Front matter (continued 3)

He thought of journeying with her in the evenings together on the dromedary—she sitting forward, sun and moon and sand, the deep drinking at evening, the fire on the desert, the tents—the tent.

He had stopped in the centre of the room and now paced on again. He was not quite the same after that last. He wished for the day. He tried the cot again, but could not stay; paced the room, longing for the day. At last he thought of papers given him to be opened at this stage of the journey.

4

There was much to read from the Peking papers, and something was made clear at last regarding the purpose of his travel. His work though political was imposing. It was of China yet above China. Full knowledge of his undertaking was promised at the next point of his journey, Wampli, but Romney had enough now to understand that there was no illusion about the bigness of the thing he was called upon to do. For a time he was lifted a little from the intensity of the present episode—at least, from what the world would have called madness in connection with it.

That was Romney's longest night. When the dawn came in, cold and yellowish gray, he felt that much which had been his the night before, was gone from him. He arose quietly and went forth. The outer room was empty, the house, even the forward room, still. Outside the chill was leaving, a day of bright heat promised. No one was abroad. He located the Rest House with difficulty, and finally touched Bamban's shoulder.

"Find the camel drivers," he said. "Get the party ready as soon as you can. We start for Wampli at once."

Bamban looked up quickly—the nearest thing to a start that his master had ever noted. In ordinary course, there would have been a halt of several days in Nadiram, and even under the pressure of speed, the camels would have been permitted to rest for one day. Moreover, it meant passage alone to Wampli, since the three Tartar merchants were now to continue by a northeastward trail to the Post Road. Romney laughed at his own sensitiveness in feeling so keenly the surprise of the little man. He did not hasten back to the Consulate, yet it was impossible to loiter. Turning into the gate of the court he saw a movement of the woman within. It was very early. The feeding and saddling of the camels and the procuring of stores would require at least an hour.... Anna Erivan came to the door. He saw something of her morning joyousness fade as she glanced into his face. This numbed him further.

"How early you rise," she said. "I heard your step and made haste to join you, but you had gone.... You have been gone a long time. The tea is ready."

"Thanks," he said briefly.

There was no sound from the forward room. She stood behind his chair waiting for him to be seated. He glanced at her. There was a hard thing in his breast; it seemed as if his breath did not go lower than his throat. He sat down to the table. The woman brought a covered dish hot from the fire, placed it before him and poured tea. She cleared her voice before speaking:

"Did you rest?"

Something gray had come into her face.

"No. Did you?"

She winced. Yet there had been something in her mind to say. She let it forth, but the gladness was gone.

"It was as we said last night—a strange and sweet kind of rest at first. I went to sleep like a little child—drifting away so pleasantly. But it didn't last. Something awoke me—some change. I could not have slept an hour. Since then, I have been waiting for the day."

They were like two melancholy strangers meeting on a strange road, each having lost his way, debating vaguely.

She ate nothing. Just as he was about to remind her, she suggested to him that he try the contents of the dish before him. He put the spoon into it and discovered that he was forced to follow each movement with his mind lest his hand stop; that he must give separate thought to each gesture, the placing of food upon her plate and upon his own, then a thought for each morsel that he lifted—a thought even to taste it. If he did not keep up the thinking, movement stopped altogether. His eyes were called to her face. The gray widened there, her eyes very large.

He heard Bamban bring in the camels to the court at last. The voice of the driver with him was like a voice from the pit. Anna Erivan cleared her throat:

"Are you going at once?"

"Yes."

"But my brother.... You see, I did not call him because every moment of sleep helps him—like this. I shall get him—"

Her dismay was rending to him.

"Don't trouble. What I had to say isn't vital. It will hold until I come back from Wampli if—"

Her throat was like a flower. This that she wore at the throat was black. He could see her hand clearly and her throat. Above was enveloped in the pervading grayness, all but the eyes. Always as the face cleared, the low voice of Bamban, or the voice of that camel-driver from the pit, blurred it. Again Romney began to think of the food, morsel by morsel. One spoonful remained on his plate. It seemed as if he could never come to the end. And now he saw the tea. He drank it eagerly. That seemed to help her, too, as if something of life had come into the room—something human and grippable. She took his cup and thankfully refilled it. He drank this more slowly, because it had not cooled.

In the open door was sunlight. It was not like the sun of yesterday, yet it was sunshine. This brought him a swift picture of the day's journey, a long and full day's passage, then nightfall. Every league, every mile, every camel-pace would take him farther away from this room.... He heard her voice.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said your face looked gray," she answered.

The horror of the journey held his mind again, twelve hours in swift passage, and two more like it to Wampli—every camel-pace away from this room.

She cleared her voice. He turned to her.

"Your camels should have rested."

"They are good," he said.

And now he was debating if there remained strength enough for him to rise and depart. All he could say was good-bye and the lie about Wampli, that he would come again. He was not sure of his limbs. He was very tired and her hands were so near—just across the little board. His eyes lifted from them to her throat, and he felt the burn of her eyes, without really looking higher. Back to her hands again. They were never still—lovely quick hands, waiting now to fill his cup.

A queer thought came to him—that he should some time bring her a yellow rose, and she would hold it in the arch of her hand, her thumb beneath.... He arose. He could stand. He turned from her to locate the door, so that he would make no mistake after he spoke. He did not know what he said—some huddled, unintelligible phrase. All that he knew well was that he took her hand, that he had to leave it almost instantly or fail, since a mist came over him—even over the single madness that he held to. It was madness to leave her, yet it was the one strong prevailing thing.

His feet stumbled on the way to the door. In the bright light of the court, his camel was already kneeling. Bamban stood there ready to take his ankle. He reached the seat. The camel arose.... Voices of the pit in his ears, and now he saw her there below. She had come forth into the light. Her face was clear. He saw her hand below on the leather near his foot, her lips forming to speak. He bent to them.

"Why don't you tell me?" she said softly.

Romney brushed his hand across his eyes and bent again.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Why don't you tell me?" she repeated.

Romney glanced about till he found Bamban.

"Tell the driver to bring this camel down," he said.

The beast knelt obediently.

Romney stood before her in the court. He brushed his hand across his eyes again, then turned to Bamban:

"Tell the drivers to put the beasts away. It's a long journey and they had better rest for to-day."

"What have I done?" she asked. "I would not delay you. Oh, no, I would not hold any one from his journey—"

"Don't make it harder," he said abruptly. "Let us go in."

"But—nothing but misery comes to a woman for holding a man from his journey."

"How do you know that?" he asked hoarsely.

5

The second camel sprawled out of the court. He looked elongated like a dog that stretches as he walks. The man and the woman went in and took their former places at the table. It did not occur to them to move the chairs.

"I had been thinking only of myself," he said at last.

She smiled faintly, as if she had met that from men for ages and ages. Then the gray cold came again to her face.

"It's a fact," he repeated, "I was thinking only of myself—I didn't know I was like that."

"It has always been man's way to forget woman's part in a crisis—and woman's to turn to man. You don't know me at all."

"But I do know you," he said. "You must have seen that. In fact, never before did I know so much from a first meeting—"

"But man always believes that a woman is at war with his work. I have always said that I should not care to be the rival of a man's work."

"And yet, you said—'Why don't you tell me?' ... Anna Erivan, I shall always hear that question. I am going to tell you."

She did not help him to begin. There was a kind of core of silence from the forward room, which was as distracting as the sound of breathing had been. He had to organise himself repeatedly.

"... I was sent out here because I had fancy."

He laughed a little harshly. "Because you have that you will understand. I have been forwarded from Peking somewhat like a valuable package. My next point is Wampli, as you know. I had looked forward to the real desert from this point. It would have been desert right enough had I gone on this morning."

Her eyes gleamed at him.

"I can't tell you all—not even all I know—I pick up my orders on the way; but this much I can tell you, and it mainly became known to me from papers read only last night, for they were not to be opened until I reached Nadiram—"

He told her hastily, something of the world-crisis, of the parties of China, of the Japanese danger, and of the big dream of the truly great men of the Empire, and something of his own relation with Nifton Bend, Minglapo and Ti Kung.

"This new party in China is not great enough to have a large following," he said, "and yet, though there are some things about it that trouble, possibly because I am a bit of an Occidental still, it seems to me that the power and the vision of the men I have met in it must become a terrific constructive force in the future of Asia and the world. You see Japan threatens to become a Japanese Asia, if it is not met with vision and force. The two older Chinese parties have neither. At the heart of any Empire is its religion, and it happens that the centre of the religion of the Chinese Empire is yonder in this desert—the Inner Temple, even the great Lohan himself—"

"You are sent to that Inner Temple?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes."

