"Thank you, Mrs. Carmichael, I knew that would be your answer. But it

is my duty to ask the others--to give them their choice. There is

little hope for those who remain." He could not bring himself to turn

to the cowering figure upon the sofa. There is a shame which is not

personal, and he was passionately ashamed for that quivering bulk of

fear, for that greedy hope which he felt rather than saw creep up into

the livid face. He looked at Lois. Her head was lifted and the fiery

enthusiasm which spoke out of every line of the small dark face

transformed her from a saddened woman back to the girl who never

played a losing game but she won it, point by point, by pluck and

daring.

"If I shan't be a bother, I wish to stay with you all," she said with

studied simplicity. But her tone was eloquent.

"A brave comrade is always welcome," he answered. "Your husband--" He

hesitated, and then concluded in a low voice: "Your husband offered to

go with you. He is waiting outside with the horses." He avoided her

eyes, but her tone betrayed to him the pain that he had unwillingly

caused her.

"Please tell Archie that I will not let him sacrifice himself for me.

I know that he will wish to remain, and I, too, wish to remain. We are

all English, and who knows how little or how much we are all to blame

for this disaster? We must share it together."

Something like a sigh of relief passed Nicholson's compressed lips,

but he said nothing. In duty bound, he dared not offer encouragement

nor plead for the fulfillment of his hopes. With mixed feelings he

turned to Beatrice. Possessed as he now was of all the details of her

conduct, he could not but lay at her door the consequences of a

frivolous and heartless action. But her pitiless self-denunciation at

the meeting, her present quiet and dignity, subdued in him all scorn

and anger. Courage saluted courage as their eyes met.

"And you, Miss Cary?"

"Lois has already answered for me," she said. "If there was any

justice in this world, I alone should suffer; but one can never suffer

alone, it seems. The least I can do is to stand by you all." Her tone

revealed all the remorse and suffering of which human nature is

capable. It stirred in him a sudden impulsive pity. He crossed the

room with outstretched hand.

"You are a brave woman."

She smiled bitterly, but the color rushed to her cheeks.

"Thank you. You have paid me the only compliment for which I care. But

it is a small thing to take one's punishment without crying. After

all, death isn't the worst."

She saw him glance doubtfully at her mother, and she bent down to the

frozen face, speaking now gently but distinctly, as though to a

suffering invalid whose ears had been dulled with pain.

"Mother, what do you want to do? There is still time--and Captain

Nicholson says there is no hope for those who remain. You must not be

influenced by my choice."

Mrs. Cary looked up into her daughter's face with a perplexed frown.

She seemed scarcely to have heard what had been said to her, not even

to have been aware that any escape was possible. She felt for

Beatrice's hand, and taking it in her own, stroked it with pathetic

helplessness.

"A bad mother!" she said absently. "Well, perhaps I was. Yes, no

doubt--and you think so, too, though you never said anything. It was

always position I wanted. Now it's all gone. What is it, dear? Why do

you look at me like that? I haven't said what I oughtn't, have I?"

"No, no. Only Captain Nicholson wants to know--will you stay or go? We

could get some of the servants to go with you. You will be safe then."

Mrs. Cary shook her head.

"Are you--what are you going to do?"

A childish smile twisted the heavy face.

"I'd like to stay with you, Beaty. We have always stuck together,

haven't we?" She lay back with her head against Beatrice's shoulder.

"You always were so clever, Beaty. I'm sure it will be all right.

You'll see your poor mother through." The eyelids sank; she dropped

into a drowse of complete mental and physical breakdown, and for a

moment no one spoke. Mrs. Carmichael had shifted from her defiant

attitude, and her hard, set face expressed a grim satisfaction not

unmixed with pity.

"Now, Mrs. Berry, what about you?" she said. "Captain Nicholson has

wasted enough time with you women. You must make up your mind--if

you've got one," she concluded, in a smothered undertone.

Mrs. Berry drew herself up from her cowering position. Her teeth were

still chattering with terror, but Nicholson saw that the crisis of

panic was over. There was a curious look of obstinate resolve on the

usually weak and silly face.

"If all the men are remaining, I suppose my husband remains, too?" she

asked.

"Yes; he is helping Colonel Carmichael with the defenses."

Wonderful indeed are the _volte-faces_ of which a character is

capable! Nicholson, to whom human nature was a book of revelations,

watched with a sense almost of awe this mean, petty and brainless

woman, who a moment before had been whimpering with fear, smooth out

her skirts and arrange her hair as though death were not sitting at

her elbow.

"I am sure," she said, in a sharp voice which still trembled, "I can

do what Mrs. Cary can do. I shall stay--please tell Percy so, with my

love. And I should like to see him if possible before the end."

Nicholson bowed to her, and for the first time in their acquaintance

the salute had a genuine significance.

"I am proud to have such countrywomen!" he said, and then added in a

low tone as he passed Lois: "The cathedral is nearly finished."

She nodded.

"It could not have been better finished," she said bravely. "And you

see I was right--when there is a noble building in the midst of them,

people grow ashamed of their mud-huts. They pull them down and begin

their own cathedrals--even when it is too late."

His eyes wandered instinctively toward the woman on the couch.

"Yes, you were quite right." He went to the curtained doorway, where

he found Mrs. Carmichael waiting for him, a quaint figure enough with

her sleeves rolled back, her skirts tucked up above her ankles, the

revolver stuck brigand-wise in her belt.

"I'm coming with you," she said coolly. "I can shoot as straight as

most of you, and a good deal better than George. I might be of some

use."

"You would be of use anywhere," he returned sincerely, "but, if I may

say so, you will be of more use here. Your courage will help the

others. As for us, we have fifty of my Gurkhas, and they will do all

that can be done. I will let you know what is happening. At present

you are safest here."

She sighed.

"Very well. And if any one is hurt, send him around. I have plenty of

bandages."

"Yes, of course."

It was a merely formal offer and acceptance. Both knew that it would

be scarcely worth while to bandage men already in their full health

and strength marked out for death. Nicholson went out, closing the

door after him, and once more an absolute stoic silence fell upon the

little company. In moments of crisis, it is the strict adherence to

the habits of a lifetime which keeps the mind clear and the nerve

firm. Lois went on quietly preparing some sandwiches, which in all

probability would never be eaten, and Mrs. Carmichael resigned martial

occupation for the cutting-out of a baby's pinafore for an East-end

child whom she had under her special patronage. But her mind was

active and, stern, self-opinionated martinet that she was, she could

not altogether crush the regrets that swarmed up in this last

reckoning up of her life's activity. Better had her charity and

interest been centered on the dirty little children whom she had

indignantly tolerated on her compound! Better for them all would it

have been had each one of them sought to win the love and respect of

the subject race! Then, perhaps, they would not have been deserted in

this last hour of peril.

Mrs. Carmichael glanced at Beatrice Cary with a fresh pricking of

conscience. What, after all, had she done to deserve the chief

condemnation? She had played with fire. Had they not all played with

fire? She had looked upon a native as a toy fit to play with, to break

and throw away. Did they not all, behind their seeming tolerance and

Christian principles, hide an equal depreciation? Was she even as bad

as some? How many men revealed to their syces their darkest moods,

their lowest passions? How many women were to their ayahs subjects for

contemptuous Bazaar gossip. They were all to blame, and this was the

harvest, the punishment for the neglect of a heavy responsibility. The

thought that she had been unjust was iron through Mrs. Carmichael's

soul, for above all things she prided herself on her fairness. She

pushed her work away and went over to Beatrice's side. Mrs. Cary's

head still rested against the aching shoulder, and Mrs. Carmichael

made a sign to let her improvize a cushion substitute. Beatrice shook

her head.

"No, thank you," she whispered, glancing down at the flushed, sleeping

face. "We have done each other so little real service that I am glad

to be able to do even this much. I don't suppose it will be for long.

How quiet everything is!"

Mrs. Carmichael looked at the clock on the writing-table.

"It is not yet midnight," she said. "Probably the Rajah is keeping his

promise." Her expression relaxed a little. "Don't tire yourself," she

added bruskly to Mrs. Berry, who had been fanning the unconscious

woman's face with an improvized paper fan. "I don't think she feels

the heat."

The missionary's wife continued her good work with redoubled energy.

It was perhaps one of the few really unselfish things which she had

ever done in the course of a pious but fundamentally selfish life, and

it gave her pleasure and courage. The knowledge that some one was

weaker than herself and needed her was new strength to her new-born

heroism.

"It is so frightfully hot," she said half apologetically. "Why isn't

the punkah-man at work?"

"The 'punkah-man' has bolted with the rest of them," Mrs. Carmichael

answered. "I dare say I could work it, though I have never tried."

"It is hardly worth while to begin now," Beatrice observed, and this

simple acknowledgment that the end was at hand received no

contradiction.

Once again the silence was unbroken, save for the soft swish of the

fan and Mrs. Cary's heavy, irregular breathing. Yet the five women who

in the full swing of their life had been diametrically opposed to one

another were now united in a common sympathy. Death, far more than a

leveler of class, is the melting-pot into which are thrown all

antagonisms, all violent discords of character. The one great fact

overshadows everything, and the petty stumbling-blocks of daily life

are forgotten. More than that still--it is the supreme moment in man's

existence when the innermost treasures or unsuspected hells are

revealed beyond all denial. And in these five women, hidden in two

cases at least beneath a mass of meanness, selfishness and

indifference, there lay an unusual power of self-sacrifice and pity.

Death was drawing near to them all, and their one thought was how to

make his coming easier for the other. When the silence grew

unbearable, it was Mrs. Carmichael who had the courage to break it

with a trivial criticism respecting the manner in which Lois was

making the sandwiches.

