Tall, slender, with a pale, transparent complexion, touched like a young rose with the faintest color, dark, grave eyes and hair that seemed a part of the obscured god, whose pure lines, though foreign, harmonized in every detail with the classic beauty of her surroundings, she stood and watched him, as he watched her, in perfect silence.
"Lakshmi!" he murmured at last; and, as though the one word had broken a charm which held them both paralyzed, she smiled, and the smile lit up the Madonna face and made it as human as it had seemed divine.
[Illustration: "Lakshmi!" he murmured at last.]
"Forgive me," she began, speaking in English, "I am afraid I have disturbed you, but—" She paused, apparently confused by the directness of his gaze. The faint pink upon her cheek deepened.
"Who are you?" he demanded in his own tongue.
Her look of non-comprehension steadied him, at least outwardly, though it did not check the fierce, painful beating of his pulses. He repeated the question in pure though hesitating English.
"I am an Englishwoman," she answered at once, "and have lost my way. For hours—it seems hours, at any rate—I have been wandering hither and thither, trying to find my party, with whom I was enjoying an excursion. By some chance I came across this temple, and hoped to meet some one who might help me. You see, I am a stranger in this part of the world. I—I hope I have done no wrong?"
She looked at him pleadingly, but he ignored her question. It never occurred to him to doubt her explanation, or wonder at the unlikeliness of the chance which should have led her through the intricate paths to this hallowed spot.
"You are English?" he echoed. The fever in his blood was subsiding, but, like some great crisis, it was leaving him changed. It had swept him out of the world of languorous, enchanted dreams into a world of not less enchanted reality.
"I fear I am presumptuous," she began again; "but are you not the Rajah? If so, I am certain you must be very, very angry. For the Rajah—so I have been told—does not love the English."