"To bring forth a sign for the people of Young China?"

"Come to think of it—it is something like that."

"And you let me delay you this morning?"

"I had not thought of it as a bringing forth a sign," he mused, watching her, "but that is really what it amounts to. If the new social order in China is recognised by the Inner Temple; if its dream of progress and power is found to be a true dream by the Holy Men of the Inner Temple—don't you see, the support of all the people touched by this religion will be turned from the old to the new?"

"They chose a white man, an American, for this mission—and I am delaying him?"

Still Romney evaded the issue.

"I always thought it queer that they chose me," he said. "These Holy Men are free from racial prejudice. They are said to be super-national. Our leaders in Peking felt that if they sent a Chinese, the Holy Men might see in him one nation's ambition, but if they chose an Occidental who was called to the struggle of New China because he had found it the purest dream for all Asia; one also who could place before the wise men the position relatively of other nations—"

"What an equipment!"

"I'm afraid it sounds more than it is," he said hastily. "You see they did not have many foreign adherents to choose from. Nifton Bend would have accomplished the mission far more wisely than I, but he is the Centre—needed every hour in Peking."

"I'm afraid you can't make me see anything insignificant now—about your being here. They thought you pure enough—real priest enough—to enter the Inner Temple and bring forth a sign to the many. You know the many always demand a sign. They did in Judea—"

He did not look above her hands. They were tightly shut.

"I asked you last night—if you ever had any sense about the Gobi, other than that of its terror and menace," he said, in an effort that he knew was vain to lift her from her part in keeping him from the journey. "The Chinese believe that the heart of the desert is a spirit-haunted land; that the Inner Pavilion holds all the ancient writings, all the seeds of wisdom and magic out of the past, the essence of truths gathered by forgotten civilisations.

"In fact, the myths and legends which surround this country make the stories of Peru and Central America seem paltry and commonplace. There are forests, it is said, in which no white man has penetrated, buried gold and statuary and all that—" Romney smiled.

"You do not need to be afraid of me," she whispered. "I love to believe such things."

"Ten years away from America—perhaps I am too ready to believe," Romney finished. "Anyway the Chinese leaders say there are wise men, whom the world never hears of as persons, doing the great constructive tasks behind the scenes, and that the central pavilion of these wise men is in the heart of the Gobi, and not in Thibet.... But all these things belonged to yesterday. I know now that there are meeting-places in a man's life, and that in the hours of meeting he cannot reckon even with missions of mercy.... This—last night—here in the court—has taken me almost like death takes a man—as the cups have taken him in there—something resistless—"

He saw one hand leave the table between them. It was held out to him, palm outward, as if trying to stop his words. Her eyes were wide with terror.... Now a change came. She turned to the forward room, listening.

"Hush," she whispered.

Strangeness was all about them. Romney came down from his story, with the sense that he had not done well. The silence crowded in again, as if from the desert.

"Perhaps he is awake," she said quietly. "Go on."

"That's all. I learned a great deal last night."

"You say that a day or two would make no difference, and yet this morning you were up very early. You ordered the camels—"

"I thought only of myself."

"You thought it would be easier to go to-day—though the camels needed rest—"

"I could not hold it in the night that the meeting meant anything to you."

"You were out on the quest and I appeared in the way—" she smiled and added, "a dragon to be overcome."

"I have not imagination enough to make you that—"

"A dragon to test the courage of the quester. A man must never forget his mission—must remember first of all the little ones, the many little ones, who require a sign."

In spite of the tearing-down, it was a pinnacle moment to Romney. She was lovely as he had not seen her before. Her swift and absolute understanding liberated his whole nature upon her. Had she chosen to captivate him, there could not have been conceived a more perfect design. Had she met him level-eyed, weakness for weakness, it would have sounded, temporarily, at least, the knell for his infatuation. Had she clung or pressed him to linger, it would have become a mere episode.

He arose, his lips smiling, his eyes burning with tributes to her—moved about the table, placed his hands upon her shoulders and bent his lips to hers.

"Won't you come with me?" he whispered.... "We will go to the Temple together. We will bring forth a sign to the people."

... Her fingers closed gently upon his wrists, lifting his hands outward from her shoulders and letting them fall. Then she arose and looked at him tenderly.

"You are dear—I think you could not be so dear if you were not bewildered. These meetings are wonderful, but don't you see—that you are dreaming? Don't you see that a man must travel alone on his quest? It's like the old stories—he must slay the dragon that stands between. A man does not take a woman to the Inner Temple. A man who passes the threshold of the Inner Temple cannot have a woman in his eyes or heart. They would say, 'Why, this is a mere mortal. He cannot enter here.' Do you not see, do you not see?"

"Anna Erivan."

She smiled and put down his hands that lifted to her.

"You are the quest," he said intensely. "It was our meeting. The Gobi—why, it was but a means of bringing me to you. Last night, as I stood in the court, I knew that. Today, when in a sentence you made all the meanings of my life clear, taking up my story and completing it briefly—today, just now, I saw that I could never look beyond you—"

"Don't say that. I should not have let you say that. We are asked to renounce nothing that lasts. You must not fail through me. This is not a good beginning for our story. You know this. You are only bewildered."

Romney began to understand her strength. She had risen above him. Her vision was clearer. In getting down from the camel he had become altogether human. The fury of his ardour was for the woman. Because he was moved with desire, he was not at his best. He took her in his arms, the tempest of emotions blinding him....

Women with a touch of the savage left in them, may be captured with strength, but he had given her a dream of greater days than these.

She did not resist, but the wonder of their first kiss did not come again. Instead, through his mind, crippling his arms, flashed the picture of his own red passion—and that in his arms chilled him to the heart. Utterly passive, she had allowed him to wound himself in a way that would never be forgotten.

He felt suddenly small and altered before her. He drew back, lowering his eyes from her face, his hand reaching behind him until he found the arm of his chair. He sat down, covering his face.

Presently she came and touched his hands, whispering:

"Do not grieve—I was thinking of something. Do not grieve. I do not care for you less. A woman loves the boy—the boy-tumult in a man—"

"You were in my arms—and yet I was alone," he said strangely. "I never knew such a sudden loneliness—all that I had for you—flung back to me—"

"I would not have hurt you so. But suddenly as you held me—I thought of the many little ones waiting for a sign—"

He was still shocked at the lifelessness which had confronted his passion. The shame of his untimely bestowal did not pass.

His life had seemed full of perfect gifts for her, and a sudden desire had blinded him, bringing down upon his head a rebuke more magic than any blow.

"You have made me afraid," he said dully. "It could never happen again. I could not go to you so again—unless you held out your arms—"

"After you have entered the Inner Temple," she whispered.

The seven words numbered and registered themselves in his consciousness. He looked up at her and there was something endless in her beauty.

"You must not be hurt," she said tenderly. "It is the man in you that is wounded. You must know that you cannot really be wounded, unless I am wounded, too—and oh, a woman is not wounded by loving, by passion—that's why we are women. It was only the others I thought of. Believe me, all is well—"

"Would you have me go to-day—now—into the desert?" he asked.

"Wait," she answered. "I do not hear him. It would seem that he would be about—now that we hear him no longer—"

6

Romney arose, but did not follow her to the door. He watched her as she opened it, a breeze seeming to take it from her hands. He saw her hands lift quietly, tighten and press across her lips. She seemed to become less in height. She ran to him, and for the briefest instant touched her forehead to his breast—the queerest murmuring little cry from her throat. Something of the picture in the other room had come to him from her mind. They did not speak. He did not draw her closely, merely sustained her.

Romney saw it on the floor, the face flattened against the stone, the arms out. His hand went out to her and pressed upon her breast to keep the shock from rending her—as if she were carrying a child. The look of her face frightened him so that he drew her away; yet all the time he had the sense that the tragedy had somehow set them free.

"You will let me take care of him—come," he whispered.

She followed, obediently. He did not know the way to her room, but took her to the one he had used, pressed her to lie down. She covered her face in the pillow where he had lain. Romney feared she was not breathing and turned her face outward. There he knelt a moment. Her eyes were open, but did not seem to hold him. Moments passed and then he heard her words:

"You said you would go to him."

"Yes, but I thought you needed me more, just now," he said.

"You said you would go to him."

Romney left her.

