Kinchinjunga's fairy white towers and spires hung high in air for a
space of time tantalisingly brief. Before they reached the bungalow the
short-lived Indian twilight was dying, and the tiny oil-lamps began to
twinkle in the palm-thatched huts of the toilers' village on the estate.
And forth from it swarmed the coolies, men, women, children, not to
welcome them, but to stare at the sacred elephant. Many heads bent low,
many hands were lifted to foreheads in awed salutation. Some of the
throng prostrated themselves to the dust, not in greeting to their own
sahib but in reverence to the marvellous animal and the mysterious white
man bestriding his neck who was becoming identified with him.

When Dermot rode away on Badshah the next morning the same scenes were
repeated. The coolies left their work among the tea-bushes to flock to the
side of the road as he passed. But he paid as little attention to them as
Badshah did, and turned just before the Dalehams' bungalow was lost to
sight to wave a last farewell to the girl still standing on the verandah
steps. It was a vision that he took away with him in his heart.

But, as the elephant bore him away through the forest, Noreen faded from
his mind, for he had graver, sterner thoughts to fill it. Love can never be
a fair game between the sexes, for the man and the woman do not play with
equal stakes. The latter risks everything, her soul, her mind, her whole
being. The former wagers only a fragment of his heart, a part of his
thoughts. Yet he is not to blame; it is Nature's ordinance. For the world's
work would never go on if men, who chiefly carry it on, were possessed,
obsessed, by love as women are.

So Dermot was only complying with that ordinance when he allowed the
thoughts of his task, which indeed was ever present with him, to oust
Noreen from his mind. He was on his way to Payne's bungalow to meet the