"Why shouldn't he?"
"Because by leaving India he pollutes his soul, he loses caste. And that's just why I wonder—"
"What?"
"Oh, nothing!"
Quite suddenly he looked up, and his long, white fingers gripped the girl's arm nervously.
"Did you feel—it?" he whispered.
There was no need for an answer. Nor, really, had there been need for the question in the first place.
For, as the raja, arm in arm with Sir James Spottiswoode, stepped away from the door and farther into the room, it came.
Nobody heard it. Nobody saw it or smelt it. Nobody even felt it, either consciously or subconsciously.
But again, through the mixed company that crowded the duchess's salon, there passed a shiver. A terrible, silent, hopeless shiver.
Then noises: human noises, and the relief that goes with them. A distinct sound of breath sucked in quickly, of tea-cups clacking as hands trembled, of feet shuffling uneasily on the thick Turkish carpet, of the very servants, placidly, stolidly English, stop-
