“But what can one do—­except the single thing one can’t do?”

“She gave me a message, if I should chance to meet you,” answered Hillyard.

Luttrell’s face hardened perceptibly.

“Let me hear it, Martin.”

“She said that she would like you to have news of her, and that from time to time she would like to have a little line from you.”

“That was all?”

“Yes.”

Harry Luttrell nodded, but he made no reply.  He walked back with Hillyard to the door of the zareba, and the ostrich bore them company, now on this side, now on that.  The elephant was rolling in the grass like a dog, the giraffes crowded about the little door like beggars outside a restaurant.  The two friends walked back towards the town in an air shimmering with heat.  The Blue Nile glittered amongst its sand-banks like so many ribands of molten steel.  They were close upon the house before Luttrell answered Stella Croyle’s message.

“All that,” he cried, with a sharp gesture as of a man sweeping something behind him, “all that happened in another age when I was another man.”

The gesture was violent, but the words were pitiful.  He was not a man exasperated by a woman’s unseasonable importunity, but angry with the grim, hard, cruel facts of life.

“It’s no good, Martin,” he added, with a smile.  “Not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men——­”

Hillyard was sure now that no little line would ever go from Senga to the house in the Bayswater Road.  The traditions of his house and of his regiment had Harry Luttrell in their keeping.  Messages?  Martin Hillyard might expect them, might indeed respond to and obey them, and with advantage, just because they came out of the blue.  But the men of tradition, no!  The messenger had knocked upon the doors of their fathers’ houses before ever they were born.

At the door of the Governor’s house Harry Luttrell stopped.

“I expect you’ll want to do some marketing, and I shall be busy, and to-night we shall have the others with us.  So I’ll say now,” and his face brightened with a smile, as though here at all events were a matter where the bitter laws of change could work no cruelties, “it has been really good to see you again.”

Certain excellent memories were busy with them both—­Nuneham and Sanford Lasher and the Cherwell under its overhanging branches.  Then Luttrell looked out across to the Blue Nile and those old wondrous days faded from his vision.

“I should like you to get away bukra, bukra, Martin,” he said.  “Half-past one at the latest, to-morrow morning.  Can you manage it?”

“Why, of course,” answered Hillyard in surprise.

“You see, I postponed that execution, whilst you were here.  I think it’ll go off all right, but since it’s no concern of yours, I would just as soon you were out of the way.  I have fixed it for eight.  If you start at half-past one you will be a good many miles away by then.”