In the end, with her cheeks on fire, she would repeat it and bend her head under the brutal sarcasm with which it was torn to rags.

Once or twice Thresk was on the point of springing up in her defence, but she looked at him with so much terror in her eyes that he did not interfere.

He sat and watched and meanwhile his plan began to take shape in his mind.
There came an interval of silence during which Ballantyne leaned back in his chair in a sort of stupor; and in the midst of that silence Stella suddenly exclaimed with a world of longing in her voice: "And you'll be in England in thirteen days! To think of it!" She glanced round the tent.

It seemed incredible that any one could be so fortunate.
"You go straight from Jarwhal Junction here at our tent door to Bombay.
To-morrow you go on board your ship and in twelve days afterwards you'll be in England." Thresk leaned forward across the table.
"When did you go home last ?" he asked.
"I have never been home since I married." "Never!" exclaimed Thresk.
Stella shook her head.
"Never." She was looking down at the tablecloth while she spoke, but as she finished she raised her head.
"Yes, I have been eight years in India," she added, and Thresk saw the tears suddenly glisten in her eyes.

He had come up to Chitipur reproaching himself for that morning on the South Downs, a morning so distant, so aloof from all the surroundings in which he found himself that it seemed to belong to an earlier life.