stant and unearthly
ring of voices that we hear in dreams, saying faintly things startling,
cruel or absurd, to which there is no possible reply. To her he had
nothing to say! She wrung her hands, glanced over the courtyard with
that eager and distracted look that sees nothing, then looked up at the
hopeless sky of livid grey and drifting black; at the unquiet mourning
of the hot and brilliant heaven that had seen the beginning of her love,
that had heard his entreaties and her answers, that had seen his desire
and her fear; that had seen her joy, her surrender--and his defeat.
Lingard moved a little, and this slight stir near her precipitated her
disordered and shapeless thoughts into hurried words.

"Wait!" she exclaimed in a stifled voice, and went on disconnectedly and
rapidly--"Stay. I have heard. Men often spoke by the fires . . . men of
my people. And they said of you--the first on the sea--they said that to
men's cries you were deaf in battle, but after . . . No! even while you
fought, your ears were open to the voice of children and women. They
said . . . that. Now I, a woman, I . . ."

She broke off suddenly and stood before him with dropped eyelids and
parted lips, so still now that she seemed to have been changed into a
breathless, an unhearing, an unseeing figure, without knowledge of fear
or hope, of anger or despair. In the astounding repose that came on
her face, nothing moved but the delicate nostrils that expanded and
collapsed quickly, flutteringly, in interrupted beats, like the wings of
a snared bird.

"I am white," said Lingard, proudly, looking at her with a steady gaze
where simple curiosity was giving way to a pitying annoyance, "and men
you have heard, spoke only what is true over the evening fires. My ears
are open to your prayer. But listen to me before you speak. For yourself
you need not be afraid. You can come even now with me and you shall find
refuge in the household of Syed Abdulla--who is of your own faith. And
this also you must know: nothing that you may say will change my purpose
towards the man who is sleeping--or hiding--in that house."

Again she gave him the look that was like a stab, not of anger but of
desire; of the intense, over-powering desire to see in, to see through,
to understand everything: every thought, emotion, purpose; every
impulse, every hesitation inside that man; inside that white-clad
foreign being who looked at her, who spoke to her, who breathed
before h