tion
returned. She remembered their cruel estrangement. She remembered their
child. And that last thought, entering like an electric force, gave her
strength. Surely it was morning, and he would be needing her! Had not
Peter said he would want her in the morning?

With a sharp effort she raised herself; she must go to him.

The next moment a sharp breath of amazement escaped her. Where was she?
The strange twilight stretched up above her into infinite shadow. Before
her was a broken archway through which vaguely she saw the heavy foliage
of trees. Behind her she yet heard the splash and gurgle of water, the
croaking of frogs. And near at hand some tiny creature scratched and
scuffled among loose stones.

She sat staring about her, doubting the evidence of her senses,
marvelling if it could all be a dream. For she recognized the place. It
was the ruined temple of Khanmulla in which she sat. There were the
crumbling steps on which she had stood with Everard on the night that he
had mercilessly claimed her love, had taken her in his arms and said
that it was Kismet.

It was then that like a dagger-thrust the realization of his loss went
through her. It was then that she first tasted the hopeless anguish of
loneliness that awaited her, saw the long, long desert track stretching
out before her, leading she knew not whither. She bowed her head upon
her arms and sat crushed, unconscious of all beside....

It must have been some time later that there fell a soft step beside
her; a veiled figure, bent and slow of movement, stooped over her.

"_Mem-sahib_!" a low voice said.

She looked up, startled and wondering. "Hanani!" she said.

"Yes, it is Hanani." The woman's husky whisper came reassuringly in
answer. "Have no fear, _mem-sahib!_ You are safe here."

"What--happened?" questioned Stella, still half-doubting the evidence of
her senses. "Where--where is my baby?"

Hanani knelt down by her side. "_Mem-sahib_," she said very gently, "the
_baba_ sleeps--in the keeping of God."

It was tenderly spoken, so tenderly that--it came to her afterwards--she
received the news with no sense of shock. She even felt as if she must
have somehow known it before. In the utter greyness of her desert--she
had walked alone.

"He is dead?" she said.

"Not dead, _mem-sahib_," corrected the _ayah_ gently. She paused a
moment, then in the same hushed voice that was scarcely more than a
whisper: "He--passed, _mem-sahib_, in these arms,