out of his reach at the first touch.

So that curious honeymoon of theirs continued, love and passion crudely
mingled, union without knowledge, flaming worship and blind possession.

"You are happy?" Merryon asked her once.

To which she made ardent answer, "Always happy in your arms, O king."

And Merryon was happy also, though, looking back later, it seemed to him
that he snatched his happiness on the very edge of the pit, and that
even at the time he must have been half-aware of it.

When, a month after her coming, the scourge of the Plains caught her, as
was inevitable, he felt as if his new-found kingdom had begun already to
depart from him.

For a few days Puck was seriously ill with malaria. She came through it
with marvellous resolution, nursed by Merryon and his bearer, the
general factotum of the establishment.

But it left her painfully weak and thin, and the colonel became again
furiously insistent that she should leave the Plains till the rains were
over.

Merryon, curiously enough, did not insist. Only one evening he took the
little wasted body into his arms and begged her--actually begged her--to
consent to go.

"I shall be with you for the first fortnight," he said. "It won't be