The Russian's body was heavy and still hot. The silence of it was almost unbelievable, with the great damp chest still radiating heat. The weight was dead, but disgustingly soft. The American had a fear, with the feet dragging across the floor, that the body might break and cover the stones. He laid it upon the couch and listened again for the heart. It was still, as if pinned to the walls of the chest. Romney wiped his brow and found that there was a door into the street. He went forth quickly.

Bamban, so constantly in evidence, was queerly enough not so easy to find this time. He had to go to the Rest House and ask questions. At last he could not go further, but bid them to send his servant to him and hastened back. The face of Anna Erivan, as she had looked into the open door, was still held in his mind. Bamban was running behind him before he reached the Consulate. He understood quickly and took charge of affairs in the Forward Room....

She had not stirred. Romney shut the door and knelt beside her again. It was a moment before she realised his nearness.

"Did you go to him?" she asked.

"Yes."

"He is dead?"

"Yes. Everything is being done for him.... Anna Erivan, if I could only do everything for you! I suffer for your suffering. I feel it all—"

Her hand came out and touched his cheek, her eyelids closed.

"Dearest stranger," she whispered.... A moment later she repeated with a smile, "Stranger."

Her face changed. The unspeakable thing to Romney was that part of the smile lingered, though her eyes opened and white rays of purest horror shone in them. Her lips parted, the smile holding to them, as something holds to life, her fingers plucking his cheek.

"To-night—don't go away from me to-night! I will hear them. They always come when any one dies. I knew they would come for him, that he would die or go mad, and they would come.

"They are out in the rocks and sand, they come closer where death is.... And he was good as a boy; a good brother. I came to him and he was changed. I knew he would never go back. When I heard them the first time and saw how they affected him, I knew they would come for him."

Romney crushed her leaping fingers in his hand.

"Listen," he said sharply. "Tell me what you mean."

"Oh, have you not heard them laughing and sobbing at night?"

"The hyenas—"

She shuddered full length, hiding her face in his arms.

"I could not have spoken the word," she cried.

He repeated, "I shall be with you, I shall be with you—"

"They always come to the lonely," she whispered. "They would have come last night, only you were here. No one will ever know what they bring to me. They are the spirits of the waste-places. They are the darkness that moves around the night-fires. Where there is death, they come in. They cry so—where there is death. They know. They are living death. They are the spirit of the Gobi—"

"No," he said. "They are just fright-things, the saddest of all beasts, mere cowardly night-roamers. It is only human nerves that make them terrible. You and I, alone and well, could laugh at them, as at coyotes and jackals."

"You are but saying that. Have you seen them when the moon-light is upon the sand and rocks? They have passed death. They are going the other way. The yellow men understand, but they bring madness to those who are white. Have you heard that it is not food they want from a corpse? Have you heard that?"

"It is food that they want," he said softly. "I have seen that. Please don't think of them. I will be here—"

"Always when he drank, I seemed to see them around him. When he shut himself in there, I could hear them. Do you know what frightens me? It is not the poor body that they will find in the desert. They always find the bodies. One cannot dig so deep, or cover so heavily with stones, but they will find them. It is not that. I think the drink has brought something like them to his soul! Perhaps he is meeting them now. He feared them so, when he drank."

"Listen," said Romney. "He has done no great harm. The desert is too much for many men. He did the best he could. The desert was too hard for him. I think he has taken up already the old good that you knew, the good that you came out here to find in him."

"Oh, do you think that?" she whispered. "Or do you just say that for me? Tell me, if you really think that."

7

Anna Erivan had arisen. She moved about her work in the house, accepting the fresh ordeal, as one accustomed to darkness and difficulty. Romney, in the afternoon, saw the sudden triumph of her will after hours of utter prostration, an almost irresistible force of spirit. Bamban had done all that mortal yellow man could do. The day had been very still and hot; the town had shown an unreasoning curiosity. In the lull of evening they were very weary. The tea-table was drawn near the open door by the court. Shadows moved softly between them.

"To-morrow you must go on your journey," she said.

Coldness and premonition came to the American. He had met her will before. This from her was a sort of "I have spoken." He seemed to recognise it in the silence as an old familiar. She had strength, an integrity terribly-earned and delivered in fulness and order. It was something hers so absolutely that even her lover could not impinge upon it. Perhaps it was the sacred thing about her; the essence of a character, rapidly unfolding to him in the twenty-four hours; a character that would meet all crises and that had formed itself by ancient acquaintance with grief.... In the stress of the moment, Romney tried to evade the issue, but realised the futility of that. His own volition was upstanding. Very rarely in his life had he felt its power as now. It was without variableness, too. There was no shadow of turning in his heart.

"I cannot leave you," he said.

She was very quiet. "I was weak this morning. It was so wonderful for you to come. When I think of your coming just at this time, I am in awe before life—the deepness and strangeness of life. We knew each other; we did not need words. I haunted and tempted you this morning. You were strong; you would have ridden away. I caught at your foot quite as a woman does. I asked you twice a question designed to make you linger. And I knew the answer before the question. I knew that you could not tell me, without showing how hard it was for you to go; that you had not trusted yourself to tell me. I knew it all. I loved your courage. I should have let you go. That was my failing—"

"You would have been here alone to-day, had I gone. You would have opened the door to the forward room and there would have been none to stand behind you—"

"Yes," she whispered.

They were silent. She looked out apprehensively at the creeping darkness.

"But that is past. Perhaps I was meant to have help this one day, but I cannot take more time from your journey. I think I must have kept some one from his quest—some time. I must have learned some terrible lesson that way, for it is so close to me! The price one pays, for keeping a man from his quest! It is untellable. You must not think of me. You must not think of staying with me now. When you have finished your mission, then you may come—quickly."

"I cannot leave you," he said.

"Don't say that again. That hurts me. I can never have a sense of innocence for my weakness this morning if you hold to that. Won't you give it back to me?"

"Do you think I would leave you here alone—a white woman in this place, to arrange your own journey of so many days to Europe, to pass the nights alone here, till you are ready, to start all alone?"

"I should not leave here for a journey to Europe till I am relieved. There should be a Russian to attend to all the papers here. The little but imperative work day by day—I have done most of that heretofore. There is no one but me to do it now.... I shall be safe enough here. At most, my part is a little thing. My fears at night-fall—they are not to be considered now. You are the one to be considered. Do you think I have failed to comprehend the significance of your mission?"

He followed her eyes into the darkness, thick upon the little court.

"It is not only that," he said. "You have comprehended everything. You always know before I finish a sentence. I could be with you years and never explain a meaning.... My mission does not call me to-night. If I were to go, I should never be able to see past your face, your frightened face, the face of you here alone at night-fall. I think I was guided here to be with you through these hard days. Many have said, 'Put love away,' but the greatest have said, 'Give all to love!'"

The night seemed heavy upon her; her words came from the heart of it:

"Can it be that you would lower the meaning of the great ones who say, 'Give all to love'? I'm afraid they do not mean the love of man and woman. Give all to the love of the world. Give all to the love of the weak and the little ones—that is the meaning of the great ones. No one knows that better than you. This is the place of meetings and partings. You know that. Was there ever a lingering together of lovers here that was proof against ennui, against satiety? It is only the weak who linger, who make their beds at the meeting-places. The great ones go on."

She had arisen. She was farther from him, but higher to his eyes.... And just then there came from out the darkness of the desert, a horrid puking laugh—like a jangling of stones in a thick glass bottle. It had nothing to do with distance. From near or far it reached them, and seemed to linger in the room like an evil odour.

It broke the woman for the moment. She caught him in her arms and cried out words that were like a command:

"... You cannot, you must not leave me now!"

8

It was not capitulation. The clinging of Anna Erivan was but momentary. Though they had already talked together almost from the first as if the relation of man and woman were old and established, nothing of the exterior obstacles had been removed. In each of the three days that followed, Anna Erivan asked him in a different way to continue his journey. He refused. They spoke little otherwise. There were occasional passages of kindness between them, when they seemed to touch the great yearning of heart for heart, but their emotions were not brought to words. Toward evening they would draw together a little, but separate early to their rooms. The second night, soon after he had entered his room, the laugh of the hyenas came again from the desert. He went to the living-room, and stood near her door.

He saw the knob turn from within—knew she was pressing against it—but the laugh was not repeated. She mastered her terror.... These nights were hard for him, for he slept little; and the days were hard. Though he was near her, the woman was very far away. He had the sense of carrying a broken courage; that he was a weakling remaining in camp with the women, while the warriors went forth for the hunt. He missed nothing of the pull of the task, but the holding of the woman was greater.

