"You are better, Miss Cuningham?" said a voice. She knew that voice, too; she smiled lazily.
"Now I know you," she said. "You are Muhammed."
He smiled back at her, a fugitive smile, mixed sweetness and sadness.
"By-and-by you will know me better—by-and-by," he said. "Now try and wake up, if you can, and help me."
He had left her and was again at the bed. Aspasia did as she was bidden. She shook herself from her torpor and stood up, somewhat dizzy, somewhat sick, but yet herself.
The man, Muhammed or another, she did not allow herself to think out the matter further, was hanging over Rosamond's inanimate form. Now he laid down the hand he held and bent his dark head to her breast. Baby flung one look of horror at the rigid upturned chin.
"She's dead!" she screamed.
He raised himself abruptly, his countenance grey even under the bronze.
"She is not dead," he answered her quickly, with a gesture that forbade her words, "but I have been too sudden with her, and Jani has been playing devil's tricks with her drugs. Is there any brandy——?" He wheeled round as he spoke, for the door had opened and old Mary's figure appeared.
The Ancient House was now full of rumours. Old Mary's blue eyes were fixed in a stare of uttermost ecstasy. Her trembling hands were lifted as if in invocation; all at once she stretched them out, with an inarticulate cry of exaltation. Then her voice faltered into homely accents: