strange secret country is given to few even of those who for long years
fly the British flag over the Agencies. Nevertheless Ballantyne
knew--very little as he acknowledged but more than his fellows. And
groping drunkenly in his mind he drew out now this queer intrigue, now
that fateful piece of history, now the story of some savage punishment
wreaked behind the latticed windows, and laid them one after another
before Thresk's eyes--his peace-offerings. And Thresk listened. But
before his eyes stood the picture of Stella Ballantyne standing alone in
the dark corridor beyond the grass-screen whispering with wild lips her
wish that she was dead; and in his ears was the sound of her sobbing.
Here, it seemed, was another story to add to the annals of Rajputana.

Then Ballantyne tapped him on the arm.

"You're not listening," he said with a leer. "And I'm telling you good
things--things that people don't know and that I wouldn't tell them--the
swine. You're not listening. You're thinking I'm a brute to my wife, eh?"
And Thresk was startled by the shrewdness of his host's guess.

"Well, I'll tell you the truth. I am not master of myself," Ballantyne
continued. His voice sank and his eyes narrowed to two little bright
slits. "I am afraid. Yes, that's the explanation. I am so afraid that
when I am not alone I seek relief any way, any how. I can't help it." And
even as he spoke his eyes opened wide and he sat staring intently at a
dim corner of the tent, moving his head with little jerks from one side
to the other that he might see the better.

"There's no one over there, eh?" he asked.

"No one."