"You should put the butter on before you cut them," she said tartly,

"and as little as possible. I'm quite sure it has gone rancid, and

then George won't touch them. He is so fussy about the butter."

Mrs. Berry looked up. The perspiration of physical fear stood on her

cold forehead, but her roused will-power fought heroically and

conquered.

"And, please, would you mind making one or two without butter?" she

said. "Percy says all Indian butter is bad. Of course, it's only an

idea of his, but men are such faddy creatures, don't you think?"

"They wouldn't be men if they weren't--" Mrs. Carmichael had begun,

when she broke off, and the scissors that had been snipping their way

steadily through the rough linen jagged and dropped on the table. She

picked them up immediately and went on with an impatient exclamation

at her own carelessness. But the involuntary start had coincided with

a loud report from outside in the darkness, and a smothered scream.

Lois put down her knife.

"Won't you come and help me?" she said to Beatrice. "Your mother will

not notice that you have gone."

Beatrice nodded, and letting the heavy head sink back among the

cushions, came over to Lois' side.

"How brave you are!" she said in a whisper. "You seem so cool and

collected, just as though you believed your sandwiches would ever be

eaten!"

"I am not braver than you are. Look how steady your hand is--much

steadier than mine."

Beatrice held out her white hand and studied it thoughtfully.

"I am not afraid," she said, "but not because I am brave. There is no

room for fear, that is all." She paused an instant, and then suddenly

the hand fell on Lois'. The two women looked at each other. "Lois, I

am so sorry."

"For me?"

"For you and every one. I have hurt so many. It has all been my fault.

I would give ten lives if I had them to see the harm undone. But that

isn't possible. Oh, Lois, there is surely nothing worse than helpless

remorse!"

The hand within her own tightened in its clasp.

"Is it ever helpless, though?"

"I can't give the dead life--I can't give back a man's faith, can I?"

The light of understanding deepened in Lois' eyes.

"Beatrice--I believe I know!"

"Yes, I see you do. Do you despise me? What does it matter if you do?

It has been my fear of the world and its opinion that helped to lead

me wrong. Isn't it a just punishment? I have ruined both our lives.

Lois, I couldn't help hearing what Captain Nicholson said to you. It

explained what you said to me about building on the ruins of the past.

That was what he did--he built a beautiful palace on me--and I wrecked

it. I failed him."

"Have you really failed him?"

"Lois, I don't know--I am beginning to believe not. But it is too

late. I meant to clear away the rubbish--and build. But there is no

time."

"You have done your best."

"Oh, if I could only save him, Lois! He was the first man I had ever

met whom I trusted, the first to trust me. I owe him everything, the

little that is good in me. It had to come to life when he believed in

it so implicitly. And he owes me ruin, outward and inward ruin."

Lois made no answer. With a warm, impulsive gesture she put her arms

about the taller woman's neck and, drawing the beautiful face down to

her own, kissed her. Beatrice responded, and thus a friendship was

sealed--not for life but for death, whose grim cordon was with every

moment being drawn closer about them.

The sound of firing had now grown incessant. One report followed

another at swift, irregular intervals, and each sounded like a clap of

thunder in the silent room. Mrs. Cary stirred uneasily in her sleep, a

low, scarcely audible groan escaped the parted lips, as though even in

her dreams she was being pursued by fear's pitiless phantom. Her

self-appointed nurse continued to fan her with the energy of despair,

the poor livid face twitching at every fresh threatening sound. Mrs.

Carmichael still pretended to be absorbed in her pinafore, but the

revolver lay on the table, ready to hand, and there was a look in the

steady eyes which boded ill for the first enemy who should confront

her. Lois and Beatrice continued their fruitless task.

A woman's courage is the supreme victory of mind over matter. It is no

easy thing for a hero to sit still and helpless while death rattles

his bullet fingers against the walls and screams in voices of hate and

fury from a distance which every minute diminishes. For a woman

burdened with the disability of a high-strung nervous system, it is a

martyrdom. Yet these women, brought up on the froth of an enervating,

pleasure-seeking society, held out--held out with a martyr's courage

and constancy--against the torture of inactivity, of an imagination

which penetrated the sheltering walls out into the night where fifty

men writhed in a death-struggle with hundreds--saw every bleeding

wound, heard every smothered moan of pain, felt already the cold iron

pierce their own breasts. The hours passed, and they did not yield.

They had ceased from their incongruous tasks, and stood and waited,

wordless and tearless.

As the first grey lights of dawn crept into the stifling room they

heard footsteps hurrying across the adjacent room, and each drew

herself upright to meet the end. Mrs. Carmichael's hand tightened over

the revolver, but it was only Mr. Berry who entered. The little

missionary, a shy, society-shunning man, noted for doing more harm

than good among the natives by his zealous bigotry and ignorance of

their prejudices, stood revealed in a new light. His face was grimed

with dirt and powder, his clothes disordered, his weak eyes bright

with the fire of battle.

"Do not be afraid," he said quickly. "There is no immediate danger. I

have only been sent to warn you to be ready to leave the bungalow. The

front wall is shot-riddled, and the place may become indefensible at

any moment. When that time comes, you must slip out to the old

bungalow. Nicholson believes he can hold out there."

"My husband--?" interrupted Mrs. Carmichael.

"Your husband is safe. In fact, all three were well when I left. If I

wasn't against such things, I should say it was a splendid fight--and

every man a hero. The Rajah--"

"The Rajah--?"

Mr. Berry looked in stern surprise at the pale face of the speaker.

"The Rajah has a charmed life," he said somberly. "He is always in the

front of his men--we can recognize him by his dress and figure--he is

always within range, but we can't hit him. Not that I ought to wish

his death, though it's our only chance." He put his hands distractedly

to his head. "Heaven knows, it's too hard for a Christian man! Every

time I see an enemy fall, I rejoice--and then I remember that it is my

brother--" He stopped, the expression on his face of profound trouble

giving way to active alarm. "Hush! Some one is coming!"

A second time the door opened, and Travers rushed in. Lois saw his

face, and something in her recoiled in sick disgust. Fear, an almost

imbecilic fear, was written on the wide-open, staring eyes, and the

hand that held the revolver trembled like that of an old man.

"Quick--out by the back way!" he stammered incoherently. "I will lock

the door--so. That will keep them off a minute. They are bound to look

for us here first. Nicholson is retiring with his men--they are going

to have a try to bring down the Rajah. It's our one chance. It may

frighten the devils--they think he's a god. I believe he is, curse

him!" All the time, he had been piling furniture against the door with

a mad and feverish energy. "Help me! Help me!" he screamed. "Why don't

you help? Do you want to be killed like sheep?"

Lois drew him back by the arm.

"You are wasting time," she said firmly. "Come with us! Why, you are

hurt!"

He looked at the thin stream which trickled down the soiled white of

his coat. A silly smile flickered over his big face.

"Oh, yes, a scratch. I hardly feel it. It isn't anything. It can't be

anything. There's nothing vital thereabouts, is there, Berry?"

The missionary shrugged his shoulders. He had flung open the glass

doors which led on to the verandah, and the brightening dawn flooded

in upon them.

"Come and help me carry this poor lady," he said. "We have not a

minute to lose."

Travers tried to obey, but he had no strength, and the other thrust

him impatiently on one side.

"Mrs. Carmichael, you are a strong woman," he appealed. Between them

they managed to bring Mrs. Cary's heavy, unconscious frame down the

steps. It was a nerve-trying task, for their progress was of necessity

a slow one, and the sound of the desperate fighting seemed to surround

them on every side. It was with a feeling of intense relief that the

little party saw Nicholson appear from amidst the trees and run toward

them.

"That's right!" he cried. "Only be quick! They are at us on all sides

now, but my men are keeping them off until you are out of the

bungalow. The old ruin at the back of the garden is our last stand.

Carmichael is there already with a detachment, and is keeping off a

rear attack. I shall remain here."

"Alone?" Berry asked anxiously.

"Yes. I believe they will ransack the bungalow first. When they come,

the Rajah is sure to be at their head, and--well, it's going to be

diamond cut diamond between us two when we meet. I know the beggars

and their superstition. If I get in the first shot, they will bolt. If

_he_ does--"

"You are going to shoot him down like a rat in a trap!" Beatrice burst

out passionately.

The others had already hurried on. With a gentle force he urged her to

follow them.

"Or be shot down myself," he said. "Leave me to do my duty as I think

best."

She met his grave eyes defiantly, but perhaps some instinct told her

that he was risking his life for a poor chance--for their last chance,

for without a word she turned away, apparently in the direction which

her companions had already taken.

As soon as she was out of sight, Nicholson recharged his smoking

revolver, and stood there quietly waiting. His trained ear heard the

firing in front of the bungalow cease. He knew then that his men were

retiring to join Colonel Carmichael, and that he stood alone, the last

barrier between death and those he loved. The sound of triumphant

shouting drew nearer; he heard the wrenching and tearing of doors

crashing down before an impetuous onslaught, the cling of steel, a

howl of sudden satisfaction. His hand tightened upon his revolver; he

stood ready to meet his enemy single-handed, to fight out the duel

between man and man. But no one came. A bewildering silence had

followed upon the last bloodthirsty cry. It was as though the hand of

death had fallen and with one annihilating blow beaten down the

approaching horde in the high tide of their victory. But of the two

this strange stillness was the more terrible. It penetrated to the

little waiting group in the old bungalow and filled them with the

chill horror of the unknown. Something had happened--that they felt.

Lois crept to the doorway and peered out into the gathering daylight.

