voice spoke to her,
a hand touched her, and her fear was stayed.

"Stella!" the voice said, and steady fingers came up out of the darkness
and closed upon her arm.

Her heart gave one great leap within her, and was still. She did not
speak in answer, for she could not. She could only sit in the darkness
and wait. If it were a dream, it would pass--ah, so swiftly! If it were
reality, surely, surely he would speak again!

He spoke--softly through the silence. "I don't want to startle you. Are
you startled? I've put out the lamp. You are not afraid?"

Her voice came back to her; her heart jerked on, beating strangely,
spasmodically, like a maimed thing. "Am I awake?" she said. "Is
it--really--you?"

"Yes," he said. "Can you listen to me a moment? You won't be afraid?"

She quivered at the repeated question. "Everard--no!"

He was silent then, as if he did not know how to continue. And she,
finding her strength, leaned to him in the darkness, feeling for him,
still hardly believing that it was not a dream.

He took her wandering hand and held it imprisoned. The firmness of his
grasp reassured her, but it came to her that his hands were cold; and
she wondered.

"I have something to say to you," he said.

She sat quite still in his hold, but it frightened her. "Where are you?"
she whispered.

"I am just--kneeling by your side," he said. "Don't tremble--or be
afraid! There is nothing to frighten you. Stella," his voice came almost
in a whisper. "Hanani--the _ayah_--told you something in the ruined
temple at Khanmulla. Can you remember what it was?"

"Ah!" she said. "Do you mean about--Ralph Dacre?"

"I do mean that," he said. "I don't know if you actually believed it.
It may have sounded--fantastic. But--it was true."

"Ah!" she said again. And then she knew why he had turned out the lamp.
It was that he might not see her face when he told her--or she his.

He went on; his hold upon her had tightened, but she knew that he was
unconscious of it. It was as if he clung to her in anguish--though she
heard no sign of suffering in his low voice. "I have done the utmost to
keep the truth from you--but Fate has been against me all through. I
sent him away from you in the first place because I heard--too
late--that he had a wife in England. I married you because--" he paused
momentarily--"ah well, that doesn't come into the story," he said. "I
married you, believing you free. Then came Bernard, and told me that the