"Thank you," said Rosa Mundi, with her little girlish laugh.

* * * * *

As he strode down the Pier a few minutes later, he likened the scent
of the crushed roses that strewed the way to the fumes of
sacrifice--sacrifice offered at the feet of a goddess who cared for
nothing sacred. Not till long after did he remember the tears that he
had seen her shed.




A Debt of Honour

I

HOPE AND THE MAGICIAN


They lived in the rotten white bungalow at the end of the valley--Hope
and the Magician. It stood in a neglected compound that had once been a
paradise, when a certain young officer belonging to the regiment of
Sikhs then stationed in Ghantala had taken it and made of it a dainty
home for his English bride. Those were the days before the flood, and no
one had lived there since. The native men in the valley still remembered
with horror that awful night when the monsoon had burst in floods and
water-spouts upon the mountains, and the bride, too terrified to remain
in the bungalow, had set out in the worst fury of the storm to find her