Here and there, half hidden behind the shelter of the trees, she could

see the khaki-clad figures of the Gurkhas, some kneeling, some

standing, their rifles raised to their dark faces, waiting like

statues for the enemy that never came. A dead, petrified world, the

only living thing the sunshine, which played in peaceful indifference

upon the scene of an old and a new tragedy! Lois thought of her

mother. By the power of an overwrought imagination she looked back

through a quarter of a century to a day of which this present was a

strange and horrible repetition. For a moment she lived her mother's

life, lived through the hours of torturing doubt and fear, and when a

stifled cry called her back to the reality and forced her to turn from

the sunlight to the dark room, it was as though the dead had risen, as

though her dreams had taken substance. She saw pale faces staring at

her; she saw on the rusty truckle-bed a figure which rose up and held

out frantic, desperate arms toward her. But it was no dream--no

phantom. Mrs. Cary, wild-eyed and distraught, struggled to rise to her

feet and come toward her.

"Where is Beatrice?" she cried hysterically. "Where is Beatrice? I

dreamed she was dead!--It isn't true! Say it isn't true!"

Lois hurried back. In the confusion of their retreat she had lost

sight of Beatrice, and now a cold fear froze her blood. She called her

name, adding her voice to the half-delirious mother's appeal; but

there was no answer, and as she prepared to leave the shelter of the

bungalow to go in search of the lost girl, a pair of strong hands

grasped her by the shoulders and forced her back.

"Lois, stand back! They are coming!"

Colonel Carmichael thrust her behind him, and an instant later she

heard the report of his revolver. There was no answering volley. A

dark, scantily-clad figure sprang through the trees, waving one hand

as though in imperative appeal.

"Don't fire--don't fire! It's me!"

The Colonel's still smoking revolver sank, and the supposed native

swayed toward him, only to sink a few yards farther on to the ground.

Carmichael ran to his side and lifted the fainting head against his

shoulder.

"Good God, Geoffries! Don't say I've hit you! How on earth was I to

know!"

"That's all right, Colonel. Only winded--don't you know--never hurried

so much in life. Have been in the midst of the beggars--just managed

to slip through. O Lor', give me something to drink, will you?"

Colonel Carmichael put his flask to the parched and broken lips.

"Thanks, that's better. We got your message, and are coming on like

fun. The regiment's only an hour off. You never saw Saunders in such a

fluster--it's his first big job, you know." He took another deep

draft, and wiped his mouth with the corner of his ragged tunic. "I

say--don't look at me, Miss Lois. I'm not fit to be seen." He laughed

hoarsely. "These clothes weren't made in Bond Street, and Webb assured

me that the fewer I had the more genuine I looked. I say, Colonel,

this is a lively business!"

Colonel Carmichael nodded as he helped the gasping and exhausted man

into the bungalow.

"Too lively to be talked about," he said. "I doubt if the regiment

isn't going to add itself to the general disaster."

"Oh, rot!" was the young officer's forgetful lapse into disrespect.

"The regiment will do for the beggars all right. They didn't expect us

so soon, I fancy. Just listen! I believe I've frightened them away

already. There isn't a sound."

Colonel Carmichael lifted his head. True enough, no living thing

seemed to move. A profound hush hung in the air, broken only by Mrs.

Cary's pitiful meanings.

"Oh, Beatrice, Beatrice, where are you?"

Geoffries turned his stained face to the Colonel's.

"Beatrice! That's Miss Cary, isn't it? Anything happened to her?"

Colonel Carmichael shrugged his shoulders with the impatience of a man

whose nerves are overstrained by anxiety.

"I don't know--we've lost her," he said. "We must do something at

once. Heaven alone knows what has happened."

No one indeed knew what had happened--not even the lonely man who

waited, revolver in hand, for the final encounter on whose issue hung

the fortunes of them all.

Only one knew, and that was Beatrice herself as she stood before the

shattered doorway of the Colonel's drawing-room, amidst the debris of

wrecked, shot-riddled furniture, face to face with Nehal Singh.

CHAPTER IX

HALF-LIGHT

Once before she had placed herself in his path, trusting to her skill,

her daring, above all, her beauty. With laughter in her heart and

cold-blooded coquetry she had chosen out the spot before the altar

where the sunlight struck burnished gold from her waving hair and lent

deeper, softening shades to her eyes. With cruel satisfaction, not

unmixed with admiration, she had seen her power successful and the

awe-struck wonder and veneration creep into his face. In the silence

and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven

threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with

death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite

the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat

its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,--another woman,

disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that

which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined.

Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The

drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered

doorway, holding out a hand which commanded, and obtained, a

petrified, waiting silence from the armed horde whose faces glared

hatred and the lust of slaughter in the narrow space behind. Whatever

had been his resolution, whatever the detestation and contempt which

had filled him, all sank now into an ocean of reborn pain.

"Why are you here?" he asked sternly. "Why have you not fled?"

"We are all here," she answered. "None of us has fled. Did you not

know that?"

He looked about him. A flash of scorn rekindled in his somber eyes.

"You are alone. Have they deserted you?"

"They do not know that I am here. I crept back of my own free will--to

speak with you, Nehal."

Both hands clasped upon his sword-hilt, erect, a proud figure of

misfortune, he stood there and studied her, half-wonderingly,

half-contemptuously. The restless forces at his back were forgotten.

They were no more to him than the pawns with which his will played

life and death. He was their god and their faith. They waited for his

word to sweep out of his path the white-faced Englishwoman who held

him checked in the full course of his victory. But he did not speak to

them, but to her, in a low voice in which scorn still trembled.

"You are here, no doubt, to intercede for those others--or for

yourself. You see, I have learned something in these two years. It is

useless. No one can stop me now."

"No one?"

He smiled, and for the first time she saw a sneer disfigure his lips.

"Not even you, Miss Cary. You have done a great deal with me--enough

perhaps to justify your wildest hopes--but you have touched the limits

of your powers and of my gullibility. Or did you think there were no

limits?"

"I do not recognize you when you talk like that!" she exclaimed.

"That is surprising, seeing that you have made me what I am," he

answered. Then he made a quick gesture of apology. "Forgive me, that

sounded like a reproach or a complaint. I make neither. That is not my

purpose."

"And yet you have the right," she said, drawing a deep breath, "you

have every right, Nehal. It does not matter what the others did to

you. I know that does not count an atom in comparison to my

responsibilities. You trusted me as you trusted no one else, and I

deceived you. So you have the right to hate me as you hate no one

else. And yet--is it not something, does it not mitigate my fault a

little, that I deceived myself far, far more than I ever deceived

you?" He raised his eyebrows. There was mockery in the movement, and

she went on, desperately resolute: "I played at loving you, Nehal. I

played a comedy with you for my own purposes. And one day it ceased to

be a comedy. I did not know it. I did not know what was driving me to

tell the truth, and reveal myself to you in the ugliest light I could.

I only knew it was something in me stronger than any other impulse of

my life. I know what it is now, and you must know, too. Can't you

understand? If it had been no more than a comedy, you must have found

me out--months ago. But you never found me out. It was _I_ who told

you what I had done and who I was--"

"Why did you tell me?" He took an involuntary step toward her.

Something in his face relaxed beneath the force of an uncontrollable

emotion. He was asking a question which had hammered at the gates of

his mind day after day and in every waking hour. "Why?" he repeated.

"I have told you--because I had to. I had to speak the truth. I

couldn't build up my new life on an old lie. You had to know. I had

won your love by a trick. I had to show you the lowest and worst part

of myself before the best in me could grow--the best in me, which is

yours."

"You are raving!"

"I am not raving. You must see I am not. Look at me. I am calmer than

you, though I face certain death. I knew when I came here that the

chances were I should be killed before I even saw you, but I had to

risk that. I had to win your trust back somehow, honestly and fairly.

I can not live without your trust."

"Beatrice!" The name escaped him almost without his knowledge. He saw

tears spring to her eyes.

"It is true. Your love and your trust have become my life. Then I was

unworthy of both. I tried to make myself worthy. I did what I could. I

told you the truth--I threw away the only thing that mattered to me. I

could not hold your love any longer by a lie--I loved you too much!"

For that moment the passionate energy of her words, the sincerity and

eloquence of her glance, swept back every thought of suspicion. He

stood stupefied, almost overwhelmed. Mechanically his lips formed

themselves to a few broken sentences.

"You can not know what you are saying. You are beside yourself. Once,

in my ignorance, I believed it possible, but now I know that it could

never be. Your race despises mine--"

"I do not care what you are nor to whom you belong!" she broke in,

exulting. "You are the man who taught me to believe that there is

something in this world that is good, that is worthy of veneration;

who awoke in me what little good I have. I love you. If I could win

you back--"

"What then?"

"I would follow you to the world's end!"

"As my wife?"

"As your wife!"

He held out his arms toward her, impulse rising like the sun high and

splendid above the mists of distrust. It was an instant's

forgetfulness, which passed as rapidly as it had come. His arms sank

heavily to his side.

"Have you thought what that means? If you go with me, you must leave

your people for ever."

"I would follow you gladly."

He shook his head.

"You do not understand. You must leave them now--now when I go against

them."

"No!" she broke in roughly. "You can't, Nehal, you can't. You have the

right to be bitter and angry; you have not the right to commit a

crime. And it would be a crime. You are plunging thousands into

bloodshed and ruin--" He lifted his hand, and the expression in his

eyes checked her.

"So it is, after all, a bargain that you offer me!" he said. "You are

trying to save them. You offer a high price, but I am not a merchant.

I can not buy you, Beatrice."

"It is not a bargain!" For the first time she faltered, taken aback by

the pitiless logic of his words. "Can't you see that? Can't you see

that, however much I loved you, I could not act otherwise than implore

you to turn back from a step that means destruction for those bound to

me by blood and country? Could I do less?"

