After that there followed a period of unusual activity in the Coventry's bungalow. Guns and rifles were overhauled, ammunition ordered, boxes and cupboards were ransacked for garments suited to the jungle.
Trixie entered keenly into all the preparations. She seldom did anything by halves; and she might almost have been joining in the expedition herself so lively was her interest in every detail. She asked endless questions concerning camps and elephants and tigers, and she listened breathless to all that George could tell her of the fascinations of the jungle. She dragged books on sport from the musty shelves of the club library, and read them with genuine enjoyment during two long, hot afternoons.
Coventry to the last was more or less reluctant to leave her; but she ignored his hesitation, and when the hour of departure came she drove with him gaily to the railway station, and with a cheerful, smiling face saw him off by the night mail.
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 It was when she returned to the empty bungalow that her spirits sank. The rooms were so silent, save for the tiny trumpeting of mosquitoes in the corners; the atmosphere felt so close, and there was a smell of musk rat that was nauseating. Until dawn brought comparative coolness she lay awake, turning restlessly, hearing the desperate cry of the brain-fever bird, and the monotonous thrumming of a stringed instrument in the servants' quarters at the end of the compound. She wondered if natives ever slept save during the spell of rest they claimed in the middle of the day, when a drowsy peace descended everywhere.
With a sense of dismay that hitherto she had held in check, she contemplated the coming fortnight. How boring it would be to have to "think and remember" the whole time that she must be careful to give no cause for gossip! True, she had her household and her livestock, and her linen and store cupboards to occupy her mornings, and she could read and sleep through the succeeding hot hours; but what of the evenings?
For the first week she got on well enough. She snubbed Guy Greaves and other eager slaves who would willingly have placed their time, their dog-carts, their ponies--everything that they possessed--at her disposal. She played in "married" sets of tennis, and dined and consorted with the most
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domesticated couples in the station, so nervous was she of committing any indiscretion. Every day she wrote to George, accounting for her time; this she felt to be a sort of safeguard against the least false step; and so far there had been nothing connected with her doings that she could not chronicle with a perfectly clear conscience.
So the time dragged on until the evening before the day on which George Coventry was expected to come home.
The heat was now terrific; even tennis had become an effort, and Trixie left the bungalow to keep her engagement in the public gardens, feeling listless and oppressed. The hot weather had begun early this year, there had been no cooling storms to give temporary coolness and relief, and on all sides Trixie heard ominous predictions that "the rains" were going to fail. Not that the prospect disturbed her particularly, for as yet she could not realise its gravity. Only those whose lives have been bound up with India can understand the dread of such a visitation, the anxious watching of the sky, the heaviness of heart when meteorological reports look bad. For a failure, or even a weakness, of the monsoon means grim combat with pestilence and famine, and most dire distress, not only at the time, but afterwards, when fever takes its toll from an enfeebled population. It means
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strain and over-work for the long-suffering official; everywhere misery, death, and desolation.
After a languid game she dawdled late at the club with a group of people who, like herself, felt unwilling to return to stuffy bungalows and food that must inevitably prove untempting. To-night especially she shrank from the prospect of a solitary dinner and the weary after hours, even though supported by the knowledge that it was her last evening alone.
They all sat outside the club-house on a round masonry platform, talking fitfully, fanned by a make-shift punkah slung between two poles. Gradually two or three married couples bestirred themselves and drove away; a few unattached men who had dinner engagements deserted also, and presently Mrs. Coventry and Mrs. Roy were the only ladies left, with a small attendance of young men--Guy Greaves, two other subalterns, and a home-sick youth who had joined the Civil Service only last winter, and still preserved pathetically a Bond Street air.
Mrs. Roy was young and pretty and light-hearted, but not entirely without guile. Captain Roy had gone away that afternoon on duty, and she did not intend to dine alone. She invited the company to join her at dinner.
"There's lots of food, such as it is," she told
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them, "and even if we can't eat we can drink champagne with plenty of ice in it."
"I'm afraid I can't come," said Trixie ruefully. She knew that George disapproved of Mrs. Roy.
"Why not?" persisted Mrs. Roy. "Who are you dining with--the missionaries?"
They all laughed.
"I'm not dining with anybody," admitted Trixie, obviously weakening. She longed to join the party and have a little "fling," to laugh and talk nonsense and be amused, as an antidote to all her good behaviour. No letter would have to be written to-morrow to George. She could tell him all about the evening, and make him understand that she had meant and done no harm.
"Then why can't you come? Don't be unsociable," argued Mrs. Roy. "To-morrow we may all be dead of heat apoplexy, or cholera, or snake-bite, or something equally common to this delightful country, and then you'd be sorry you hadn't enjoyed yourself while you had the chance."
"Do say 'Yes,' Mrs. Coventry," sang a chorus of male voices. And after a moment's further hesitation Trixie succumbed.
"I must go back and change, then," she said, and rose. A little later they all met again in Mrs. Roy's
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pretty bungalow, and despite the heat and the insects, and, according to Mrs. Roy, the uncertainty of existence in India, they were a festive little party. They chaffed and told stories, and drank iced champagne and smoked cigarettes, and Trixie cast from her all thoughts of her husband's displeasure. Until this evening she had conformed to his wishes with the most strict consideration. She felt she deserved this innocent enjoyment, that it would be really unreasonable of George if he grudged it to her.
