no prayer.

"I have been to the Palace," he said, "I have had an audience with the
Maharajah."

"Of course," she answered. "I shall put no difficulties in your way."

He was standing in her own drawing-room, noticing with what skill
comfort had been combined with daintiness, and how she had followed the
usual instinct of her kind in trying to create here in this room a piece
of England. Through the window he looked out upon a lawn which was being
watered by a garden-sprinkler, and where a gardener was at work attending
to a bed of bright flowers. There, too, she had been making the usual
pathetic attempt to convert a half-acre of this country of yellow desert
into a green garden of England. Coulson had not a shadow of doubt in his
mind Stella Ballantyne would exchange this room with its restful colours
and its outlook on a green lawn for--at the best--many years of solitary
imprisonment in Poona Gaol. He shut up his book with a snap.

"Will you be ready to go in an hour?" he asked roughly.

"Yes," said she.

"If I leave you unwatched during that hour you will promise to me that
you will be ready to go in an hour?"

Stella Ballantyne nodded her head.

"I shall not kill myself now," she said, and he looked at her quickly,
but she did not trouble to explain her words. She merely added: "I may