"No," he said slowly.

She held out her hands to him.

"Oh, Nehal, turn back while there is yet time! For my sake, for yours,

for us all, turn back from a bloody, cruel revenge. The power is

yours. Be generous. If we have wronged you, we have suffered and are

ready to atone. _I_ am ready to atone. I _can_ atone, because I love

you. I have spoken the truth to you. I have laid my soul bare to you

as I have done to no other being. Won't you trust me?"

His eyes met hers with a somber, hopeless significance which cut her

to the heart.

"I can't," he said. "I can't. That is what you have taught me--to

distrust you--and every one."

She stood silent now, paralyzed by the finality of his words and

gesture. It was as though the shadow of her heartless folly had risen

before her and become an iron wall of unrelenting, measured

retribution against which she beat herself in vain. He lifted his head

higher, seeming to gather together his shaken powers of self-control.

"I can not trust you," he said again, "nor can I turn back. But there

is one thing from the past which can not be changed. I love you. It

seems that must remain through all my life. And because of that love I

must save you from the death that awaits your countrymen." He smiled

in faint self-contempt. "It is not for your sake that I shall save

you; it is because I am too great a coward, and can not face the

thought that anything so horrible should come near you." He turned to

two native soldiers behind him and gave an order. When he faced

Beatrice again he saw that she held a revolver in her hand.

"You do not understand," she said. "You say you mean to save me, but

that is not in your power. It is in your power to save us all, but not

one alone. I know what my people have resolved to do. There are weak,

frightened women among them, but not one of them will fall into your

hands alive. Whatever happens, I shall share their fate."

Though her tone was quiet and free from all bravado, he knew that she

was not boasting. He knew, too, that she was desperate.

"You can not force me to kill you," he said sternly.

"I think it possible," she answered. She was breathing quickly, and

her eyes were bright with a reckless, feverish excitement. But the

hand that held the revolver pointed at the men behind him was

steady--steadier than his own.

Nehal Singh motioned back the two natives who had advanced at his

order.

"You play a dangerous game," he said, "and, as before, your strength

lies in my weakness--in my folly. But this time you can not win. My

word is given--to my people."

"I shall not plead with you," she returned steadily, "and you may be

sure I shall not waver. I am not afraid to die. I had hoped to atone

for all the wrong that has been done you with my love for you, Nehal.

I had hoped that then you would turn away from this madness and become

once more our friend. To this end I have not hesitated to trample on

my dignity and pride. I have not spared myself. But you will not

listen, you are determined to go on, and I"--she caught her breath

sharply--"surely you can understand? I love you, and you have made

yourself the enemy of my country. Death is the easiest, the kindest

solution to it all."

Nehal Singh's brows knitted themselves in the anguish of a man who

finds himself thwarted by his own nature. He tried not to believe her,

and indeed, in all her words, though they had rung like music, his

ear, tuned to suspicion, had heard the mocking undercurrent of

laughter. She had laughed at him secretly through all those months

when he had offered up to her the incense of an absolute faith, an

unshared devotion. Even now she might be laughing at him, playing on

that in him which nothing could destroy or conceal--his love for her.

And yet--! Behind him he heard the uneasy stir of impatient feet, the

hushed clash of arms. He stood between her and a certain, terrible

death. One word from him, and it would be over--his path clear. But he

could not speak that word. Treacherous and cruel as she had been, the

halo of her first glory still hung about her. He saw her as he had

first seen her--the golden image of pure womanhood--and, strange,

unreasoning contradiction of the human heart, beneath the ashes of his

old faith a new fire had kindled and with every moment burned more

brightly. Unquenchable trust fought out a death struggle with

distrust, and in that conflict her words recurred to him with poignant

significance: "Death is the easiest, the kindest solution to it all."

For him also there seemed no other escape. He pointed to the revolver.

"For whom is that?" he asked.

"I do not know--but I will make them kill me."

"Why do you not shoot me, then?" he demanded, between despair and

bitterness. "That would save you all. If I fell, they would turn and

fly. They think I am Vishnu. Haven't you thought of that? I am in your

power. Why don't you make yourself the benefactress of your country?

Why don't you shoot her enemy?"

She made no answer, but her eyes met his steadily and calmly. He

turned away, groaning. In vain he fought against it, in vain stung

himself to action by the memory of all that she had done to him. His

love remained triumphant. In that supreme moment his faith burst

through the darkness, and again he believed in her, believed in her

against reason, against the world, against the ineffaceable past, and

against himself. And it was too late. He no longer stood alone. His

word was given.

"Have pity on me!" he said, once more facing her. "Let me save you!"

"I should despise myself, and you would despise me--even more than you

do now. I can not do less than share the fate of those whose lives my

folly has jeopardized."

"At least go back to them--do not stay here. Beatrice, for God's

sake!--I can not turn back. You have made me suffer enough--." He

stood before her now as an incoherent pleader, and her heart burned

with an exultation in which the thought of life and death played no

part. She knew that he still loved her. It seemed for the moment all

that mattered.

"I can not," she said.

"Beatrice, do not deceive yourself. Though my life is nothing to

me--though I would give it a dozen times to save you--I can not do

otherwise than go on. I may be weak, but I shall be stronger than my

weakness. My word is given!"

He spoke with the tempestuous energy of despair. The minutes were

passing with terrible swiftness, and any moment the sea behind him

might burst its dam and sweep her and him to destruction. Already in

the distance he heard the dull clamour of voices raised in angry

remonstrance at the delay. Only those immediately about him were held

in awed silence by the power of his personality. Again Beatrice shook

her head. She stood in the doorway which opened out into the garden

where the besieged had taken refuge. There was no other way. He

advanced toward her. Instantly she raised her revolver and pointed it

at the first man behind him.

"If I fire," she said, "not even you will be able to hold them back."

It seemed to her that she stood like a frail wall between two

overwhelming forces--on the one side, Nehal with his thousands; on the

other, Nicholson--alone, truly, but armed with a set and pitiless

resolve. A single sentence, which had fallen upon her ears months

before, rose now out of an ocean of half-forgotten memories:

"Nicholson is the best shot in India," some one had said: "he never

misses." And still Nehal advanced. His jaws were locked, his eyes had

a red fire in them. She knew then that the hour of hesitation was

over, and that in that desperate struggle she had indeed lost.

Uncontrollable words of warning rushed to her lips.

"Nehal--turn back! Turn back!"

He did not understand her. He thought she was still pleading with him.

"I can not--God have pity on us both!"

Then she too set her lips. She could not betray the last hope of that

heroic handful of men and women behind her. He must go to his

death--and she to hers. She fired,--whether with success or not, she

never knew. In that same instant another sound broke upon their

ears--the sound of distant firing, the rattle of drums and the high

clear call of a trumpet. Nehal Singh swung around. She caught a

glimpse of his face through the smoke, and she saw something written

there which she could not understand. She only knew that his features

seemed to bear a new familiarity, as though a mask had been torn from

them, revealing the face of another man, of a man whom she had seen

before, when and where she could not tell. She had no time to analyze

her emotions nor the sense of violent shock which passed over her. She

heard Nehal Singh giving sharp, rapid orders in Hindustani. The room

emptied. She saw him follow the retreating natives. At the door he

turned and looked back at her. At no time had his love for her

revealed itself more clearly than in that last glance.

"The English regiment has come to help you," he said. "Fate has

intervened between us this time. May we never meet again!"

He passed out through the shattered doorway, but she stood where he

had left her, motionless, almost unconscious. It was thus Nicholson

and the Colonel found her when, a moment later, they entered the room

by the verandah. Colonel Carmichael's passionate reproaches died away

as he saw her face.

"You must not stop here," he said. "You have frightened us all

terribly. The regiment has come and is attacking. There will be some

desperate fighting. We must all stick together."

She caught Nicholson's eyes resting on her. She thought she read pity

and sympathy in their steady depths, and wondered if he guessed what

she had tried to do. But he said nothing, and she followed the two men

blindly and indifferently back to the bungalow.

CHAPTER X

TRAVERS

They had no light. They talked in whispers, and now and again, when

the darkness grew too oppressive, they stretched out groping hands and

touched each other. They did this without explanation. Though none

complained or spoke of fear, each needed the consolation of the

other's company, and a touch was worth more than words. Mrs. Cary

alone needed nothing. She lay on the rough truckle-bed and slept. Thus

she had been for a week--a whole week of nerve-wrecking struggle

against odds which marked hope as vain. Bullets had beaten like rain

upon the walls about her, the moaning of wounded men on the other side

of the hastily constructed partition mingled unceasingly with the

cries of the ever-nearing enemy. And she had lain there quiet and

indifferent. Martins, the regiment's doctor, had looked in once at her

and had shaken his head. "In all probability she will never wake," he

had said. "Perhaps it is the kindest thing that could happen to her."

And then he had gone his way to those who needed him more.

Mrs. Berry knelt by the bedside. Her hands were folded. She had been

praying, but exhaustion had overcome her, and her quiet, peaceful

breathing contrasted strangely with the other sounds that filled the

bungalow. Mrs. Carmichael and Beatrice sat huddled close together,

listening. They could do nothing--not even help the wounded men who

lay so close to them. Everything was in pitch darkness, and no lights

were allowed. They could not go out and help in the stern, relentless

struggle that was going on about them. They bore the woman's harder

lot of waiting, inactive, powerless, fighting the harder battle

against uncertainty and all the horrors of the imagination.

"I am sorry the regiment has come," Mrs. Carmichael whispered. "There

is no doubt they will be massacred with the rest of us. What are a few

hundreds against thousands? It is a pity. They are such fine fellows."