His will did not change. Nadiram was all that was sinister and detestable. He could not leave her there alone. Sometimes he yearned for the mission, the perils of it, subtle and open, the worst that it could bring in exposure and famine and fear. Her presence haunted him with every beauty and mystery. He found himself dwelling for many rapt moments on the scenes of their meeting—the first night and morning. Sometimes he felt that this was only a door that was shut between them; that all the love was there, waiting for one will to break. Sometimes again he was in the utter darkness that came from the conviction that he had forfeited everything by remaining. In the main, she gave no sign.

It was a very still place in his life. He had no thought of food, though to pass the time he explored the town to purchase little delicacies for the table and comforts for the house. He did not go near the Rest House. In the sight of the resting camels was something both indolent and insolent. Bamban was ever within call—apparently true and uncritical, though sometimes Romney fancied a reproach. The forward room where the brother had lain, was opened and clear. The few callers were received there, the woman attending.

Romney ate little or nothing. He thought he would see more clearly, and all his inclinations were against food. On the third day, though she did not speak, he saw that he was making her suffer. The fear came that she might think he was trying for her pity—that nauseated him. He fell to—and perceived her relief.

"I thought it was a good chance. A man ought to fast occasionally," he explained. "Especially a man who does not work, should not eat."

"A woman sees something personal in a man's fasting," she said with a trace of a smile.

They laboured again that third night at the old subject—but all had been covered. Their eyes were weary. She would lift her eyes to him, saying that his mission awaited; and he could only reply that he would not leave her.... The fourth night something hard and resolute was in her eyes. He knew that she would speak when the tea was poured. He waited, more afraid than he had ever been before:

"Do you know," she said steadily, "it is not just the thing for you to be here with me. I am alone. One does not live alone in a house with a man—"

Her finger was tapping the table. She saw that he regarded it and dropped her hand to her knee. It was the hardest moment since their first trial together. It did not seem to belong to her. They had needed no laws. They were human adults. They were a universe apart in the same house. It hurt him to the core—such words from her. Many times of late the sense of his own smallness had come, but he had never fallen so little that he could not ignore a sham of this kind.

"I did not think of that. We seemed to be under a law of our own—"

"But the others," she said steadily.

"You mean Nadiram?"

"Yes—you see I have the office—"

"Ah, yes—the office.... I shall go to the Rest House, of course. Shall I go to-night—or to-morrow morning?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Very well."

She was whiter than ever. There was no word at all at breakfast. Bamban came for the bags.

"Please," he said, as he was leaving, "don't fail to use me. We are not enemies. Do you know—it is hard for us to remember—that all there is between us is a difference of opinion—each for the other's good. We cannot go far astray that way. Please use me. The days are so long."

Her lips moved. They moved again into a smile. It was one of the bravest smiles.

"Of course, I shall try to think of something—"

That night he came to her court a little before sundown. There was a stone there by the west wall, and he sat and smoked until long after full darkness. As a rule the hyenas were heard early in the evening, when they were near Nadiram. She came to the door several times before dusk, smiled and waved to him. When he turned away in the full night, it was as if there was some part of him that refused to leave; and when he pushed on, straightening his shoulders, this part tore loose from him with numbing pain.

Bamban sat on the floor across the room at the Rest House. Bamban's eyes gleamed.

"Since there are no orders here, and to-morrow is the fifth day, it might be well for the messenger and his servant to push on to Wampli tomorrow."

"It might be well," said Romney, "But I don't think I shall be able to clear to-morrow. Your country and your countrymen have taught me how to wait, Bamban.... I recall Tushi-kow when I was very impatient and the delightful Fai Ming would not let us even talk about the matter of our journey for nearly as many days as we have waited here in Nadiram—"

"Might it not be well for the messenger's servant to travel on to Wampli alone if the interval of waiting is still to be extended, in order to ascertain the orders there, or to be there if orders come?"

"Would orders be delivered to the messenger's servant?" Romney asked.

"In case the messenger is unavoidably detained."

There was no longer any doubt in the American's mind that Minglapo had given him more than a servant.

"I may think more about that," said he.

But he didn't. He thought about the woman. His faith was shaken now, and his pride was harshly wounded. The devotion he had come to know was a madness and a martyrdom. Compared to it, all the things that men do with their boundaries, ambitions, conspiracies, and sundry national businesses, belonged to a lower dimension of life. He saw all his activities of the past as little and lesser movements. He could not have lived through them had he known how futile they were, how empty his heart was.

The great burden now was this meeting of the old world in her heart—her sending him away because they were man and woman alone. Man and woman, as he had thought, in the strangest and deepest moments of their lives. He loved the quest spirit in her eyes; he loved her capacity to sacrifice; he loved her mighty will for him to go and the cry of her most human heart for him to stay in the fright from the hyenas. He loved her now with this taint of the old upon her—that was the torturing truth. But he was disappointed.

He had been so far from the truck of convention, that he had neglected to speak of this point first. Had he spoken of it, he would have expected her to deny any cause for his changing from the Consulate to the Rest House in so far as a convention was concerned.... He felt himself in the old madness. These were the days of Hankow again, with all the added forces and energies of his life making hell for him. He was like an engine thrashing itself to pieces with its own power, because she had cut herself from him. He saw ahead a redder rending than he had known before, and which had brought him close to death.

He felt at rage with the world; capable even of telling Anna Erivan how vindictive was this hurt for a man who would die for her. But Romney unfrequently spoke in his rage. It came very seldom, and he had made it a law to laugh and speak of other things until it passed.

"Bamban," he said, "you Chinese men do not consider a woman."

"Ah, yes," said the wise little man.

"You do not consider the interests of the heart of man or woman comparable to the interests of one's country or business—"

"We keep them apart."

"That does not answer. If one's country or business demand the man, the woman must wait—"

"Yes."

Romney laughed. Bamban waited for him to speak.

"You keep them behind lattices. You do not give them the breath of life. You feel that they belong to a man's weakness rather than his strength. You do not see that the girl is equal to the boy; that the two are one so far as the future is concerned. You think that all women are wanton, unless they are repressed."

"We do not consider that women belong to the larger affairs of man's life," said Bamban.

Romney laughed again.

"That's why as a nation, the Chinese Empire is ninety-seven hundredths putrified," said he.

There was not a look in Bamban's clearly-formed face to denote if the depth and delicacy of his regard were shaken.

"You are the messenger of our country," he said.

"Hardly that—a messenger of the remaining three per cent," said Romney.

9

The next morning he went to the court of the Consulate, without anything in his hands. The night had been so rough for him that he was uncentred enough to seek the woman for a moment—just to look upon her, to ease off the mighty ache across his chest. He had become very humble from wanting her. Last night he had been touched with the coldness and hatred that seemed close to destroying the attraction between them, but the emptiness and irony of all life without her, had come in the hours following the talk with Bamban. The thing that he had called a taint diminished to one of the minor mysteries of womanhood, and Anna Erivan, brave enough not to quibble about the wonder of their meeting, and of spiritual force to forget her own longing and passion, stood forth with augmented light and lure.

As he waited a mere moment within the gate of the court, it seemed that he would die if she did not come quickly. The pain that he had learned to identify with her in moments of their separation in presence or thought—a pain that began in the pit of his left arm and stretched to the centre of his breast—awakened to burning and agony in that moment before he heard her step. Words were on his lips to say that he loved her, that nothing mattered but that to him, that he wanted to die if he could not have her, that her own terms were his, that he could not take his thoughts much less his presence again from the place where she abode—a rush of confession and revelation altogether unlike the man that others knew or that he had hitherto known himself.

She had been in the Forward Room. He heard the door and her step in the living-room; then at last she came to the door of the court, and all that he could say was:

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

She looked so white that he was awed by the frailness of her life. He could not speak, and the sense of hanging there, impotent, presently prevailed upon his pride, and he went away. During the day Bamban twice mentioned the town of Wampli, and each time Romney turned away and smiled.

Always when driven to the last ditch, he smiled. One can best survey the humour of the world from the last ditch. And this day moved on, hour by hour, the slowest caravan in the reach of mortal conception—hours to the dusk, deadly, crawling. And when the dusk came on, he went to the court of the Consulate and sat upon a stone by the west wall, and smoked there, waiting for the full night. Once the woman came to the doorway and waved at him. And that night, leaving, he was torn again. As he stretched out on his blankets, Bamban brought a candle.

