Aspasia, in her mind, flung the light from her and ran into the darkness, shrieking: "The Panther, the Panther!" But Aspasia, in the flesh, stood rooted to the spot, in a paralysis of terror, unable to move a muscle.
The thing came close to her on its noiseless feet. And she saw that the panther was Muhammed. This was no surprise; she had known it.
But, under his dishevelled locks, from out of the barbaric wings of his beard, the savage being's face was gazing upon her—as it gradually filtered to her panic-stricken mind—with no sort of savageness; rather, indeed, a gentle, a pathetic anxiety.
"Miss Cuningham..." said the Pathan.
To her bewildered ears it was the voice of no Pathan that spoke, but the high-bred accents of an English gentleman. The girl rubbed her eyes with her left hand. ("Wake up, Aspasia, wake up. You are still asleep, and in the middle of some ridiculous dream!")
"Miss Cuningham," pursued the dream-creature that was panther and Pathan, and yet looked and spoke like one of her own sober kin; "are you going to her?"
"I was going," answered the girl, abandoning herself to her dream. Then she began suddenly to tremble, and with knees giving way beneath her, advanced uncertainly towards the door, all her energies bent on reaching safety within. But he, with an outflung gesture of prayer, cried to her, in that low English voice that was so amazing, yet which, in spite of its incongruity, soothed her frantic fear.
"In pity, stop one second. Do you hear how she is crying within? Tell me, what is her trouble?" And, as Baby fell from amazement to amazement, as even in dreams one falls, and could find no thought, much less words for answer, he went on in his pleading undertone: "Is the old man not good to her? Oh, do not stop to wonder why I should ask you! Answer me, in the name of God, as one fellow-creature to another: Whom, or what, is she mourning for?"
Aspasia saw how, between the sweep of his moustache and the great fans of his beard, the man's lips quivered as he spoke: she felt his haggard eyes imploring, compelling; and she made answer, as she was bidden, "as one fellow-creature to another," with a solemnity which she herself was scarce aware of:
"She is mourning for her dead husband."