did. Even if he didn't want to live he would have put himself out of the

way in a clean-cut abrupt fashion--"

She shook her head quickly, as if pained at some picture in her mind.

"A real man would have done neither," he added. "He would have taken his medicine and not thought of death. There is always a yellow streak in letting go.... I'm sorry to bring you such a story. It has no virtue save that of being true. Also it is back--finished."

Her silence was destroying him. The panorama of his abandonment rushed past in a kind of red dark. His voice had a whimper, for his own ears, as he said:

"At least, it was all in the year. I drank little before, I drink nothing now."

The absurdity of it now prevailed. His story had taken her away from him. Much thinking had made him lose the ugliness. He had told her matters which were so horrible as to break the spell between them. She seemed to be slipping away, and just now he thought of the man in the Forward Room in relation to that year in the Drift. She was not the first woman who had reached the end of endurance in this business. The laugh formed deep within him--the laugh of a man at the last ditch again. What a fool he had been to tell her what had happened--to forget the part that this particular devil had played in her life! ... He would go on to Wampli now--without a woman waiting. The laugh was twisting in his lips, and he had the sense that if it came it would slay the last hope.

Anna Erivan turned and started at the sight of his face.

"I wasn't thinking of the months in which you held yourself palms-up to death, and drifted along the water-fronts," she said quickly. "Oh, any one could see that has nothing to do with you now."

Romney gasped, and, leaning forward, placed his wide-stretched hand near hers, which went to it.

"I was thinking of the woman," she said slowly. "I never thought I would feel like this."

He was still shaken from the illusion he had suffered, in high voltage. It suddenly occurred to him what it would mean if she had brought a story of an affair with a man--an affair that meant as much to her as Moira Kelvin meant to him. The very thought was torture. There is a touch of insanity in the best of men on this ground. Romney was amazed at his own feelings and at his own simplicity; and over all was a contaminating something that seemed to emerge from his deepest nature--a gladness for her primitive emotion regarding him where another woman was concerned. He wanted to take her close in his arms. An uncertain memory of the night before when he was half-asleep, recurred queerly.... He had not spoken, and yet he knew that in her case, he would want to ask and ask--also that to ask questions meant to bend a mighty pride. He was using his will to be fair--holding that woman is as free an instrument in the world as a man.

"I love your truth," she said hoarsely. "I think that is all that saves it--saves me--the sense that what you say is true."

"There is no more," he whispered. "I have told you all."

"I love your truth--but I hate myself--"

"Anna Erivan, you are superb to me. I think--there is a bit of madness or martyrdom about two coming together this way. I didn't understand what my story could mean to you, until I thought of it the other way--as if you brought it to me--"

"I have nothing interesting like that," she said with a smile. "I think if I brought you a story like that, it would change me in your eyes."

"I would not let it," he said.

"Your will could not save me," she answered. "A man might say and believe (until his own heart was touched) that a woman has all the rights of man to diffuse herself before her mate arrives, but in his own heart, he would see her differently if she did. Oh, it is not the pressure of centuries of man's possession of women--not altogether his instinctive sense of conservation. That's only physical. There is something back even of the patriarch idea about women. She cannot give herself to one and be the same again--not even in her own mind. There is something sacred about that, which men do not know--and which only great women know--"

"Then you think a man big enough to place a woman on the same moral footing as himself has not come to the end of the subject?"

"I think when men are tolerant enough for that, they will be great enough to accept woman's idea of herself, which is greater still."

"What is it--can you tell me?"

"Just so long as a woman has not the spiritual power to formulate her ideal of the one man of her heart, she must accept the nearest, the first or second or third, and must suffer her horrors of mis-mating. But all the time her dream is forming, literally making the one who belongs to her and no other. It builds out of her suffering. It comes out of agony and diffusion, even out of promiscuity. It is the ascent of woman's character into an integrity which can only be touched by one human being. It is not touched if he does not come--"

Romney stood before her, looking into two flashing points her eyes had become.

"It does not play a fortnight--to find out if the man is the one. It does not play at all. It does not suffer from waiting because it does not live in sex. It does not meet its own on any basis of sex--not at first, even though it has passions powerful enough to fire the world--"

"Anna Erivan--have I lost you--am I too far from the dream?"

She arose and came nearer, the table no longer between them.

"I tell you I hate myself because this has hurt me--"

"And I tell you that this morning I feel abysses below you--that you are revealed to me higher than I knew and dreamed."

"That first night, I thought it was he who had come to me ... and last night, running after you, I was sure--"

He started forward, his arms outstretched, but remembered and fell back.

"I said I would wait until you held out your arms--"

Her face turned a little to the side, and he saw a smile suffuse with colour.

"I did last night," she whispered.

*13*

That noon Bamban came and sat in the court for a little period, awaiting any word from his master. It was in Romney's heart to tell him that he meant to start for Wampli to-morrow, and yet he had not spoken of that to Anna Erivan since morning, and he decided to wait until the last judgment of the woman was heard. Bamban smilingly departed, but back of the glittering eyes of the little man, the American fancied an expression:

"You are a tarrier with women."

An Oriental expresses his deepest scorn in a statement somewhat of that nature. It touched Romney very lightly on this day. He was not himself--something lifted and expanded far beyond the man he had been; and yet apart from Anna Erivan he was but a creature of listening and turning. On this day, Anna Erivan had entered a domain of his heart which Moira Kelvin had not found. A questing woman brave enough to wait, a woman above playing with senses, who required no experiments to uncover her own. And her head had lain a moment on his breast, her waist in his hard lean arm.... He wasn't untrue to Moira Kelvin in any thought. Even in the illumination of Anna Erivan, there was still a laughing splendour about the other. He could view the yellow-rug woman now with a man's generosity, though he recognised that there was no answer to Anna Erivan's point. He was proud to the very spirit of his being that it was so.... They strode out into the desert together, when the sun was at its highest. She stopped and caught his arm. It was almost as if the cry of the hyenas had come to her:

"What is it? What is it?" he asked.

"Was she very beautiful?"

Her art was somehow revealed. Anna Erivan had waited until they were far from the village before asking that question.... He was almost well again--not so robust, perhaps, as when he had come to Nadiram, but healed and glowing to-day, as one filled with light. It was only gradually that he dared let the full light in. Sometimes he seemed to be holding a door against it, lest it be too much for his heart. He had followed her about the house that morning until he was amazed at her power over him, and forced himself apart in the room where he had passed the long night. He had waited with every ounce of will-force, and holding was possible so long as he heard her step, but the moment she was silent he rushed forth as one coming up from deep water.

The day was dazzling bright though the heat was not dangerous. She had never been out of the court before in his presence, and something of the gold-brown of the desert came to her, as if all the wasted energy of the sunlight, deluging fruitless rock and barren sand, gathered about her to animate the delicate promise of her being. Desert gold was in her eyes, and noon warmth in her cheeks, her lips parted with joy and ardour and low laughter he had never heard in the house. Clouds were massed into gilded mountains in the low west. The dry heat came up from the sand and the living heat pressed down from the sun. Nadiram was silent behind them, their voices free now in the open, their hearts drinking the power of the light.

"Think of it," she said halting, "think if we should go on and on--you and I. The nights--"

"I thought of that before I came to your door--on the road to Turgim. I thought of journeying on and on through the desert with the woman waiting somewhere--"

"I should be dangerous in a desert-night--"

"Dangerous?" he laughed.

"I should be myself at last. You'll find that dangerous. A desert night would set me free. Perhaps I should find a nature very old and abandoned--"

"In me?"

"In myself."

"Suppose you should hear the cries?"

Anna Erivan laughed. "There would be no Forward Room out here. It is the houses and the presence of men that make me afraid."

... He did not care much to speak, but regarded her face as he had never used his eyes before. Several times during the morning, she had reverted in her talk to incidents of the night before, when he lay in exhaustion, with only a waver of consciousness from time to time.

"Did you know that a woman finding her beloved, looks for a man but finds a child?"

Romney peered closer, his eyelids all but shut in the vivid light.

"This morning as the dawn came in, I saw the child so clearly that I had to touch your face. I would have wept had I not run away for a little time."

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.

"He is my Ancient!" Anna Erivan cried. "He is the one who came to the court long ago, and left me such strength. He is very dear and very wise."

This robe was first to show Romney the quality of his guest, but he was soon conscious of something beside, that made him very tender, so that he knelt and gently lifted the ancient ascetic by the shoulders. The chin now rested in the hollow of his arm. The old man leaned there as if in peace. Presently Romney's eyes were called back to the town--a mere low jagged contour behind in the blinding stillness. Bamban was running toward them. At a little distance, he halted, dropped to his knees, and thus came forward, the expression on his face altogether new. Indeed, it was dissolute with devotion.

And now the old Father appeared to sleep in Romney's arm, and thus was carried between the men, a light burden, back to the Consulate in Nadiram.

They brought a cot to the living-room, Anna Erivan joyously preparing food, filling the begging-bowl with the choicest that her house afforded. Yet it was hours before the old priest awoke, and during this time Bamban never moved from his devotional posture by the door of the court. It appeared now that the aged Buddhist had pushed his austerities somewhat farther than usual, almost extinguishing the flicker of life that remained in his wasted breast. His opening speech had to do with the absolute rightness of all things, especially with the excellence of the universe and the exceeding rightness of right knowledge, to all of which Romney attentively agreed and Bamban degraded himself to accept. The Sannysin advanced deeper into the thought, enunciating his conviction that all was well in Nadiram and in the house. He spoke briefly of his all-readiness for departure from this life, saying that he had been ready three days before in the desert, that he was ready now to pass or presently. Having impressed his readiness, he ventured to add his personal point of view to the effect that he considered it a misery to be called back into life through the medium of strong food, but qualified this opinion by inquiring if he had not returned to the hideous pressure of the flesh with some slight degree of calmness and cheer. Romney encouraged him to believe this, hastily translating for the woman; and Bamban projected himself in abasement, whereupon the Sannysin slept again.

Toward evening, the ancient head was once more raised into the hollow of Romney's arm. Bamban had scarcely left the Consulate for a moment throughout this extended interval. The Buddhist raised his eyes to Romney's face, saying that he was now acquainted with the deep reason for his misery in being so relentlessly called back to the coils of matter; that he recognised in the white man a younger brother, a true Brahman, whereupon he gave Romney a small bit of parchment, the size of three postage-stamps, upon which was written a Sanscrit phrase, having to do with the inspiration of the soul, and a few further marks which even Romney, though he deciphered them, could not understand.

Thus was the coming of Rajananda and his passing likewise, for he asked that he be carried forth at sundown, to the exact spot where they had first seen the upraised head. There they placed the body upon the sand, accepted a cold claw and a gesture to return to Nadiram. The Buddhist then slept, the withered yellow cheek pressed upon the breast of his old Mother, the desert.

The disquieting part of the whole affair was that Bamban appeared to have acquired the habit of abasing himself in Romney's presence, though more than ever his eyes avoided Anna Erivan's. The three returned to the Consulate in the early darkness and Bamban's impulse to kow tow again asserted itself on the flags of the court.

"Come, come, Bamban; get up and go to the Rest House for your supper. I'm the same friend of yours--as always."

The Chinese obeyed, and Romney turned from where he stood in the court, to the door-way. Anna Erivan stood there--as on the evening of his arrival.

*14*

They sat down together in the deep shadow, for a time not thinking of talk or food. Each felt a singular relief with the passing of Bamban, and the excellent calm that the presence of Rajananda had left behind.

"Did you know he is not Chinese?" Romney said at last.

Anna Erivan shook her head.

"I just thought of it now--the name Rajananda, the Sanscrit on the little parchment, the character of his sayings, though he spoke in Chinese. Then he said I was Brahman.... There was much to say, much to ask him. I don't see how I could have let him go without words--"

"One only thinks of listening when a holy man speaks."

The man smiled at her. "But the thought comes to me again and again that he might have put me straight on the mission--that he is very high in power, possibly of the Inner Temple--"

"You may meet him again--perhaps at Wampli. To-morrow you must go on--"

Romney did not resist the thought at this time. He looked about the low stone room, at the forward door, toward the inner room and at the door to the court.... It was like a call, a trial of strength. He had found his own. It would be weak to tarry with a task undone.

"I will be safe," she said, as if following his thoughts.

"I think you will see me differently--if this thing is well done," he told her. "I remember this morning in our misery over the old story, the need of doing some great thing to show you that I was not that man now, but I didn't relate it to going on to Wampli--"

"You are not the man of the Drift, as you call it. I see that, as you said--a quick review of all the hells of life. You needed it. Nothing so low as that which held him--" she pointed to the Forward Room, "--could hold you.... You must go on to-morrow, but the separation is not for you alone. Perhaps there is a dream that I must form in readiness for action. It is hard for you to go--but as hard for the one who must stay. No harder thing could be called from us. I think I could not have endured it, except for the coming of the Holy Man. He brought me strength before."

"But if, from the desert, that laughter should come at evening--"

She knelt before him an instant.

"I shall think of you and Rajananda--of your bringing back a sign for the little ones. I shall think of the days ahead--our journey out of the desert together--two on the dromedary--the task done--Nadiram behind forever--"

The thought of the hyenas had unsteadied them in spite of her courage. Hyenas meant Nadiram to Romney--and one white woman alone in the midst of a town full of Orientals--bands of desert men passing through--nothing but a Russian flag. He shivered. Anna Erivan arose to get supper. They ate in silence. The thought of to-morrow was like a gray mist between them again. They found themselves very tired; the power of Rajananda slipped farther and farther from them. Often they started to speak, but lost the impulse before the words came. Wampli was inexorable. If Romney failed now, he knew he would find himself less a man.

"It's no use. It's got to be done," he said impatiently at last, "but they seem to be binding us closer to-night rather than making it easy--"

"They?" she whispered.

"Did I say _they_? I think I must have meant the Fates or something of the kind. It isn't all wonder and exaltation--a meeting like this--and yet if I fail to-morrow, I am not what I thought. My work seemed here until you came to me--came running after me last night. Now that I have you, I know that I must go--but there's something impassible in the thought. I can't get over it. It's like walking along the edge of a canyon--no wings, no bridge--"

"You will go," she whispered. "To-morrow you will see the way. It will come with the morning sun. We are very tired to-night. We have been everything to-day. It's like the little picture of a whole life. Why, think of it--last night you were unconscious from weakness.... You must go to your cot now--"

"Leave so soon--the last night?"

"We will arise early. We are helpless in the dark to-night. We can't think. We are like two desolate beings, lost to each other.... I will call you early--"

"My God, don't go so soon!"