... Romney suddenly reached for the yellow hand. At the touch of it, a sob came from him, and for an hour he apologised. Still an hour later he awoke, sweating, with a start, dreaming that the laugh had come. Bamban was still sitting by the candle.

"Was that the hyenas?" the American asked.

"No, there has been silence. You were dreaming."

"Ah, yes."

Bamban watched him for a time.

"You do not eat. You do not sleep. You are losing strength for your journey. Will not the woman wait for you?"

"I feel as if I needed some new power," Romney said strangely. "I feel the need of a master."

"When that comes to a man, the master is near," Bamban said quietly.

"What do you mean? You see I have stopped talking to you as a servant."

"I am your servant," Bamban responded simply.

"But what did you mean about the master being near?"

"It is a saying among the Buddhists that the master is ready when the man is; but I wonder if he will find his disciple with great joy, when that disciple delays his mission for a woman. Remember I am talking still as your servant."

"I appreciate you, Bamban."

"You are the chosen one. I wait for you to remember your mission, and to have done with the lesser drawing principle—"

Romney laughed. "It's a clash of the East and West," he said.

"But they thought you were of the East. They are waiting now in Peking—in the conviction of your loyalty—"

Romney turned away as if to sleep again.

The next morning when he shaved he cut himself twice, for his face was all unfamiliar with bone; and that evening he sat on the stone by the west wall of the court. There was no sound. The full moonless night came over him. The woman waved in the doorway. He arose at last and went out of the court, for there was no sound from the desert.

It was exactly so the next night, and during neither of these two days did he see Anna Erivan. On the third night he arose and left the court as usual, but there was a light speeding foot behind him, and her hand touched his sleeve.

"Oh, come back—send Bamban for your bags and come back!"

"My God—why?" he stammered.

"Do as I say—"

"But what have I done?"

"Oh, I cannot let you live another hour with the thought that I was afraid of what they would think—of your being here. That is a lie. You must have known I care nothing for that. I thought that sending you away would make you start on your mission—I used that. It has almost killed us.... Come in.... Since you will not go—come in to the house with me."

She brought the candle to his face. "Oh, you poor—poor—"

She seemed not to know whether to say boy or man—"how you have suffered—and for me! ... I do not understand it. It seemed weak for you to stay. It has been my greatest anguish that I caused you to stay.... And yet, there is something deathless about it—something I do not understand."

10

There was something about it also that Romney did not understand. Nor could he speak. He watched her in the light of the single candle. Again and again, the face of flesh that he knew, faded into a kind of dream before the intentness of his regard. It was she, and yet another face might have been painted upon it without changing the real identity. And all about it was a vapoury white, different from lamp-light. It was like a visitation from the other side. Out of it her words came to him, but he did not answer at once. The fact is Romney had banked his fires of late in such a heavy and draughtless fashion, that they were in danger of going out.

And queerly enough now, certain hardly remembered passages of strangers through Nadiram recurred to mind: wild nomads from the Khingan Mountains driving their scanty flocks to the sparse pastures of the south; Tartars, the true descendants of Genghis Kahn; Buddhist holy men gaunt from their days of fasting in the solitudes; once a skeleton troop of Cossacks that stole in on a mysterious errand and vanished; and the merchants, the everlasting wigglebrows—all strangers on the long road through the days of wasting heat and nights of drawing cold.

... She came to him because he did not speak. There seemed a movement around the room above her head; and the face in the centre of the faint white ray was at his knees. He felt vaguely that if he spoke, the face and all would vanish.

"There is something greater than I knew about your waiting," she whispered. "It belongs to the future ... as all that I thought I knew belongs to the past.... I see it differently ... not that you should stay for my sake, but that you felt a woman's need and remained.... Won't you speak?"

His head swung to and fro like one to whom breathing is a burden. His hand had gone out to her. He could not be sure, but he felt that his hand touched her throat, that her chin nestled in his palm for a second.... There was a step in the court—Bamban coming with the bags. Oddly enough, this aroused Romney from the lulling presence of the woman. Alone in the room with her now he had found it irresistible. It was as if he had come home after incredible travail.... The fact is he had treated himself rather badly; there had been many hours of self-hatred. He had felt the whole outer world, (which he cared for second to her)—arousing itself in scorn for him.... He would have been unconscious before her, had not his servant come.

"Bamban," he muttered, "help me into that room. I am to stay—to stay here, I believe."

At the door of the room, Romney's back turned, Bamban stood before the woman a moment. She bowed her head until the servant passed on. Then she moved swiftly to the fire, stirred it into flame and put on the kettle.... Through the open door in the candle-light, she saw the man struggle with his shoe. He seemed unable to see, and his body swayed weakly as his head bent forward. He gave it up for a moment and sank back on the cot. She went in to help him. He tried to push her away, but she resisted:

"Please, I must help you—"

A picture of her brother in the Forward Room had come before him, hunched and helpless, and he would not.

"Just sit down—if you will," he panted. "Just a little while—so I can be sure. I am better—"

There was silence.

"... I was leaving the court," he said in an expectant tone, as if ready to be corrected. "You came after me—"

"You came three nights to be near me at the time of the hyenas—"

"Yes.... And this is the Consulate—the room I first slept in, and you are here."

"Yes."

"And why did you ask me here? ... Or did you tell me already? ... You see, I wasn't quite all here for a minute."

"I asked you to come, because I was torn with the faith and the will you have shown. It seemed to me suddenly as great as the quest—something modern, added to the old dream of going forth—as if you knew that the quest was nearest—"

"I didn't know anything like that. I only knew I loved you," he said rigidly.

"You felt a woman's need and remained," she said. "Against her will, and all."

"It was not a woman's need," he muttered. "Everything is out of me, but naked truth. I loved you—that changed all. I had work. You made me forget it. You held to the dream. My dream turned to you. It is you now.... I think I shall not pass this way again. If there is something more important here below than this love—very well. Let them have it, who say so. As for me, I love you. I think the great man who said, 'Give all to love,' meant me."

"Wait—"

She went to the fire, her eyes gleaming. The thing there was not finished. She brought water to him in a basin.

"No—let me," she said, as he would have arisen. "I want to.... It will make me happier."

He sank back and closed his eyes. The figure of her brother fled from his mind, as the cool cloth laved his forehead. Bamban had kept his clothing in order. He had never come to the court at evening other than as a man who comes to see a maiden. Her will now was to serve him. There was a magic in the ministry that sent him to the borderlands again.... Then she brought food, and would not let him help himself.

"I shall be with you to-night.... When you sleep I shall be here. When you wake you shall find me here.... You must rest ... and every little while you must have food. You have not taken care of yourself since you left me—"

The splendour had to do with the spontaneity of it all. Her every movement was an improvisation. He heard her words separately and as a whole. He weighed and looked at them—as at coloured lights, studying the background and distances between them, in that strange altering of time that one who touches the dream-border knows. Then more words came:

"I shall always serve you now. My will is not broken. It is blent with yours. I am proud and glad—for yours was greater than mine. It should be so. But I should have seen it before—"

He was wondering what he would say; at times afraid lest it break some words of hers; at times unable to think of words.

"Don't try to speak," she whispered.

The old wonder of her understanding recurred to him. It would always be so.... Two or three times the thought came, almost the words, to ask her not to lose her rest; that he would do very well now—replenished as he was, and absolutely comfortable. She left him presently to bring another sup of the hot liquid hastily prepared; and then it was as if he had spoken, though he could not remember. Her answer remained in mind:

"You would not deny me the joy of helping you back to strength—you who have given me so much—"

... Once he opened his eyes and knew by the candle that he had slept.

"I think I must have been looking at you and woke you up," she whispered. "I won't look at you that way again. Wait—"

She brought something different, hot and in a cup.

... Then long after he heard her say "Yes?" questioningly, and opened his eyes.

Her head bent toward him. "Were you dreaming?" she asked.... "I answered because you said, 'Anna Erivan, Anna Erivan.'"

Another candle was upon the table....

Again, much time elapsed, when he started up hearing the hyenas, but her face was calm and untroubled.

"I must have been dreaming," he said.

"Your dreams should be peaceful. All is well. You must rest, rest."

His hand was taken. After that he did not sleep at once, though his eyes were closed. He felt his strength coming back into his veins, new life creeping through him, a resuming of interests in living; all interests centring in the woman and yet radiating far from her, out into the world. He thought of the whole story since the night of their meeting.

