‘Why should I go?’ said she one evening on the roof.

’There is sickness, and people are dying, and all the white mem-log have gone.’

‘All of them?’

’All—­unless perhaps there remain some old scald-head who vexes her husband’s heart by running risk of death.’

’Nay; who stays is my sister, and thou must not abuse her, for I will be a scald-head too.  I am glad all the bold mem-log are gone.’

’Do I speak to a woman or a babe?  Go to the hills and I will see to it that thou goest like a queen’s daughter.  Think, child.  In a red-lacquered bullock-cart, veiled and curtained, with brass peacocks upon the pole and red cloth hangings.  I will send two orderlies for guard, and—­’

’Peace!  Thou art the babe in speaking thus.  What use are those toys to me?  He would have patted the bullocks and played with the housings.  For his sake, perhaps,—­thou hast made me very English—­I might have gone.  Now, I will not.  Let the mem-log run.’

‘Their husbands are sending them, beloved.’

’Very good talk.  Since when hast thou been my husband to tell me what to do?  I have but borne thee a son.  Thou art only all the desire of my soul to me.  How shall I depart when I know that if evil befall thee by the breadth of so much as my littlest finger-nail—­is that not small?—­I should be aware of it though I were in paradise.  And here, this summer thou mayest die—­ai, janee, die! and in dying they might call to tend thee a white woman, and she would rob me in the last of thy love!’

‘But love is not born in a moment or on a death-bed!’

’What dost thou know of love, stoneheart?  She would take thy thanks at least and, by God and the Prophet and Beebee Miriam the mother of thy Prophet, that I will never endure.  My lord and my love, let there be no more foolish talk of going away.  Where thou art, I am.  It is enough.’  She put an arm round his neck and a hand on his mouth.

There are not many happinesses so complete as those that are snatched under the shadow of the sword.  They sat together and laughed, calling each other openly by every pet name that could move the wrath of the gods.  The city below them was locked up in its own torments.  Sulphur fires blazed in the streets; the conches in the Hindu temples screamed and bellowed, for the gods were inattentive in those days.  There was a service in the great Mahomedan shrine, and the call to prayer from the minarets was almost unceasing.  They heard the wailing in the houses of the dead, and once the shriek of a mother who had lost a child and was calling for its return.  In the gray dawn they saw the dead borne out through the city gates, each litter with its own little knot of mourners.  Wherefore they kissed each other and shivered.

It was a red and heavy audit, for the land was very sick and needed a little breathing-space ere the torrent of cheap life should flood it anew.  The children of immature fathers and undeveloped mothers made no resistance.  They were cowed and sat still, waiting till the sword should be sheathed in November if it were so willed.  There were gaps among the English, but the gaps were filled.  The work of superintending famine-relief, cholera-sheds, medicine-distribution, and what little sanitation was possible, went forward because it was so ordered.