"Can you not be silent?" Arnold said, almost in a whisper; and her look
of astonishment showed her that there were tears in his eyes. He left
the theatre and walked light-headedly across Chowringhee and out into
the starlit empty darkness of the Maidan, where presently he stumbled
upon a wooden bench under a tree. There, after a little, sleep fell upon
his amazement, and he lay unconscious for an hour or two, while the
breeze stole across the grass from the river, and the masthead lights
watched beside the city. He woke chilled and normal, and when he reached
the Mission House in College street his servant was surprised at the
unusual irritation of a necessary rebuke.




CHAPTER VI.


While Alicia Livingstone fought with her imagination in accounting for
Duff Lindsay's absence from the theatre on the first night of a notable
presentation by Miss Hilda Howe, he sat with his knees crossed on the
bench furthest back in the corner obscurest of the Salvation Army
Headquarters in Bentinck street. It had become his accustomed place;
sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara, it
was the only spot from which he could observe, try to understand, and
cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm
of her presence in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the
sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His
persistent refusal of a better place also profited him in that it
brought to Ensign Sand and the other "officers" the divination that he