"As the Sahib wishes," she answered, and smiled at him like a child.
The huge medallion of gold had slid down in the west from the dome through which were shot great streamers of red and mauve, and a peacock perched high in a sal tree far up on the mountainside sent forth his strident cry of "Miaou! miaou! miaou!" his evening salute to the god of warmth.
As the harsh call, like an evening muezzin, died out, the sweet song of a shama, in tones as pure as those of a nightingale, broke the solemn hush of eventide.
Barlow turned his face to where the songster was perched in the top branches of a wild-fig, and Bootea, said in a low voice: "Sahib, it is said that the shama is a soul come back to earth to sing of love that men may not grow harsh."
Soon a silver moon peeped over the walls of the Vindhya hills, and from the forests above the night wind, waking at the fleeing of the sun, whispered down through feathered sal trees carrying the scent of balsam and from a group of salei trees a sweet unguent, the perfume of the gum which is burnt at the shrines of Hindu gods.
When they had eaten, Barlow said: "I wonder, Gulab, if this is like kailas, the heaven those who have passed through many transitions and become holy, attain to."
"It is just heaven, my Lord," she replied fervently.
"And to-morrow I will be plodding on through the sands and dust, and I'll be all alone. But you, little girl, you will be making your peace with Omkar and dreaming of the greater heaven."
"Yes, it will be that way; the Sahib will not have the tribulation of protecting Bootea, and she will be in the protection of Omkar."
There was so much of pathetic resignation in the timbre of the girl's voice, for it was half sigh, that Barlow shivered, as if the chilling mist of the valley had crept up to the foothills. Why had he not treated her as an alien, kept all interest in abeyance? His self recrimination was becoming a disease, an affliction.