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moment they gazed at each other as they had gazed the other day. But now the story was to take life and substance. They were to remain ghosts no longer. He threw open the sash.

‘I have come to say good-bye,’ said Monica.

His collar was unfastened; his tie loosened; and oddly,automatically, his fingers went up to them, angrily wrenching them into place. ‘May I come in?’ she faintly smiled. How absurd, with all its beauty, life was! That at a moment like this she should feel herself wish to say: ‘Let it alone: it makes no difference. ’ And the sense of pathos brought by the untoward little mischance deepened in her as, while she waited on the doorstep, she realized that he had said not a word of welcome or surprise.

The door opened and she went before him into the drawing-room. A chair at the table had been pushed back in haste and a heavy pile of documents lay sprawling on the floor beside a battered leather box with brass corners. She glanced down at it as she went in; it seemed to have been in a dream that she had seen it before; it had come from so far away; it was going so far away again. Those strange names and visions floated for a moment through her mind. ‘Hindu Kush,’ she thought