Mrs. Repton came to Stella Ballantyne's door and was careful not to stop.
She reached her own room, and once in shot the bolt; and in a moment or
two she heard him breathing just outside the panels.

"And to think that Stella is alone with him in the jungle months at a
time!" she cried, actually wringing her hands. "That thought was in my
mind all the time--a horror of a thought. Oh, I could understand now the
loss of her spirits, her colour, her youth."

Pictures of lonely camps and empty rest-houses, far removed from any
habitation in the silence of Indian nights, rose before her eyes. She
imagined Stella propped up on her elbow in bed, wide-eyed with terror,
listening and listening to the light footsteps of the drunken brute
beyond the partition-wall, shivering when they approached, dropping back
with the dew of her sweat upon her forehead when they retired; and
these pictures she translated in words for Thresk in her house on the
Khamballa Hill.

Thresk was moved and showed that he was moved. He rose and walked to the
window, turning his back to her.

"Why did she marry him?" he exclaimed. "She was poor, but she had a
little money. Why did she marry him?" and he turned back to Mrs. Repton
for an answer.

She gave him one quick look and said:

"That is one of the things she has never told me and I didn't meet her
until after she had married him."