Yet what was it he had once said to her?  It rushed across her now—­words he had uttered long ago on the night he had taken her to the ruined temple at Khanmulla.  “My love is not the kind that burns and goes out.”  She remembered the exact words, the quiver in the voice that had uttered them.  Then, that being so, he was loving her still.  Across the desert—­her bitter desert of ashes—­the lamp was shining even now.  Love like his was immortal.  Love such as that could never die.

That comforted her for a space, but soon the sense of desolation returned.  She remembered their cruel estrangement.  She remembered their child.  And that last thought, entering like an electric force, gave her strength.  Surely it was morning, and he would be needing her!  Had not Peter said he would want her in the morning?

With a sharp effort she raised herself; she must go to him.

The next moment a sharp breath of amazement escaped her.  Where was she?  The strange twilight stretched up above her into infinite shadow.  Before her was a broken archway through which vaguely she saw the heavy foliage of trees.  Behind her she yet heard the splash and gurgle of water, the croaking of frogs.  And near at hand some tiny creature scratched and scuffled among loose stones.

She sat staring about her, doubting the evidence of her senses, marvelling if it could all be a dream.  For she recognized the place.  It was the ruined temple of Khanmulla in which she sat.  There were the crumbling steps on which she had stood with Everard on the night that he had mercilessly claimed her love, had taken her in his arms and said that it was Kismet.

It was then that like a dagger-thrust the realization of his loss went through her.  It was then that she first tasted the hopeless anguish of loneliness that awaited her, saw the long, long desert track stretching out before her, leading she knew not whither.  She bowed her head upon her arms and sat crushed, unconscious of all beside....

It must have been some time later that there fell a soft step beside her; a veiled figure, bent and slow of movement, stooped over her.

“Mem-sahib!” a low voice said.

She looked up, startled and wondering.  “Hanani!” she said.

“Yes, it is Hanani.”  The woman’s husky whisper came reassuringly in answer.  “Have no fear, mem-sahib! You are safe here.”

“What—­happened?” questioned Stella, still half-doubting the evidence of her senses.  “Where—­where is my baby?”

Hanani knelt down by her side. “Mem-sahib,” she said very gently, “the baba sleeps—­in the keeping of God.”

It was tenderly spoken, so tenderly that—­it came to her afterwards—­she received the news with no sense of shock.  She even felt as if she must have somehow known it before.  In the utter greyness of her desert—­she had walked alone.

“He is dead?” she said.