Romney didn't know his own voice, didn't know the weakness that had come to him. Her face seemed to be receding in the lamp-light.

"We are not sane!" she whispered. "Have you thought--that it is going to be too much for us? You must go.... Oh, what shall we do?"

"Let us sit in silence together," he asked her.... "The last night--to go apart so soon--"

"Do you not see that we must sleep to be sane? You must feel as I do. We are wearing--wearing. The day has been terrible. This morning, as you told me of that woman, I thought I should die. Even my Holy Man only healed me for a little while. I think it is a madness--a man and woman yearning like this. Words don't help. I look at you--and feel far off. Your hand that I reach for only tells me that to-morrow you must go. It seems nothing will do but--oh, I don't understand--I want to lose myself in your arms. It seems as if all nature were driving me to you--and that you were going away--"

He held her fast and understood it all as only a lover could, for she seemed to be speaking from his own heart. Any separation between them was poignant agony. He wanted to become identified with her--to lose himself, as she expressed it--yet the horror of the coming day prevailed upon his mind, making thoughts and words and even the movement of his hands an indescribable heaviness.

"It seems there should be but two in a world at a time like this. Our walk in the desert must have maddened me. I want some hill-country for our Meeting. I want the desert ... I must go. If I do not sleep, I shall not be strong."

"Do you think you can sleep?"

"I shall try. Perhaps--we are so exhausted."

They stood apart as if by common impulse, searching each other's eyes. It was the deep look that passes but once between a man and a woman. She drew back a little, saying quietly:

"It is not our hour."

And then a sudden pity seemed to come to her, akin to that which he had met the night before--something from his face. She came to him.

"Oh, don't think it has anything to do with the world. I would have no mere man tell us when we are one. It is nothing like that. Our marriage must be made in a better place than earth--or else we are very far apart and mad indeed. No man--none less than a saint, a master--could tell me when I am your wife--oh, yes, our Holy Man--but I would not wait for him. But don't you see--this is not the hour? Our hearts are broken. I feel Nadiram heavy upon me like a low and appraising eye. This place is full of the _old_. It belongs to the cries in the night--it belongs to him of the Forward Room.... Listen, to-night we must rest, or we will break to-morrow. I feel as if nothing mattered but strength for to-morrow. Go to your room--yes, go to your room and bring your cot here--"

"Anna--Anna!"

"Yes, and I will bring mine beside it--here beside it.... Yes, and we shall lie down, hand in hand, and call upon our strength--and rest--don't you remember?--like little children--"

It was in a kind of ecstasy that he moved about his room, making ready--the sweetness of the woman overcoming every other thought. He was hastening, yet he knew she would be longer in coming to the living room. His love went forth to her, often his hand and his step stilled to listen for her movement in the house. With a queer laugh, he realised that she was calling forth from his heart a force that could never come back to him--that she was necessary for life, that his days would be very few if she were taken. He was forced into the lover's establishment of every thought on an immortal basis. "Give all to love"--he had not known what that meant, even last night.

His hand touched something soft and clinging in the saddle-bags. He did not draw it forth at once, but knelt beside it, covering his eyes with his free hand. It was the crumpled bit of chiffon that he had carried so long and forgotten so remotely of late.... He held it in his hand. It was very dry and thin--a little dusty from the bag. Many pictures rushed through his mind--from Longstruth's to the house of Dr. Ti Kung. It had gone down into the Drift with him, and come up to this hour. It was done. It was good. He touched it to his cheek, and held it to the candle-flame, breathing a blessing upon the woman who had stood head and shoulders above her beloved in the doorway of Minglapo's house.

He folded the blankets and carried forth his cot to the living-room. The little dining-table was thrust back to the wall. The open fire was burning low, the lamp was set apart.

"I am almost ready," she called.

"May I not come to help you with your cot?" he answered.

"In a moment. I will let you know."

He went to the pitcher and drank a cup of cool water, then stood motionless beside the table until her trailing voice:

"Now you may come in."

It was a little white-washed room, a silver cross on the plaster above her pillow. He dropped to his knee there for an instant, his thought for her care while he was gone. She stood apart watching, her hands reaching back against the wall, her eyes burning upon him.

He placed the cot beside his and turned to the door. She came forth, very little in her bare feet and white robe, a shawl about her shoulders, holding something in her hand.

Romney waited for her to come forward, put out the lamp, and found his place. There was a moment of stillness, and then her hand came forth to meet his, and he found that it was the little silver cross that she held.

The door to the court was open, and the moonlight lay pale upon the stones.

*15*

Romney thought at first that it was a flutter of wings that aroused him. The room was cool and touched with gray, not of moonlight. Many vague images passed through his mind before the actual realisation of the present. He turned to find the pillow empty at his side.

He felt the cold of morning, and a silencing dread. A dark shadow hung before his eyes like the tangible presence of fear, and then a hand lifted from the blanket close to his breast and patted him softly.

Now he saw her face, low in the cot. It was turned to him, and Anna Erivan slept. He moved slightly and the hand patted him again. Romney then lay very still, reflecting upon the miracle of her mothering instinct. Without awakening she had felt his sudden stress. It was like a babe's cry, and her hand had brought it peace. The presence of her soothed him again. She was resting so sweetly that he could not arouse her now. Contemplating the magic of it all in the thin dawn light, he fell asleep again.

... Some one had come with a great message--the perfect word for him. The lips moved close to his with the story--touched his with a kind of imperishable wonder. He opened his eyes to the full sunlight, and Anna Erivan's face was close to his.

"Take me with you!" she whispered.

She was dressed and kneeling beside him. His arms went out to her.

"Take me with you!" she said again.

"It is done," he answered, yet even as he spoke he felt that he would have to suffer for that.

"You will take me with you--on your camel--into the desert!"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it means?"

"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?"

She laughed and leaned toward him. "Those who have met our kind of fears, are not afraid of mere men and desert distances.... It will be--it will be almost too great a thing--to leave Nadiram and all this--and go out into the desert with you--"

He saw she had not said all:

"Yes--I would go without food or drink. I would go with you--for you are all that faith means.... Better and better I understand. I do not think we are to die soon--but if that is so--it will be together--a rapture in that." ....

"I have thought every day of our going out in the desert," he said.

His eyes kindled from her nearness. "I saw it the first night here--and every night as I sat at the west wall--"

"We will start to-night!"

"Yes."

"I have tea nearly ready. You will put the cots back--and this--you know where it hangs. We will take it with us tonight."

She gave him the little cross.

"Hurry now and dress, and breakfast will be ready. Don't mind me. I shall be at the fire--"

"I wonder that I did not waken when you did--that I did not hear you."

"I was very quiet."

"I awoke once in the night--and when I stirred, you patted me as if I were--"

"I was dreaming," she said softly, her face turned from him. "I was dreaming--and once I awoke in the night."

Romney felt the very core of the mystery now--his passion not to take or seize, but to give her his life. All the difference between the old and the new was in this--the difference between flesh and spirit, death and life. The thought came that this which he now knew had to do with the romances of the coming age--the passion to give one's self, not to seize something for one's own. He wanted to give her every beauty from his past and the high conceptions from the future, one by one. He had loved her spirit, her understanding mind, her presence, somehow as detached principles until this moment. Now they seemed one. All had come to the very earth of her being. He had knelt to her. The touch of her lips was the whole mystery. Nothing seemed impossible. He went to the door. Her word "to-night" was ringing through his whole being.

He sought Bamban early, to remark that they would set out for Wampli at noon.

"There is some extra baggage at the Consulate, including some provisions. We will need an extra camel and driver. In adding to the provisions in stock, arrange for four persons, Bamban, and don't spare on the little matters of extra comfort and accommodation--"

"Four persons?" said Bamban.

"Anna Erivan is going with us to Wampli."

Romney had a peculiar sense of hatred for an instant from his servant, who a moment before was inclined to prostrate himself, at least in effect. Bamban's hands were lifted, his head thrust forward from his shoulders, thin lips protruding, and a kind of dusk about his features.

"It would be better for us to return with her to Turgim in case she is not safe here, rather than to have a woman on the next part of the journey. Any delay is better than taking a woman--"

"I think we'll be able to manage according to the plan--"

"You will forgive your servant, but our mission is endangered by this plan. The solicitude of those represented by the master who came yesterday is withdrawn from any party which contains a white woman. It would be wiser for you to give up the mission and return to Peking--"

Romney coloured a little. "The master who came yesterday is friendly," he said.

"I am afraid you are taking the woman to her death--to say nothing of your own."

"Bring the camels toward the end of afternoon, Bamban."

Romney turned and walked back to the Consulate. He had met nothing of this sort before from his most excellent _boy_; and the fact that Bamban's resistance tallied with a fear in his own mind, added to the coldness with which he regarded the venture. He recalled his first swift rejection of taking Anna Erivan forward on the mission. So utterly had he put the thought away that it had not returned even in the great stress at the thought of separation. Yet when she asked to go, there had been no question; only the instant sense of warning which he had put from him steadily.... His step quickened. The braver way would be to change now--to explain his fear and ask her to remain. The force to accomplish this, however, did not arise in him. He had always been stubborn. He regarded his stubbornness now as something before which he was powerless.... She had asked to go. He had agreed. She was preparing even now. The journey to the desert was a part of her dream--their dream. It called him now. Rajananda--a queer sense of the old priest's love and tenderness and guardianship came to mind. Romney shared with Anna Erivan a horror for Nadiram. He did not accept the thought that he was taking the woman to her death, yet an icy draught came to him somehow from the thought, a certain grim finality. He did not know how he loved her until he was near the court. A gust of warmth, an indescribable elation, swept over him, as he perceived her against the doorway.

"You are pale," she said.

"It is a strain to be away from you," he answered.

"Bamban is Chinese. He does not understand," she said, with a touch of mirth. "I knew he would do his worst to make you go alone."

Romney found that he had hoped she would change of her own accord, but this was out of the question.

"I have locked up all his papers, and locked the Forward Room. My bags are almost ready--and yours. I helped a little in your room. I could not miss that thrill.... Ah, do not be troubled. I would die here.... Bamban does not know everything. Perhaps I will be a good omen, instead of evil. I think Rajananda would not make me stay."

"Now that's queer; I had the same thought," said Romney.

Anna Erivan was standing by the table, waiting for him to come to her.

"There should not be any mission--any task at this time," she said strangely. "There should be only two in the world--two and a desert--"

"They have given us power," he answered. "All these obstacles make us only cleave together more furiously. I think I could not have known you as I know you now, if everything had been smooth for us. Perhaps it is in the Plan. There are always rapids where two rivers come together."

For an instant her eyes burned passionately into his.

"You are wise," she whispered. "You fill a woman's dream. Last night you were like a priest. To-day you are like an adventurer--"

"To-night?"

"To-night--who knows what the desert will do?"

The camels came when the shadows were long. Bamban's face was wistful.... Romney's lips moved as one wonder-struck, as Anna Erivan emerged a last time from her room in riding-garb--starry-eyed and silent. They saved their words for the desert. Vile Nadiram was in a sunlit stupor, and did not stir as three camels crossed its face like insects--a dirty face in the late day.... They looked back. Nadiram lay still in the midst of thin sharp shadows, not a voice, not a movement--just a sprawl of lifeless browns and thin dark lines, and all around it the desert in the gold of sunset.

The woman spoke:

"A good-bye to that--the rooms, the beds, the streets, the Chinese," she whispered. "Oh, how I have hated it all--but a good-bye to that!"

They halted soon for supper, glad of the fire in the quick chill of dusk, glad for the cheer of the kettle and food. Bamban and the camel-driver sat apart. Romney raised his hand and his servant approached.

"We will set out as soon as the moon rises. And, Bamban, fill the water-cans now, and all you need from the water-hole."

This was done, and Romney led Anna Erivan to the water, and drew apart, waiting. The dusk crept in, and he thought of Bathsheba taking her bath in the fountain on the roof-tops.... All the magic of the old East opened again as he waited, but the moments were unbearably slow. His heart quickened, as after months of separation, when she appeared from the hollow--exquisite to the finger-tips, even in the desert..... The last of their fresh milk was used in that supper, and they fared very well indeed with perfect tea and dried fruit and loaves of her own baking at the Consulate.

"Are you rested for a hard night's journey?" he asked with a laugh.

"I have not been so rested since a little child," she answered.

... They were standing in the darkness by the camels, all prepared for departure, when there came out from the darkness of the desert that insane laughter, the mouthing of stones in thick wet glass.

She caught her breath and clasped his arms. She was laughing, as one who has been drenched with cold water.

"I had forgotten," she said. "It's quite all right, only I had forgotten. I'm not afraid at all.... Why, they are nothing more than jackals--"

The moon was two-thirds full and in meridian. Three nights--and moonlight all the way. Ahead, in the east, the great planet arose. Her eyes were lost in that rising. It was then Anna Erivan sang her song, like the ancient Deborah at the end of conquest:

"A star in the East--" she whispered, leaning back to him. "Our quest--by swiftest camels.... I love it. I love the night and the cold wind---the smell of the desert and the smell of the camels. This is our flight--and what is at the end, Beloved? ... You know, you know, what it is we journey to by swiftest camels--the risen star before our eyes--"

"A little child," said Romney.

For a moment, she clung to him.

*16*

They were in a country of rocks. It was late afternoon of the second day's travel, and Bamban had just found a suitable place for camp. Anna Erivan's eyes had been turned toward the south for a moment. Now her hand pressed Romney's sleeve. He followed her eyes and discerned a black movement in the distance.

Silently they watched a single black figure which presently appeared more clearly, not on account of an approach, but because of an eminence gained. They saw a signal as of a wind-blown cloak. A moment later a party of horsemen appeared upon the slope of a rolling waste of sand, halted before the figure that had signalled--then all were in the saddle and sweeping forward.

Romney's eyes turned to Bamban. The little chap was kneeling in the midst of the camp-kit, but watching the horsemen. Similar parties of horsemen had been met on the out-journey, but there had not come to Bamban's face before quite such a look as now. He stepped forward to Romney.

"It is the Dugpas," he said. "They are devils."

"I think we'll take care of them all right," Romney said lightly.

Anna Erivan fixedly regarded the approach of the desert-men. There were a dozen or fourteen, riding at a gallop in a semi-circle about their leader--the faces bent forward, their black cloaks blown full behind.

"We met this sort of thing coming out," Romney explained.

His hand crept under his blouse to the place of the little parchment. She did not answer. There were no further words between them, just her quick look, haunting and tender, and his movement slightly nearer.

"Greeting--_Amitabah_."