Her rough, tired voice had a ring of unconquerable pride in it. She

was thinking of the gallant charge her husband's men had made only two

weeks before; how they had broken through the wall of the enemy, and,

cheering, had rushed to meet the besieged garrison. That had been a

moment of rejoicing, transitory and deceptive. Then the wall closed in

about them again, and they knew that they were trapped.

"Perhaps we can hold out till help comes," Beatrice said.

She tried not to be indifferent. For the sake of her companions she

would gladly have felt some desire for life, but in truth it had no

value for her. She could think of nothing but the evil she had done

and of the atonement that had been denied her. It was to no purpose

that she worked unceasingly for the wounded. The sense of

responsibility never left her. Each moan, each death-sigh brought the

same meaning to her ear: "You have helped to do this--this is your

work."

"No help will come," Mrs. Carmichael said, shaking her head at the

darkness. "When a whole province rises as this has done, it takes

months to organize a sufficient force, and we shan't last out many

days. I wonder what people in England are saying. How well I can see

them over their breakfast cups! Oh, dear, I mustn't think of breakfast

cups, or I shall lose my nerve." She laughed under her breath, and

there was a long silence.

Presently the door of the bungalow opened, letting in a stream of

moonlight. It was closed instantly, and soft footfalls came over the

boarded floor.

"Who is it?" Mrs. Carmichael whispered.

"I--Lois," was the answer. The new-comer crept down by Beatrice's side

and leaned her head against the warm shoulder. "I am so tired," she

said faintly. "I have been with Archibald. He has been moaning so. Mr.

Berry says he is afraid mortification has set in. It is terrible."

"Poor little woman!" Beatrice put her arm about the slender figure and

drew her closer. "Lay your head on my lap and sleep a little. You can

do no good just now."

"Thank you. I will, if you don't mind. You will wake me if anything

happens, won't you?"

"Yes, I promise." It gave Beatrice a sense of comfort to have Lois

near her. Very gently she passed her hand over the aching forehead,

and presently Lois fell into a sleep of absolute exhaustion.

By mutual consent, Mrs. Carmichael and Beatrice ceased to talk, but

when suddenly there was a movement close to them, and a dim light

flashed over the partition, they exchanged a glance of meaning.

"That is my husband," Mrs. Carmichael whispered. "Something is going

to happen. Listen!"

She was not wrong in her supposition. The Colonel had entered the next

room, followed by Nicholson and Saunders, and had closed the door

carefully after him. All three men carried lanterns. They glanced

instinctively at the wooden partition which divided them from the four

women, but Carmichael shook his head.

"It's all right," he said. "They must be fast asleep, poor souls.

Let's have a look at these fellows." He went over to a huddled-up

figure lying in the shadow. The corner of a military cloak had been

thrown over the face. He drew it on one side and then let it drop.

"Gone!" he said laconically. He passed on to the next. There were in

all three men ranged against the wall. Two of them were dead. "Martins

told me they couldn't last," Colonel Carmichael muttered. "It is

better for them. They are out of it a little sooner, that's all." The

third man was Travers. He lay on his back, his face turned slightly

toward the wall, his eyes closed. He seemed asleep. The Colonel nodded

somberly. "Another ten hours," he calculated.

He came back to the table, where the others waited, and drew out a

paper from his pocket.

"Give me your light a moment, Nicholson," he said.

No one spoke while he examined the list before him. All around them

was a curious hush--a new thing in their struggle, and one that seemed

surcharged with calamity. After a moment Colonel Carmichael looked up.

He was many years the senior of his companions, but just then there

seemed no difference in years between them. They were three wan,

haggard men, weakened with hunger, exhausted with sleepless watching.

That week had killed the youth in two of them.

"Geoffries has just given me this," Carmichael said. "It is a list of

our provisions. We have enough food, but there is no fresh water. The

enemy has cut off the supply. We could not expect them to do

otherwise." He waited, and then, as neither spoke, he went on: "I have

spoken with the others. You know, gentlemen, we can not go on another

twenty-four hours without water. We have made a good fight for it, but

this is the end. We must look the fact in the face."

"Surely they must know at headquarters what a state we are in--"

Saunders began.

The Colonel shrugged his shoulders.

"No doubt they know, but they can not help in time. This is not a

petty frontier business. It is something worse--a rising with a leader.

A rising with a leader is a lengthy business to tackle, and it

requires its victims. In this case we are the victims." He smiled

grimly. "We have only one thing left to do--make a dash for it while we

have the strength. You must know as well as I do that there is

scarcely anything worth calling a hope, but it's a more agreeable way

of dying than being starved out like rats and then butchered like

sheep. I know these devils." He glanced around the shadowy room with a

curious light in his eyes. "My best friend was murdered in this room,"

he added. "Personally, I prefer a fair fight in the open."

"When do you propose to make the start, Colonel?" Nicholson asked.

"Within an hour. The night favors us. The women must be kept in the

center as much as possible. I have given Geoffries special charge over

them. They will be told at the last moment. There is no use in

spoiling what little rest they have had." He drew out a pencil and

began to scribble a despatch on the back of an old letter. "I advise

you gentlemen to do likewise," he said. "Very often a piece of paper

gets through where a man can not, and it is our bounden duty to supply

the morning periodicals with as much news as possible."

For some minutes there was no sound save that of the pencils scrawling

the last messages of men with the seal of death already stamped upon

their foreheads. All three had forgotten Travers, and yet from the

moment they had begun to speak he had been awake and listening. He sat

up now, leaning upon his elbow.

"Nicholson!" he said faintly.

Nicholson turned and came to his side.

"Hullo!" he said. "Awake, are you? How are you?"

Travers made no immediate answer; he took Nicholson's hand in a

feverish clasp and drew him nearer.

"I am in great pain," he said. "You don't need to pretend. I know. The

fear of death has been on me all day. Just now I am not afraid. Is

there no hope?"

"You mean--for us? None."

Travers nodded.

"I heard you talking, but I wanted to make sure. It has all been my

fault--every bit of it. It's decent of you not to make me feel it

more. You are not to blame--her. You know I tempted her, I made her

help me. She isn't responsible. At any rate, she made a clean breast

of it--that's something to her credit. I didn't want to--I never meant

to. I am not the sort that repents. But this last week you have been

so decent, and Lois such a plucky little soul--she ought to hate

me--and perhaps she does--but she has done her best. Nicholson, are

you listening? Can you hear what I say? It's so damned hard for me to

talk."

"I can hear," Nicholson said kindly. "Don't worry about what can't be

helped." In spite of everything, he pitied the man, and his tone

showed it.

Travers lifted himself higher, clinging to the other's shoulder. His

voice began to come in rough, uneven jerks.

"But it can be helped--it must be helped! Don't you see--I came

between you and Lois purposely. From the first moment you spoke of her

I knew that you loved her--and I wanted her. I never gave your

message. I didn't dare. You are the sort of man a woman cares for--a

woman like Lois. I couldn't risk it. But now--well, I'm done, and

afterward she will be free--"

Nicholson drew back stiffly.

"You are talking nonsense," he said, in a colder tone. "No one wants

you to die--and in any case, you know very well we have no chance of

getting through this alive."

Travers seized his arm. His eyes shone with a painful excitement.

"Yes--yes!" he stammered. "You have a chance--a sure hope. I can save

you; I can--atone. That's what I want. Only you must help me. I am a

dying man. I want you to bring me to the Rajah--at once. Only five

minutes with him--that will be enough. Then he will let you go--he

must!"

Nicholson freed himself resolutely from the clinging hands.

"You exaggerate your power," he said, "and, besides, what you ask is

an impossibility."

He turned away, but Travers caught his arm and held him with a

frantic, desperate strength.

"Then if you will not help me--send Miss Cary to me," he pleaded. "I

must speak to her."

Nicholson looked down into the dying face with a new interest. He had

no suspicion of the burden with which Travers' soul was laden, and yet

he was conscious now that the matter was urgent and of an importance

which he could not estimate.

"I will tell her," he said. "Stay quiet a minute. We have no time to

lose."

Travers nodded and fell back on to his rough couch. His eyes closed

and he seemed to sleep, but as Beatrice knelt down by his side he

roused himself and looked at her with the intensity of a man who has

gathered his last strength for a last great purpose.

"I am dying," he whispered thickly; "I know it and I don't care. I am

past caring. But before I die I want to atone; I want, if I can, to

save Lois. I care for her in my poor way, and I would like her to be

happy. Are you listening?"

"I am listening," Beatrice answered gravely. "Do you think I could

close my ears when you speak of atonement?"

He clutched her hand.

"You would be glad to atone for all the mischief we have done?"

"I would give my life."

"Is the Colonel there? I can't see clearly. Colonel, I want you to

hear what I have to say."

Colonel Carmichael turned.

"This is no time," he said sternly, "and it is too late for atonement.

Our account with this world is closed."

"It need not be. Colonel--in the name of those whose lives lie in your

hands, I beg of you to listen to me."

There was a moment's hesitating silence. Travers' glazed eyes were

fixed on the elder man's face with a hypnotizing power. The Colonel

drew nearer--reluctantly knelt down.

"Be quick then!" he said.

Travers nodded. His head was thrown back against Beatrice's shoulder.

With fumbling, trembling fingers he drew a plain gold ring from his

pocket and thrust it into the Colonel's hand.

"Look at that!" he whispered. "Look at the inscription."

Carmichael turned to the feeble light. No one spoke or moved. They

watched him and waited with a reasonless, breathless suspense.

"My God!" he whispered, "How did you come by this?"

Travers drew himself upright. The shadows of death were banished in

that last moment; his voice was clear and steady as he answered.