She had honestly intended to go home soon after dinner was over, but Mrs. Roy refused to "hear of such a thing."
"Behold the moon!" she exclaimed, a good deal later, as they straggled out into the veranda after a short and boisterous game of cards.
And, indeed, the moon was something to behold--huge, orange-coloured, almost terrifying, hanging heavy in the dusty night. Its lurid light filtered through the foliage of the trees and tinged the haze of the atmosphere with an unearthly radiance.
"I ask you, who could go to bed whilst that great lantern blazes in the sky?" cried Mrs. Roy with mock grandiloquence. "Let us all drive down to the river and go for a row. Wouldn't it be simply perfect?"
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 And, with others, Trixie agreed. What did it matter? Who cared? There was a sensuous influence in the hot, scented air that stilled her scruples, rendered her reckless. For the moment all the careless, irresponsible gaiety of her girlhood had returned.
The young civilian and one of the subalterns took charge of Mrs. Roy, the other three climbed into Guy Greaves's dog-cart, and they all drove hatless, wrapless, along the deserted, dusty road hedged with dry mud-banks that were tipped with prickly pear and cactus, until the ground began to slope, the wheels of the vehicles sank deep into the heavy, sandy soil, and they were at the river's edge.
There was a little delay while two boats were got ready by sleepy boatmen roused from their huts, a good deal of talk and laughter and argument as to how the party should divide and how far they should row. Finally it was agreed that in an hour's time they should land at the grove of trees that sheltered the Mohammedan cemetery, and that the syces with the traps, and a man to take back the boats, should meet them there.
Trixie found herself afloat alone with Guy Greaves. She did not know if this was due to an accident or to Guy's deliberate manøuvring. She felt as though she were in a dream as she
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took the rudder-lines. The second boat shot past them, and the occupants called out foolish jokes and gibes, sprinkled them with water, and left them far behind.
They slid slowly, silently, over the smooth bosom of the holy river, that was burnished with the moonlight. From the distance came the sound of native singing, a faint sound that rose and fell on the warm night air, only to be drowned, as though in protest, by the yells of jackals hunting, closely packed, across the plain.
Then all again was quiet, with a vast and dreamy peace that held the man and woman speechless, like a spell, as the boat slipped through the water, on and on.
Suddenly Guy Greaves stopped rowing. He leaned towards his companion, his young face set and hard, his eyes dark in the moonlight; his hands, holding the oars, were strained and trembling.
"Trixie!" he said in hoarse appeal.
His voice roused her. She looked at him, surprised.
"Why have you been so cruel to me lately? What have I done?"
She felt irritated, helpless. "Don't, Guy. Don't be so silly. I don't know what you mean."
"Oh! I know it's no use. But I must say it;
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I must tell you." He spoke with quick, nervous emotion. "It isn't as if I'd ever done or said anything since you came out here married to deserve the way you've sat on me lately--or if I have, I didn't know it. I thought I'd been so jolly careful! It hasn't been easy--and it's no good pretending now that I don't care for you, or for you to pretend that you don't know it. You knew it when I was at home last year, and we had such ripping times together. If only I'd been able to afford to marry, wouldn't you have taken me--Trixie? Wouldn't you? Instead of marrying a man old enough to be your great-grandfather!"
The boy had lost his head; his words came with passionate bitterness.
"Guy, be quiet!" Trixie broke in, distressed and alarmed. "You must be mad to talk like this."
He paid no heed. "No, I'm not mad--unless, perhaps, with wretchedness. I could stand it all as long as you treated me as a pal, and were kind, and let me do things for you. But you suddenly kicked me off like an old shoe, and, as far as I can see, for no reason whatever. I want to know," he went on doggedly, "what I've done."
"You haven't done anything," she hastened to tell him. "It's all your silly imagination. Do, for goodness' sake, go on rowing; we shall never catch up the others before they land."
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 He sat motionless, waiting.
"Guy--you must row on. I'll tell you nothing while you behave like this. It's beastly of you. Look--we're floating to the other side of the river! Guy, do be sensible!"
That was what she had said to him last year at home, when he had "talked nonsense" at a dance before he had to sail for India. They both remembered it now. In her agitation she clutched at the rudder-lines confusedly, and the boat almost swung round. He steadied it with the oars, but he did not go on rowing.
"Would you have married me if it had been possible?" he persisted, though now more calmly.
There was a long pause. The boat moved sideways, gravitating towards the farther bank, nearing ridges of sand and islets of brushwood and rubbish, mysterious shapes that stuck up sharp and fantastic in the moonlight. Something swished past, rippling the water with swift cleavage--a long, black water-snake hurrying to its refuge. And a mighty splash broke the stillness--a crocodile disturbed from its stupor on a sandbank.
"No," said Trixie in a low, tense voice, "I would not have married you. I think I could never have married anybody but George."
The truth had come to her, here on the river in the moonlight, with sudden and overpowering
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force. She loved her husband, loved him with all her............