Romney's salutation was returned by the leader. He came forward alone. He was old, very lean and sharp of face, singular in his preservation of wiry strength. His face was a surprise, also, since it might be called cruel or kind, according to the moment; but it was in no wise heavy with brutality. The ponies were given over to the charge of a third portion of the party and were left some distance from the camels. The relieved riders came forward in twos. The significant thing to Romney and the woman was that these were mainly men of years, a queer phantom grayness about them, gray in the black of their skin, a touch of gray in the dulled red of their lips. Life had shown them more than comes from mere desert-riding. Bamban strode in closer. The leader loosed a strap at his throat, the black cloak falling back from his shoulders. It was retained at his hips by a girdle. He shook his arms with a queer spasmodic movement, as if to straighten out a cramp of hard riding from his muscles. There was a thin line of white foam on his lips and he spat twice--pointing first to the woman, then to the camels.

"He does not want her here when we talk," said Bamban. "I will take her there."

He was back in a moment. The usual questions as to direction and motive of the journey were passed. Romney was then informed that he would not be allowed to go on to Wampli. The American drew forth the usual passports, also Anna Erivan's credentials from Russia, and had them thrust back into his hands unopened. The native leader spat again. Romney now offered the parchment from Rajananda. The other took it in his two hands, pressed it to his lips, then turned away, bowing his head close to the paper.

At this point, Bamban undertook to say something to his master, and called upon himself a look of peculiar ferocity from the second in command.

Now certain of the followers came up with long sharply-pointed poles, which were driven into the ground in the form of a square. Before the final stake was driven, Romney and the woman were bundled in. The whole enclosure was then woven with leather thongs, and the sides covered with skins and cloaks. Soon all was quiet about, the chill of night increasing.

Romney called. Bamban was summoned from the camels to interpret. The white man asked for his blanket rolls. Bamban was allowed to serve his master to this extent.... In the early darkness, a twist of dried goat's-flesh and a tin of tea were passed over the pickets.

Romney was quiet many moments, subdued with reflections of his own stubbornness. The woman's hand had come forward from the dusk, touching sometimes his hand, sometimes his knee, or patting his cheek. At last she spoke:

"I know that you are thinking that you might have done differently. You are troubled that this happened with me here, but really I do not mind. I have been many times more miserable--ah, night after night, when you came to the west wall, scores of times before you came to Nadiram--much more miserable. This that has come to us--somehow I cannot lose the great joy and beauty of our meeting and mating. I cannot think steadily of these lesser things. They come to mind, but this wonderful thing we have known routs them forth--"

"You do not falter," he whispered. "You rise and rise, Anna Erivan. I should not ask more of the Gobi, or from Earth itself, than this meeting with you. You said days ago that this was but a place of meetings and departures--perhaps you were right. But I had glimpses of a longer journey than this--that is all."

"That will come to pass--if not to Wampli and beyond--then a still longer journey together.... I am very close to you. We are warm. The thongs give easily to one's back. Will you not lie down a little?"

... His head was upon her knee, her hand lightly touching his temples.... Full darkness had given way to the moon-glow, but the orb itself had not risen for them to see. They heard a sudden restlessness from the picket-line of the horses, a movement as if the natives had started up quickly from the fire--then the soft tread of camels and a hail. The coughing snarl followed from their own camels, as the stranger-beasts came to a halt near-by. The desert greeting, "_Amitabah_" from the Dugpa leader now reached their ears. Another desert party had joined the camp.

For a long time the leaders intoned by the fires; then voices dwindled and the flame-shadows on the picket-wall died to the red glow of embers.... Romney was wondering if the parchment would be of value.... Anna Erivan was not asleep. The slightest movement of his hand and her pressure answered. She was so frail and yet so strong; absolutely courageous, yet so tender. This fragrance that came to him from her was like a breath from home. He was not ready for the end. He wanted earth with her, more than heaven; yet the sense of peril was somehow lost in the peace of her presence, and the madness of any human adversary was less than her power....

Romney's eyes stung with the dawn. The cloaks had suddenly been removed from the pickets and he was staring straight into the rising sun. He turned softly to greet the woman. She sat up laughing like a child. The morning air was keen and bright, the wood-smoke fragrant. Nothing from these black strangers appeared to dismay her, though the impending evil became acute in Romney's mind. The party of later arrival, consisting of a dozen horsemen, was already prepared to depart, standing at the head of their mounts, with the exception of the older men who were conferring with the leader of the original party. Bamban had been called into this conference. Romney saw him bow his head and hold his palms out, a matter of uncertain significance to the white man, though the suspicion arose that the _boy_ was expressing himself to the effect that he had done his best to prevent the woman's coming. Queerly enough the whole spell was broken for an instant as a pair of horses, belonging to the original party, stretched their tethers too close to the camel pickets. There was a tangle, and vicious squealing of beasts, through which Romney observed that his camel driver conducted himself with singular calm.

"What a perfect night's rest," said Anna Erivan.

Romney regarded her with awe. She held up her frail arms to the light and smiled. Her girlish breast seemed moulded of new wonder for that day. It was only in detached fashion that Romney could _take_ the facts. Neither of the parties seemed to have the slightest concern about food. The halting place of the night was clear of unpacked provisions of any kind. Apparently Bamban was not permitted to serve his own. The sun was rising. The rock-strewn desert was like a dream. The sand was drinking in its false life; the rocks were touched with morning red; the horizon was a ring of pearly azure with one flaming jewel of rose-gold. Romney turned his eyes from that rising radiance to the woman, and touched her hand.

The leader of the first party and two others now approached. Romney realised that talk was finished; that what was to be done was to be done now. Then like a thrust their purpose came to him. It was like a physical horror crawling nearer and nearer. Anna Erivan was not slower to grasp the meaning of the approach. Her arms went to him, her face close to his:

"They can only separate us a little. I am yours, body and soul, remember that--yours--yours--my Beloved."

The full madness really came to him when he understood that the woman recognised as coming to pass that which was the most rending fear of his life. It happened very quickly. Two of the pickets were pulled out, the thongs slipped, and the leader stepped back, bowing his head in sign for them to come forth. Romney was first to obey and was ordered to stand with the two desert-men at the right of the opening. Anna Erivan was beckoned to the left by the leader's side. They moved forward, not largely separated, but Romney was halted--a brown hand on each arm--by his own camels; and Anna Erivan was led forward toward the second party of horsemen, which stood in readiness to mount. Whether it was the restraining hands or the obedience of the woman--her face turned back to him--which broke Romney's control, he did not know himself, but leaping forward, he was caught and held, and the battle was on.

He heard her voice. Nothing that he did prevailed; nothing that a white man could do with his body counted against this silent pair of spine-twisters. Knee or knuckle, he could not tell, but it seemed a steel bolt was hurled into his back. He sprawled like a frog, her face and a certain amazement at his own futility queerly blended in his last flash of consciousness--his open mouth pressed into the sand.

*PART THREE: THE GOBI*

*RAJANANDA*

*1*

At times Romney thought he was insane. There were stretches of desert miles, and hours of travel in which he knew only the waver of a brassy film before his eyes--no sand, no sky, just a slowly moving brazen curtain that was like an emanation from burning metal.... He had awakened to the rock of the camel, and day was high. Bamban was nearest, beyond him the Dugpa leader and six of his party. They were on the western trail. Vaguely to Romney's mind came the word "Wampli." Bamban waited for him to speak.

"Did the other party give her the third camel to ride?" Romney asked.

"Yes. Also one driver is with their party."

"Where did they go?"

"I don't know. We turned out of the camp before they left. I think they went back toward Nadiram."

"Was she hurt?"

"No. They treated her with every care."

"Did she say anything--after I fell?"

"No--only for me to take good care of you. She covered her face. After that she was calm."

"Do you think they will do her harm?"

"No. They are not like that."

"Is it a matter of ransom?"

"Not in this case. They greatly reverence the little parchment from Rajananda. They gave it to me to restore to you."

"Did you tell her I was not hurt?"

"I could not. I did not know what had happened. It was at the very worst, when she seemed to know the feel of fresh power."

"You were with them, Bamban, when they made the plan to separate us. What brought it about?"

Bamban's whole concern seemed to be to answer in a way that would be exactly true and at the same time relieve his master's agony. "They asked me many questions as to our work in the desert--why we had come west from Nadiram. I told them of the mission as I know it--of the waiting leaders in Peking. Then they asked me about the woman, and I said that I was not in the knowledge of your concern with her. They asked if the woman had come from Peking with you. I said no. They asked where you had found her. I told them in Nadiram. They asked what I thought of your bringing the woman with you on this mission. I said I was your servant and that I had no authority to think. They did not make their plans regarding the separation in my hearing."

"Thank you, Bamban."

Romney could not feel his real life. The pain across his chest had returned. At intervals he talked with the _boy_, who answered patiently, but could give no more than has been said. The white man felt the repetitions, halted in shame, remembering suddenly that he had asked in regard to certain matters many times before--yet his mind would come up from its black depth with the same question again. At times he was childish. He would have taken Bamban's hand if it were night. He thought often of Nadiram as a safe place. It would be heaven to ride on to Wampli--if Anna Erivan were safely back in the Consulate. He had not been strong enough to leave her there! ... Now Anna Erivan was in the hands of the Dugpas, at the mercy of a desert band--carried away by dark men who frothed at the lips.... Often his face turned back. Once he broke out laughing. It was toward the end of the day....

Bamban talked to him after that--told the story again and again without questions, making him listen. Their little band halted for the evening. They meant to reach Wampli the next afternoon. The sun was down, but the sky filled with afterglow--the south still brazen, the east dull, the west ablaze, the north a cool blue-green of pasture-lands. Many times Bamban asked his master to sip the tea. Food was not to be thought of. At last the servant followed the white man's eyes, which were lost in the south.

"What do you see?" Bamban whispered.

"It has the look of a low-flying swan to me."

Bamban saw the flash of white against the sky. It was like developing a plate. A superb camel cleared in the heightening glow, all shadows and distances falling away--a mighty dromedary, pure white, lean and tall in dull gold trappings. Bamban could only think of the words of his master--a low-flying swan.

The Dugpas arose in strange formation. Straight to them that long snarling head--then the voice from the basket, the halt, the kneeling.... It was a huge round basket like a bowl. The driver touched his forehead to the ground before them, then toward the east, then toward the camel. He arose and, stepping lightly with bare foot upon the shoulder of the dromedary, glanced with deepest reverence over the rim of the basket. At that moment, Romney saw again the shrunken, shaven skull--touched with evening now, the eyes lifting dully from deep sleep.

"It's Rajananda," eagerly whispered Bamban. "It's quite all right now for us. It's as I thought--he is the master of all in these parts!"

"Rajananda--" Romney repeated.

The driver, still standing upon the camel's shoulder, caught the hem of the great yellow robe in his hand and beckoned the American to stand beside him and take the other. It was thus that Rajananda was lowered to the ground in his blanket--very gentle that delivery, as two storks would perform upon unsuspecting parents in the stillest hour.

It was the hollow of the white man's arm that presently took the chin of the Ancient, who spoke at once of the Five-fold Reason and the Nine-fold Order, cosmic and terrestrial; the plan of the Universe admitting of no imperfection, and the absolute rightness of right conduct and right emotion--all of which Bamban accepted as if eating from the ground, and Romney took with impatience until he could speak of the woman.

Rajananda was coming closer with the thought. All was well with Turgim; well with Nadiram; the desert slept in its great peace. Alone of the earth, the heart of man faltered and fell short of perfection. Black misery brooded over the heart of man; soon he, Rajananda, would pass forth from this misery, but the sufferings of the sons of men swiftly again would call him back. This coming by camel was but a symbol of his entrance by the dark way of woman's womb into the world of men again....

Romney heard the words. It was that queer listening on his part, to meanings that would unfold and become clearer afterward. Something of beauty and order came to him from the old master's presence. Rajananda now appeared to see the white man as one detached from the rest. Romney bent closer to the face in the hollow of his arm.

"There was a woman," the saint observed. "Once, before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at Nadiram."

"They have taken her away from me. It was this morning, Father, two parties separating after the halt in the night. It was the hour of our mating. We were journeying on to Wampli together--"

Romney spoke softly. His voice surprised himself, for it was steady and sane.

"I am listening, for you to help me," he added in the silence.

Rajananda seemed to sleep. Romney held himself with such tensity that sweat came to his face.

"You have met. You will meet again. Nothing is lost. Man cannot put asunder that which Holy Breath has joined together. Man goes alone to the Sanctuary, and woman waits. In going alone, the man is strengthened; in waiting, the woman is purified.... And now you will sleep. Rajananda, your father, will be here beside you, and these, my desert children, will watch over us through the night."

The ancient withered hand swept slowly from one to another of the Dugpas. All had turned at the sound of Rajananda's voice. Each man bowed low as he was designated. Romney felt that sleep was utterly gone from him. And yet the night passed without breaking him--a kind of passage from one numbed dream to another.... Rajananda journeyed on with them the next morning, the dromedary abreast, held to the slower pace of the white man's beast. Questions came often to the white man, but his awe of the old priest forbade. Rajananda talked when he was ready. As the day rose, Romney met the brazen curtain again.

The picture of yesterday's dawn recurred at intervals with unabating horror; and the steady consciousness that he was moving farther and farther from his own. Sanity was difficult in this suffering, but always as it reached a certain pressure of destructiveness, its voltage seemed queerly lowered, and he lost the sand and sky, and travelled through the deadly glitter that had neither surface nor line. This emerging at the moment of shattering always had to do with Rajananda. Somehow the old master would break the spell, and Romney would hear voices and feel again the swing of the camel's tread. Presently all would sink away but the voice of the Ancient, who affirmed again and again neither the past nor the present, but what was to be:

"Your work is not done. This is the stone death that you feel. It comes to ease the pain, and the pain comes from the red of flesh. When you have faith, all will be well--"

"They tore her from me!"

"All is well with her. You have chosen the way to God through a woman. It is the harder way. When you love enough, you will find peace--"

"It is because I love her that I suffer so--"

"My son talks as a child. It is because you do not love enough. In the great love there is no separation, save that of limbs and lips and hands. You have been taken for a brief season from that, in order that you may rise to the great love which laughs at death and distance and the intervention of men. Long ago you learned this, but my son has forgotten. The woman will remember more quickly and wait with serenity. Hold your hands to the sun. Rise to the love of the Long Road--and the lesson will soon be finished. She is waiting--"

"Where--"

"In good time you shall know."

"Is there not to be a love on earth?"

"Yes; the great races of the future--the races that shall heal the world--are to come from the love of earth--"

"I want her here on earth. We had only met when she was taken away."

"You cannot know the blessedness of the valley until you have crossed the heights--"

"But we only just met, Father. All our lives we were apart."

