CHAPTER TWELVE.

"Lebong, _August 20, 19--_.

"Dear Katrine,--

"Your grumbly letter safely to hand. You explained the reasons right enough, for all your protests, and honestly, dear, I can't sympathise! All is going as I could have told you it would, and in the best way possible for all concerned. You've only to sit still, and await events.

"I should like to meet Miss Grizel Dundas. She doesn't sound the sort of a girl a man _would_ look at with sorrowful eyes. I shouldn't myself. I'd think small beer of Martin if he did. Dorothea says there's an erratic old aunt in the question, and that no human soul can foretell what she may do. Personally I hope she'll leave her fortune to the Home for Stray Cats, or any mad scheme which old ladies approve, rather than to fascinating Miss Grizel. A few hundreds a year to buy frocks and frills is agreeable enough, but a colossal fortune is a handicap to a girl, so far as decent, single-minded men are concerned. _You_ are not an heiress by any chance, are you? My annual income from every source tots up to something like eight hundred a year, and as this is an expensive station, and the caste question necessitates an army of servants, it might very well be more... However! we were not talking about ourselves.

"You are wrong about Martin, dear girl, and the sooner you realise it the better. There's no stepping down from pedestals in opening the heart to love and joy--the demoralising thing is to close it, out of a mistaken sense of duty. Are these years of repression shaping him into a kinder, wider, more generous form? Think over the question, and if you answer `no,' then what is to be his cure?

"I expect the truth of it is that like most dear women the religious question troubles you. How, you ask yourself, would Martin feel, if he married again, and died, and met Juliet in another sphere? What would happen when the two wives met?--I should laugh over that question, if I did not guess that it bites deep, for what sort of a spiritual world could it be in which jealousy and self-seeking counted before love! I can imagine Juliet meeting Grizel with open arms, and blessing her for having brought back joy to the beloved's heart; I can imagine them united by the very fact of their mutual love; what is utterly beyond my imagination is that having reached a higher plane of thought and vision, there should be any grudge, any envy, any question of who comes first!

"We've got to _grow_, little girl! Plants _can_ grow in the dark; sickly, pale-coloured things, but they cannot flower. Think that over too. You'll find I am right.

"I'm hanged if I am not preaching, after all. Sorry! You'll have to forgive me this time.

"Dorothea and I have had `words.' She represents that as she allowed me to hear extracts from your letters for years past, she might now be treated to occasional extracts from mine. From a logical point of view there's nothing to be said, only--it can't be done. My letters are my own. Not so much as a comma can be shared. It appears also that a certain photograph has disappeared from her mantelpiece, and that she blames me. I took it right enough, _but it looked as if it wanted to come_! Give you my word it did. And it lives _perdu_ in a drawer, where no eye can see it but mine own, and I say good-night to it every night, and good-morning when I'm not too late, and an occasional salaam during the day, just to see that she's there all right!

"We have just been giving a big send-off to a fellow in the regiment, Bedford by name, who is taking a few months' sick leave. His people are to meet him in Egypt as he can't stand an English winter, and he hopes to get back in spring. A bad case of rheumatism, which will play the dickens with his work if it is not stopped in time. The desert air is the best cure he can have, and he ought to put in a pretty good time. You'd like Bedford. A big, bony chap, rather after your own description of the fortunate orphan, with a curt, shy manner, which the women seem to approve. With men he is as straight as a die, and a splendid soldier. It gives one a choke in the throat to see Bedford hobble.

"I've told him that I know a spinster lady in England who collects brasses, and asked him to keep a look-out for old specimens, so I expect you'll hear from him one of these days. It will give him an interest in poking about, and besides--Christmas is coming!

"Well, good-bye, little girl. Take care of yourself, and look forward as I do to a good time coming!

"Yours ever,

"Jim Blair."