"You're wrong, Ayeshi. I shouldn't. There are no barriers—at least, none like that. Goodness knows, we're not born equal, but the inequality that matters isn't of birth or race, but of mind and soul. And you have a mind and soul above most. There are no barriers for you."
He bent his head.
"That is what Meredith Sahib has said to me. We are all brothers—that is the message of his God to us. Somehow, I do not think that Meredith Sahib is wise to bring the message—nor you, Mem-Sahib—and yet we who are athirst in the desert——"
He seemed to meditate and to have forgotten her. He rose stiffly and painfully to his feet.
"I go to seek Tristram Sahib," he muttered.
She also had risen with an effortless slowness which made even of the simple movement a kind of wonder.
"Tristram Sahib? Is Tristram Sahib here?"
He pointed vaguely out into the darkness.
"There—in an hour I am to meet him with the Colonel Sahib's answer. He would not come himself, for he is hard pressed, and if he met the Colonel Sahib——"
"There would be an end to his theories," she interposed with a little laugh.