'No, Excellency, beyond.'
'What! has Vishnugupta other haunts?'
But here Grace touched his arm; and, turning, he saw a strange, indescribable yearning in her face.
'He is dead,' she said. 'I thought so.'
The man of whom they had been inquiring bent his head silently. He had not wished that his should be the voice to speak the word of ill omen; but it had been spoken and he could not deny it.
Grace said nothing more about Vishnugupta that night, but the next day she asked Tom to find out for her how he had died. There was little or nothing to know. After his last conversation with Grace he had started, as it was supposed, for his hermitage in the hills. Some had seen, or imagined, a change in his face—a rapt expression that had awed and solemnised them; but no one had spoken to him. The morning after the day he left the city he was found in a mango-tope at a short distance from the gates, his back against a tree—dead! His face, which, those who found him said, was turned towards the sun rising, had lost the tense and feverish look which it had worn so often in his lifetime. It was irradiated with the morning light, and a stillness—an expression of satisfied longing—seemed to rest upon it. This was what Tom heard and what he told Grace. She listened with a wistful smile. 'A beautiful death,' she said softly; 'I am glad for him.'
'He was an aged man. His death was natural,' said Tom with unusual eagerness.
'Death is always natural,' answered Grace, and she added after a moment's pause: 'What we call death. Isn't it wonderful, Tom, the power words have to mislead us? We think of death with horror; it is the word, the associations. If we were to look at it calmly, as it is——'
'Death means separation, Grace,' interrupted her lover hoarsely. 'To those who go it may mean everything you imagine. To those who are left——'