there were less innate nobility in his avatar, if he were like men that were called red-blooded men, yet lacking the finer sensibility, this might be; not a villainous rush, just drifting.  That was it, the superlative excellence of the Gulab; the very quality that attracted, was the shield, the immaculate robe that clothed her and preserved her like a vestal virgin from such violation.  Barlow could not word all these things; subconsciously they swayed him—­like the magnetic needle, always toward the pole of right.

When they had topped the pass and descended into the valley of the Narbudda, clothed in arboreal beauty, passed from a forest of evergreen sal to giant teak trees with huge umbrella-like leaves that formed a canopy over the straight column-like boles of eighty feet, and on amidst topes of wild mango and wild date, down, down, to the lower levels where the dhak jungles gave way to feathery bamboo and plantain and waving grass, the sun, like a great ball of molten gold, was splashing its yellow sheen upon the waters of a stream that hurried south to Mother Narbudda.

There was a small village of Gonds, or Korkus, like a toy thing, the houses woven from split bamboo, nestling against the billowing hills.

“Here we will rest and eat,” Barlow said to the Gulab.

“As the Sahib wishes,” she answered, and smiled at him like a child.

The huge medallion of gold had slid down in the west from the dome through which were shot great streamers of red and mauve, and a peacock perched high in a sal tree far up on the mountainside sent forth his strident cry of “Miaou! miaou! miaou!” his evening salute to the god of warmth.

As the harsh call, like an evening muezzin, died out, the sweet song of a shama, in tones as pure as those of a nightingale, broke the solemn hush of eventide.

Barlow turned his face to where the songster was perched in the top branches of a wild-fig, and Bootea, said in a low voice:  “Sahib, it is said that the shama is a soul come back to earth to sing of love that men may not grow harsh.”

Soon a silver moon peeped over the walls of the Vindhya hills, and from the forests above the night wind, waking at the fleeing of the sun, whispered down through feathered sal trees carrying the scent of balsam and from a group of salei trees a sweet unguent, the perfume of the gum which is burnt at the shrines of Hindu gods.

When they had eaten, Barlow said:  “I wonder, Gulab, if this is like kailas, the heaven those who have passed through many transitions and become holy, attain to.”

“It is just heaven, my Lord,” she replied fervently.

“And to-morrow I will be plodding on through the sands and dust, and I’ll be all alone.  But you, little girl, you will be making your peace with Omkar and dreaming of the greater heaven.”

“Yes, it will be that way; the Sahib will not have the tribulation of protecting Bootea, and she will be in the protection of Omkar.”