She sat staring about her, doubting the evidence of her senses, marvelling if it could all be a dream. For she recognized the place. It was the ruined temple of Khanmulla in which she sat. There were the crumbling steps on which she had stood with Everard on the night that he had mercilessly claimed her love, had taken her in his arms and said that it was Kismet.
It was then that like a dagger-thrust the realization of his loss went through her. It was then that she first tasted the hopeless anguish of loneliness that awaited her, saw the long, long desert track stretching out before her, leading she knew not whither. She bowed her head upon her arms and sat crushed, unconscious of all beside....
It must have been some time later that there fell a soft step beside her; a veiled figure, bent and slow of movement, stooped over her.
"Mem-sahib!" a low voice said.
She looked up, startled and wondering. "Hanani!" she said.
"Yes, it is Hanani." The woman's husky whisper came reassuringly in answer. "Have no fear, mem-sahib! You are safe here."
"What—happened?" questioned Stella, still half-doubting the evidence of her senses. "Where—where is my baby?"
Hanani knelt down by her side. "Mem-sahib," she said very gently, "the baba sleeps—in the keeping of God."
It was tenderly spoken, so tenderly that—it came to her afterwards—she received the news with no sense of shock. She even felt as if she must have somehow known it before. In the utter greyness of her desert—she had walked alone.
"He is dead?" she said.