Beneath them pulsed the great heart of the ship, white foam pointing her way as she forged ahead. Behind her stretched the furrow of her course, two long lines, ever wider divergent till they lost themselves to the eye. And now, by some fantastic mirage effect, the great oriental port, with its glimmering minarets and cupolas, showed as if caught up into the sky itself. Let but this iron heart labour on a little while longer, let but this eager prow cut its way a little deeper towards the sunset, and the East would have vanished altogether.... The travellers would not even see the first glimmer of her evening lights hung a jewel necklace on the horizon, so swiftly had the sea laid hold of them.
Homeward bound! The step from pier to steamer had already severed the link of their strange affinity with the East. Its mystery had fallen from them. Already this was England. Rosamond Gerardine and Aspasia, side by side, watched the shores retreat, fade, sink, and vanish.
"Good-bye, India!" said Aspasia, her head sentimentally inclined, dropping at last the little handkerchief with which she had been frantically signalling long after there was any possibility of the vessel being descried from the land otherwise than as a black spot; "Good-bye, India, and hey for home!"
Lady Gerardine fixed the fading vision with wide, abstracted eyes.
"God grant," she said, under her breath, more to herself than to the girl beside her, "that I may never see those shores again!"
"Amen!" said Aspasia, cheerfully.
Rosamond laid her hand upon Aspasia's wrist as they leaned against the railings and pressed it with a grasp that almost hurt.
"An accursed land!" she went on, this time in a low, intense voice. It was as if she flung anathema to the retreating shores. "Cruel, cruel, treacherous! Oh, God, what has it not already cost us English! Is there a home among us that has not paid its blood tribute to that relentless monster? Listen, child. I was as young as you when I last beheld its shores—thus—from the sea. It was in the dawn (it is fit it should now be dusk), and we stood together as I stand beside you to-day. And I saw it grow out of the sky, even with the dawn, a city of rose, of pearl, beyond words beautiful—unimaginable, it seemed to me, in promise! He said to me: 'Look, there is the first love of my life; is she not fair? And I am bringing to her my other love ... and you two are all that I will have of life.' And then he laughed and said: 'It would be strange if I wanted more, with two such loves.' And, again: 'Not even for you could I be false to her.'"
Aspasia, mystified, turned her bright gaze full upon her aunt's face. In the pupils of Rosamond's eyes there was enkindled a sullen fire.
"He came back to her," she went on; "and she—that land—lay smiling in the sunrise to receive him. Oh, how she can smile and look beautiful, and smell fragrant, and caress, with the dagger hidden under the velvet, the snake in the rose, and the sudden grave yawning! I've never been home since," she said, with a sudden change of tone, bringing her glance back from the misty horizon, to fix it upon Aspasia with so piteous and haggard a look that the girl lost her composure. "And now I am coming home alone, and he remains there." She made an outward sweep with her left hand towards the north. "I am coming home alone. The other has kept him. She has kept him. I am alone: he is left behind."