sed to her.

"If you heard tongues gossiping out of jealousy of the woman, you
loved; if you found her in a situation which could not easily be
explained; if she, hurt, wounded, had run like a little child to
another to beg for balm for her wound,--tell me, would you forgive her?
Tell me!"

There was a strange insistency in the repeated question and a deep
anxiety in his eyes, which passed as Kelham laughed.

It was the genuine, honest laugh of the man who loves and is willing to
shoulder the burdens, great and small, which love brings in her train.

"You say there is no 'have-been' in love, Carden. I say there is no
question of forgiveness in love. You love, and there is no room
anywhere for anything else but love."

A great silence fell; the silence of two strong men who for one moment
had broken through the barbed-wire of convention, to be their natural
selves; the silence heralding the birth of a new day.

There was no sound, as the hands of Fate pointed to the full hour.

It all happened and was over even as the hour struck.

There was a shout from both men as the tawny shape leapt out of the
night through the opening of the tent; the crashing report of Ben
Kelham's revolver as he fired; the coughing of the wounded lioness as,
spitting blood, she recoiled to spring; a ringing shout from Hugh
Carden Ali as he flung himself in front of his friend just as he fired,
and the great brute, with a mighty roar, turned and disappeared into
the night whence she had come.

There was a look of great wonder on the face of Hugh Carden Ali as he
stood looking beyond his friend; then he suddenly turned in the
direction of Mecca.

Slowly he raised his hand to his turban, whilst a look of ineffable
peace swept across his face and stayed, as a little red stain like a
crimson rose showed just above his heart.

"_Here, Sir_!"

The answer to the roll-call rang out across the desert he had loved so
well, and was carried by the breeze of dawn up through the stars to the
Head Master whose justice and mercy take no account of race.

Then the old Harrovian crashed face downward, dead.

CHAPTER XXXII

"_Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep_."

"_Spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part. . . ._"

MILTON.

The light from the silver lamp shone down upon the water in the crystal
basin and upon the girl's red head as she crouched upon