ankly a Goth and flash my electric torch into holes
and corners," Lance announced as the other two came up. "I bar being
intimidated by ghosts."

"We're not going to be intimidated either," said Roy, addressing himself
to Thea. "And I guarantee not to let Aruna be spirited away."

Vincent shot a look at his wife. "Don't wander too far," said he.

"And don't hang about too long," she added. "It'll be cold going home."

Though he was standing close to her, she could say no more. But, under
cover of the dusk, her hand found his and closed on it hard.

The characteristic impulse heartened him amazingly, as he followed Aruna
down the ghostly stairway, through marble cloisters into the hanging
garden, misted with moonlight, fragrant with orange trees.

And now there was more than Thea's hand-clasp to uphold him. Gradually
there dawned on him a faint yet sure intimation of his mother's
presence, of her tenderly approving love--dim to his brain, yet as
sensible to his spirit as light and warmth to his body.

It did not last many moments; but--as in all contact with her--the clear
after-certainty remained....

Exactly what he intended to say he did not know even now. To speak the
cruel truth, yet by some means to soften the edge of it, seemed almost
impossible. But nerved by this vivid, exalted sense of her nearness, the
right moment, the right words could be trusted to come of themselves....

And Aruna, walking beside him in a hushed expectancy, was remembering
that other night, so strangely far away, when they had walked alone
under the same moon, and assurance of his love had so possessed her,
that she had very nearly broken her little chiragh. And to-night--how
different! Her very love for him, though the same, was not quite the
same. It seemed to depend not at all on nearness or response. Starved of
both, it had grown not less, but more.

From a primitive passion it had become a rarefied emotional atmosphere
in which she lived and moved. And this garden of eerie lights and
shadows was saturated with it; thronged, to her fancy, with ghosts of
dead passions and intrigues, of dead Queens, in whom the twin flames of
love and courage could be quenched only by flames of the funeral pyre.
Their blood ran in her veins--and in his too. _That_ closeness of
belonging none could snatch from her. About the other, she was growing
woefully uncertain, as day followed day, and still no word. Was there
trouble after all! Would he s