Carlin halted and drew back looking at him with a kind of still strength all her own.
"You do not know that the natives think you are something of the kind?"
"I—a holy man?"
"I heard them speak of you last night. You see they have heard of your deliverance of the Grass Jungle people."
Skag was learning how wonderfully news travels in India.
"Of course, it was all easy to believe, after what I saw—"
"What did you see?" he asked.
"That the two priests of Hanuman permitted you to follow them here—"
Then Carlin verified what Cadman had said, that the priests make no mistakes in these things. . . . Presently Skag was listening to accounts of Carlin's life. He was insatiable to hear all. In some moments of the telling, it was like a phantom part of himself that he was questing for, through her words. Her story ran from the Vindhas to the Western Ghat mountains, touching plain and height and shore (but not yet High Himalaya), touching tree jungle, civil station, railway station and cantonments; stories including a succession of marvellous names of cities and men; intimations that many great servants of India and England were of her name; that she had seven living brothers, all older; all at work over India. Finally Skag heard that Carlin had spent eight years in England studying medicine and surgery, and again that the natives called her the Gul Moti, which means the Rose Pearl; or Hakima, which means physician. But her own name was Carlin!
When they came back to the edge of the jungle again, it was the hour of afterglow. Its colours entered into him and were always afterward identified with her. Carlin left him, laughingly, abruptly; and Skag was so full of the wonder of all the world, that he had not thought to ask if he should ever see her again.