be kept. But I found no chance of speaking to her until, shortly before my departure, I was called upon to decide one of the childish disputes which constantly disturbed my temper and comfort. Mere fleabites they were; but fleas have often kept me awake a whole night in a Turkish caravanserai, and half-a-dozen mosquitos inside an Indian tent have broken up the sleep earned on a long day's march or a sharply contested battlefield. I need only say that I extorted at last from Eveena a clear statement of the trifle at issue, which flatly contradicted those of the four participants in the squabble. She began to suggest a means of proving the truth, and they broke into angry clamour. Silencing them all peremptorily, I drew Eveena into my own chamber, and, when assured that we were unheard, reproved her for proposing to support her own word by evidence.
"Do you think," I said, "that any possible proof would induce me to doubt you, or add anything to the assurance I derive from your word?"
"But," she urged, "that cannot be just to others. They must feel it very hard that your love for me makes you take all I say for truth."
"Not my love, but my knowledge. 'Be not righteous overmuch.' Don't forget that they know the truth as well as you."
I would hear no more, and passed to the matter I had at heart. . . .
Earnestly, and in a sense sincerely, as upon my second audience I had thanked the Camptâ for his munificent gifts, no day passed that I would not thankfully have renounced the wealth he had bestowed if I
