estined to be buried under
the stifling pall that enveloped them. He felt against him the soft body
of the woman clinging desperately to him; and the warm contact thrilled
him. A feeling of pity, of tenderness for her awoke in him at the
thought that this young and attractive being was fated perhaps to perish
by so awful a death. And instinctively, unconsciously, he held her
closer to him.

For minutes that seemed hours the storm continued to shriek and roar
over and around them. But at length the choking waves began to diminish
in density and slowly, gradually, the deadly, smothering pall was lifted
from them. The black wall passed on and Wargrave watched it moving away
over the desert. The storm had lasted half an hour, but the subaltern
believed its duration to have been hours. The fine grit had penetrated
into the case of his wrist-watch and stopped it. A cool, refreshing
breeze sprang up. Pulling his jacket off Mrs. Norton's head, Wargrave
said:

"It's all over at last."

"Oh, thank God!" she exclaimed fervently, standing erect and drawing a
deep breath of cool air into her labouring lungs. "I thought I was going
to be smothered."

"It was a decidedly unpleasant experience and one I don't want to try
again. My throat is parched; I must have swallowed tons of sand. And
look at the state I'm in!"

He was powdered thick with it, clothes, hair, eyebrows, grey with it. It
had caked on his face damp with perspiration.

"Thanks to your jacket I've escaped pretty well, although I was almost
suffocated," she said. "Well, now that it is over surely someone will
come to look for us."

"Then we had better get up on our horses and move out into the open.
We'll be more visible," said Wargrave.

Yet he felt a strange reluctance to quit the spot; for the thought came
to him that their unpleasant experience in it would henceforth be a link
between them. A few hours before he had not known of this woman's
existence! and now he had held her to his breast and tried to protect
her against the forces of Nature. The same idea seemed born in her mind
at the same time; for, when he had brushed the dust off her saddle and
lifted her on to it, she turned to look with interest at the spot as
they rode away from it.

They had not long to wait out in the open before they saw three or four
riders spread over the desert apparently looking for them, so they
cantered towards them. As soon as they were seen by the search party a
_sowar_