It unfolded like a wonderful flower, his mind at peace, his breathing steady.... And now he knew that the new life was coming to him from her hand—rare essence of vitality, something finer than he had known. His mind was full of unfoldings. There was a vision of days ahead—desert mid-days, desert evenings, with her beside him, the superb magnetism of her hand and presence. He would not take her strength as to-night; he would be strength to her. She said her will had blent with his, and yet in the days to come he would make her will his law.... The position of her hand did not change and yet she was nearer. The huge blanket that had overhung from the cot to the floor was lifted to cover her knees. Then he thought the candle expired, but it was only shielded from his eyes. The warmth of her was healing and fragrant.... There was a touch upon his cheek, and it was day.

11

Romney washed and shaved, listening to her step outside. It gave him a joy that he had never known before. The morning sun was bright and warm, and the wind that came steadily through seemed less of the arid Gobi than on other mornings, having for his replenished heart the freshness of grass and fruitful valleys.... Her step—the step of a man's woman in the house. He laughed at himself; no one could understand but the man. It would sound banal if he tried to tell what it meant to him—the step so light and swift and for him. Presently he made haste; was quite concerned about moments that continued to pass apart from her, so that his hand trembled in the last small tasks.

The little table was spread in white; the kettle steamed; the sunlight crossed the stone flags almost to the fireplace. She was standing by the table, her shoulder bent a little to the right, something shy in her smile. He moved closer and she turned—the way free between them. Romney's arm lifted but fell again. That other old moment bewildered him—the moment he took her and it was not right. He had said that she must hold out her arms. It was from this mental turning that the big thought came....

"You are better," she said.

"I shall be ready to travel to-morrow," he answered.

She turned away and he was close to her shoulder, but behind.

"I'm strong enough for anything—after last night," he added. "I suppose we must put our house in order now."

She went to the fireplace and returned, pouring the boiling water on the tea. They sat down together.

"No one goes to Wampli from here," she said at last.

"It's the orders I received—three days into the west—"

"But the desert tribes—"

"I have certain credentials and money to pay their tariffs—"

"Life is terrible," she said strangely. "Sometimes I am afraid of the intensity of life. I saw your face last night—white it seemed in the dusk—and suddenly I found myself running after you and all I had thought before looked wrong. I think we were dying because we were apart in this thing.... Isn't it strange? We have spoken none of the little things, that lead up to these deeper revelations between man and woman.... Running to you, I felt something great and new in your holding for my sake. I could hardly breathe until I told you that the sick and hated convention was a lie. I think now a lie is always wrong. Yesterday I thought it a good and worthy thing if it were powerful enough to help you on to your journey."

He leaned forward listening. She had so many things to say, the order was slow in coming to them.

"Now I see that a lie is always wrong. The truth would have sent you forth before this. It is the truth that makes you ready now. And yet last night I did not change in order to make you go."

Romney spoke slowly:

"It did not come to me until just now. You have said it. We are given just so much intensity—then there is a rest. It was like reaching the top of a mountain—last night—"

"But we have to begin all over again to-day," she said dully. "The truth starts you on your journey. Yesterday I wanted you to start. It seemed a test. I could not see the truth I wanted about you—with your staying on here. I felt that I was the cause, and that some ancient wickedness must adhere to me. I did everything to make you go—but first of all I made you stay—clung to your stirrup that first morning. I do not understand myself—"

"That first morning held a very real moment to me," Romney said.

"But that's not all," she went on, appearing not to hear.

"What more?"

"Now again, I want—oh, it's hard to have you go."

Romney was silent.

"Must we always be apart?" she asked in the same dull way. "Last night it all looked different. You said such an incomparable thing to a woman. You said that you had turned from your work to me—that your dream had become me. I never shall forget your face—dazed, not realising hardly that I had brought you back into this house. It was as if you were on a ridge between heaven and hell, and but one true thing remained for you to say.... 'I think I shall not pass this way again. If there is something more important here below than this love—very well. Let them have it who say so. As for me, I love you. I think the great man who said, "Give all to love," meant me.'"

"A thousand times I have re-pictured that night coming into the court," he told her. "Who would have thought of such a meeting in the Gobi? I once heard that it wasn't a matter of place, but of time—"

The thought of Moira Kelvin had hardly recurred with her in the room, and there was something strange about this, considering the proneness of the human mind to make contrasts. Moira Kelvin had been his master—perhaps that was the secret of her falling away so cleanly from his heart. His first thought that her capacity of appeal was so largely histrionic, scarcely recurred in the later days of their fortnight, and left only a memory. There had been an early sense of her ruthlessness, but that had not lived out their period. He held her to splendour. Finding her with Nifton Bend fastened it forever in his mind. Her quest was the certain spirit of a man—and yet he remembered the passion of her. He felt that great natures are built upon such passions, and considered it nothing at all to his credit that he had held her passion sacred since she had nothing else for him.

She had shown him in a thousand ways that there is a new order of conduct in the love-relations of the world—that man in general is very much in need of learning to wait, to hold and to serve. He held Moira Kelvin as a great friend now—one to reverence and to rely upon among the rarest passages of his life. All that she had said had proven true. He had brought Anna Erivan a different treasure because of that meeting. It had proved an initiation, and the one dark moment of Nadiram was his taking Anna Erivan in his arms at the wrong moment. He would pay for that in good measure....

She had been silent, and spoke now as if the words escaped: "Do you think that because you were so ready—because you had been waiting and had pictured the one woman—that I more or less fell into it?"

He leaned forward longingly. Her shyness in asking such a question quickened her attraction.

"That first night—that night of fighting—I thought there must be something insane about me—to let you take hold so utterly. Why, it was as if everything else were done—a new era entered on. The whole world would say I'm yellow to stick here—instead of pushing on for that which I was sent. I sat in the court during those nights apart from you—or thinking I was apart on that conventional thing—and felt Bamban, Nadiram, the Big Three and all of New China pouring scorn upon me. Yet what hurt me more was being apart from you. You see, that seemed a difference we couldn't overcome."

She seemed to be looking into his heart and finding something there which had little to do with his words. She felt the silence again, and it was plain to him when she spoke that she had taken up some secondary matter less hard to broach.

"I have sometimes felt that you were not sure of the work you were on—as if you doubted, perhaps, since you were out here, the wisdom or the goodness of those who sent you."

Romney was startled at the foreignness of the observation at this moment. Nothing seemed normal that had not to do with their story. He found himself telling her hastily of the suspicion he had encountered in regard to New China's idea of waging war—if she were called to war; and also of the incident of the Japanese spy.

"That was hard to take," he added. "I thought I was pretty well orientalised, but the old western training cropped up. I tried to make myself believe that I wasn't responsible for his capture, but I didn't make a very good job of that. I had run him down. Perhaps they would have got him, but the fact is, they got him where they did because of my efforts. It broke me for a moment—the little man being put out that way at my feet—"

"You speak of things as they happened—not making them less to save yourself," she said.

"That would be short-sighted and unsatisfactory."

"What must you have thought of me for telling you an untruth to make you go on?"

"I didn't think of it as an untruth. You wanted me to go for the good of others—and that way came to you—"

"But you would not have descended to such a trick—"

"Trick!" he said impatiently; "don't speak of it that way. Who am I to forget what you said—about the little ones needing a voice and a sign? ... And I want to add about the men who have sent me: they are pure. They hold their own lives as cheap as those whom they find necessary to put out of the way.

"They loved the little spy, too. They have a dream of a purer world. I don't think anywhere on earth the dream is so close to coming true as it is in the minds of those men. I am proud to serve them."

"I cannot see you running after the little spy, through the streets—"

"I'm sorry you have to see it at all."

"I had to ask, as if its presence in your mind made me draw it forth. I will help you forget it—"

"There's something very dear to me in that," he answered. "You—yes, you can make me forget it."

There was a pause, and Romney laughed. "I show you things I never could show any one before," he said. "Why, a man doesn't talk of such compunctions. I think we go about the world without telling each other—I mean the men we meet—any more than the foam of reality. A man's woman takes everything—"

"A man's woman," she repeated. "There's something primitive in that—and something that is ahead, too.... I don't know exactly what thrilled me so last night as I ran after you. I believe that the patience and wonder of your staying and coming to the court each night had something to do with that primitive thing which 'a man's woman' suggests.... And also with the big stories of men and women as they will be lived in the future. The wonder does not pass. The thought was with me all night—as I watched near you. It made me want to ask something else—"

"What—?"

