"Lucker khan Bhaina, Bowree," the Gulab said in a low voice, and the woman's eyes took on a startled look for it was a decoit password, and the Bowrees were a clan of decoits akin to the Bagrees. From the woman Bootea learned where she could find a good resting place with the family of a shop-keeper. There was no doubt about it, the Bowree woman assured her, for the tonga would impress him, and he was one who profited from the loot of decoits.
The Gulab was given a place to sleep in the shopkeeper's house that extended back from his little shop. The driver was ordered to return in the morning to the Pindari camp. Barlow was for keeping the tonga, hoping that perhaps Bootea would change her mind and go on to Chunda, but the girl was firm in her determination to end it all at Mandhatta.
Before Barlow left her to seek some camping place in hut or serai, and food for himself and horse, the girl said: "If the Sahib will delay his going to-morrow for a little, Bootea will proceed early to the shrine to see the Swami—then she will return here, for she would want to see his face once more before the ending."
"I'll wait, Gulab," he acquiesced; "I'll be here at the tenth hour." He felt even then an unaccountable chill of their parting, for, many being about, he could not take her in his arms to kiss her; but their eyes spoke, and the girl's were luminous, and sweet with a look of hunger, of pathetic longing, of sublime trust.
As Barlow turned away leading his horse, he muttered over and over, "Gad! it's incomprehensible that a Sahib should feel this over a—yes, a native woman; it's damnable!"
He reviled himself, declaring that it was harder on the Gulab than on him—and he was actually suffering. It would be better if he swung to the saddle and fled from the misery that prolongation but intensified. And the girl's brave resignation in giving him up was wonderful, was so like her.
Then the sight of Mahratta sowars, who, it being Sindhia's territory, were a guard to watch the pilgrim throng, flashed him back to a sense of duty, his own mission. But it had not suffered because of Bootea; it had benefitted through her; but for her the written message from the British would have been lost—stolen by Hunsa, and would have landed in Nana Sahib's hands; and he would have been slain as the Patan, killer of Amir Khan.
But the Gulab was right; from that time forward should she listen to him and go on to Poona, God alone knew where it would lead to—misery. It would be utter ruin morally, officially, in a caste way; even in time passionate enthusiasm, engendered by her lovableness, dulled, would bring utter debasement, degradation of spirit, of man fibre. It was the wisdom of God that entailed upon the union of the white and dark-skinned the bar sinister.
Until he slept, wrapped in his blankets on the sand beside his tethered horse, Barlow was tortured by this mental inquisition. Even in his troubled sleep there was a nightmare that waked him, panting and exhausted, and the remembrance was vivid—Bootea lay beneath the mighty paws of a tiger and he was beating hopelessly at the snarling brute with a clubbed rifle.