"There is another range of hills for you to cross--"

"But she saw me carried from her as one dead--"

"Even so, she is at peace in this hour. The faith of woman comes more quickly than the faith of man. She is one of the mothers of the new race. Her children cannot be borne alone among the little valley shrines of men. Her children must breathe the strong air of the hills."

"But tell me, shall I meet her again here--down on the good earth?"

"Your master cannot speak of that. If I should tell you what you ask, you could not turn your eyes upward from the dream of the valley-shrines.... Hold up your palms, my son. Master the red of flesh that will not let you wait in peace. So long as you can be destroyed by that, you are not ready for the greater meeting with the Beloved--"

"I could die, but it would not be better than this--"

"The true Brahman speaks in that saying. We shall not know the Holy Breath in death, if we fail to find it here in the life of flesh."

There were hours of this--backward and forward. Rajananda, who seemed hardly strong enough to hold his life to the withered body, could speak and answer tirelessly through the blinding day.

"But tell me," Romney asked at last, "has she a master to make easy these hours--a master to tell her the way to meet this hardest of all lessons--to wait?"

"She has a master," said the mystic, "but not an old man like Rajananda. She does not need to be reminded by a voice from without. It is easier for a woman to wait, my son. The faith of woman comes more quickly."

*2*

At Wampli that night, Romney read the last of the documents given him by Nifton Bend, the one designated to be opened at this point. As he had dimly anticipated, the papers concerned Rajananda who proved to be the power of the Asiatic section in the East, the guardian of the Eastern Gate to the alleged Inner Temple, and the highest of the forces in touch with Peking, politically. Of all the Gobi hierarchy, Rajananda was alone in retaining a name and personality used in the outer world. How close he was to the great Lohan, Romney's information did not even hazard.

The American was ordered to await the coming of Rajananda in Wampli, to place his case before this priest and to accept the judgment of the latter as to whether he should journey on farther for the ultimate decisions. In a word, if Rajananda cared to close the issues of the mission, either for good or ill, so far as the Big Three were concerned, Romney's out-journey was ended. On the contrary, if Rajananda refused to act, and advised him to carry his plea for the new party in China still higher, Romney was commanded to accept the advice and to continue his advance into the desert as directed.

There was a singular nobility about the second paper, which contained the story of the dream and forming structure of New China. Romney was familiar with this study of the coming civilisation, and felt the mighty and beloved spirit of Nifton Bend in every line of the writing. The China which the Hunchback pictured for future years carried the wisest and most modern conceptions of super-national development and the brotherhood principle in the comprehension of apostles of the new social order. Romney was asked in a personal note to place the salient points of this document before Rajananda, one by one. This he was prepared and, in fact, eager to accomplish.

The third enclosure contained a sealed envelope which the American was asked not to open for the present. The accompanying sheets of this document had to do with the menace of Japan. The peril of the Japanese aggressiveness was traced, during the past two decades, to the present snapping point. Japan was shown in her position toward China and the other powers, in relation to the present world-war. The Japanese ambition was set forth from both the conservative and the more perilous angles. Nifton Bend erected in rousing outline the future of Asia under Japanese dominance, in contrast to the vast yellow peoples gathered in a fabric of fraternity and turned outward in benevolence toward the other races of the world.

There were moments in which Romney forgot his own tragedy. The old power of Nifton Bend returned to his heart, the deep thrall of service under him. Something of the breadth of force that comes from self-immolation touched his zeal afresh and brought nearer and clearer the dimension of faith and divine fire which Rajananda had laboured all that day to impress upon his torn and fevered heart. Romney was confronted with the need of drawing upon some higher potency to endure these hours. He could not change the facts of yesterday. He could not turn back until the old master and his desert children made the journey possible. In justice to Anna Erivan, he could not cease to live unless death came to him from an exterior agency, and he was sufficiently imbued with the mysticism of the Orient to believe that death, self-inflicted, would not entirely release him from the struggle and agony of the present separation. Again that night came the queer impulsive passion to transcend these limitations--instead of to bow before them; and more clearly that night he realised what Rajananda had repeated so often through the day: that the limitations were set upon him for the sole purpose of forcing him to rise in his strength and transcend them.

... Nifton Bend had found his own in Moira Kelvin, but only after he had given himself utterly to the service of a foreign people.... Romney turned back to his reading. Bamban was watching him from a shadow--that strange and sleepless _boy_ farther from the white man's comprehension at this moment than when they had set out together from the house of Minglapo.... Just now, Romney encountered a personal note in regard to the sealed envelope:

"My dear Romney: The contents of the final envelope which is sealed are matters which need only be used in case Rajananda or others higher inquire regarding the specific means by which our new party plans to overcome the aggressiveness of the Japanese in case of their war on China. We know that this is uncertain ground for you personally, but trust that in case you are called upon, you will open this letter and state the contents to the religious masters, without bias. Perhaps you will be surprised to find that they who hold all life dear, having a deeper knowledge of the meaning of life than we are given to know, will look with philosophic calm upon the methods we plan to use, to overcome the strength of this young and brutal people. Our whole case is in your hands.

"You will be interested to know that I had intended to take this journey into the desert. I felt that my services could well be spared for so important a mission. The change of plan came as a result of that extra case against you in the police station. During the hours that elapsed before we could secure your freedom (after we had accomplished your release from the first charge) conditions arose here that demanded my remaining in the vicinity of Peking and Tientsin indefinitely. Had the Chinese officials turned you loose when we expected, your service for us would have been carried on in Japan instead of the Gobi. As it stands, we are all breathless for the issue of your travel.

"A last word: If our methods of dealing with Japan in case of war are not asked, do not open this envelope. I would spare you from it personally. On the eve of your return journey, whether it is successful or not, burn the envelope unread, and hurry home to us. There is much for you to do here. Men of your class are rare. The woman who has come to me, bringing the full cup of life, has quickened our spirits toward you afresh, and you know how animate we were before...."

Romney brooded long. He could feel the world a little--the different pulse that the Gobi had made him forget. He felt his relation to the Big Three and the world at large once more. The timeless repetitions of Rajananda came and went in his brain like the sounding of breakers; the letter from Nifton Bend contained intrinsically the fervour and courage that he held most dear from men of the world. He was called to a longer view of life than this present pit afforded. The great plan of it appeared. Out of the sorriest fall of his life had come the great meeting with his own woman. He pictured the wastrel in flapping white clothing that had sunk into the stoke-hold of the _John Dividend_ in Manila Harbour. Upon that day and that ship depended the night of the Cross in Nadiram and the night of the Crown in the desert--upon that darkest of beings, McLean, hung an issue of starry light, for had he not borrowed five pounds from that fence-faced marine, he would have been sent to Japan instead of the desert, where his woman waited.

It was only the Terrible Now....

Romney slept. Anna Erivan came and went in his dreams. Once she was singing her _magnificat_ in the hill-country.... The next day, Romney told the story of his mission to Rajananda. For many hours they sat together on the mud-floor of the clay-walled and palm-thatched hut in Wampli. Rajananda lay covered in his yellow robe and listened, marking the symbols of God and the Holy Breath upon the dirt of the floor with a finger-nail like a twisted kernel of dried corn. Toward evening they broke their fast together, and Romney covered his face in his hands as he listened:

"My son, you are strong. Yesterday you wanted death, but knew too much to die in the midst of gray hate and red desire. All is well with you to-day. Your eyes hold the light that sees afar off. That which you bring to me from the capital of the Empire is too great for the like of Rajananda whose thoughts are of God and not of men.... I see strange things. I see the empire of brotherhood as your white master envisions it, but it is not so near as he thinks--and his figure is not in the midst of it. We will journey on and place our story at the feet of Tsing Hsia, my stern brother in Rhadassim--a journey of five camel days into the west. Your heart is strong, my son. Your woman waits for you--"

Five camel days.... There was an instant in which Romney almost asked for mercy. He would have done this the day before, but somehow he had turned back from the last ditch once more, clutching the very substance to live on from the Unseen--a bigger and silenter man than went out from Nadiram.... He asked the stars if his woman still lived. The next morning as the sun came up, he saw himself in the tin water basin--a darkly-wasted face, beaked like a Hindu of caste, and the eyes asked the same question.

"Five camel days," he muttered. "Romney, they don't give you a chance to choose or to fight. You've either got to go on or lay down--and you can't lay down...."

He turned a look back to the East as the camel knelt for him, and sent forth the best he had of love and courage to the woman. So much surged from him that moment that an answer seemed to come back--nothing he could be sure of, nothing that had to do with actual words, perhaps illusion altogether, but his face wore a thin smile, and there was a humming about his heart.

For another whole day at Rhadassim, Romney talked, and the next day Rajananda offered his observations. All the time the stern and stolid Tsing Hsia listened, and at the end announced that one more Father should be called to the matter--Chi Yuan of Kuderfoi, a three days' journey westward by camel.... Romney felt in this accession that his last debt was paid to life.... It was Chi Yuan, on the second day after the arrival at Kuderfoi, who asked by what means the new Chinese party planned to make Japan sue for an early peace in case of struggle with China. Romney asked permission to withdraw for an hour. It was granted and he read the sealed letter from Nifton Bend.

... For a long time he sat in silence. Ten minutes was all that the reading required. He rejoined the three Holy Men, no longer impassioned for the cause of the Big Three, but merely to state the case without bias, as Nifton Bend had asked.... Romney always remembered the three bowed heads, as he entered the little tiled court where the yellow lilies grew. This was the end of his out-journey. He knew it now and was very calm. That for which he had been sent would be answered this day. The rest was but the return of the message--then Anna Erivan, if grace were still in the world for him.

Romney felt aged like the three. A little spray moved a pool of water before them. The lilies were lotus-sweet to the white man's nostrils after an eternity of desert-sand. The green cooled his brain like a dear hand. He stood with bowed head, a little at the side, and waited for them to turn from their meditation.

"Speak," said Chi Yuan.

"The new party of China is prepared to fight Japan with pestilence. Their plan is complete. Their chemists have been working for several years. I have the data here to outline to you how the servants of the Empire expect to meet the landing forces of Japan, as well as literally to impregnate the Island Empire with the germs of incurable disease--"

"The outer world of men is truly crushed in the coils of matter," said the gentle Chi Yuan.

"It is the darkest hour," said Tsing Hsia, the stern. "The dawn might be hastened by the innovation of this demoniac contrivance. Japan is young-souled. If allowed to master China and rule Asia, Japan would bring into the world a repetition of the pitiful and unholy civilisation which is destroying itself in Europe now. On the contrary, these men of New China appear to be pure. As I understand, they mean only to defend themselves and their country in case of Japan's insistence for war. I believe that their messenger should carry back from us written word of our good will--the message that we are watching with great ardour their sign of Empire, and that if they preserve their sign in purity, more and more will we carry to them the strength of the Inner Temple. In a word, I, Tsing Hsia, perceive nowhere the promise of national exemplarship for the new order of humanity as in this dream which the white man brings--"

"But warring with pestilence--" said Chi Yuan.

"It is but bringing a greater destructiveness than fire and steel," answered Tsing Hsia. "War will end when its full hideousness is perceived by the many. Pestilence will but hasten the day."

Romney was amazed that these saints who would not have crushed a worm, who knew not the taste of red meat, could thus sacrifice an empire for the good of the future as they saw it. Awe held him, at the completeness with which they ignored the individual life personally and nationally, regarding spirit and not flesh in every thought. They had not even asked for the details which had so harrowed his own heart. To them, the globe was the plane of a spiritual experiment, and not property for a group of divided peoples.

Rajananda seemed very little and dry. His hand came out to the American. He asked to be lifted a little nearer the pool. He dipped his hands in the pure water and covered them again in the Sannysin robe. The faces of the two brethren were turned to him, waiting for him to speak. After long preliminary, he said, perceiving only the future as was his fashion:

"The dream is in the world. Man will unite with his brother, race to race; and war shall be no more. Nowhere in the world has this dream, that broods upon the planet, come nearer to finding its expression in action than through the labours of this party of which our son brings tidings. But this party shall pass without knowing the material fruit of its clean desire. Its business has to do with conception, not with birth. The time of birth is not far as men reckon years, but it is not so near as these dreamers and toilers of New China believe.... They shall pass. The ancient order of Empire shall overpower them. Even now they are in the folds of the night that still lingers upon the face of the world. Asia shall be richer for their thought, but from others shall come the action. Carry to them, my son, by word of mouth the message of peace and good will from the desert. Our approval in script may find no hands to accept it, at least no party to profit by it."

Rajananda now spoke directly to Romney:

"Our westward journey is ended. To-night we depart once more, each for his own country. It has been good to see these brothers again in the flesh. In spirit we have been one these many years.... Chi Yuan, will you see to the preparations for travel, for the night is coming quickly. Our messenger must make haste in returning or he shall not find ears to pour our blessing into.

"I will return with you to Rhadassim," said Tsing Hsia.

"And I," said the plaintive Chi Yuan, "shall sit many days by this pool, meditating upon the coming and the departure of my beloved companions."

... That night, Romney smiled into the starry dark. The great northern stars burned near--Vega, Arcturus, Antares, Altair. No Inner Temple, no arcanum; just waiting and travel, broken sleep of nights and unbroken journeys by day; no phenomena, just sand and sky and low villages, flat upon the desert and burned gold-brown; no miracle but that of love, no mystery but the deep mystery of life. The white dromedary sped forward in silence, making the pace for the rested camels.... It was all haste now. The old master paused not. His desert children had been repeatedly enjoined for more rapid speed on the way to Rhadassim.... Romney's mind sped forward, beyond, to Wampli, almost to Nadiram ten days away--to the point in the desert where the Dugpas had divided, where his heart had met the hardest human test, and pulsed on.

*3*

The speed of the journey had not abated after Tsing Hsia was left behind at Rhadassim. A different party of desert men met them for conduct to Wampli, and the journey that had required five days coming out was made in four on the return. Rajananda's hand was seldom raised above the rim of his basket during the hours of travel. Steadily Romney's wonder increased toward the old ascetic, his place and power. It was he at the last who had spoken regarding the mission; it was Rajananda to whom all the leaders and forces of the desert bowed in reverence and fealty. Rajananda concerned himself not only with the Peking business, the worship and well-being of the Gobi tribes, and the races of the world at large, but had time and authority for the direction of a white man's romance.

