question everlastingly throbbing in her brain; and her eye
was not quick enough to distinguish one delicate oval face from
another, or to notice that at each stopping place her ayah meandered
down the length of the train to a compartment where, in consequence of
his high caste and rank, a man sat utterly alone--unconcerned and
totally oblivious of the screaming, chattering crowd upon the platform,
of beggars, pilgrims, and _bona fide_ native travellers.

True, for one moment at the station where she alighted for the
world-famed tomb, she glanced back hurriedly at a native who placed
himself between her and an unsightly epileptic; and she looked back
once again as her intuition rapped out a message she did not grasp, and
her ayah suddenly besought her help with the coolies.

A dilapidated tonga, drawn by a pony of the same description, took her
and her servant to the dak bungalow, built on a concrete platform in a
jungle clearing about two miles outside the village.

There she gave carte blanche for the arrangement of the evening trip to
the guide who materialised serenely, all smiles and extreme deference.
Bathed, and fed, she had her hair brushed for half an hour by her ayah;
refused the offer of massage, which process she abhorred, and turned in
and slept the afternoon away upon her own bedding spread on a charpoy.

Later she bathed again, attired herself in a simple low-cut, white silk
dress, dined, and wrapping herself in a heavy white Bedouin cloak,
wedding present from Jill Wetherbourne, who had got it from her
godmother in Egypt, seated herself on the verandah to await the arrival
of whatever means of locomotion the guide had chosen to take her to the
tomb.

And down the jungle path loomed the shape of a great elephant, moving
at a gentle shuffle but an almost incredible speed.

Without audible instructions it stopped in front of the verandah, threw
back its trunk, twined it gently about the middle of the _mahout_ or
driver, lifted him from his seat behind its ears and placed him on the
ground; then on a word, trumpeted shrilly in greeting to Leonie.

"Oh!" said she as she almost sprang from her chair in delight. "Oh!"

The _mahout_ salaamed, standing in the moonlight at the animal's head.

He made a vivid eastern picture, dressed as he was from head to foot in
white, with two pleated side-pieces to the turban, hanging in suchwise
as to conceal half the face; and the guide, who had been squatting on
th