Chapter IV: Part 4

"Your mission is unprecedented. The desert tribes are said to be full of zeal, and slow in discrimination, though you will not meet dangers on this side of Turgim. In any event we are taught that a man with a real mission is in the hands of strange and powerful helpers."

Bamban meant superb tea, dry blankets, and dustless food. Also, he appeared to command a proper respect for his new master not only from the native travellers, but from the camel-drivers and Tartar merchants. Moreover, that camel-reek which became a part of the very texture of everything in the caravan, as all men and equipment of a cavalry outfit partake of the essence of horse, was at least checked in its pervasiveness so far as Romney was concerned, by the tireless efforts of the fastidious one.

"Bamban, you're getting to be a habit that will be hard to break," Romney remarked one evening early in the journey to Turgim.

Days folded into each other, and something from the unearthly gleam of the desert edges entered his soul. His mind moved slowly. Sometimes he wondered if the old quick thinking and sharp mental activity would ever come back. At times he had no care regarding it, feeling that all surface glibness had passed for good. His orders so far were only arousing. He did not know as yet what he was to do in the Gobi, though the intimations were of a most challenging kind. He had been furnished with copies of manuscripts written in Chinese and in part in Sanscrit, containing information regarding the desert, information that the world at large would scoff at. He was advised concurrently to study these papers. More and more he realised that in ways other than his linguistic prowess he was fitted for the journey at hand.

He thought much of Moira Kelvin and Nifton Bend. One night by the desert fire, with Bamban sitting expectantly near, the salient events of the year moved by in steady, and for the first time, ordered procession, beginning with his first glance at the yellow rug on the little river steamer _Sungkiang_--that whirlwind fortnight. For a month or so he had been close to death--he saw this clearly now--her laugh the note of his delirium, her kiss the heat of his fever. After that, a kind of low animal hate which had to burn out before decency and sense came.

He was cool now. The night was winter clear. He would never have been able to see her so largely and definedly as now, had she taken him. She had become a kind of institution, but impersonal. His present run of thoughts was not without a touch of chivalry. He saw that there are very few really exciting vampires among the love-women; that no man strikes fire with a superb woman's genius without enduring benefits. If a man figures out the cost in dollars for such an adventure he's not a lover of quality. If a man's career in the world is slowed somewhat, it's an easy price to pay for being privileged to enter even for a little time the domain of a passionate woman's genius. The yellow-rug woman was his initiation. The fact that he had glimpsed a devil in her too much for a boy to subdue, no longer prevented him from seeing that the fault was his own weakness and that her devil was in no way smug. He had well put away the cheap male diversion of hating all women, because he had met one too great to hide herself in him. He did not want Moira Kelvin back, but his heart was strangely expectant of meeting some one of her quality, some glory akin to hers, but nearer his own full comprehension.

Because he did encounter something of this kind, he is present on these pages. The rest--the strangeness, the peril, the desert itself, is mere setting and arrangement.

In the main, the deeps of his mind were undisturbed, the forces there moving often with a finer vitality than he had known before, but day after day the expectancy recurred in the same form, the sense of an imminent and radical complication. He could not quite put away thoughts of this delicate and encompassing mystery. Always he said, "This will pass when I really enter the desert," but it was not so in the journey to Turgim, though he saw no white woman throughout those majestic days--only the dark and yellow women in the shadows of the Rest Houses at evening--creatures very far from complication. Still, the gently lingering of feminine redolence in his reveries....

Always when he thought of the woman yet unknown, the penetration and one-pointedness of his mission diminished. In the colder morning hours he was able to reckon with the soft haunt of it all; but in the wondrous nights of desert moonlight (the same lady of the moon, full-throated, head tilted back) Young China of the towering present, and the sand-strewn relics of the ancient Lemurians, said to be left in the Gobi, alike lost their conspicuous magic.

At Turgim, a vile and sprawling town, Romney drew a somewhat clearer idea of what he was out after, and the vague vastness of the undertaking at this time possessed the large part of his thinking in the day-light hours of travel. The main road was left at Turgim and the next point was Nadiram, six days' journey straight west into the desert. Three Tartar merchants arranged to travel this stretch and Bamban explained that they relied upon his master's credentials, since Nadiram was usually reached from an open spur running south from the Chinese Post Road at a point ten days' journey ahead. Nearly two weeks was to be saved by this western cut, but the trail was commercially unsafe. The remotest of the Russian consuls was said to be stationed at Nadiram.

Six days--a party of five camels. The Gobi now gave them battle, days of burning, nights of sudden chill. The three strangers proved helpful, as they knew the best switches of the trail and the halts for water and rest. Three times desert bands swept up to the little caravan--foul and furious they appeared, demanding their tariffs of money to the last copper or kopeck. It was on this journey that Romney first heard the hyenas....

