Gone, too, was the woman who had materialized from his world-scroll into intimate palpability, bringing the rich gift of her presence—and leaving the bitter-sweet pangs of her departure. He would find her again, for she had fixed herself in the inner-penetralia of his being. But the period of waiting!... Waiting—love's Gethsemane since the first simian creatures battled in the wildernesses of a still-hot planet.
As he lay there, reflecting upon these things, he experienced an ache, a sensation of isolation, that was reminiscent of his boyhood—of a night when a shadowy being of antiseptics and sick-room odors roused him from sleep with the announcement that the man who had fathered him into existence was no longer in the house.
It dulled only when a sleepy intoxication came over him, and as he surrendered to it he visualized, in a dim, hazy way, a falcon, and it lay in a welter of blood.
CHAPTER VIII
"BEYOND THE MOON"
At noon the next day Trent drove to the station where Tambusami, having attended to his luggage, was waiting. The Englishman looked for Kerth among the travelers on the platform, but saw no one who even resembled him. However, he reflected as the train pulled out, Kerth might have changed his identity and passed within a foot of him without his knowledge!
When Pegu lay behind, he shifted his attention from the "Rangoon Gazette" to the endless panorama of paddy fields and scrub jungle. Yet he could not altogether divert himself. Invariably the landscape faded, to be replaced by the recollection of some recent scene: the court of the joss-house; the ride along Strand Road with Euan Kerth. But more frequently his mind was possessed with an image of starry luster and russet hair. The memory of Dana Charteris occurred suddenly, unexpectedly, in the very midst of other thoughts. She seemed a central force about which musings, retrospections and quandaries revolved. He found himself separating from their short association certain incidents and looking back upon them as through stained glass. He pictured her under the black and gilt scroll in the Chinese quarter; in the dusk of the Bengali theater; in the bow of the Manchester, beneath the sprinkled flame of tropic stars. These portraits arranged themselves in a mosaic—an exquisite inlay of romance. Romance. He clung to the word. "The doctrine of Romance and Adventure—" She had said that "... in mellower years, to close your eyes and dream of wandering in the 'Caves of Kor' or the time you spent on a pirate island." She had the spirit of youth eternal—youth with its orient mirages. He was having the Great Adventure now. Soon it would be over. And then? Back to the old routine—medicines and sun-scorched villages. (The thought was new, strange. Had he ever been a doctor? It seemed so long ago!) But in the years to come, at night, over his pipe, he could dream of it all. The memory of things—that was life's recompense for taking them away.
Shortly after seven o'clock he arrived in Mandalay. As he left his carriage, he saw a familiar figure—Kerth, scar, drooping eyelid and all; saw him again, an hour and a half later, when he boarded the Myitkyina train.