The old master seemed anxious for the Big Three to have his word in the shortest possible time. Romney was worn to the bone. Every hour devoured him as they neared Wampli. To his surprise, Rajananda did not remain there, but signified his wish, after a few hours' rest, to continue toward Nadiram with the American. The utterly emaciated old body seemed to hold its ultimate force together quite as easily _en route_ as during a period of rest in one of the settlements. In fact, it appeared to Romney at length, that Rajananda had somehow learned to master the elements of his physical being; that death would not be accidental in his case, but a kind of relinquishing sleep--a passing forth, in order and without pain. This was only a thought, but many strange powers were glimpsed from time to time in this companionship.

The Ancient was the cleanest of men. His bath each day was a desert rite, and, like all else that touched him, the food that he partook of was kept with holy care by his servant. There was not the faintest taint of senility about the old body. It was withered and dry but like sun-dried fruit. Romney often recalled the impression that Rajananda had made upon Anna Erivan when he first came to the court of the Consulate--the strength that had come to her from his passing.

Romney lived in this strength. He had need of it. More and more he realised what Rajananda had meant in this crisis, and how, first and last, his reliance for the care and welfare of Anna Erivan was held to the authority of the old ascetic. Somehow he believed that the priest had been aware of the separation of the lovers before his arrival. No word was spoken regarding this. Two new camels were supplied at Wampli for Romney and Bamban, but the white dromedary continued the journey. The full day's work of even the tawny Bikaners did not wear down this priceless beast.

The party was rejoined at Wampli by the old Dugpa leader and a dozen followers, and the journey eastward continued. Romney realised that the first camp out of Wampli would be made at the point in the desert on the road to Nadiram, where the separation had taken place.

He did not sleep during this night of travel. He did not ask what was ahead, but he heard the break in his own voice when he spoke to Rajananda of other things.

... Romney stood alone the evening of the day following at the place of the square of stakes.... Bamban called him in for tea at last when the quick dusk dimmed the faces around the fire. Rajananda had been let down from his basket in the yellow robe, and the withered old arm raised to beckon the white man near. For many moments Rajananda ordered his consciousness by prayer and the repetition of mantras, at last coming close to the matter so heavy upon Romney's heart:

"My son longs for his beloved as the heart of the _bhakti yogin_ yearns for union with God."

"The days have been many and long, Father, nor did I leave the loved one in peace. Without you, I should have awakened from that first unconsciousness--to resist again and again until death."

"That would have been failure, my son."

"Yes; but we are not trained in the Occident to accept the tearing away of our women without resistance."

"In spirit you are true Brahman--very far from the Occident in ways of thought and life. That is why you are tested here. Had you not been ready to accept the healing of Rajananda, he should not have come to you. Our disciples are not tested more greatly than they can bear. The world had ceased to interest you. You had won the cold laugh. Only the woman of the heart could be used for lifting you to the plane of power. The plan is not to inflict agony upon you, but to burn and refine and whiten your soul. Only the woman could be used for that--"

Romney's face paled under its weathering and his lip hardened white.

"I would not make a woman suffer to test a man."

"You have a lingering of the Occidental in your idea of compassion," Rajananda said softly. "You have met a woman who does not need sparing from the truth. What you have won from these days, she has won, too. Your rising into the breadth of spirit and power has been her ascent also. Compassion does not mean to spare the beloved from ordeals. The thing called happiness so often means that content which is a kind of neglect by the gods. There is a right and a left hand to compassion. It is a unit made of the sternness of Tsing Hsia and the gentleness of Chi Yuan. It dares to wound, but it bathes the wound it makes. It loves, but always constructs. My son, you came to the desert for a greater thing than to carry a message back to your leaders--"

"I think I came for the meeting with Anna Erivan. I am here again after many days, at the point where she was taken from me.... I have been able to live through the recent days because of you, because I have put my trust in you. My Father, I feel that I cannot go much further without word from her--"

Darkness had fallen. The old hand came forth slowly from the robe. Romney's sped forward to take it.

"I have lived in your devotion and it has been a holy thing, my son. You love well. She has become more than an earth-woman to you. She has become the way to God. It is the true _yoga_--this love of yours, when it is lifted from the lust of the flesh. Where there is love like yours, there is no lust. Without these trials you could not have known so soon the love you will bring in good time to her breast. The ways of easily-wedded pairs sink into commonness soon--the dull and dreamless death. It is those who are kept apart, who overcome great obstacles, who learn the greatest thing of all--to wait--who touch the upper reaches of splendour in the love of man and woman, and thus prepare themselves for the greater union and the higher questing which is the love of God together."

Romney bowed his head over the aged hand. Even in this hour, Rajananda had made him forget himself once more.

"You--" he said haltingly, "you, who have never known a woman--how can you touch the arcanum of romance?"

"The seer must know the hearts of men. Knowledge of love is the knowledge of God. Love is the Wheel of Life; love is the Holy Breath that turns the Wheel. The seer is far from ready for his work in the world, who has forgotten from his breast the love of man and the love of woman. And then, my son, we are almost at the end of the night of the world. The builders are coming in to take the places of those who have torn down with war and every other madness of self. These builders must be born of men and women--the new race--but of men and women who have learned what great love means....

"So you have come to the desert for a greater message, my son, than that which you carry to the waiting ones in Peking--"

"I hear your words. They always come to me again and again afterward. Do not think that I miss what you say when I bring the thought down to the personal thing that tortures me. Tell me: am I to see Anna Erivan soon?"

The last sentence was hoarsely uttered.

"My son, is there doubt in your heart in regard to Rajananda?"

"No."

"Do you believe in my love for you, as master to disciple?"

"I do not understand it. I do not feel worthy to be your disciple, but I have every reason to believe in it."

"Will you do as I ask--a hard thing?"

Romney felt himself smothering close to the ground. He arose to his feet. There was red before his eyes, a breaking tension in his throat. The strongest thing about him--the control of his temper--was stretched to the snapping point.

He paced a moment, with clenched hands, before speaking:

"You mean to ask me to go back to the Big Three without Anna Erivan--?"

"Yes."

"I cannot.... I cannot!"

"Come to me, and take your father's hand."

Romney sat down in silence. Something flooded over him that broke down all his resistance. He wanted to weep like a young boy who was pressed too hard. Instead, he laughed--his old trick when hard driven.

"I forget that I am powerless," he said bitterly. "Why do you ask my will in the matter? She was taken by force. I do not know where she is. I am in the hands of your men. I must do their will or yours. You say that I have gained great power by this separation, but it had nothing to do with will of mine--"

"You have accepted the destiny imposed--that is enough. It honoured you in being as great as your strength. A weaker man than you would have fallen--"

"But you ask my will now, when I see that yours is greater than mine. My will is to go to Anna Erivan now--to-night! She needs me--"

"Do not speak bitterly, my son. We will abide by your will in this thing--"

"You mean that?"

"Yes. But first I will tell you that it is not the greater way."

"Why?"

"Any delay on the road to Tientsin now endangers your chance of seeing your leaders in life again. You accepted their mission. It is the work of a true _lanoo_ to fulfil it."

"You think I did wrongly to delay in Nadiram on the way out?"

"I have never chided you for that. Others felt it failure, but they did not understand. You did not fail there. There were three, my son, who went to the Manger on swiftest camels, bearing gifts to the Child whom they found; and another who found his quest by the way, and when he was old and the last of his quest finished, he met the Master face to face.... It was Rajananda who made his desert children understand about your tarrying in Nadiram and who made my son's servant understand. But that is finished. It is different now. Delay now will leave your mission unfulfilled, and that, my son, would not leave the future shadowless--"

"But Anna Erivan--in the hands of strangers--thinking me dead. If she still lives, I must go to her. A day, an hour--"

"My son, what words were the last that you heard from the lips of this woman you love?"

"She asked me to remember that she was mine--body and soul--"

"Have you faith in that?"

"Yes--but the desert-men--"

"They are my children."

"But she has not had you for strength."

"She has not needed me for strength. My son, her faith is above yours. A woman rises into her faith more quickly than a man--"

A kind of moan came from the white man's lips.

"You mean she is at peace--that she is not crying out for me?"

"I mean that she is well and content to wait until you come. She is holding up her arms--for the white fire. When a woman is great enough for that, my son, her arms do not long remain empty."

"Do you mean to tell me that Anna Erivan would have me go to Tientsin and report this mere verbal intelligence--before going to her?"

Rajananda took his hand from Romney's and fumbled in his robe for a moment, drawing forth a little leathern packet pinned with a seven-fold swastika of gold. From an inner fold of this he drew out a paper which Romney took with a thrill of passionate joy. He had never seen Anna Erivan's writing, yet he knew that this was penned by her own hand:

_My Beloved: Finish your mission and hurry back to me. Carry forth your sign even though it seems to fail for the time. I am waiting for you in the hills. They will show you where I am. Remember my last words. All is well. My love stands above all. Come swiftly to_

_Anna Erivan._

*4*

The dawn had come. Romney and Bamban were to go forward alone to Nadiram, the servant to remain there for his master to return from Tientsin. Rajananda's province did not include Nadiram, and in thinking of this, the American recalled that the famous white dromedary had not entered there. Twice, at least, he had appeared in Nadiram as a begging Sannysin.... The desert-band drew apart, all the animals in readiness for the trails; even Rajananda's servant removed himself to squat a short distance from his day-star. The old man lay upon his yellow robe, adoring his God with many perfectly appointed sayings. Romney bowed before the mystery. At last, words were brought to matters of the hour:

"... In a few weeks, my son, you will come again to this place--this man with you, for he is a good servant and will not be parted from his master after his return from the province of the Capitol."

Rajananda indicated Bamban, who stood at a little distance, and quickly turned his face away as his name was spoken. More than ever Romney realised that blackness was ahead for the Big Three, at least for Minglapo. It had never been far from his thought that Bamban would return to his former master after the Gobi mission; in fact, Romney had thought at times Bamban was absolutely Minglapo's, even in his present service.

"... First to Nadiram," Rajananda intoned, "then the long road to Turgim, and the travel lines again to Tushi-kow and on to Peking.... You have breathed again, my son, and strength has come to you. You will set your face firm to the distance, knowing that the plan of life is for joy and for the evocation of divine spirit through the human heart. You shall know through nights and days that the woman you have found is in Sanctuary--that man goes alone upon his mission and that woman waits.

"... Listen, my son: in the elder days men put away their women to worship God. The prophets, the seers, the Holy Men walked alone, and left the younger-souls of the world to bring forth sons. The time was not ripe for the race of heroes, therefore the mere children of men brought forth children. And all the masters spoke of the love of God for man and the love of man for man, and the love of woman for her child, but no one spoke of the love of man and woman. All the sacred writings passed lightly over that--even the lips of the Avatars were sealed. But now the old is destroying itself in the outer world; the last great night of matter and self is close to breaking into light; the time for heroes has come, my son, and heroes must be born of this sacred mystery--the love of man and woman. So all the priests have this message now, all the teachers and leaders of men, even I, old Rajananda who speaks to you and who has never known the kiss of woman--all are opening to the world the great story, unsealing the greatness of the love of man and woman.... For the builders are coming--coming to lift the earth--the saints are coming, my son--old Rajananda hears them singing; the heroes are coming with light about their heads and their voices beautiful with the Story of God.

"... And now I must sleep. I go to my daughter, who waits for you.... Once, before you came, she rested my head and filled my bowl in the stone square at Nadiram. Even now she waits for you in the hills of my country--not far from this place, my son--"

The withered hand came up a last time. Rajananda's servant hurried forward, and Romney helped him. Together they lifted the master in his perfect yellow robe, lowering him over the rim of his basket. The camel-driver took his place at the head of the kneeling dromedary, and his eyes shone with the risen day.... Another desert party had ridden in; they dismounted now in a half-circle opposite the escort from Wampli. It was like a pageant--the desert-men a circle of devotion. Romney watched the white camel rise and depart, the two desert-bands following. Then he called for his camels, mounted, and rode away toward Nadiram in the great wash of light.

*PART FOUR: TIENTSIN*

*THE HUNCHBACK*

*1*

Romney connected with Peking by telegram at Tushi-kow, and was ordered to report at the Hotel Nestor in Tientsin and to inquire for Dr. Ti Kung. At least, this was the information he drew from a long, vague and rambling telegram, the direct meaning of which was veiled, doubtless for political reasons. The whole affair was strange. He recalled how Rajananda had enjoined speed for his return, and how the aged one had been unable to see Nifton Bend in the big reconstruction activity of the East.

He reached Tientsin late at night, asked at the desk for the Doctor, and was taken upstairs at once, a boy leading the way. Several knocks brought no reply from within. At the desk again it was reported that no one had observed Dr. Ti Kung to leave the hotel--that his key was gone, that it might be well for the visitor to sit down and wait. Romney had his bags taken to a room.

It was midnight. For an hour the messenger from the Gobi sat rigid as an Oriental. It was not through effort or tension--this stillness of the American's. He had learned how to wait. He kept his back straight and his hands and head still, because he forgot them and turned his thoughts within, quite as if he sat in meditation upon a mat of _kusa_ grass. He had to protect himself from the preying of the city--from sounds and odours and the shatteringly low vibration of massed human beings out of peace with each other. He had come from the silences, which he had mastered.

He fell into the very deeps of himself, deeper than the desert mission and the cause of the Big Three, to an area where Anna Erivan alone could reach. For thirty days he had been apart from her. Sometimes he felt, as now, that it was too great a wonder ever to come into her presence again, at least on earth where perfections are not by any means guaranteed. He felt that such a mating enforces in the human mind the sense that mystic love goes on and on.... Yet his eyes stung often with the thought of being with her again--if not on desert-sands, anywhere with the good brown earth under their feet. He loved her spirit, felt some miraculous union with it; but he loved her step beside, her movement in the house, the touch of her hand and the lift of her breast; loved her lips and eyes, loved the dream of a child of her body and soul.

From the beginning to the end (sitting rigid near the desk of the Nestor) he went through the precious scenes of his romance--all the words and pictures, the meeting, the Forward Room, the hyenas, the kiss and the quest, the cots and the cross, the camels and Rajananda's coming, the desert and the dream of a child, the desert-men and the thonged stakes, until that moment of horror--separation--that would never subside. This last invariably shook him back to the dull drag of earth again.

It was the litany of a lover. When he looked at the clock it was one in the morning. He went to his room, leaving word for Dr. Ti Kung to call him if an interview was advisable before morning.... Romney felt himself fixing for a sleepless night. There was a curious heat in his heart at the thought of meeting Nifton Bend again. Was he in Tientsin? Would Ti Kung take him to Merchant's Square and the house of Minglapo in the morning? Where was Ti Kung to-night? Perhaps some call to conference at the dais--perhaps the Doctor had given up hope of his arriving to-night.

