“Where?” he said.

She pointed back over her shoulder, her eyes dilated, anguished.  “In the temple,—­and Noel is there!  He will be killed!”

In a single movement he had freed his arm and was gone.  She heard his feet racing over the stones, and she turned up her face to the blinding sunshine and frantically prayed....

Minutes—­or could it have been only seconds?—­passed.  From below her came Tinker’s frightened neigh.  She could hear him stamping in the undergrowth.  But she had no further thought of going to him.  That spot with all its terrors held her chained.

Suddenly from behind her there came a loud report—­a nerve-shattering sound.  She whizzed round.  He had a gun, then.  She had not seen that he had a gun.

But what had happened?  What?  What?  She was trembling so that she could barely stand, yet she forced her quaking limbs to move.  Back she stumbled, back through the glaring sunlight.  Once she fell, and saw a lizard—­or was it a scorpion?—­flick from her path.  And then she was up again, panting, sobbing, utterly unnerved, but struggling with all her failing strength to reach the ruined temple, to see for herself what lay there.

An awful silence brooded across the stony space.  It was as though a curse had fallen upon it.  She tried to lift her voice, to call to Noel, to make some sound in the stillness.  But her throat was powerless.

She thought he must be dead.  She thought that her brain had tricked her, that she had only dreamed of the coming of the second man, had dreamed of the gun-shot, had dreamed all but those dreadful gleaming eyes coming stealthily nearer and nearer out of the dark.

Again she tried to call, and again piteously she failed.  She reached the temple staggering, her hands stretched gropingly before her.  And even as she did so, the silence was rent by a sound that convinced her wholly that she was indeed dreaming—­a sound that echoed and echoed through the gloom, making her pulses leap again in spite of her—­the sound of a ringing British laugh.

She fell against the broken marble of the doorway, her hands pressed fast over her face.  She was struggling with herself, consciously striving to nerve herself to go in and find his dead body.  Of any personal danger she was past thinking.  Had the tawny body of their enemy sprung out upon her then she would scarcely have known fear.

And so when Noel came suddenly to her, caught her hands into his own, making her look up, his brown face bent close to hers, she simply gazed at him uncomprehendingly, not believing that she saw him.

Swift concern flashed into his eyes.  He drew her to him and held her in his arms.  “Olga,—­Olga dear, don’t you know me?” he said.  “You’ve had a beastly fright, haven’t you?  But the brute’s dead, and no one else is any the worse.  There, there!  It’s all right.  Did you think I was killed and eaten?”