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The Sisyphus beetles harness themselves to provide an inheritance for their larvæ; the larger insects are concerned in obtaining the material for a banquet which the two chance-met partners will consume underground. The couple set off, with no definite goal ahead, across the irregularities of the soil, which cannot be avoided by a leader who hauls backwards.
Beside the footpath in April lies the Mole, disembowelled by the peasant's spade; at the foot of the hedge the pitiless urchin has stoned to death the Lizard, who was about to don his green, pearl-embellished costume. The passer-by has thought it a meritorious deed to crush beneath his heel the chance-met Adder; and a gust of wind has thrown a tiny unfeathered bird from its nest.
I have no desire to mix with chance-met wastrels. My ears are not long. I am not a woman wishing to overhear secrets. The Jat slid himself heavily into a far corner. 'Art thou anything of a healer? I am ten leagues deep in calamity, cried the Mahratta, picking up the cue. 'This man is cut and bruised all over. I go about to cure him, Kim retorted. 'None interfered between thy babe and me.
And young men chance-met in the streets, talk to you about their nerves which are things no young man should know anything about; and the friends of your friends go down with nervous prostration, and the people overheard in the trains talk about their nerves and the nerves of their relatives; and the little children must needs have their nerves attended to ere their milk-teeth are shed, and the middle-aged women and the middle-aged men have got them too, and the old men lose the dignity of their age in an indecent restlessness, and the advertisements in the papers go to show that this sweeping list is no lie.
In India men never tell the truth to chance-met strangers or to their enemies; the truth is a valuable thing, to be shared cautiously among friends. "If Mahommed Gunga is at Alwa's," reasoned Jaimihr, "then he is much too close at hand to take any chances with. I must keep this man close confined."
Was he prepared to bid her good-bye in a week or ten days, and possibly not set eyes on her again? Would she let him go without a pang, and start afresh with some chance-met fellow in Simla? The idea was detestable; and yet...? Half irritably he dismissed the intrusive thought. The glamour of her so dazzled him that he could see nothing else clearly.
For some reason which she would herself have been at a loss to explain, she hastened to detail to this chance-met stranger the exact appearance and nature of Pros Passmore's injuries, her listener nodding his head at this or that point; making some comment or inquiry at another.
Information, if information it was, came from scouts, couriers, Ashby's vedettes, chance-met men and women of the region. Something electric flashed from van to rear. The line went up the hill with rapidity. When they reached the crest the men saw the cavalry far before and below them, charging upon the town and shouting.
After disputation, the father and lovers walk off, leaving Galba alone for a moment's soliloquy; and, from behind the terminal altar, unseen Sibyl hails him Cæsar; he, astonished at the airy voice so coincident with his own feelings, thinks it ideal, chides his babbling thoughts, and so forth: then enter to him suddenly chance-met noble citizens, burnt out of house and home, who declaim furiously against Nero.
Oh, to be the stronger! to seize and overpower him when he came, he who talked of seizing others! All she considered was the child, flesh of her flesh; the chance-met father was naught, never had been aught, to her. She had no particle of wifely feeling toward him, only a sentiment of concentrated rage, the deep-seated hatred of the vanquished for the victor, when she thought of him.
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