writer before the war, the hobby of a rich man; but if I picked
up anything in the welter in France, it was that real work is the
only salvation this mad world has to offer; so I meant to begin
at the beginning, and learn my trade like a journeyman labourer.
I had come to the right place. A very wonderful city is Peshawar
- rather let us say, two cities - the compounds, the
fortifications where Europeans dwell in such peace as their
strong right arms can secure them; and the native city and bazaar
humming and buzzing like a hive of angry bees with the rumours
that come up from Lower India or down the Khyber Pass with the
camel caravans loaded with merchandise from Afghanistan,
Bokhara, and farther. And it is because of this that Peshawar is
the Key of India, and a city of Romance that stands at every
corner, and cries aloud in the market - place. For at Peshawar
every able-bodied man sleeps with his revolver under his pillow,
and the old Fort is always ready in case it should be necessary
at brief and sharp notice to hurry the women and children into
it, and possibly, to die in their defense. So enlivening is the
neighbourhood of the frontier tribes that haunt the famous Khyber
Pass and the menacing hills where danger is always lurking.

But there was society here, and I was swept into it - there was
chatter, and it galled me.

I was beginning to feel that I had missed my mark, and must go
farther afield, perhaps up into Central Asia, when I met Vanna
Loring. If I say that her hair was soft and dark; that she had
the deepest hazel eyes I have ever seen, and a sensitive, tender
mouth; that she moved with a flowing grace like "a wave of the
sea - it sounds like the portrait of a beauty, and she was never