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“Is it for me to say? She explains it as the trend of her manifest destiny; we say it is her hunger for territory. But she advances, and we remain stationary, or worse, advance and retreat again. But retreat from this point we will not while the breath of life is in me,” he cried passionately; “and when I die, I mean to be buried here, if there is any burial for me at all, that at least the bones of an Englishman may hold the frontier for England.”

“But,” hesitated Penelope, “if we don’t want to advance, why shouldn’t she?—up to our frontier, I mean, not beyond.”

“Because she wouldn’t stop there. How could she, after sweeping over all the barren worthless regions, pause when a rich fertile country lay before her? I couldn’t myself. Otherwise, one would say that at any rate her rule could not be worse than the present state of things. There are plague-spots in Central Asia, like Gamara, which ought to be swept from the face of the earth. But we ought to do it, not they. It’s our men who have been done to death there—not spies, but regularly accredited representatives of the Government—and we don’t stir a finger to avenge them. Whybrow takes his life in his hand when he enters Central Asia, and so will any man who follows him.”