Dana Charteris had slipped away soon after the meal, and the room seemed barren to Trent. He scarcely heard his two companions, and sat nervously fingering the arm of the chair and blowing smoke into the air. When he could no longer endure it he begged to be excused and went to the room assigned to him, where he got from his pack a certain object and thrust it into his pocket.
In the compound he encountered a Gurkha.... Yes, he had seen the memsahib, the soldier replied; he heard her order one of the sahib's muleteers to saddle her pony and she went toward Pal-khor Choide.
Trent followed.
He had passed the crimson walls of the lamasery before he saw her—a slender shadow ahead in the dusk. He urged his pony into a canter, and presently slackened pace beside her. She had not turned, but now the brown eyes were directed upon him and he felt a polar coldness in the look. For a moment his voice refused to answer his summons.
"Dana—" he faltered. "Why did you run away, like this?"
She smiled—not the smile he knew, that awakened a golden memory of autumn forests and cathedral spaces.
"I wanted to be alone. Why did you follow?"
From his pocket he drew a glinting bracelet. In the dusk she saw the cobra-head lifted in bizarre relief. It seemed to strike into her heart.
"To give you this;"—his voice was low, trembling—"to tell you that I cannot be your—your bracelet-brother longer." He seemed to drink courage from those first words and plunged ahead. "Back there in Burma, at the jungle camp, I promised myself that until we reached civilization I'd remain the—the brother; and now...." He extended the bracelet. "Won't you accept it?"
The winter-light faded suddenly from her eyes; they shone with a new illumination. With its coming, the chill in his heart thawed; the early night was aromatic and healing. (Overhead a few stars were caught in the gauzy dusk, like dewdrops in a web.) Her fingers closed about the bracelet.