The Big Three drew a certain love from him. They were men. They rang true. They had trusted him and been lenient in regard to his tender-heartedness in the case of the little spy. Nifton Bend had been splendid about that.... Romney never ceased to wonder that three wise men in the desert had not agreed with him about the spy's death being an atrocity, or about the questionableness of the sacrifice of Japan for the greater good of Asia. Perhaps it was his own limitation, that he considered so strongly the personal side in all things. Perhaps a man impassioned with the glory of the future, who reckons not with the lives of his brothers, his enemies or himself in order to promote his dream of coming days into action, has the greater human heart.

Now the picture of the Island of Pestilence took sharper form and clearer colour. It literally hurtled into his mind.... They would have sent him to Japan had it not been for his delay in the Chinese police-station. Doubtless that mission concerned the Chinese agents there. The myriad Chinese working in the Japanese financial world were possibly lined up in the cause he had touched; perhaps they were bound together in Young China's system. They would have to leave Japan in case of war, but their work might be done before they left.... There was nothing missing from Romney's idea of the plot to end war in the world by making it too hideous even for the militarists. His present conception covered every fact. Each part fitted perfectly. He saw it far more clearly than when he outlined the form of it to the sages of the Gobi.... Ti Kung, working in the laboratories of the West, had brought back methods of producing and propagating the cultures of all the plagues. Perhaps the packet Ti Kung had thrust upon him, to carry from Shanghai to Minglapo, had contained directions for producing certain cultures, or added information for spreading the most loathsome infections.

Romney felt the sweat start from his brow and throat. Sleep was farther and farther away. When his head started to work at a pitch like this--it had to wear itself out, a process requiring many hours.... The plan would stop war, but the Japanese nation would pay the price in extermination. The strike would come possibly before the soldiers took the field; agents of the Big Three would start to distribute infections among the crowded myriads of Japanese, among women and children--typhus, yellow fever, cholera, bubonic plague.... A few hundred of agents might ravage the entire island in a night's work, and that which they carried would require no more space than a surgeon's bag. Was this what Dr. Ti Kung called using mind instead of muscle? There would be no heavy war engines--no noise, no reek of powder, no twelve-mile projectiles. That was innocent boys' play. Taking a citadel with charges of infantry under the cover of silencing batteries--a mere sport of picked sides! ... Yet this thought held him: In the greater economy of civilisation and the future of mankind, was it not a fair price to pay--to sacrifice one nation for the elimination forever of the international curse?

Romney smiled. He could see it, but acting on it was out of his dimension. When it came to putting even a spy out of business, he had quailed.... Hours passed, sleep coming no nearer. Once he lost himself in the possibilities of waging war upon the country of an enemy by means of spies alone. Every power had great systems of espionage at work in all rival centres--enough to ravage the land of an enemy with plague. Nations would have to protect themselves from each other by the establishment of an unalterable peace. There was a lift to the vision, but carrying baneful cultures of epidemic was no job for one Romney. Sorting the pastils--not for him.

... The room was breathless. At intervals from the hall he heard the creak of a board, as of some one's slow weight pressed upon it; and twice he tiptoed to the window imagining at least that he heard the soft pad of a native foot on the iron balcony. After the second glance into the outer darkness, he shot the casement bolt, and the stuffy smell of the Chinese house thickened. Toward morning he really tried to sleep, but at the first departure he would meet a cloud of hideous rousing dreams. He was abroad early and in the street, a certain reality and grip of things returning with the movement and daylight.

Romney's heart was pumping rather fast for him. At the desk they declared that Ti Kung had not come in. His own message was uncalled for in the Doctor's box. The room-key was still gone. At breakfast he waited for word, watching the door of the dining-room. An hour later, Dr. Ti Kung not having joined him, he could no longer delay in carrying out the plans which had occurred in the night. No change at the desk, and he ventured to send a house-servant to Ti Kung's room. The _boy_ returned saying that repeated knocking at the door had brought no answer. Romney, now convinced that something of grave importance had happened, insisted for the _boy_ to try again. For many moments he was gone, before the _Nestor_ people reluctantly whispered that Dr. Ti Kung had been found dead in his room.

In the street, Romney's quick step halted, his perturbation strangely broken by the personal issue. It was like the beginning of life again. He saw the passage into the desert as nearer than the night before. The Post Road from Peking was a portal to life of higher scope--romance with Anna Erivan instead of the romance of an ambitious Empire--love of woman instead of the old loves of men, peril, intrigue and adventure.... Now he wondered that he could be so heartless.... A hand touched his sleeve. Romney recognised one of the house-servants of Minglapo. He was led by him hastily to a second rickshaw. The coolies were bade to run.

*2*

Nifton Bend met him at the door of the shop, which was not yet opened for the day. The slim cold hand turned in his, and Romney felt as if it clutched at some inner part of him.

"Have you seen Ti Kung?".

Romney reported in swift brief terms.

"You did not sleep?" the Hunchback asked in a queer way.

"No."

"Neither did I sleep," he added slowly, "but our good Minglapo slept."

Nifton Bend touched his hand, led the way to the second floor, and entered there an apartment that was like a throne-room. In the centre was a huge canopied couch. Romney's eye sought the heart of this even before the lifted finger of the Hunchback directed.... The knees of the occupant were drawn up against the abdomen--this fact obvious before the cover was pulled back. The great face had taken on its ultimate gray and yellow; the wide mouth that had laughed so wonderfully was twisted in torture. Romney did not look far enough to ascertain the means of death.

"Fat men sleep so soundly," repeated Nifton Bend.

"But Ti Kung could not have been caught sleeping. I reached the hotel between eleven and twelve last night, and sent up word of arrival. He must have been in the room then--the thing already done."

The objects in the great room were lost for the moment in a brown mist before Romney's eyes. Then he saw that the wolf-hound head of the Hunchback was close to his own breast--the face turned up to his own face. His arm went around the low shoulder.

"The spirit of the little spy will rest easier," he whispered.

"You mean--"

"I was expecting this word from the _Nestor_. I expected them to find him--like our master here. As for me, I did not sleep--"

"That was my trouble last night," Romney said.

"They may not have wanted you."

Romney recalled the creaking in the hall and the fancied step upon the iron balcony.

"You think they have not finished?"

"I am sure they want _me_," the Hunchback said, his burning eyes upturned to his countryman's face. "We will have a cup of tea together--not here. Come--"

For a moment Romney thought they had turned to the room of the yellow lamplight, but this was not the plan. They entered the apartment which Romney himself had used--the same silken hangings so absurdly peopled with pink embroidered storks and lavender fishes. The Hunchback rang for a servant.

"I see that you have not brought all that we hoped for from the Inner Temple."

"I think they saw something of this day from the distance of the Gobi," Romney answered. "They bade me hasten back, as if the time were most precious--as if they wanted their servants Minglapo and Ti Kung to get their blessing before last night--"

"Their servants--?"

"They spoke of you and the two who have passed with love and reverence," Romney said.

Quickly he told the story of his meeting with Rajananda, Chi Yuan and Tsing Hsia--how they were gathered together at the pool in Kuderfoi, and how they listened to his own story of the work and the dream.

"They were more inclined to take your view of methods than mine," Romney added. "They did not quibble about the death of individuals, nor the manner of defense planned by Young China in case of aggression by the Japanese. They said Japan is young-souled and, if allowed to master China, would bring into the world more of the horrors known as _civilised_, which are destroying themselves in Europe now. They saw that you were pure. It was not necessary for me to impress my own conviction of that. In fact, the three Holy Men united in the belief that nowhere in the world was there such a promise of national exemplarship for the new order of humanity as in this beginning under your hand. They saw very far and very deep. I wish you could go to the aged arms of Rajananda now. He seems pure power to me. He bathed his hands in the pool and spoke at last, saying that you have brought the dream into the world. I think at times he saw you alone--the others only helping. He saw ahead that the time would come when man would unite with his brother, race to race. But he said that it was not quite time--that nothing of your work would be lost, but that your work had to do with conception rather than with birth--"

"Then he saw that we are to be overpowered?"

"Do you believe that you are to be overpowered?" Romney asked slowly.

"It is practically accomplished. Old China has already mastered us, but the vision cannot be covered long. The vision is in the world."

"Rajananda said that. He saw your work lost in the folds of the night that still lingers on the face of earth. That was almost his expression.... He bade me hurry to carry his blessing with the others to you--a message of peace and goodwill from the Holy Fathers of the Gobi. He said they were watching and waiting for the dawn, that they could not give you their approval in script, since it might find no living hands to accept it, no party to profit by it."

A servant had come to the call. Nifton Bend sent this one to find his own personal servant.... The former returned, saying that the General's _boy_ had been sent on an errand into the street. Nifton Bend called for tea.

"... They saw a great deal from a distance--those three wise men," he added thoughtfully. "I should have been glad to go to them.... And you say they saw us as belonging only to the dream and not to the action?"

"Yes. That is what was said by Rajananda."

Nifton Bend's face was calm, something almost boyish in his smile.

"I should like to have my young men about me in this hour. I should like to tell them to watch for the working out of the great story which I shall not be allowed to see.... _Story_--I think of everything as a story--a man's relation to his work and to his woman.... Romney, she thinks much of you. She will be alone. I'd like to live. She makes every day a quivering ecstatic thing. I used to think that death was the best thing that could happen to a man, but death is different now. Let me talk a little English and laugh with you.... Yes, death is different. I would rather be in hell with her than in heaven without. But, of course, everything is ordered better than I could do it. I think I shall be _asleep_ when she comes. I was never a good sleeper here. I shall sleep well for a little--until she comes and wakes me. For she will come. I'm tired. I'm bending to the ground.... I talk to you of this sacred thing--"

His head came very close to Romney, but his eyes were mild and boyish.... "I liked you because you had an Occidental heart--a place for a woman. If my young men were here they would sit and talk with me about China. I love them. They are passionate countrymen--but I have finished with China. Only the woman is left in my heart. And you--you are a white man who can understand--"

"Yes, I can understand--" Romney whispered. "Where is Moira Kelvin?"

The Hunchback pointed forward toward the apartment where Romney had seen her in the yellow lamplight.

"You think there is danger, and you sit talking with me?"

"She sleeps. She knows nothing of these things. She sat and read to me all night.... She is young. She is so beautiful. I put her to sleep against her will.... You will see her to a ship. You will tell her that I had but one thought--that all dreams were merged into one--that I sat at the last contemplating her beauty and the tenderness--"

The tea was served before them. The Hunchback thanked the servant and bade him go. Romney absently reached for his teacup, but Nifton Bend's hand touched his:

"Don't drink that. My passage out is doubtless in it, if not yours. I don't think they want you particularly, though they would, if they understood.... Ah no, they have doubtless murdered my servant. No one but his master sends him on an errand into the street--"

Now the pinkish storks of the portieres had real moisture about their lower joints, a faint but veritable mist rising before them. Smoothly Nifton Bend had allowed the steaming contents of his cup to soak into the wall-hangings behind his chair. He did the same with Romney's cup. The fabric slowly sucked in the liquid.... The thrall of the great man deepened in Romney's heart. His own romance was near and vibrant in the room; yet he was touched by a dread which the other did not share, apparently had not thought of.... Was Moira Kelvin safely sleeping after her night of devotion to the sleepless one?

"Is it the Japanese secret agents that became active last night at the _Nestor_ and here?" Romney asked quickly.

"No. Our work never appeared to get to them--thanks to your part with the little old spy whom you liked so well. It is China punishing the younger generation."

"But did he not work in the laboratory--that same spy? I saw him coming up from there--a trap-door--"

"Only for a day or two, at the last. We were watching him before his knee-cap snapped. He could not have gotten in his report."

These were old matters. Romney was troubled about the woman, and burned with the peril of the man before him.

"Perhaps they do not want you," he said.

"Our enemy is in this house," the Hunchback answered. "I shall not be allowed to leave. At least, not to go far--"

"Do you think you would be molested if you walked out now--with Moira Kelvin and me?"

Nifton Bend seemed thinking aloud:

"They may have but one agent working here, but ten men, one after another, would die gladly for my life. They are not afraid. If it is not this tea, it will be another way and soon.

"They will watch.... But we have touched the vision. The young men will carry it through. What are three lives compared to starting the races of the world into a new wisdom, a new comeliness?"

"While you live, _you are Young China_--and what of the woman?"

"Ah, don't, Romney--"

"Is she safe?"

"What?"

"Are you sure that she will not be wanted?"

"China would not touch her--yet how strange I did not think, even of the thousandth chance! Still, don't you see, I carry to her the menace of myself. Romney, you must help me--"

Romney was hushed by the spectacle of Nifton Bend's sudden dread--and this from a man scarcely capable of fear for himself. He saw the great constructive worker for mankind turning helplessly to cope with a personal issue. He pressed the General's hand.

"You can count on me," he said quietly. "I don't think the game's up--"

"Romney, you bring me back the old romance of America--"

"Let us think.... Have the police been notified in regard to Minglapo?"

"No."

"If the police were called here, the work of any secret agent in our case might be complicated--"

"Vulgar detentions--a day of questions--a day lost--our enemy to organise. Remember, these killers are ready to die themselves--"

"Then let us go forth now--"

"Go forth into China?" The question came mildly. "Any rickshaw coolie--"

"To the American Consulate--" Romney interrupted.

The answer remained in Romney's mind as one of the high moments of life.

"I would not accept sanctuary from a country from which I have withdrawn my allegiance."

"Then I'll stay with you here, but I think we had better join the woman--"

"Yes--"

"Just a minute--wait," Romney whispered, touching the other's sleeve. "Let them think that the tea did it. Walk heavily, on my arm, through the halls. Let your legs reel a bit. It will give us time--"

"Yes, it might give us time--"

The utter hopelessness of Nifton Bend's repetition of his words brought to Romney something like an expression of Fate itself. The Hunchback, in accepting China, had accepted the code of her servants. The condemned never resist death.

But Romney did not share the attitude.

"Listen," he added. "They will be watching. They will think you dying from the poison--if they really fixed this tea. They will leave you alone in your rooms--possibly for hours. I'll go out and get your young men together. Don't you see? I am one of them. You are the Cause while you live. We'll come again and take you out--"

The expression upon the Hunchback's face deepened with pain.

"I love the thought. It is brave and strong--as young men are. But it would mean the deaths of all who came--yours and the others. My young men cannot be spared. It would not save me. We are in China.... There is this that you can do--I was almost forgetting. Here are two packets of papers. It is the whole affair that you hated so--the plan and all, in case of aggression by Japan. There is only one safe place for these, in case our cause is lost--the bottom of the sea. Certain of these parchments are fire and acid-proof. It's the work of years of Ti Kung and others. Japan would use them quickly enough against China. You must take care to prevent all that. Don't dare to die with these papers on your person, Romney.... And now may we go to her?"

