She laid her hands on his shoulders.
"And you who go out very gallantly, perhaps to meet the end which you fear so little—have you nothing to ask first of life, nothing you desire, no fulfilment of mad dreams dreamed by the river and by your fireside—nothing that I might not grant?"
He made no answer. She felt him tremble under her hands. Her laugh was subdued, pityingly triumphant.
"Oh, Tristram Sahib, do you think I don't know—do you think I haven't read your heart?" she said.
And bent and kissed him.
CHAPTER XI
INFERNO
He pitched his tent outside the village in a paradise of brilliantly painted flowers and high grass, whose bright emerald shone luminously where the dying sun touched it. A pool in the shadow of the trees wore a score of lotus-flowers on its still breast, and the ghosts of yellow blossoms from the overhanging mango shimmered tremulously beneath among the tangled undergrowth.
But there was no living thing. The sand at the water's edge was unbroken by the familiar pugs, and the trees and the long grasses were empty and silent. Death and over-abundant sensuous life lay side by side. The very soil, rich and moist, gave out an aroma of sickly sweetness tainted with corruption.
The native bearers shook their heads and crouched down near their sleeping quarters, awaiting the loathsome, invisible thing with the fatality of their race.