"It may make me seem less to you—"

"That cannot be."

"I never thought I would feel like this—but I seem to feel her about you—some woman you must have loved greatly—"

12

Romney forgot the Gobi. Rarely were they altogether out of its influence in Nadiram and this room, but the story that was called stirred him to the old beat of the world. He felt distantly as he had during his tests in the house of Minglapo. This killed out instantly any idea of policy. The truth was all he knew, but the truth here was a different affair from dealing with Chinese who might take or leave what he had to offer according to their whim. Here was a tense face of a woman who had crushed her pride to ask such a question.... He told her how the big devils and virtues had opened in him from the encounter with Moira Kelvin, what he had been before the meeting on the deck of the Sungkiang—and what he had been since.

He told her in ten minutes how he had cast all into the Great Drift, and had been spared in spite of himself—how the thrall of Moira Kelvin had gone out of his heart, and how he had met her again in the presence of her mate.

"She made me know that there can be no doubt in a great love-story," he added. "She made me know that there is no such thing as a triangle; that a man or a woman in doubt between two, loves neither as the world shall presently know love. She made me know that love cannot be altogether on one side—that mine could not hold because she had not the same for me. The mystery of its falling from me in the Great Drift revealed that. She opened my heart for the woman I was to find. I did not believe when she told me that, but I have come to believe it. After I saw her behind the low shoulders of Nifton Bend—I knew that my heart's desire was still a-field, and that all she had said was truth. The power of this truth was opened to me the night I rode into this little court—"

Her eyes were turned out to the sunlight.

"It seemed that I had come home that moment," he added. "I did not want to leave you that night. I never did a harder thing than to call for the camels the next morning. And when you put your hand on the leather at my foot—it was not until then that I knew what our meeting meant to you. Realising that—the transaction was finished, so far as I was concerned."

"I never thought I would feel like this," she repeated.

"It was like a review of all the hells," he said, meaning the Drift. "I look at the years before that as a kind of semi-sleep. I moved about only partly conscious—studying, watching, laughing at things, fancying I was somebody, thinking I had done something when I got into the pulse of China. The fact is, the Romney of those days wasn't ready to come into the court of this little Consulate—"

Her face was still turned away. Very quickly the flaw appeared in his last sentences. He was making very light of a wastrel period—a period without will and organised manhood of any kind.

"Don't think I fail to see the other side," he said hastily. "Something of quiet and power has seemed to come out of it, but it was abandonment. It was weak. A better man would not have thought of letting go as I did. Even if he didn't want to live he would have put himself out of the way in a clean-cut abrupt fashion—"

She shook her head quickly, as if pained at some picture in her mind.

"A real man would have done neither," he added. "He would have taken his medicine and not thought of death. There is always a yellow streak in letting go.... I'm sorry to bring you such a story. It has no virtue save that of being true. Also it is back—finished."

Her silence was destroying him. The panorama of his abandonment rushed past in a kind of red dark. His voice had a whimper, for his own ears, as he said:

"At least, it was all in the year. I drank little before, I drink nothing now."

The absurdity of it now prevailed. His story had taken her away from him. Much thinking had made him lose the ugliness. He had told her matters which were so horrible as to break the spell between them. She seemed to be slipping away, and just now he thought of the man in the Forward Room in relation to that year in the Drift. She was not the first woman who had reached the end of endurance in this business. The laugh formed deep within him—the laugh of a man at the last ditch again. What a fool he had been to tell her what had happened—to forget the part that this particular devil had played in her life! ... He would go on to Wampli now—without a woman waiting. The laugh was twisting in his lips, and he had the sense that if it came it would slay the last hope.

Anna Erivan turned and started at the sight of his face.

"I wasn't thinking of the months in which you held yourself palms-up to death, and drifted along the water-fronts," she said quickly. "Oh, any one could see that has nothing to do with you now."

Romney gasped, and, leaning forward, placed his wide-stretched hand near hers, which went to it.

"I was thinking of the woman," she said slowly. "I never thought I would feel like this."

He was still shaken from the illusion he had suffered, in high voltage. It suddenly occurred to him what it would mean if she had brought a story of an affair with a man—an affair that meant as much to her as Moira Kelvin meant to him. The very thought was torture. There is a touch of insanity in the best of men on this ground. Romney was amazed at his own feelings and at his own simplicity; and over all was a contaminating something that seemed to emerge from his deepest nature—a gladness for her primitive emotion regarding him where another woman was concerned. He wanted to take her close in his arms. An uncertain memory of the night before when he was half-asleep, recurred queerly.... He had not spoken, and yet he knew that in her case, he would want to ask and ask—also that to ask questions meant to bend a mighty pride. He was using his will to be fair—holding that woman is as free an instrument in the world as a man.

"I love your truth," she said hoarsely. "I think that is all that saves it—saves me—the sense that what you say is true."

"There is no more," he whispered. "I have told you all."

"I love your truth—but I hate myself—"

"Anna Erivan, you are superb to me. I think—there is a bit of madness or martyrdom about two coming together this way. I didn't understand what my story could mean to you, until I thought of it the other way—as if you brought it to me—"

"I have nothing interesting like that," she said with a smile. "I think if I brought you a story like that, it would change me in your eyes."

"I would not let it," he said.

"Your will could not save me," she answered. "A man might say and believe (until his own heart was touched) that a woman has all the rights of man to diffuse herself before her mate arrives, but in his own heart, he would see her differently if she did. Oh, it is not the pressure of centuries of man's possession of women—not altogether his instinctive sense of conservation. That's only physical. There is something back even of the patriarch idea about women. She cannot give herself to one and be the same again—not even in her own mind. There is something sacred about that, which men do not know—and which only great women know—"

"Then you think a man big enough to place a woman on the same moral footing as himself has not come to the end of the subject?"

"I think when men are tolerant enough for that, they will be great enough to accept woman's idea of herself, which is greater still."

"What is it—can you tell me?"

"Just so long as a woman has not the spiritual power to formulate her ideal of the one man of her heart, she must accept the nearest, the first or second or third, and must suffer her horrors of mis-mating. But all the time her dream is forming, literally making the one who belongs to her and no other. It builds out of her suffering. It comes out of agony and diffusion, even out of promiscuity. It is the ascent of woman's character into an integrity which can only be touched by one human being. It is not touched if he does not come—"

Romney stood before her, looking into two flashing points her eyes had become.

"It does not play a fortnight—to find out if the man is the one. It does not play at all. It does not suffer from waiting because it does not live in sex. It does not meet its own on any basis of sex—not at first, even though it has passions powerful enough to fire the world—"

"Anna Erivan—have I lost you—am I too far from the dream?"

She arose and came nearer, the table no longer between them.

"I tell you I hate myself because this has hurt me—"

"And I tell you that this morning I feel abysses below you—that you are revealed to me higher than I knew and dreamed."

"That first night, I thought it was he who had come to me ... and last night, running after you, I was sure—"

He started forward, his arms outstretched, but remembered and fell back.

"I said I would wait until you held out your arms—"

Her face turned a little to the side, and he saw a smile suffuse with colour.

"I did last night," she whispered.

13

That noon Bamban came and sat in the court for a little period, awaiting any word from his master. It was in Romney's heart to tell him that he meant to start for Wampli to-morrow, and yet he had not spoken of that to Anna Erivan since morning, and he decided to wait until the last judgment of the woman was heard. Bamban smilingly departed, but back of the glittering eyes of the little man, the American fancied an expression:

"You are a tarrier with women."

An Oriental expresses his deepest scorn in a statement somewhat of that nature. It touched Romney very lightly on this day. He was not himself—something lifted and expanded far beyond the man he had been; and yet apart from Anna Erivan he was but a creature of listening and turning. On this day, Anna Erivan had entered a domain of his heart which Moira Kelvin had not found. A questing woman brave enough to wait, a woman above playing with senses, who required no experiments to uncover her own. And her head had lain a moment on his breast, her waist in his hard lean arm.... He wasn't untrue to Moira Kelvin in any thought. Even in the illumination of Anna Erivan, there was still a laughing splendour about the other. He could view the yellow-rug woman now with a man's generosity, though he recognised that there was no answer to Anna Erivan's point. He was proud to the very spirit of his being that it was so.... They strode out into the desert together, when the sun was at its highest. She stopped and caught his arm. It was almost as if the cry of the hyenas had come to her:

"What is it? What is it?" he asked.

"Was she very beautiful?"

