All the time I was conscious of a kind of dishonour, and perhaps it was
that which prompted me (I had fallen away from my intention of visiting
him freely) to send my steward to see how Boyd Madras came on, rather
than go myself. I was, however, conscious that the position could not--
should not--be maintained long. The practical outcome of this knowledge
was not tardy. A new influence came into my life which was to affect it
permanently: but not without a struggle.

A series of concerts and lectures had been arranged for the voyage, and
the fancy-dress ball was to close the first part of the journey--that is,
at Aden. One night a concert was on in the music saloon. I had just
come from seeing a couple of passengers who had been suffering from the
heat, and was debating whether to find Mrs. Falchion, who, I knew, was on
the other side of the deck, go in to the concert, or join Colonel Ryder
and Clovelly, who had asked me to come to the smoking-room when I could.
I am afraid I was balancing heavily in favour of Mrs. Falchion, when I
heard a voice that was new to me, singing a song I had known years
before, when life was ardent, and love first came--halcyon days in
country lanes, in lilac thickets, of pleasant Hertfordshire, where our
footsteps met a small bombardment of bursting seed-pods of the furze,
along the green common that sloped to the village. I thought of all
this, and of HER everlasting quiet.

With a different voice the words of the song would have sent me out of
hearing; now I stood rooted to the spot, as the notes floated out past
me to the nervelessness of the Indian Ocean, every one of them a
commandment from behind the curtain of a sanctuary.

The voice was a warm, full contralto of exquisite culture.
It suggested depths of rich sound behind, from which the singer, if she