"No—you're quite right. I don't judge—I can't. I seem going down-hill fast with my theories—my—my infernal humanity. I can't believe it—everything seems to have gone at once—you didn't care—it wasn't love you felt for me——"
"Aren't you glad—doesn't that relieve you of all responsibility?"
She watched him for a moment in silence. Then her face softened. He was standing against the table, his hand pressed upon it as though he held himself upright only by an effort of will. She laid her hand on his, diffidently, pityingly. "Tristram, we're both mad with pain, but don't let's hurt each other more than we must. It's no one's fault. We pick up threads in our lives carelessly and without a thought, and from day to day they weave themselves without our will into a pattern—into tragedy. That's all there is to it, Tristram." He nodded silently, and she turned away from him, sighing. "It's quite quiet now. I'll go back to Gaya, Tristram."
He went out beside her into the empty moonlit street. A black shadow lay huddled against the wall, and involuntarily he bent and touched it.
"Dead!" he muttered.
"The feast of Siva!" she said. "He who destroys!"
Her small pale face was lifted to the great silver disk above her. It seemed to his aching eyes that she was no more than a frail white ghost—a haunting spirit of the haunted moonlight.
"Sigrid——!" he whispered.
"Hush—it's no good. We've got to go on—Tristram Sahib——"
He walked beside her as she rode out of Heerut. It was very still—-no sound but that of her horse's hoofs and the soft swish of the long Arab tail. They went out across the plain. The conflagration of the day had burnt itself out, leaving grey ash and a few stains on the white fields. The temple lay sinister and watchful beneath the shadow of the jungle. It was as though all life had been swept away in a deluge of destruction.