“Perhaps partly. But it may be that I have something to go upon. When I have more I will tell you more—but—I am forgetting—how on earth can it interest you?”
“But it will interest me very much—and—” “you know it,” she was going to add, but substituted: “life is prosaic enough for a romantic search of this sort to add new interest to it. How is it I did not know you were here?”
“Here—on this spot, or in this country?”
“On this spot, I mean. The other is easily understood. We have been living out of the way so long, and I see so few people. And you have only recently arrived?”
“Yes. As to being in here, I had no pony to leave outside. I have been climbing the mountains after markhôr, hence a tolerably disreputable old Khaki suit, and a battered and general air of not having been to bed all night.”
“Did you have any success?”
“No. I got in one shot, but missed it of course, just as I was saying when up at your place the other day. However, what I really wanted to do was to come in quietly here and explore.”
“So did I. Where is my syce, I wonder? There is my pony,” looking around, for they had regained the entrance of the cave. “Ah! I see him. He is at his prayers. Your man has joined him.”
“Yes. Old Bhallu Khan is a whale at piety. I should think he stood a first-class chance of the seventh heaven.”
“These people are very devout,” said Vivien, looking towards the two Mohammedans, who, with their shoes off, and their chuddas spread on the ground as praying carpets, were prostrating their foreheads to the earth, and otherwise following out the prescribed formula—facing towards the holy city. “I sometimes wonder if it is all on the surface.”