Lewis spoke now and then, when appealed to, but he was busy thinking out his own problem.

On the morrow night he should meet Marker, and his work would reveal itself.

Meanwhile he was in the dark, the flimsiest adventurer on the wildest of errands.

This easy, settled place, these Englishmen whose minds held fast by polo and games, these English ladies who had no thought beyond little social devices to relieve the monotony of the frontier, all seemed to make a mockery of his task.

He had fondly imagined himself going to a certainty of toil and danger; to his vexation this certainty seemed to be changing into the most conventional of visits to the most normal of places.