Very gently she extricated herself from his embrace.
"I haven't lived five years in India for nothing," she said.
"But what was it?" he asked. "Why did you want me to shoot? Why--"
"I fancied that devilish _khitmatgar_ was spying again," she hastened to answer, slipping into a chair. "I saw something move--out there."
"And so you made me shoot at the bronze?"
"It's a very realistic bronze, isn't it?" she asked.
But he didn't answer. "Was it the _khitmatgar_?" he pressed.
"The bronze was a present," she went on instead. "Do you mind setting it upright again?"
He did so. "Odd I never saw it before," was his comment. "I thought I'd seen everything in this room. When I was here two days ago it seemed to me that every object spoke of you. I missed nothing. And yet--"
"That came this morning," she told him. "A gift without a card."
"It's a horrid thing," he said. "I don't like it."
He saw her shiver again, but she tried to smile. Her pallor had grown no less.
"Tell me," he insisted, "_was_ it the _khitmatgar_, do you think?"
"Who else could it have been? He will tell Jack Darling he saw me in your arms. And then--Hadn't you better be going? Aren't you overdue in Junnar?"
"When I go you go with me. Now that I know you love me--"
"I never said I loved you. I don't. I can't. I love but one man. I know it now as never before. For just a moment I thought--" And there she stopped.
"You thought?" he questioned, suddenly agitated.
"I thought I might forget. I thought perhaps you could make me forget. I was, you see, so utterly weary of everything."
"You were right," he cried earnestly. "I can make you forget. I'll give my whole life to it. I'll--"
He bent over her, but she drew away quickly with a gesture of repulsion, which Andrews was quick to note. It cut him cruelly, and he stepped back, pained and crestfallen.
In the instant of silence that ensued he swept her with a devouring gaze from head to foot. Was he to lose her again--now, when for a second time he had been so sure?
One dainty, white-shod foot was stretched out from beneath her skirt, and as his eyes reached it a dark, smearlike stain across the toe arrested his attention and awoke a question. Impulsively he dropped to one knee and swept a finger across it.