The wind moaned amongst the ivy on the walls. In its wailing she seemed to hear a prophetic voice that told her the struggle she had been an unwilling witness to between the two women, but represented the greater struggle between two races that had just commenced; and, before it could end, the soil of India should be drenched with blood.
The night wind moaned. It sounded in her ears like a requiem for her slaughtered friends. It seemed like an agonised cry of pain, wrung from hearts suffering almost more than mortal sorrow.
The night wind moaned—a dirge-like moan, that told that the Angel of Peace had been beaten, broken-winged, into the dust; and through the Orient land were stalking the grim demons, War and Woe.
The night wind spoke. It told her that the catastrophe she had just witnessed destroyed every hope of escape she might have had, for with Zeemit her best friend had gone.
She heard Jewan Bukht’s voice in the wind—a voice malignant and cruel.
“I will return to-night, and then we will see who conquers!”
Those were his parting words. As the wind repeated them to her, it called her back to a sense of her awful danger. Her almost stilled heart sprang into life again. It throbbed with the wildness of fear and horror at what the consequences might be if he returned.
She could foil him yet; in her hands she held her own life. An effort of will, and she could snap the “silver thread” and break the “golden bowl.” Three paces forward, and a plunge down into the dark depth, whence had rolled the bodies of Zeemit and Wanna.
Were it not better to die than to live to shame and misery?
When all hope has fled, when everything that can make life endurable has gone, has not the time come to die? She thought this. And the moaning wind answered her, and said “Yes.”