'I will come out, Kit,' said Grace.
And then came the joyful buzz of the camp, and the glowing evening light on the jungle, and the spread table, to which the rajah led her, his servants and camp followers bending down humbly, with their faces to the ground, and again she felt as if she were moving in a dream. Though she was only able to take a very little of what had been provided for her, Grace felt stronger when she had eaten. Leaning on Tom's arm, and with Kit clinging to her hand, she was able to move about the camp. She made the acquaintance of Purtab, who had slain the serpent, and, using Bâl Narîn as an interpreter, he and Abiman congratulated her upon her escape, and expressed their conviction that she was favoured of the gods. So long as she was talking and moving she was at peace. But when she was alone the horror came again. They were not to start until moon-rise. Tom left her in her tent to rest. Kit went to sleep on a cushion by her side. Silence fell upon the camp, and in the darkness and solitude her nameless dread took form. There she lay, with hands cramped together and staring eyeballs, while vision after vision, full of horror, swept by. Was it she, her very self—this Grace who was not of heroic mould, to whom all these things had happened? Was she dreaming hideously, or were they true? Oh! God, were they true? She had suffered, but it was not that alone. She had heard what curdled her blood in her veins, and made her feel that the gentle, innocent gaiety of the past was a sin. Women and little children tortured to death, men blown away from guns, inhuman crimes, inhuman vengeance, hell gaping its mouth to devour, and heaven, the dear heaven, of which, in the days of her childhood, she had dreamed, passing away as visions pass in the lurid light of a world in flames.
She shuddered as she lay. This was terrible. She ought to be so thankful. Ah! and she was thankful; but it was to man, not God. Once she opened her lips, and the cry, old as humanity, the 'Our Father,' that will instinctively break from the heart of Earth's children when they realise their weakness and the strength of the forces set in array against them, rose on a wave of anguish from her soul. But in the next instant the cry was withdrawn. Father! There was no Father, only a blind power that hurled the world-atoms, which for once in the measureless ages have shaped themselves into sentient lives, from steep to steep of a dead eternity. Awful, unutterable, sorrow piercing her heart, like barbed arrows, each of which leaves its sting in the wound, looking out pitifully from a myriad of eyes, making life impossible and death the only refuge to be hoped for!
In the darkness Kit awoke and heard her laboured breathing. He groped for her hand, and, finding it cold, was frightened and stole out to awake Tom.
He came in, lighted the lamps, and knelt down beside her. 'You are with friends,' he whispered, when he had made her drink a few drops of Bâl Narîn's cordial. 'You must have courage for a little while.'
'I will try,' she said plaintively. 'I should like to see them once more.'
'You will see them once more, and many times. When all this tangle is over, we must go back to England.'
'England!' murmured Grace. 'Ah! they are good there. One can believe, but,' shuddering, 'one cannot forget. I suppose we have to go out of life for that.'
'Grace, if you love us, if you love them, do not, for heaven's sake, speak so!'
She raised her heavy eyes and looked at him.