.

But her youth had gone from her forever and her heart had been stamped
with the seal of an everlasting regret; her eyes had been filled with a
great questioning which was never to be answered on this earth, when
her scream had been drowned in the crash of the report as the man she
loved had fired, and killed his friend.

Had Hugh Carden Ali really feared for the safety of his friend and
flung himself between him and the wounded beast, or, understanding that
in that way only could peace be obtained for all three, had he
deliberately sought death?

Allah, who is God of all, alone knows the answer, so let us leave it
with Him.

And then, being untried and very young, she slipped to her knees and
fell unconscious, with her face upon her outstretched arms. And there
she lay whilst the silence of the coming dawn fell upon the earth, and
wrapped itself in a soft winding-sheet about him who lay asleep upon
his couch of death, at the foot of which stood his friend, looking down
upon the peaceful face.

Only a few moments had slipped into eternity when Damaris shivered and,
bewildered, not knowing if an hour or a second had passed whilst she
had lain senseless, rose to her knees.

There was no sound.

She sat back and pushed the hair from her forehead; then rose and
tiptoed to the curtain. She put out her hand, and drew back; then,
urged by a desire which clamoured for definite knowledge, parted the
curtain and looked in. She looked for just one second, then staggered
back and back as far as the crystal basin filled with the clear water
which was used in prayer; and she stood with her arms outstretched, and
fingers spread between her eyes, and the picture she herself had
painted in the thoughtlessness of youth, and then swung round, with her
back to the Tent of Death and looked down into the water, and, as
though a veil had been lifted from before her eyes, looked back along
the past, and forward into the future.

As in a flash she saw the wreck she had made of her life by throwing
away the substance of a good man's love for the fantastic conviction
that, as she was not as other girls, she must therefore go a-venturing
through the world's mazy high-ways and by-ways until she had found her
own particular niche.

She saw the picture of herself proclaiming it to her life by throwing
away the substance of a good man's godmother's letter of invitation to
Egypt. She saw the girl's lips moving. What was she saying?