women liked him, and one evening, as they sat together in the scented darkness with the roar of their mountain-stream filling the silences, he turned their fitful conversation in Monck’s direction to satisfy his lazy curiosity in this respect.

“I suppose I ought to write to the fellow,” he said, “but if you’ve written to Tommy it’s almost the same thing.  Besides, I don’t suppose he would be in the smallest degree interested.  He would only be bored.”

There was a pause before Stella answered; but she was often slow of speech in those days.  “I thought you were friends,” she said.