mustn't forget that." Then I would try to recollect some of the
gossip I had heard at the Club: the prices of So-and-So's
horses--anything, in fact, that related to the workaday Anglo-Indian
world I knew so well. I even repeated the multiplication-table
rapidly to myself, to make quite sure that I was not taking leave of
my senses. It gave me much comfort; and must have prevented my
hearing Mrs. Wessington for a time.

Once more I wearily climbed the Convent slope and entered the
level road. Here Kitty and the man started off at a canter, and I was
left alone with Mrs. Wessington. "Agnes," said I, "will you put
back your hood and tell me what it all means?" The hood dropped
noiselessly, and I was face to face with my dead and buried
mistress. She was wearing the dress in which I had last seen her
alive; carried the same tiny handkerchief in her right hand; and the
same cardcase in her left. (A woman eight months dead with a
cardcase!) I had to pin myself down to the multiplication-table,
and to set both hands on the stone parapet of the road, to assure
myself that that at least was real.

"Agnes," I repeated, "for pity's sake tell me what it all means."
Mrs. Wessington leaned forward, with that odd, quick turn of the
head I used to know so well, and spoke.

If my story had not already so madly overleaped the bounds of all
human belief I should apologize to you now. As I know that no
one--no, not even Kitty, for whom it is written as some sort of
justification of my conduct--will believe me, I will go on. Mrs.
Wessington spoke and I walked with her from the Sanjowlie road
to the turning below the Commander-in-Chief's house as I might