"But the prophet himself—what has become of him?" asked Helena, raising her head from her pillow.
"White Prophet gone," said Mosie.
"Gone?"
"Mosie follow him to station. White Prophet go by train, lady."
"By train?"
"Yes, lady. White Prophet go by train to Upper Egypt," said Mosie, and then Helena heard no more.
Her head fell back to her pillow and she covered her eyes with her hands. The guilty man was gone, the authorities had allowed him to go, and if the evil-doer was to be punished there was nothing left but personal vengeance.
Every tender impulse of her heart was now dead. Overwhelmed as by a new burden, and haunted by a dark responsibility—that of seeing God's vengeance brought down upon her father's murderer—she saw herself at one moment prompting Gordon to kill Ishmael. Why not? There was no other way. Gordon should kill Ishmael Ameer because Ishmael Ameer had killed her father!
At the next moment the recollection that Gordon had gone took her back once more to the bitterest part of her suffering. She had always thought that when God made Gordon He had made him without fear, yet he had run away from the consequences of being court-martialled. It was intensely painful to her to despise Gordon, but do what she would she could not help feeling a growing contempt for him. If he had only stood up to his punishment she would have been proud of him, and even if he had been drummed out of the army, or any fate had befallen him less terrible than death, he would have found her standing by his side.
But he had fled, he had left her, and being useless for all purposes of righteous vengeance, a woman without a man behind her, she could do nothing now but go back to England.