“Bah!” he said, interrupting me savagely.  “That has nothing to do with it.  Had you only pounded my head you might live, but you have pounded my heart!  It is for that I hate you, and for that you die!”

“What have I done?” I asked.

“What have you done?” he roared, furious with rage.  “I will tell you.  You have by magic possessed the mind of my wife.  Your name, your cursed name is ever upon her lips!  My entreaties, my supplications are answered by nothing else.  Even in her sleep she starts up and calls for you.  You have cast a spell upon her.  Day by day she droops and withers like a lotus-flower whose root is severed; yet ever and always, is your cursed name upon her lips, goading me to madness, until at last I have registered a sacred oath to kill you, and remove the accursed spell you have thrown upon her.”

Had he advanced upon me at this moment he would have found me as helpless as a child, so overcome was I by the sudden joy which seized upon me, and seemed to turn my melancholy inside out.  Those words of hatred had been as a torch illumining the gloom of my despair, for they had shown me that my existence was not altogether barren and unproductive.  The life which has known the heaven of true love cannot be called a failure.  There is no wall so high, no distance so great, no separation so complete as to defy the ineffable commerce of two loving hearts!  Lona, then, was still mine, despite all obstacles.  What a change this knowledge made!  In an instant life became an inexpressible benefaction, for it permitted me to realise I was beloved,—­and death was dowered with a new horror—­the fear that I should cease to know it.

I was roughly aroused from my reflections by Rama Ragobah.

“Come, Sahib,” he said, as his thick lips curled sneeringly, “suppose you try your spells upon me?  You will never have a better chance than now to show your power,” and again he made a slight movement toward me with the gleaming knife.  The moon, low down upon the horizon, sent a broad beam of light into the entrance of the cave and over the head and shoulders of the Indian.  Its cold light shimmered along the blade which was now held threateningly toward me.  The crisis had been reached.

In times of such great urgency one has frequently an inspiration —­instantaneous, disconnected, unbidden—­which no amount of quiet, peaceful thought would suggest.  Such extraordinary flashes are the result of reasoning too rapid for consciousness to note.  The Indian had already laid bare his right arm to the elbow before I had determined upon the desperate course I would pursue, and upon which I must hazard all.  As he advanced upon me I seized the large, white sola hat from my head, and hurled it full in his face.  It was a schoolboy trick, yet upon its success depended my life.  Instinctively, and in spite of himself, Ragobah dodged, closed his eyes, and raised his right hand, knife and all, to