"Yes."
Again in his consciousness came the sense that what he promised was a failure for which he would have to pay.
She stared into the west. "No one goes that way from Nadiram," she said. "I have been here a year, yet Wampli is but a name to me. Even you, coming from Peking, know that desert bands watch the ways around Wampli. We shall have no escort—"
"We shall pay the tariff demanded. I have credentials that worked before."
"The little parchment of Rajananda shall help us!" she exclaimed.
"Also we have Bamban, a camel-tender, good compasses."
"You think there is no danger of getting lost?" she asked, and he did not search in vain for her smile.
"I have been afraid to leave you here," he said. "There is danger, but it is here—it is everywhere, in the desert and out—if they want to bring us danger—"
"They—again," she whispered.
"I do not feel that we could be lost together. Are you afraid? Would you rather stay?"