“What did you do with the letter?” Thresk asked and was careful that there should be no exasperation in his voice.

The bearer came to life again, his white teeth gleamed in smiles.

“I leave the letter.  I give it to the gardener.  All letters are sent to his Excellency.”

“When?”

“Perhaps this week, perhaps next.”

“I see,” said Thresk.  He stood for a moment or two with his eyes upon the window.  Then he moved abruptly.

“We go back to Bombay to-morrow afternoon.”

“The Sahib will see Chitipur to-morrow.  There are beautiful palaces on the lake.”

Thresk laughed, but the laugh was short and bitter.

“Oh yes, we’ll do the whole thing in style to-morrow.”

He had the tone of a man who has caught himself out in some childish act of folly.  He seemed at once angry and ashamed.

None the less he was the next morning the complete tourist doing India at express speed during a cold weather.  He visited the Museum, he walked through the Elephant Gate into the bazaar, he was rowed over the lake to the island palaces; he admired their marble steps and columns and floors and was confounded by their tinkling blue glass chandeliers.  He did the correct thing all through that morning and early in the afternoon climbed into the little train which was to carry him back to Jarwhal Junction and the night mail to Bombay.

“You will have five hours to wait at the junction, Mr. Thresk,” said the manager of the hotel, who had come to see him off.  “I have put up some dinner for you and there is a dak-bungalow where you can eat it.”

“Thank you,” said Thresk, and the train moved off.  The sun had set before he reached the junction.  When he stepped out on to the platform twilight had come—­the swift twilight of the East.  Before he had reached the dak-bungalow the twilight had changed to the splendour of an Indian night.  The bungalow was empty of visitors.  Thresk’s bearer lit a fire and prepared dinner while Thresk wandered outside the door and smoked.  He looked across a plain to a long high ridge, where once a city had struggled.  Its deserted towers and crumbling walls still crowned the height and made a habitation for beasts and birds.  But they were quite hidden now and the sharp line of the ridge was softened.  Halfway between the old city and the bungalow a cluster of bright lights shone upon the plain and the red tongues of a fire flickered in the open.  Thresk was in no hurry to go back to the bungalow.  The first chill of the darkness had gone.  The night was cool but not cold; a moon had risen, and that dusty plain had become a place of glamour.  From somewhere far away came the sound of a single drum.  Thresk garnered up in his thoughts the beauty of that night.  It was to be his last night in India.  By this time to-morrow Bombay would have sunk below the rim of the sea.  He thought of it with regret.  He had come up