"I leave everything to you, Ahmed. But is there not some place farther below where the water does not run so fast?"
"Ramabai will know."
But Ramabai knew only the bridge. They would have to investigate and explore the bank. Half an hour's journey—rather a difficult one—brought them to still and shallow water. Here they crossed and made camp beyond in a natural clearing. They erected the small tent for Kathlyn, inside of which she changed her clothes, drank her tea and lay down to sleep.
"What does Ahmed think?" asked Bruce anxiously.
"That we are being followed by some assassins hired by our friends, the priests."
"Colonel, let us make straight for the seaport and let this damnable bushel of trinkets stay where it is," urged Bruce, the lover.
"That is not possible now," replied Ramabai. "We can now reach there only by the seacoast itself, or return to the desert and journey over the old trail. We must go on."
The colonel smoked his pipe moodily. He was pulled between necessity and desire. He had come to Asia for this filigree basket, and he wanted it, with a passion which was almost miserly. At one moment he silently vowed to cast the whole thing into the sea, and at the next his fingers would twitch and he would sigh.
Sometimes it seemed to him that there was some invisible force working in him, drawing and drawing him against the dictates of his heart. He had experienced this feeling back in California, and had fought against it for weeks, without avail. And frequently now, when alone and undisturbed, he could see the old guru, shaking with the venom of his wrath, the blood dripping from his lacerated fingers, which he shook in the colonel's face flecking it with blood. A curse. It was so. He must obey that invincible will; he must go on and on.
His pipe slipped from his fingers and his head fell upon his knees; and thus Kathlyn found him.