*3*

There was a smile back of the tortured eyes of the Hunchback as he reeled through the hallway, holding heavily to Romney's arm. The latter caught a trace of the humour of the thing. He could not have reached this smile had it not been for the days in the Gobi. A man who had had his own loved one torn away, who has been forced to take his faith from the substance and place it upon the spirit of things, does not easily find himself denied a laugh afterward, when the world is at its worst.

There was another urge to realisation that came in that brief and laboured walk to the room where he had seen the woman and her own in the yellow lamplight. It seemed the nexus to an ampler power and a broader wisdom. Nifton Bend's part in Young China was already done. To a material mind, it was the darkest hour, but Romney lived and moved that moment in a larger world where brave unselfish thoughts have immortal potency. He saw that no task is finished with the conceiver--that Nifton Bend was merely the drawer of plans, that the builders must come, that matter must obey since the plan was in the world. He saw also a new power in the quick refusal of the Hunchback to bring his young men into this house of secret death. The dreamer would spare the builders.

The door was opened instantly. Romney stepped behind the Hunchback to keep the eyes of the hall from observing the change, for Nifton Bend was himself at the turn of the knob. Such men cannot be relied upon as actors....

"I have brought you back an old friend, Moira," he said.

Romney pushed the door shut behind him and stepped forward to the woman.... They did not speak. Nifton Bend asked with concern:

"You did not sleep?"

"I was asleep when you sent the tea."

The Hunchback's face was turned from her. Romney saw the broad bent shoulders sag a little. The woman did not see that, but sensed the recoil of the tragic shaft that had entered her lover's heart.... Her eyes instantly left Romney's face. She turned, almost running--her hands to the low shoulders. She was never more beautiful.... Nifton Bend lifted the little teapot from its wrapping in padded silk.

"How long since this came?" he asked.

The voice was calm again, but the tone was hollow.

"Don't drink that. I'll get some fresh for you both," she said. "It must be a half-hour since that came--"

"Moira ... don't call for more now. We will sit down together--we three. Romney has brought us the voice of God from the desert.... I hoped you would rest a little more. I was thoughtless to let them waken you--"

Romney could scarcely credit his listening.

The woman spoke:

"Indeed, I never felt more animate. I was fathoms deep when the knock came--deep, deep and dreaming. The knock must have repeated several times, for it became a part of my dream, before I awoke and answered.... The _boy_ said that you were having tea and had sent some to me. I thought you would soon be coming, so I drank as I dressed--to be ready for you. I began to feel more joyous and light--like a little girl combing her hair for a great day. It was like a day of something-to-happen. It must have been your coming, Sir Romney. We hoped to see you last night--"

There was a blithe richness of vitality, a sparkle that made him remember the wine at Longstruth's, the Chinese girls twanging the _vina_ in the bamboo clumps by the river.... Wine and song at Longstruth's, and a score of other thoughts, light and indistinct as the trailing movements of a vagary--with this concrete enormity in the room.

Romney suddenly whipped in closer to reality. His mind had been trying to hold off the truth from itself. Moira Kelvin turned to her mirror. The Hunchback, glancing to see that his face was out of range of the glass, directed one slow terrible look into the eyes of his friend. Romney took it all. For an instant there was an indescribable tightness across his chest and a sense of inadequacy to bear the drama. Nifton Bend had already accepted the death of his beloved. He would spare her from all knowledge of it. There seemed a dull gray shine about his face. The long hands were lifted a little, but steady. The face did not implore; it commanded Romney to be calm, to help in bringing happiness to the departure.

Romney was continually swept by surges of incredulity--that this thing was working out under his eyes. In another way it was like the last moment of a tragedy which one knows is coming. He wanted to leave before the end. He felt himself an inadequate third in this great hour.... He heard his own voice, telling of the three sages at the little pool of the lilies in Kuderfoi.... He was describing Rajananda.... She laughed and came close for an instant to listen. She caught the same magic that had been so dear to Anna Erivan.... He remembered a similar look from Moira Kelvin, though more imperious and passionate, when he told her of Nifton Bend and Young China.... He caught a glance of calmness and commendation from the eye of the Hunchback now.... He pictured the tranquil and compassionate Chi Yuan, the firmer and more balanced Tsing Hsia to whom the sureness of the retributive forces of life were as inevitable as gravitation. He spoke again of the little withered master lying between them--so vast, so calm and inclusive.... Always Romney's own story came in with its wonders and pictures, but he did not let them reach the point of words. His romance was something he might have brought to Moira Kelvin alone, if there had been hours. He longed for her sanction and to show her how wise and deep in life she had been, since all that she had said came true; he wanted her word on the chance of finding Anna Erivan again--to help his faith. There was none to whom the story belonged as to her; but it was not for Nifton Bend in this hour....

He repeated instead what the three sages had said of the dream which was Nifton Bend's--what they thought of him ... and how the picture of Nifton Bend and herself, together in the lamp-lit room, had stayed with him through the days and nights of the desert riding.

Her movements were swift, her laugh sweet and low, her love and joy on the wing.... For a moment they forgot the Hunchback.... Something had come to them from their fortnight--something that had to do with the moths and the rice fields and the tea among the pyramids.

"You are wonderful, Sir Romney. You change so rapidly now.... You are sun-darkened. All waste seems burned away. You bring the breath of the desert nights--and something else. Your heart has known some great replenishment, and some great terror. I see the man who was a boy when I first looked.... All happens where Nifton Bend is. I think it must be the ignition of his mission and his service. The world will never know the wonder of him. Every one changes who touches him--the young men--"

He had followed her eyes to the Hunchback, who had poured a cup of tea and was drinking leisurely.

"You said you did not want tea," she ventured. "I could have had it fresh. That must be cold and bitter from standing."

"I like it strong," said Nifton Bend.

Moira Kelvin was speaking on, but Romney only heard the murmur of her voice. The picture of the next hour came to him--that all was done. There was something like a cry in his heart for the end of the mystic. And poignantly the sweetness of the woman before him returned--the last moment by the river when her fervent impulse to give him a token expanded his nature to its broadest reaches of emotion. Her splendour was lifted now, her whole being crowned with the spirit that can only come to one whose quest has ended.... The Hunchback came toward them. The calm that Romney saw upon that face was marmoreal, the calm of one whose circle is almost finished. He led her to a chair which the yellow rug covered, and sat before her upon a cushion, his arm across her knees.

"You are young, but very old," he said. "You are a child, a girl, a woman all lavish in her love, but more than all a mother. This--this Romney--is like a son to us--and those brave young men--our sons. We are ancient, Moira. We shall end our work to-day and depart. We have known the cities of men, and the fruitful valleys have been our meeting-places. To-day we shall go to the hills. We have talked much of the world. To-day we shall talk of God. Our work is finished. This is one of our sons who will carry on the work here. It is good that he is with us.... Moira--Moira--what a love it is."

She bent forward, listening, her face in a kind of noon glory.

"What has come to us?" she whispered. "Has Sir Romney brought us magic from the desert? Does he carry with him some power from the Holy Men? ... I think I was never so happy. All things that I have thought undone seem accomplished. Are all the rest of the days just for you and me? Shall we walk together--our tasks all finished? ... Ah, you have always had so much to do. I have been wasteful in the waiting hours. I have seemed always waiting for you to come to me--"

"I shall not leave you again," he whispered.

"But your work--"

"My work is finished."

"I thought when I found my own, that it would be like this--everything pushed away for our being together--and now it has come.... Listen, I have hated her, when you found her so very beautiful--"

The Hunchback turned with a smile to Romney.

"Her rival," he whispered. "She means the old Mother China--"

"She has taken you away from me--days and nights. I am terrible in waiting. You will go to her no more?"

"No more," he answered.

"Did she cast you out?" she asked softly. "Is it because she will not have you that you come back to me?"

"Yes," he said.

She thought he was carrying out her own whimsicality.

"Fancy my rival turning you out! You would not have been called to one so bereft of reason and vision.... I know _you_! No one knows you as I do.... I knew something of you when Sir Romney first spoke your name. It was a call to me. Did I not answer it? Did I not come at once? ... And you--when I came--what a moment!--that look that flashed between us like light across the world.... And your hand as you said, 'Come in!' ... your hand. It is the same now.... You are so powerful! Your touch brings me to the earth--"

"It is for you," he said.

"Is it not strange?" she was whispering. "All is changed in a day.... You know, in a way, it was Sir Romney who brought me you, and now he has come again bringing us our true life together.... I thought when I found the one, I should rise and compel all things. Instead I bowed and listened. You never knew how terrible it was to have you so lost in affairs--even of an Empire. But you have come home to me.... My thoughts are going away. Why is it? Closer to me--"

Romney was nearer to them. The Hunchback's left hand was thrust back. It closed upon his in an iron clasp, commanding silence and peace. There was an intensity of power in the long gray face--an expression of invincible conquest that to Romney was like the mastery which the men of the future are to know. He was holding pain from her by his force of will. The instant Romney realised this, it became actual. Her cheek was upon his shoulder now, her eyes like a drowsy child's. Often she touched the face so close to hers, once with her lips. Once her eyes fixed for a moment on Romney's.

"Forgive me, my friend," she said with a smile, and added as if confident he would understand all: "The day is strange. I must be very happy.... You are a good omen, Sir Romney--"

There seemed a certain wickedness, apart from time and motive, in the destruction of such beauty.

"Oh, I know! I know now! ... You are putting me to sleep again--"

"For our journey!"

And then Romney heard:

"... We are one. We will go on. There is no end.... I thought I was a terrible woman out in the world. But I was only a little girl looking for her true companion.... I came to him and he knew. We are mated and he is putting me to sleep.... It is deep, deep sleep, and he will be with me. Yet I almost hate to go. Beloved--your head a moment on my breast. I know only love.... Ah, closer to me.... He will not mind.... He, too, is searching for his own--"

It was her theme.

Nifton Bend did not arise from his cushion at her knees. With his free hand, he drew a purse and a pistol and a packet of bank-notes from his coat, and then he spoke:

"You will go now. You will rush forth into the hall as one maddened by pain. You see, I use your plan. They have seen me. I think you will be able to reach the street. Inasmuch as you are stricken, they will call their work done. But do not let a servant approach you. Be wary in the street, should they care to follow. The papers must be dropped into the sea--and then you have finished.... Use the pistol in the hall if necessary--all the chambers. But I think if they see the end upon you, they will let you die outside."

The free hand was raised to Romney, who bowed to his knee before the man and woman.

"You mean beauty and manhood to me--you precious two," he whispered. "The packets shall be sunk as you say. I have been proud to serve you both. Always I shall feel you above and beyond."

"Ah, America--so often you bring her home to my heart. Godspeed to you, Romney. All is well with us. All is better than the best we could know or ask for.... We will be alone together. We shall have silence here.... Yes, that is well. Toss the yellow rug about us. Now we shall know the deeper dreaming."

*PART FIVE: CONCLUSION*

*THE HILL-COUNTRY*

*1*

With his hand on the knob of the door, Romney looked back. The whole hour he reviewed in a rush. He had not been heroic, nor even uncommon. His story had been stammered. There had been nothing to tell such a pair, lost in each other. Even the cause of China seemed little and unsubstantial compared to the splendour of their relation. The courage of Nifton Bend should always mean the arrival of man to manhood in Romney's thoughts. The far roving spirit of the quest-woman come at last to the home-nest of a great man's heart was a sort of pattern for the world's romance.... She who had been the ruling imperious mistress of a few flashing days of his own life, was a child, utterly feminine and receptive in the presence of the greater force.

The big secrets of life had come to him in this hour, to be unwoven and unfolded during the years that remained. Just now Romney felt himself small in that he had risen to no part to help or spare them. He forgot that the revelations were for him alone; that he had furnished complete understanding; that his own soul carried forth the message of their end. In this sense he was chosen. No man could have done better. He would have been crude, indeed, to resist their way. He had entered upon the heroism of abnegation.

The hush of their great story was in his heart as he stood by the door.... The face of the Hunchback was upturned to the bowed head of the woman. There was no sound, no movement. The leaves of an ancient mulberry tree lay tranced against the leaded window. The yellow rug was folded close. The lords of life and death were in that shadowed room.

An ironical smile came to Romney's lips as he turned the knob.... He was meeting the little world of men again. He must act. He must go on with his little part, after dwelling in the presence of those who were great enough to show the world their own immortal selves.... He must fight for his own life--what a travesty. How little were the herds of mere men moving to and fro on the broad back of ample mother earth. For a little time longer he, Romney, must play his part--or die.

A last devoted look back, even as the substantial wonder of his own life recurred. To Anna Erivan now. Nothing but distance lay between--the task accomplished.... It seemed an unreckonable length of time since last night when he threaded the litany of a lover in the lobby of the _Nestor_ waiting for Dr. Ti Kung....

He plunged into the hall--left hand to his brow, knees tumbling, his right hand in the loose pocket of the corded blouse he wore, the pistol in his palm. A pistol always made him laugh, gave him the sense of being less than a man.... No, the task was not quite done--the yellow packets to put away.... And a woman waiting in the hill-country. In that instant of outward bewilderment the reality of Anna Erivan was very close.... A servant with a tray met him in the hall near the stairs. Romney veered by, and turned quickly. The yellow _boy_ had placed his tray on the floor and followed as if to assist a guest in the house. His face was troubled but innocent. Romney staggered on.

The broad curving stairs were empty; the lower hall. The white man saw a shadow move on the polished floor beyond the half-drawn portieres that led into the shop of Minglapo. Romney's way told once more. No hesitation, a leap through the curtains. The servant there stepped back in surprise, his hands quite empty. The other joined him behind. Their heads bowed together as if to consult as to the best way to do their duty by a totally incomprehensible guest. It was with difficulty that Romney held to suspicion and the part assigned.... The great front-door had not been opened to the Square. Romney reached it but stood aside:

"Quick," he called in Chinese. "Open. I go to a doctor. I have made a mistake and fear death."

He leaned his back to the sash, while they unfastened. There appeared to be no thought of detention. One of the servants was sent to call a 'rickshaw-coolie, another to explain his hurried departure to Minglapo. Romney merely wanted them away from the door as he passed.... He was in the street, and did not wait for the 'rickshaw. He had no panic, in fact, marvelled a little at his coldness, under the play of dissolution conducted exteriorly. The street brought a sudden bewilderment. He could not hold it all at once--Minglapo, Ti Kung, Nifton Bend, Moira Kelvin--and he who had served them, unscathed, unmolested, so far.