"Listen," he said. "I will tell you--and then act before it is too

late!"

CHAPTER XI

IN THE HOUR OF NEED

Nehal Singh pulled aside the curtains over the window and stepped out

on to the balcony. The air in the great silent room behind him stifled

him, and even the night breeze, as it touched his cheeks, seemed to

burn with fever. He stood there motionless, his arms folded, gazing

fixedly into the half-darkness. A pale, watery moonlight cast an

unearthly shimmer over the shadowy world before him, brightened every

here and there by the will-o'-the-wisp fire points which marked the

presence of the camped thousands waiting silently for his word. Only

one spot--it seemed like a black stain--remained in absolute gloom,

and it was thither the Rajah's eyes were turned. Every night he had

come to the same place to watch it. Every night he had tortured

himself with the thought of all it contained.

For he knew now, with the clear certainty of a man who has searched

down to the bottom of his soul, that in that silent area his whole

life, his one hope of happiness was bound up, and waited, with those

who were fighting stubbornly, heroically, against the end--its

destruction beneath his own sword. He was fighting against himself.

With his own hands he was tearing down that which seemed an

inseparable, incorporate part of himself. Anger and contempt were

dead. In their place the old love had rekindled and grown brighter

before the sight of a courage, dignified and silent, which had held

back the tide of furious fanaticism and thwarted his own despair. He

had seen, with eyes which burned with an indescribable emotion, a

regiment of wearied, weakened men, led by a man he had once despised,

burst through the densest squares of his own soldiers; he had heard

their cheers as they had clasped hands with the defenders; he had

looked aghast into his own heart, afire with admiration, aching with a

strange, broken-hearted gratitude to God who had made such men. It was

in vain that, lashing himself with the knowledge of his own weakness

and of his disloyalty to those who followed him, he had flung himself

against the defenses of the little garrison.

Day after day they drove him back, fighting hand to hand in the

earthworks they had thrown up in a few hours of miraculous labor. He

fought against them like a man possessed of an unquenchable hatred;

but at night, when he was at last alone, he had slipped out on to his

balcony and held out his hands toward them in an unspeakable wordless

greeting. Once more they had become for him the world's Great People,

the giants of his boyhood's imagination, the heroes of his man's

ideal. At the point of the sword they had proved the truth of

Nicholson's proud boast, and hour by hour the man who had turned from

them in a moment of bitter disillusion saw the temple he had once

built to their honor rise from its ashes in new and greater splendor.

Thus two weeks had passed, and to-night was to see the end. Nehal knew

that, brave though they were, they could do no more. They had no

water, and his forces hugged them in on every side. One last attack

and it would be over--Marut would be cleared from the enemy, his

victory complete. His victory! It was his own ruin he was preparing,

the certain destruction of that which seemed linked invisibly but

surely to his own fate. And, knowing that, he knew also that there was

no turning back for him, no retreat. His word was given. His people,

the people who claimed him by the right of blood, clamored for him to

lead them as he had sworn. It made no difference if on the path he had

chosen he trampled on every hope, every wish, every rooted instinct.

There was no turning back. He knew it--the knowledge that his own

words bound him came to him with pitiless finality as he stood there

watching the silent, lightless stretch which was soon to be the scene

of a last tragic struggle; and if indeed there are such things as

tears of blood, they rose to his eyes now.

With lips compressed in an agony he could neither analyze nor conquer,

he turned slowly back into the dimly lighted room. Two torches burned

on either side of the throne and threw unsteady shadows among the

glittering pillars. They lit up his face and revealed it as that of a

man who has cast his youth behind him for ever. Only a few months had

passed since he had sat there with Travers in the full noon of his

hope and enthusiasm. He remembered the scene with a clearness which

was a fresh torture. The hopes that had been built up in that hour lay

shattered, the woman for whom they had been built was lost. He thought

of her now as he always thought of her, as he knew he would think of

her to the end. For this love, save that it had grown and deepened

into a wider understanding, had remained unchanged. As there had been

cowards and tricksters among his heroes, so in that one woman evil and

good had stood side by side and fought out their battle. And the good

had won--had won because he alone of all men had believed in it. He

believed in it still--in the same measure as he had learned to love

her--with a deeper understanding of temptation and failure. It was the

one triumph in the midst of seeming ruin, the one firm rock in the

raging torrent of his fate, beaten as it was between the contending

streams of desire and duty. She was indeed lost to him, but not as in

the first hour of his shaken trust. He had regained his memory of her

as a good woman, striving upward and onward; and already he had

invested her with the glory of those whom death has already claimed

from us.

Nehal Singh started from his painful reverie, conscious that some one

had entered the room and was watching him. He turned and saw his chief

captain standing respectfully before him, and, though it was a man he

liked and trusted, it seemed to him that the gaunt, soldierly figure

had taken on the form of an ugly, threatening destiny.

"All is ready, Great Prince," the native said, salaaming. "Every man

is at his post. We do but await thy orders."

Nehal did not answer. His hands clasped and unclasped themselves in

the last agony of hesitation. The moment had come, the inevitable and

irretrievable moment which had loomed so long upon his horizon. Even

now he hardly knew what it was to bring him. The forces warring in his

blood were locked in a death struggle. At last he nodded and his lips

moved.

"It is well. In half an hour--I will come to them. In half an

hour--the attack will begin."

"Sahib--is it good to wait? The dawn cometh, and with the dawn--"

Nehal Singh lifted his hand peremptorily.

"In half an hour," he repeated.

The man salaamed and was gone. Nehal Singh stood there like a pillar

of stone. It was over. In half an hour! And yet, at the bottom of his

heart, he knew that he had delayed--purposely, but to no end but his

own increased suffering. With a sigh of impatience he turned, and in

the same instant became once more aware that he was not alone.

For a moment he perceived nothing save the shadows and the unsteady

flickering of the yellow torchlight. Then his vision cleared and he

saw and understood, and an exclamation burst from his horrified lips.

It was a woman who stood out against the darkness, her body clothed in

rags, the hair, grey and thin, hanging unkempt about her shoulders,

the face turned to his that of some being risen from a tomb. There

seemed to be no flesh upon the high cheek-bones nor upon the hands

that were stretched toward him; only the eyes were alive with an

unquenchable fire which burned upon him with a power that was

unearthly. She staggered a few steps and then sank slowly to his feet,

her hands still outstretched. He knelt down and supported the sinking

head upon his shoulder.

"Who art thou?" he whispered in Hindustani. "Where hast thou come

from? Tell me thy history."

A look of intense pain passed over her features. Slowly and with a

great effort her lips parted.

"I am English--let me speak in English. I have only a few minutes--I

am dying."

He looked about him, seeking something with which to moisten her dry

lips, but she clung to him with an incredible strength.

"No, no, I must speak with you. Up to now I have lived in an awful

nightmare--amidst ghastly phantoms who pursued and tortured me. But

when I heard your voice--when I heard you give that order, I awoke.

The dreams vanished, I heard and understood--and remembered!" She drew

herself upright and, for a moment spoke with a penetrating clearness.

"Not in half an hour--never! Withdraw that order! If you go against

them you are accursed. Lay down your arms! You must--you know you

must! You dare not--" She clung to his arm and her eyes seemed to burn

their way into his very soul. "I tell you--to turn traitor is to

inherit an endless hell--"

"A traitor!" he echoed. Something clutched at his heart, a sort of

numb suspense which became electrified as he saw a new expression

flash into her face.

"Yes, a traitor!" she whispered. "That was what I was. I was

English--yes, English in spite of all, but in my bitterness I turned

from my people. I let myself be taken alive. I would not share the

fate of those who had once been dear to me. My whole life has been the

punishment. They tortured me and then came the dreams--the awful,

hideous dreams. I was always looking for you, always calling for you.

And they laughed and mocked at me. Only one man did not laugh--" her

voice grew doubtful and hesitating, as though she were groping in the

shadows of her memory. "He did not laugh. He promised to help me but

he never came again--and I died--yes, I died--but I saw your face, I

heard your voice--and I came back from death--to save you!" Once more

her vision cleared and her voice grew steadier. "Go back to them! They

are your friends. If you do not go, you will break your heart--as mine

is broken. Swear to me--you must, because--"

He bent closer to her to catch every sound that fell from her lips.

His pulses were beating with a suffocating violence. Somewhere a veil

was lifting. It was as if the sunlight were at last breaking through a

mist of strange dreams, strange longings, strange forebodings. The

confused voices that had called to him throughout his life grew

clearer.

"Because--?" he whispered.

But she did not answer. Her head was thrown back. Her open eyes were

fixed intently on his face. Suddenly she smiled. It was a smile that

chilled his blood with its hideous distortion. And yet behind it

lurked the possibility of a long-lost beauty and sweetness.

"Steven!" she whispered. "Steven!"

Closer and closer she drew his face to hers. Her icy lips rested on

his cheek. Pity and a strange, as yet unformed, foreboding made him

accept that dying caress and speak to her with an urgent, pleading

gentleness.

"You have something to tell me," he murmured, "something I must know.

Tell me before it is too late."

But her eyes had closed and she did not answer him.

"Rouse yourself!" he insisted. "Rouse yourself!" It seemed to him that

she smiled. Her face had undergone a change. It was younger, and in

the flickering light his imagination brightened it with the glories

whose dim traces still touched the haggard, emaciated features. One

last time her eyes opened and she looked at him. The frenzy of despair

was gone. He felt that she was looking beyond him to a future he could

not see.

"Go back!" she whispered. "Go back!"

He pressed her to him, seeking to pour something of his own seething

vitality into her dying frame. With her life the threads of his fate

seemed to be slipping through his fingers.

