"He is badly hurt?"
"I think so. The blow was a terrible one. It seemed to me that he was conscious. Once he looked at me, but he could not move or speak."
"Do you think it was one of his men, Ayeshi?"
"I do not know, Mem-Sahib."
She turned away from him.
"There is blood on your hand, Ayeshi."
He salaamed imperturbably.
"I will wash it away. It is a cut—a little thing."
He followed her into the next room with the unobtrusive decision of one whose right to enter could never be challenged. Mrs. Smithers had moved the lamp behind a screen, but Ayeshi, standing at the foot of the bed, looked down through the veil of shadow as though the sleeper's face was an open book in which he read intently. Then he looked at Sigrid. She had taken her place close to Tristram's pillow, and one hand rested lightly on the coverlet. There was a caress in that touch. Her fair head was bent in grave, pitying contemplation that was yet touched with a curious detachment, as though she looked down from a great distance. In the half-light, she seemed unreal, fanciful, the very spirit of that beautiful æsthetic Paganism which the room breathed.
Ayeshi shivered a little, and his slender, dark hands resting on the carved wooden bed, tightened their grasp.