"For the _sahib's_ hands alone," he said.

Merryon snatched up the note and opened it with shaking hands.

It was very brief, pathetically so, and as he read a great emptiness
seemed to spread and spread around him in an ever-widening desolation.

"Good-bye, my Billikins!" Ah, the pitiful, childish scrawl she had made
of it! "I've come to my senses, and I've gone back to him. I'm not
worthy of any sacrifice of yours, dear. And it would have been a big
sacrifice. You wouldn't like being dragged through the mud, but I'm used
to it. It came to me just that moment that you said, 'Yes, of course,'
when Mr. Harley came to call you back to duty. Duty is better than a
worthless woman, my Billikins, and I was never fit to be anything more
than a toy to you--a toy to play with and toss aside. And so good-bye,
good-bye!"

The scrawl ended with a little cross at the bottom of the page. He
looked up from it with eyes gone blind with pain and a stunned and awful
sense of loss.

"When did the _mem-sahib_ go?" he questioned, dully.

The _khitmutgar_ bent his stately person. "The _mem-sahib_ went in
haste," he said, "an hour before midnight. Your servant followed her to
the _dâk-bungalow_ to protect her from _budmashes_, but she dismissed me
ere she entered in. _Sahib_, I could do no more."

The man's eyes appealed for one instant, but fell the next before the
dumb despair that looked out of his master's.