"Help me!" he implored. "Do not leave me!"

But he knew that she would never answer. She lay heavy in his arms,

and the hand that clasped his relaxed and fell with a soft thud upon

the marble. He rose to his feet and stood looking down upon her. It

was not the first time he had seen death. In these last weeks he had

met it in all its most hideous, most revolting forms; but none had

moved him, awed him as this did. He knew that she had once been

beautiful. Who had made her suffer till only a shadow of that beauty

remained? What had she endured? Who was she? What did she know of him?

Why did she call him by a name which rang in his ears with a vague

familiarity? What was it in her poor dead face which stirred in him a

memory which had no date nor place in his life?

Outside he heard the uneasy stirring of the thousands who awaited him.

He looked up and through the open windows, saw the camp-fires and that

one dark spot which was to be swept clear of all but death. What had

she said? "Go back! Lay down your arms! You must--you know you must!

To turn traitor is to inherit an endless hell!" A traitor? A traitor

to whom--to what? To some blind instinct that had called him in those

English voices, that had beaten out an answering cry of thankfulness

from his heart when their cheers proclaimed his own defeat?

A soft step roused him from his troubled thoughts. He looked up and

saw a servant standing in the curtained doorway. The man's eyes were

fixed on the outstretched figure at Nehal's feet, and there was an

expression on the dark face so full of fear and horror that the Rajah

involuntarily drew back.

"Who was this woman?" he demanded. "Whence comes she?"

"Lord Sahib, she was a mad-woman whom the Lord Behar Singh kept out of

mercy. She must have escaped her prison. More I know not."

The man was trembling as though in the shadows there lurked a hidden

threatening danger, and Nehal turned aside with a gesture of desperate

impatience.

"Why hast thou come before the time?" he asked.

"Lord Sahib, outside there are two English prisoners. They demand to

be brought before thee. What is thy will?"

"Bring them hither."

Nehal Singh stood where the bowing servant left him, at the side of

the poor dead woman, his hands crossed upon his sword-hilt, his eyes

fixed on the parted curtains. There he waited, motionless, passive, as

a man waits who knows that he has become the tool of Destiny.

A moment later, Beatrice stood before him.

CHAPTER XII

HIS OWN PEOPLE

She was not alone, but in that first moment he saw nothing but her

face. It seemed to him that the whole world was blotted out and that

only she remained, grave, fearless, supreme in her wan beauty, a

tragic figure glorified by a light of unconquerable resolution. He

looked at her but he did not greet her; no muscle of his set and ashy

features betrayed the thrill of passionate recognition which had

passed like a line of fire through his veins. To move was to awake

from a dream to a hideous, terrible reality.

She came slowly toward him. The thin wrap about her head slipped back

and he saw the light flash on to the fair disheveled hair. His eyes

were dazzled, but it seemed to him that there were grey threads where

once had been untarnished gold. Yet he could not and would not speak,

and she came on till she stood opposite him, the dead woman lying

there between them. Then for the first time she lowered her eyes and

he awoke with a start of agonizing pain.

"Why have you come?" he said. "Have you come to plead again? Have you

come to torture me again? Was not that once enough? In a few minutes I

shall sweep your people to destruction. Shall I save you?--is that

what you have come to tell me?"

He waited for her answer, his teeth clenched, his brows knitted in the

old terrible struggle. All his energy, all his determination sank

paralyzed before her and before his love, and yet he knew he must go

on--go on with the destruction of himself, of her, of all that was

dearest to him.

She knelt down and touched the dead face with her white hand, closing

the glazed, staring eyes with a curious tenderness and pity. There was

no surprise or horror in her expression as she at last rose and faced

him--rather a mysterious knowledge which held him bound in wordless

expectation.

"I have come to tell you that woman's history, Steven Caruthers," she

said. "I have not come to plead with you but to tell you the truth--to

lay before you the two paths between which you must choose once and

for all. Will you listen to me?"

"Beatrice!" he stammered. "Why have you given me a name which is not

mine--which _she_ gave me with her last breath? What do you know that

you have risked your life--"

"It was no risk," she said. "My life was forfeited and it was our last

hope. Oh, if I can turn you from all this ruin, then I shall have

atoned for the evil I have done you!"

The note of mingled entreaty, despair and hope stirred him to the

depths of his being, but he made no response. He could only point to

the white face and repeat the question which had beaten in pitiless

reiteration against his tortured brain.

"Who was she?"

"She was your mother."

"And I--?"

It was not Beatrice who this time answered. A figure stepped forward

out of the shadows and faced the Rajah. It was Carmichael, pale,

deeply moved, but erect and steadfast. His eyes were fixed on Nehal's

features with a curious, hungry eagerness which changed as he spoke

into a growing recognition.

"Let me tell you," he said. "I will be brief, for every minute is

precious and full of danger for us all. This poor woman was Margaret

Caruthers, the wife of my dearest friend, and your mother. Until an

hour ago I believed that she had been butchered with her husband and

with all those others who paid the penalty of one man's sin. No doubt

you know why your supposed father, Behar Singh, rose against us?"

"His honor--his wife had been stolen from him by a treacherous

Englishman," Nehal answered hoarsely.

"Yes, by Stafford, John Stafford's father. The issue of that act of

infidelity was a child, Lois, who afterward was adopted by Caruthers,

partly out of friendship for Stafford, partly because he had no

children of his own. So much, at least, I surmise. I surmise, too,

that that adoption cost him his wife's love and trust. Perhaps,

ignorant of the child's real parentage, she believed the worst,

perhaps there were other causes--be it as it may, in the hour of

catastrophe she refused to share the general fate. She chose to throw

herself upon the mercy of her mother's people."

"Her mother's people!" Nehal echoed blankly.

"There was native blood in her veins. It was on that account that

Behar Singh spared her. She bitterly learned to regret her change of

allegiance. She was kept close prisoner, and six months after the

murder of her husband she bore him a son--you--Steven Caruthers. Behar

Singh, himself without an heir, took the child from her, and from that

hour the unfortunate woman became insane. Long years she was kept a

secret and wretched captive, and then one day she escaped, and in her

wanderings met a man--an Englishman who was then your friend."

"Travers!" Nehal exclaimed.

"Yes, Travers. By means of bribes and threats he obtained her whole

history, partly from her own lips, partly from her gaolers. But he

told no one of his discovery."

"Why not? How dared he keep silence?"

"It is very simple. He wished to marry my ward, Lois Caruthers, and he

wished to have her money. As I have said, Caruthers had adopted her

when her mother, the Reni Ona, returned to her own people, and had

made her his heir in the case that he should have no children of his

own. Had your existence been known Lois would have been penniless.

Travers knew this and kept his secret from every one save Stafford."

"Why did he tell Stafford?"

"He had to. Stafford and Lois loved each other--with a love which was

all too natural and explicable in the light of our present knowledge.

It was necessary that he should be made aware that marriage between

them was impossible--that they were, in fact, the children of the same

father."

"Stafford kept silence--"

"He had promised. And, moreover, he believed it kinder to hide the

truth from Lois. Only at the last he determined to speak at all costs.

But it was too late. You know--he was murdered on the steps of

Travers' house."

Nehal Singh nodded. An even deadlier pallor crept over his features.

"I know," he said. "It was Behar Singh's last vengeance. God knows, my

hands are clean."

"That I know. You are your father's son."

"And the proof of all this?"

"This ring. Take it. It was your mother's. Travers gave it to me when

he made his confession. He took it from the poor mad woman at their

first meeting. Look at the inscription. It bears your mother's and

father's names."

"And Travers--?" The Rajah lifted his hand in a stern, threatening

gesture.

"--is dead," was the grave answer. "He died an hour ago, in his wife's

arms."

For a moment a profound hush hung over the great, dimly lighted hall.

The Rajah knelt down by his mother's side and gently replaced the ring

upon the thin lifeless finger.

"She called herself a traitor," he said, half to himself. "A traitor

to whom--to what?"

"To the strong white blood that was in her veins. In her bitterness at

the real or imagined wrongs that had been done her, she turned away

from the people to whom she belonged, to whom she was bound by all the

ties of love and upbringing. She disobeyed the voice of her instinct.

And you, her son, you, too, have been bitter; you, too, must listen to

the call of the two races to whom you are linked. Whom will you obey?

You stand at the cross-ways where you must choose--where we must

either part or join hands for good and all. The road back to us is

open, is still open. That is the message of peace which we have risked

our lives to bring you. Rajah, Steven Caruthers--for so I now call

you--I plead with you--I may plead with you, for in this hour at least

I can not look upon you as an adversary, but as the son of this

unfortunate woman--above all, of my friend. I plead with you the more

because I owe you years of friendship. I am not the least to blame

that you fell away from us in resentment and bitterness. I could have

shielded you from the inevitable pitfalls that beset your path,

but--God forgive me!--my prejudice blinded me and I held back. It was

I who carried you away from the palace on that night when you were

left, a helpless child, to the mercy of Behar Singh's enemies. Then I

had pity enough--but years after I held back the hand of friendship

which I might have offered you. Well, I am punished, twice punished,

for my prejudice and blindness. Is it too late for me to make my

reparation?"

He held out his hand and there was a silence of tense expectation. The

Rajah's head was bowed. He did not seem to see the Colonel's movement.

"You can not think I am pleading with you to save our lives,"

Carmichael went on with grave dignity. "We have fought for them. An

hour ago we were prepared to lay them down without complaint. We are

not the less prepared now. It is not for us I am speaking, but for

you. Your day as Rajah is over--your claim to rule in India void. I

offer you instead your father's name, your father's people, your

father's heritage. The other road--well, you have trodden it, you know

it. You must choose. Your mother chose--twenty-five years ago, in the

same hour of crisis, blinded by the same bitterness. She chose to tear

the bonds of love and duty; she ignored the true voice of her

instinct. It broke her heart. The same crisis stands to-night before

you, her son. What will you do--Steven Caruthers?"

