After a moment, she added in whispers and falterings:
"Did you know, toward morning, but before the light—when the cold came in—that I was very close to you, leaning forward under the edge of your blanket? ... You were still. Your breathing was like a child's. And then I thought again of your coming in the evening to the court—to the west wall. I don't know how I could have been so hard. I should have broken down in fright, had you not come."
"I only knew that I could not leave you," he said.
"But to-morrow morning—"
He was silent.
"We need not think of it now," she said slowly. "Not until to-night. We shall know best to-night—"
She was staring away into the gilded mountains of cloud in the low west. Romney's eyes followed hers. There seemed a movement there, something filmy white like a great bird, against the brilliant horizon. He could not get his mind away from Wampli. Every moment with her, and the parting seemed harder. The larger consciousness that had come from her, at the same time bound him to her.... Leaving her in Nadiram—alone under the Russian flag. It would take seven days at least to get back, even if his mission made it possible for him to remain as short a time as a day in Wampli. That was not likely. The chances were, if he were not held there, his orders would be to push on. The last packet of orders, designated for reading in Wampli, might contain the open orders for a farther journey of weeks. Romney shivered. There was little mercy in the facts. The great continent of Asia was like a dead weight against him. She touched his arm.
"Look—"
What he saw presently, low upon the sand, had the look of a turtle of large size, the head uplifted from time to time. The strangeness of the creature and the way it moved stirred him oddly.... The thing was yellow—the noon light showed that, the deep satisfying embrowned yellow of some object in which the sun has sunk for ages and ages. This is the yellow of the Gobi at a certain moment of evening. It was the yellow of Moira Kelvin's rug—and this was a robe of a Chinese Holy Man. In India they would have called him a Sannysin.
Hastening forward, they saw that the head, lifted from time to time, was shaven and literally fallen in from emaciation. The gray of death suffused the brown skin, especially where it was thinnest, in lip and temple and nostril. The creature crawled; his age must have been very great, his grasp of life a miracle, yet the robe he wore was woven from the breasts of young camels and coloured, as the priests would say, with God's own light. This is a colour princes dare not wear. It trailed upon the sand and took no hurt or stain; it was fine as leather can be, a protection from the sun and a saving grace from cold.