Her art was somehow revealed. Anna Erivan had waited until they were far from the village before asking that question.... He was almost well again—not so robust, perhaps, as when he had come to Nadiram, but healed and glowing to-day, as one filled with light. It was only gradually that he dared let the full light in. Sometimes he seemed to be holding a door against it, lest it be too much for his heart. He had followed her about the house that morning until he was amazed at her power over him, and forced himself apart in the room where he had passed the long night. He had waited with every ounce of will-force, and holding was possible so long as he heard her step, but the moment she was silent he rushed forth as one coming up from deep water.

The day was dazzling bright though the heat was not dangerous. She had never been out of the court before in his presence, and something of the gold-brown of the desert came to her, as if all the wasted energy of the sunlight, deluging fruitless rock and barren sand, gathered about her to animate the delicate promise of her being. Desert gold was in her eyes, and noon warmth in her cheeks, her lips parted with joy and ardour and low laughter he had never heard in the house. Clouds were massed into gilded mountains in the low west. The dry heat came up from the sand and the living heat pressed down from the sun. Nadiram was silent behind them, their voices free now in the open, their hearts drinking the power of the light.

"Think of it," she said halting, "think if we should go on and on—you and I. The nights—"

"I thought of that before I came to your door—on the road to Turgim. I thought of journeying on and on through the desert with the woman waiting somewhere—"

"I should be dangerous in a desert-night—"

"Dangerous?" he laughed.

"I should be myself at last. You'll find that dangerous. A desert night would set me free. Perhaps I should find a nature very old and abandoned—"

"In me?"

"In myself."

"Suppose you should hear the cries?"

Anna Erivan laughed. "There would be no Forward Room out here. It is the houses and the presence of men that make me afraid."

... He did not care much to speak, but regarded her face as he had never used his eyes before. Several times during the morning, she had reverted in her talk to incidents of the night before, when he lay in exhaustion, with only a waver of consciousness from time to time.

"Did you know that a woman finding her beloved, looks for a man but finds a child?"

Romney peered closer, his eyelids all but shut in the vivid light.

"This morning as the dawn came in, I saw the child so clearly that I had to touch your face. I would have wept had I not run away for a little time."

After a moment, she added in whispers and falterings:

"Did you know, toward morning, but before the light—when the cold came in—that I was very close to you, leaning forward under the edge of your blanket? ... You were still. Your breathing was like a child's. And then I thought again of your coming in the evening to the court—to the west wall. I don't know how I could have been so hard. I should have broken down in fright, had you not come."

"I only knew that I could not leave you," he said.

"But to-morrow morning—"

He was silent.

"We need not think of it now," she said slowly. "Not until to-night. We shall know best to-night—"

She was staring away into the gilded mountains of cloud in the low west. Romney's eyes followed hers. There seemed a movement there, something filmy white like a great bird, against the brilliant horizon. He could not get his mind away from Wampli. Every moment with her, and the parting seemed harder. The larger consciousness that had come from her, at the same time bound him to her.... Leaving her in Nadiram—alone under the Russian flag. It would take seven days at least to get back, even if his mission made it possible for him to remain as short a time as a day in Wampli. That was not likely. The chances were, if he were not held there, his orders would be to push on. The last packet of orders, designated for reading in Wampli, might contain the open orders for a farther journey of weeks. Romney shivered. There was little mercy in the facts. The great continent of Asia was like a dead weight against him. She touched his arm.

"Look—"

What he saw presently, low upon the sand, had the look of a turtle of large size, the head uplifted from time to time. The strangeness of the creature and the way it moved stirred him oddly.... The thing was yellow—the noon light showed that, the deep satisfying embrowned yellow of some object in which the sun has sunk for ages and ages. This is the yellow of the Gobi at a certain moment of evening. It was the yellow of Moira Kelvin's rug—and this was a robe of a Chinese Holy Man. In India they would have called him a Sannysin.

Hastening forward, they saw that the head, lifted from time to time, was shaven and literally fallen in from emaciation. The gray of death suffused the brown skin, especially where it was thinnest, in lip and temple and nostril. The creature crawled; his age must have been very great, his grasp of life a miracle, yet the robe he wore was woven from the breasts of young camels and coloured, as the priests would say, with God's own light. This is a colour princes dare not wear. It trailed upon the sand and took no hurt or stain; it was fine as leather can be, a protection from the sun and a saving grace from cold.

"He is my Ancient!" Anna Erivan cried. "He is the one who came to the court long ago, and left me such strength. He is very dear and very wise."

This robe was first to show Romney the quality of his guest, but he was soon conscious of something beside, that made him very tender, so that he knelt and gently lifted the ancient ascetic by the shoulders. The chin now rested in the hollow of his arm. The old man leaned there as if in peace. Presently Romney's eyes were called back to the town—a mere low jagged contour behind in the blinding stillness. Bamban was running toward them. At a little distance, he halted, dropped to his knees, and thus came forward, the expression on his face altogether new. Indeed, it was dissolute with devotion.

And now the old Father appeared to sleep in Romney's arm, and thus was carried between the men, a light burden, back to the Consulate in Nadiram.

They brought a cot to the living-room, Anna Erivan joyously preparing food, filling the begging-bowl with the choicest that her house afforded. Yet it was hours before the old priest awoke, and during this time Bamban never moved from his devotional posture by the door of the court. It appeared now that the aged Buddhist had pushed his austerities somewhat farther than usual, almost extinguishing the flicker of life that remained in his wasted breast. His opening speech had to do with the absolute rightness of all things, especially with the excellence of the universe and the exceeding rightness of right knowledge, to all of which Romney attentively agreed and Bamban degraded himself to accept. The Sannysin advanced deeper into the thought, enunciating his conviction that all was well in Nadiram and in the house. He spoke briefly of his all-readiness for departure from this life, saying that he had been ready three days before in the desert, that he was ready now to pass or presently. Having impressed his readiness, he ventured to add his personal point of view to the effect that he considered it a misery to be called back into life through the medium of strong food, but qualified this opinion by inquiring if he had not returned to the hideous pressure of the flesh with some slight degree of calmness and cheer. Romney encouraged him to believe this, hastily translating for the woman; and Bamban projected himself in abasement, whereupon the Sannysin slept again.

Toward evening, the ancient head was once more raised into the hollow of Romney's arm. Bamban had scarcely left the Consulate for a moment throughout this extended interval. The Buddhist raised his eyes to Romney's face, saying that he was now acquainted with the deep reason for his misery in being so relentlessly called back to the coils of matter; that he recognised in the white man a younger brother, a true Brahman, whereupon he gave Romney a small bit of parchment, the size of three postage-stamps, upon which was written a Sanscrit phrase, having to do with the inspiration of the soul, and a few further marks which even Romney, though he deciphered them, could not understand.

Thus was the coming of Rajananda and his passing likewise, for he asked that he be carried forth at sundown, to the exact spot where they had first seen the upraised head. There they placed the body upon the sand, accepted a cold claw and a gesture to return to Nadiram. The Buddhist then slept, the withered yellow cheek pressed upon the breast of his old Mother, the desert.

The disquieting part of the whole affair was that Bamban appeared to have acquired the habit of abasing himself in Romney's presence, though more than ever his eyes avoided Anna Erivan's. The three returned to the Consulate in the early darkness and Bamban's impulse to kow tow again asserted itself on the flags of the court.

"Come, come, Bamban; get up and go to the Rest House for your supper. I'm the same friend of yours—as always."

The Chinese obeyed, and Romney turned from where he stood in the court, to the door-way. Anna Erivan stood there—as on the evening of his arrival.

14

They sat down together in the deep shadow, for a time not thinking of talk or food. Each felt a singular relief with the passing of Bamban, and the excellent calm that the presence of Rajananda had left behind.

"Did you know he is not Chinese?" Romney said at last.

Anna Erivan shook her head.

"I just thought of it now—the name Rajananda, the Sanscrit on the little parchment, the character of his sayings, though he spoke in Chinese. Then he said I was Brahman.... There was much to say, much to ask him. I don't see how I could have let him go without words—"

"One only thinks of listening when a holy man speaks."

The man smiled at her. "But the thought comes to me again and again that he might have put me straight on the mission—that he is very high in power, possibly of the Inner Temple—"

"You may meet him again—perhaps at Wampli. To-morrow you must go on—"

Romney did not resist the thought at this time. He looked about the low stone room, at the forward door, toward the inner room and at the door to the court.... It was like a call, a trial of strength. He had found his own. It would be weak to tarry with a task undone.