The Rajah lifted his head. The struggle was written in his dark,

sunken eyes and on the compressed lips.

"I can not desert them," he said wearily. "They trust me--my people

trust me."

"Who are your people?" was the swift question. "You must choose."

Again the same silence, the same waiting while the hand of fate seemed

to hover above them in the darkness. Beatrice left her place at the

dead woman's side. With a firm, proud step she came to the Rajah and

took his hand in both her own. He started at her touch, and for a long

minute his gaze seemed to sink itself in hers, but she never wavered.

When she spoke an immeasurable tenderness rang in her voice, a

boundless understanding and sympathy.

"Steven--have you forgotten? Long ago in the old temple? Don't you

remember what you told me then--how you loved and admired us? You

called us the world's Great People, and when you spoke of our heroes

there was something in your voice which thrilled me. Was it only your

books, was it your teachers--Behar Singh--who made you feel as you

did? When you came among us, what led you? The face of a woman? Was it

only that? Or was it something more?--the call of a great, wonderful

instinct?"

His eyes were riveted on her face, but for that moment he did not see

her. He did not see the tears that glistened on her cheeks. He was

looking straight through the long vista of the past, right back to the

first hours of his memory, when he had wandered alone amidst strange

faces, a ruler in a palace which had never ceased to be his prison, an

exile whose home lay only in strange, fantastic dreams. And in this

final moment he seemed to stand high above the past, and ever swifter

and surer to trace through every incident of his life one same guiding

power. Through the snares of Behar Singh's hate-filled temptations it

had led onward; it had borne him to the temple--to the feet of the

woman he was to love through every torture of bitter deception; it had

swept him on a wave of impulse beyond his prison walls out into a

world which he at last hailed as his; and now, in the hour of fiercest

despair, of deepest loss, it was drawing him surely and swiftly

homeward. The past vanished. He saw again the face lifted to his--he

saw the tears--the Colonel's hand outstretched, waiting to clasp his

own. He heard the title that she gave him as a man hears a

long-forgotten watchword.

"You are English, Steven. You are English--you belong to us!"

He unfastened the sword at his side. For a moment he held it as though

in farewell. But there was no grief on his face as he laid the jeweled

weapon in the Colonel's hand.

"I have chosen," he said. "I can not go against my people."

CHAPTER XIII

ENVOI

With the surrender of one man the great Marut rising came to an end.

It had been built up by him and on him, and with him it collapsed. As

the news reached the armed thousands encamped about the ruined

Station, consternation fell upon them. There was no attempt at

organization or resistance. They believed simply that Heaven had

turned against them and Vishnu joined hands with the Englishman, and

they waited to hear no more. What had seemed an overwhelming force

melted away as though it had been a shadow, and in the jungle,

slinking along the lightless highways, or huddling in the lonely

hovels outside Marut, the remnant of Behar Singh's great army hid from

the hand of the destroyer. They had followed their god, and their god

had deserted them. All hope was lost, and with the fatalism of their

race they flung their weapons from them as they fled.

Pending the decision of the Government, Nehal Singh, now Steven

Caruthers, was held prisoner in the club-house he had built two years

before. Part of the returned regiment was encamped about the

surrounding gardens, in order to prevent all attempt at rescue, but

the precaution was a mere formality. Visitors came constantly. There

was not a man in all the Station who was not anxious to help bury the

past and to hold out the hand of friendship to one whom at the bottom

of their hearts they had once wronged and slighted. Among them

Carmichael and Nicholson were the chief. They passed many hours of

each day with him, and worked steadily and enthusiastically for his

pardon and release. He was touched and grateful, but beneath his

gratitude there still lurked the demon of unrest. She had not

come--the one being for whom he waited--she had sent no word. He knew

that her mother lay dying--above all things he knew that on the great

day of the attack she had stood resolutely between him and death--but

nothing, no explanation or assurance, calmed the hidden trouble of his

mind. After all, it had been pity--or remorse--not love.

Thus three weeks passed. The Colonel had spent the day with him

discussing the future, arranging for the transference of Lois' fortune

into his unwilling hands, and now, toward nightfall, he was once more

alone, wearied in body and soul. For the first time since his

surrender his sense of quiet and release from an immense burden was

gone. He was still alone. He felt now that he would always be alone,

for there was but one who could fill the blank in his life. And she

had not come. He did not and could not blame her. Who was he that a

woman should join her lot to his? An Englishman truly, but one over

whose birth and youth there hung a shadow, perhaps a curse such as had

darkened his mother's life and the life of all those in whose veins

there flows an alien blood. She must not even think that any link from

the past bound her. She must be free--quite free to choose. Wearily he

seated himself at his table and took his pen.

"You have been the great guiding light of my life," he wrote to her.

"You will always be, because I can not learn to forget. But for you it

would be easier and better to forget. You will be happier--" And then

he heard the door open, and she stood before him. The words that he

had meant to write rushed to his lips, but no further. Moved by a

common impulse, they advanced to meet each other, and the next moment

she was in his arms. Neither spoke. It seemed as though, once face to

face, there could be no doubts, no misunderstandings between them.

Their love was wordless, but it had spoken in a silence more eloquent,

more complete than words could ever have been.

"I could not come before," she said, after a little. "I could not

leave her. She was only at peace when I held her hand. She was very

happy at the last--now it is all over."

He held her closer to him, and she clung to him, not sadly or wearily,

but like a strong woman who had fought and won the thing she fought

for.

"It was Fate after all," he said, under his breath. "She meant us for

each other."

She looked up at him. Though suffering, physical and mental, had drawn

its ineffaceable lines upon her face, it had also added to her beauty

the charm of strength and experience.

"I knew long ago that it was Fate," she answered. "Do you remember

that first evening? You told me that people do not drift aimlessly

into each other's lives. Even then, against my will, I felt that it

was true. Afterward I was sure. I had entered into your life in a

moment of frivolous recklessness, but you had entered into mine with

another purpose, and I could not rid myself of you. Your hold upon me

was strong. It grew stronger, do what I would, and the farce became

deadly earnest."

"For me it was always deadly earnest," he said. "When I first saw you

standing before the idol, it was as though a wall which had surrounded

my life had been overthrown, and that you had come to be my guide and

comrade in a new and unknown world."

"And then I failed you."

His eyes met hers thoughtfully.

"Did you? Now I look back, I am not sure. I had to believe you when

you said you had deceived me and played with me. I had to force myself

to despise you. Yet, when you confronted me in the bungalow, I felt

suddenly that you needed to explain nothing. I understood."

"Did you understand that I had only deceived myself? I told myself

that it was a farce played at your expense. But--Heaven knows--I

believe it ceased to be a farce from the first hour I saw you. You

believed in me so. No one had believed in me before--I had never

believed in myself or in man, or in God, either. But I had to believe

in you, and afterward--the rest came." She drew herself upright and

looked him full in the dark eyes. "Steven, do you trust me?" He

nodded. "As you did on that day when you told me that you owed me all

that you were and ever would be?"

"As then, Beatrice."

She smiled gravely.

"You do right to trust me. You have made me worthy of your trust."

He put his arm about her shoulder, and led her gently on to the

verandah. The night had fallen dark and starless. Through the black

veil they saw the gleam of bivouac fires and heard the voices of men

calling to one another, and the clatter of piled arms. They remained

silent, after the storm and stress of the past, content to be together

and at peace. They knew that the long night was over and that the dawn

had broken.

When the Colonel entered they did not hear him, and without speaking

he turned back and closed the door after him. In his hand he held a

telegram ordering the deposition of Nehal Singh, Rajah of Marut, and

the recognition, pardon and release of one Steven Caruthers,

Englishman. But he crept away with the long-hoped-for message.

"Time enough," he thought. "They are happy."

And if beneath his heartfelt rejoicing there lurked the shadow of

bitterness, who shall blame him? There was one dearer to him than his

own child could have been, for whose wounded heart there seemed as yet

no balsam. And yet, unknown to him, for her also the dawn was

breaking. For even as he crept away with knitted brows, sharing her

burden with her by the power of love and sympathy, she held in her

hands the first herald of a happier future.

"What you have told me I accept--for now," Adam Nicholson had written.

"You are wise to travel with the Carmichaels. It will do you good. I,

who was prepared to wait my whole life for you, can have patience for

a little longer. I know that you suffer and as yet I may not help you.

Your pride separates us, but your pride is a little thing compared to

my love. What is your birth or parentage to me? You say it would

overshadow my whole life, darken my career? It might try. That would

be one thing more to fight against. We have come to India to sweep

away its prejudices; let us first sweep away our own. We have come to

bring freedom; let us first make ourselves free. It will be a good

battle, but it will not darken my life, Lois. Do you think opposition

and struggle could darken my life? Surely you know me better. Do but

stand at my side, and there will be no darkness. I am not a boy. I am

a man who sees before him long years of labor, and who needs the one

woman who can help him. Is our cathedral forgotten? I do not believe

it. You are not the woman to forget. The time is not far off when we

will crown our cathedral hand in hand. Only when your love dies can

the barrier between us become insurmountable. If your love lives,

then, as surely as there is a God in Heaven, I will come and fetch

you, Lois--my wife."

And the tears that filled her eyes as she read the boldly written

words were no longer the tears of grief. Her love for him had been the

rock upon which her life was built. It was imperishable. She knew thus

that she would not have long to wait until his coming.

THE END