Yet foreigners in his case saw a drunken stranger or thought they did, and the Chinese watched in their queer way expecting anything.... Now he was in China, as the Hunchback had said. Any one of the hundreds of natives near him and in sight--merchants, students, coolies, boys or scavengers--might be the one deputised to get him. He crossed streets in the midst of Chinese. They searched his face, keen looks, glances of scorn and covert amusement. He had never felt a native throng so powerfully before....

Doubtless he was followed. Doubtless they let him alone, believing that the assassination principle was satisfactorily at work.... The brush of a wadded coat against his own stung him strangely. He remembered the absolute acceptance of death on the part of Nifton Bend. There had not been the slightest expectancy of escape in that strange far-seeing intelligence.

The same calmness was Romney's now, and the realisation that he had passed through an episode that would ever increase in importance so long as he lived. He had been with the heart of new China when it ceased to beat; more than that, he had lost a man of his own heart and a woman who had shown him the way to power and glory.... From the first moment he had been drawn to the Hunchback--a kind of passion that seemed to awaken potentialities of his being, starting within strange premonitive urgings, that left him more and more dissatisfied with the smug and the small things of life. As for courage, he had seen much of the courage of the open with its laugh and flaunted arms, but this at the last of the Hunchback broke all the former models.... Romney halted wondering. He had passed days with Ti Kung and Minglapo. The former had lifted him from the wash of the gutter literally; yet all of the night's close-running horrors centred about the death of this white man and woman--and they were one. A grandeur, an isolation about them.

... For a moment he had forgotten himself.

His body straightened, his face upturned to the morning sun. Suppose he had brought Anna Erivan to Tientsin--to the house of Minglapo. He might have left her with Moira Kelvin when the tea came. Yes, it might have happened just like that.... The old sage Rajananda must have felt the flood of love that poured forth from the American's breast that instant. Where did he stand that he saw all this? ... Only the papers now, and the journey to the desert. He must watch. He must be sleepless. He would not be safe until he reached Nadiram, at least.

A deep sense of weariness gradually oppressed. He felt his own weight and the misery of life. The world seemed mad to him--his heart thirsting for the beauty and peace of a woman--and his master. Somehow he wanted Rajananda once more before the ancient one passed. Distance and time only increased the richness of this relation. He felt the hated packet against his breast. If it were found upon him, it would prove enough forever to rob him of peace, even if the assassin failed to strike. Romney smiled again at his own weakness in the midst of recent great affairs. He knew best of all his own inconsequence....

His hand touched the purse in his pocket, and he drew it forth. It was heavy with gold. The note-case contained English and native money to a large amount.... Now it came for the first time--the possibility of his arrest in connection with the deaths of Minglapo and Nifton Bend. The servants would report his presence in the house. His steps quickened. Everywhere was the native crowd. His slightest movement toward making away with the packets would be noted.... He was hastening to the water-front.

He hailed a native rivercraft, pointing to one of the farthest of the ships lying at anchor.

In the middle of the stream, his back turned to the boatman, he drew the packets from his pocket, and loosening the long string that tied them, he fastened the small, blunt-nosed automatic pistol Nifton Bend had given him, to the papers. This was the only heavy object within reach. Then, as he directed the eye of the native to a ship at right angles to the present passage, he dropped the packets and the weight overside. The sense of ceremonial did not come to him until the papers had sunk from sight in the yellow Peiho. After that for a moment the American lost all interest in the finding of a certain ship, but as the boatman turned back toward the city-front, Romney encountered a peculiar dread of entering that crowd again, and at the same time remembered that the ship he had ordered the native to punt for was flying Blue Peter at the fore, and also that her lines had a strange familiarity.

He was thinking rapidly now. The packets were safely out of the way. He had tied them tightly to the weight, making a satisfactory use of the bit of a mankiller, its chambers all unused. Perhaps they had followed him to the water-front watching even now for his return, or some word from this boatman regarding him. Romney turned and scanned the river harbour again.

There was Blue Peter surely enough, and the rusty tramp that queerly filled his eyes a second time. Now Romney laughed aloud. As certainly as he lived, it was the _John Dividend_ at this instant drawing up her huge barnacled hook. His voice whipped the boatman about and with mutterings anent the proverbial insanity of foreigners, which the white man was by no means supposed to understand, the native began poling once again toward the smoking craft.... It meant down the river anyway and giving Tientsin the slip. If the tramp were headed south he could make the shore at Tongu at any rate and catch the Chinese Eastern across Shantung Province in the general direction of Tushi-kow.

There was no ladder overside. Romney had to shout, and this was hard for him. He did not know his own voice, and could not remember letting it out in this way since a boy. It was like calling up to an uninterested some one in a third floor window. The "old man" showed himself, spat overside, narrowly missing the lesser craft, and appeared to reflect whether he cared to be bothered or not. Perhaps he needed a hand. In any event the ladder came down, and Romney, grateful for the thickness of the _John Dividend_ between him and the keenest possible eye on the waterfront, ran up the tarred threads calling the boatman to follow. The latter obeyed, though his expostulation was high-keyed.

The "old man" went on with his clearing. Romney had never had any truck with this person and did not care to begin now. He was aboard and the _John Dividend_ was getting into the down-channel under her own steam. Straight to the engine-room where he had once trafficked with coal against his will, Romney made his way now and presently was measured head to toe by a single and most calculating gray eye.

"Where are you heading, Mack?" he asked.

"Tongu. Chifu."

"Take this river-coolie in charge. I'm healed. I go to Chifu with you. I want him to go too. Cut his boat loose from the ladder. I'll pay him for it. I'll pay him for his time and passage back. I'll pay you for managing the job.... How much?"

He felt light and fine toward McLean. If it had not been for that loan, he would have gone to Japan instead of the Gobi.

It was not a matter in which McLean was accustomed to make haste. He did not appear disturbed by the outcries of the Chinese, who thought the American was interceding with the engine-man to pay for his passage out from the water-front.... Presently the fence spoke. Romney would have paid many times the amount for the service. He found the steward and a berth.... They were three miles below the city when he went on deck. The ladder had been drawn up. No native craft was trailing.... The river boatman was easily placated later from the purse. Tongu was passed without misadventure. Presently the _John Dividend_ was tumbling around the capes in the Yellow Sea, and Romney with quickened pulse, five days later, started inland from Chifu to Tushi-kow.

*2*

Romney was changed. The thing called civilisation settled back. Only the spirit of that which he had passed through remained with him from past days. All seemed closed, integrated. He travelled light. There was no menace, no apparent pursuit. He could not hold the continual wariness. Fear slipped from him before he rejoined Bamban at Tushi-kow. They were on the road to Turgim with two camels and one driver with provisions. Romney leaned forward.

Sometimes it was like a terrible thirst. The pictures of the past no longer fed his heart. They too were completely integrated. He wanted the living woman again--her voice and hands, her sweet and sacred mysteries. He was burned with waiting. The actual resistance of the miles of sand and rock against the tread of swift camels was a peculiar and persistent deviltry. His sleep was brief and fragmentary. Only lovers and great workmen can endure such sleeplessness. Many times each night he awakened to see the greater stars moved but a short step westward.... Turgim, that had meant so much in approach, was nothing but a night-camp upon arrival. Ahead was another long barren stretch to Nadiram; every hour had to be wrestled back. His images all had to do with a certain coming hour.

From a white man's standpoint he had little to count on. His woman had been torn away by a desert-band--only the promise of a withered ancient creature whose next breath was less than a good gambling chance, yet Rajananda had bulked mightily in his heart. In his best moments he had faith--a priceless winning. From a white man's standpoint, he was on the longest possible chance, but only in the darker and more terrible passages could Romney accept this.... There was one moment of starlight, the last night of riding between Turgim and Nadiram, when he really had a great moment.

It was in solitude, as all such visitations arrive. Bamban was on the other camel with the driver, since provisions were down to small compass. He had fallen into a deep reverie and came-to with his hands out, palms stretched upward, eyes turned to the stars, his lips moving with a sentence like this:

"It's the love of the Long Road. I have found her. No man can spoil that. I will find her again--if not now, when the time comes--if not here, there--"

Romney laughed at the stars. He had been listening to his own soul, perhaps. It was stronger than he. He wanted her here and now; but the fact that the sentences had come through to his brain, had a significance that he was deeply-grounded enough in life to understand. And his palms had been stretched out. That meant submission, the world over.

He laughed again. He was very far from the world just now. Cities--even China--had distressed him. He must reach calm on that. He must go back and master that terror of men. The desert had given him a tithe of her mysticism and power. He would have to go back and make it tell among men. Would he have to go back alone?

Nifton Bend had mastered himself in the midst of men. Romney gripped a fuller understanding. The Hunchback had passed this barrier--after that his mate came to him. They were a completed circle--one even in their dying.... He would love to tell Anna Erivan that story.... In the very strength of his submission, his faith grew. The word of Rajananda returned. There had been no doubt in what the old master said. Anna Erivan was to wait for him in the hill-country. All that Rajananda had said about other things had been fulfilled.... And Nifton Bend had followed his own into the deeper dreaming. What did he mean by that? He seemed so glad to go, even though their lives were most beautiful together.

The next day Romney squinted up at the sun. Something of the same power came to him again. There was a cross in the blinding light, and after that a full sheaf of golden wheat. Of course it might have been only the glare in his eyes, but he felt very strong and that he would bring something of different manhood to the woman who waited for him.

Romney leaned forward.

Bamban accepted him. There were no two ways now. He had bowed in silence long after the story of the end of Minglapo, even lamenting a little that he had not been there. But Rajananda had somehow put a seal on his service to the white man. Romney regarded the _boy_ as he had never been quite able to do before, and respected the nature capable of such awe and reverence for the holy man. More especially admirable had Bamban proved on this last swift lonely journey.... They sat together during a long evening in the stone court of the Consulate at Nadiram (the door shut, the pole empty where the Russian flag had hung, and the hyenas whimpering afar off).

"I'd like to go on to-night," Romney muttered.

"It would kill the camels. They have been pressed as never before."

"Did you ask if there were two new camels here--exchange or rent?"

"Nothing of the kind."

"I shall wait."

"My master is parched," said Bamban.

When his servant went to the Rest House, Romney remained to contemplate his world a little from the west wall where he had sat so many nights. At last he arose and went to the door where she had stood--the place of their first meeting--and knelt a moment on the stone.

Even the next day the camels travelled but slowly. The same pair had come from Tushi-kow and they needed the rest of many days. From Nadiram to the place of the thonged stakes required two full days' travel; indeed, the night had fallen before they reached this point on the road to Wampli, and no desert-band was encountered on the journey.... The night was very still and hot. For two days a south wind had blown, and they breathed now the burning of the lower borders of the desert.

A deserted world. Romney could not eat. With deep strange kindness, the _boy_ pressed him to drink his tea. The white man had come and there was no sign. His head was heavy on his breast. When his thoughts became too swift and torturing for stillness, he arose from the fire and walked to the place of the stakes. From there he followed the way to the point where he had fallen in his revolt against the natives.... They had taken her on from this point--just here he was carried to the camel.... The sentences of the old master on that last day recurred persistently now.

"... He said that man goes alone on his mission and that woman waits. He said that the woman I had found was to wait in sanctuary.... He seemed to love her, too, Bamban--"

"Yes, he called her his daughter, and spoke twice of her filling his bowl in the stone square at Nadiram--"

"He said that he was going to her," Romney went on, his words heavy and slow, "--that she was waiting for me in the hills of his country--not far from this place."

"He will come soon," said Bamban, who was stretching out the blankets.

"He said there must be a new and different love between man and woman in the world. But, my God! they die! They seem to die when they love like that--"

"I do not understand," said Bamban.

"Why, I saw such a love--but there was no child. They died--in a room at Minglapo's house.... They did not have time--"

"You mean the General--"

"Yes--"

"His work was finished."

"But his woman wanted a baby. She told me long ago--"

"Perhaps she saw at the last that it was better to go--"

"I am afraid--afraid to-night--tired and done. I won't fail. I won't lie down--but I thought he would be here to take me--"

"He will come," said Bamban.

Romney was looking up at the lustrous film of night. His lips moved again:

"He said the builders were coming to lift the earth--that the saints were coming, for he could hear their songs--that the heroes were coming with light about their heads, their voices beautiful with the story of God--that they must come from the love of man and woman here--but they reach that love only to die--"

"My master must sleep," said Bamban.

"I am very far from sleep," said Romney; but the other pressed him down, and the small hard hand was in his, and there was no yellow and white between them. And almost instantly, Romney slept.

He awakened in a smoky red light, started up to see the heads of camels and horses against the east; then a voice:

"My son, all is well. You will arise and go to the beloved who waits for you in the hills of my country--not far from this place."

The ancient shaven head emerged from the yellow robe, so near that Romney had not perceived it until after the distance had unfolded its objects. Romney leaned forward and took him in his arms.

"Tell me again--is she well? Is all well with her?"

"Yes--her face turned to us. And now arise and break your fast, my son, for you are worn dark and dry from much fasting. I have brought you milk and fresh fruit, such as the desert does not furnish."

Straight north they travelled until noon was high. The white dromedary had an escort of eight camels, including Romney's pair, and some twenty desert horsemen. They were entirely off travel lines, and Romney realised that the way was kept closed to commerce between Nadiram and Wampli by the desert-parties, chiefly to protect this northern way to the country of Rajananda.... In the afternoon they followed for two hours the path of an ancient river-bed, and entered, when the shadows gathered, a land of rocky hills--the beasts quickened their pace under the scent of water.... At sunset, by a spring, Romney's camel kneeled. The escort vanished. Bamban unfolded fresh white clothing. Romney was granted the luxury of a bath.

Ahead was verdure and a temple. It was low, and there was a walled garden to the side, the green foliage hanging over the stones.... Beyond was a village that looked as if it had been born again from a ruin. It was strange as a dream--cattle feeding peacefully in the dip of land between the temple and the town. Night was creeping in.

Even Bamban had vanished. There was silence. Romney emerged from the sheltering leaves of the spring, his eyes fixed upon the temple.... There was a voice:

"Ah, do not keep me longer from him!"

... A strange altering of time and space--a wavering brightness in the dusk--a woman's figure in the gateway of the garden wall.

"My man! My man!"

She was running to him, her arms held forward. His own limbs stumbled, for the full power of his life went from him to her breast.... They were alone.... They entered the garden of the temple together.... Her arms did not leave him, yet they were about his knees, and words came to him leaning forward:

"... Remember--that night as we journeyed forward by swiftest camels--the risen star in our eyes--the quest in our hearts?"

Romney caught her up in his arms and stilled her whispering lips against his own.

THE END.