The last day of the journey to Nadiram was ending. It had been an extra long stretch for the camels. He planned to rest a few days, and Nadiram was supposed to be for him, the last day on the outer and open highway of the desert. A sense of the mystery of the East came that night, as it had not since his early days in India.

They neared the settlement in the first coolness of early evening. It lay in a strange, fixed fashion, as if moulded low upon the rolling sand. Except for the shadows, it would have been unearthly. Indeed, there was a sharp intensity to the shadows, such as one finds upon the moon through a strong lens, but the colour was lowered--a Gobi colour, a lifeless, sand-scoured yellow. Romney gathered his padded coat about him before the hut-shadows fell across the way. The desert was clean, but the smell of the town was of uncovered dead. In the open, the sun had played upon all surfaces; men had defiled these shadows. Romney shivered, his nostrils had long been clean of Turgim....

Nothing of his reading or imagination had pictured this entrance to Nadiram, and yet there was a strange and evil familiarity about it all--as if some ancient picture of his mind finally opened to tally with the present, object for object.

The moon was not yet risen; the town was lit, but the desert still in twilight. The main road through the town stretched straight into the East. In the very centre of it, in the low distance, the planet Jupiter was rising--something to hold to, something of peace and spaciousness. It was needed, because the sights and sounds and scents about him, as the camels rocked in, belonged to a flaring hell. Little shops were lit with torches in the doorways, torches that roared and were red. The faces of the keepers took on this red light, also the faces of the beggars in the streets. The tired beasts moved forward rapidly and with a stealth that had long been forgotten in the desert. The forward drivers were continually screaming for right of way. Thus Romney saw Nadiram, the faces of the people turned upward in the red reflection--like a kindling of hatred upon a countenance of impassive gloom.

The three Tartar merchants disappeared into a side street. Romney turned presently into the court-yard of the Russian consulate, and dismounted, deeply conscious in the dusk of the eyes of a woman in the doorway.

*2*

From the moment that he beckoned to Bamban to make his camel kneel in the court of the Consulate, until the woman's eyes turned to his from where she stood in the narrow opening of the door, an intensity of sheer living possessed him such as he had never experienced except during the Hankow fortnight. His good limbs stumbled as he crossed the level stone flags, not because he had been on the rack for hours, but because the main force of his life had turned out to the woman's face--as if all his life hitherto had been but a journey to that face.

She gave no sign; merely bowed and said in English:

"The Russian Consul is ill. He can see no one."

To the weathered Romney had come a certain dismay. He had been able to meet most pressures from men; take up most of men's crosses and carry them to Golgotha, if necessary, but the burden of this--that her face was calm, that her eyes gave no sign, that his approach meant nothing of the extraordinary nature that had prevailed upon him--this held the unique pang. He tried to save himself, as a man's mind will, by the thought that the suddenness of this encounter and the utter absence of beauty from his life for many weeks, had stimulated him in an unusual way. This that had rocked his heart was just a pretty woman's influence. She would say something presently to break the dream, and he would be quite calm again.

It was not until after this rush of thinking that Romney came up out of the deeps--enough to laugh at himself, for expecting her to be startled by his coming. But it was not a very successful laugh, not the kind he used in men's affairs or against the worst that the world had shown him since the other woman went her way. The idea of his mission did not rouse him. He had merely concentrated on work to pass the time until this moment. In fact it is the great workers of the world who become terrific to handle when they turn from their tasks to a woman....

Romney had no particular message for the Russian Consul, yet he said with difficulty:

"Is the Consul very ill?"

"I think he will be able to see you in the morning."

Now she was looking at him differently, her head bent toward him.

"You do not speak like an Englishman," she added.

He drew closer. "I am American."

It was not apparent whether she was pleased or regretted the fact. That there was a medium of language between them did not occur in its full importance until afterward.

"I am Anna Erivan, the Consul's sister."

If she had been Erivan's wife, Romney might have treasured for some time a certain deep dream, but certainly he would have kept his dreaming clean-clipped that night; and certainly he would not have tarried in the court, until he was asked to enter the Consulate.

Bamban was sent with the camels to the Rest House. The woman made tea and placed food before him, lighting the candles and tending the fire upon the hearth.

It was a low, broad room, the beams of the ceiling uncovered, the floor paved with flags, like the court, and gratifyingly clean.

She spoke as she served him.... Her brother was not dangerously ill. He would be up again in the morning, if that would do.... She had been here with him a year. Yes, she had been lonely.... There were no other Russians here, no other Europeans, none who remained.... No one remained in Nadiram. It was but a point on the long road. No one came back; all moved on. In good time every one passed on. If one remained long enough in Nadiram, all Asia would go by, she supposed.... Mostly, however, they were Chinese and Buddhist holy men, many of them weak from hunger that they had brought upon themselves. She loved the holy men. Some of them were quite pure.... There was one very ancient one, who was almost dead. He had slept in the court for a whole day, and she had served him. His heart was an abode of peace. She had been better for days following. She had felt a strange peace for an hour or two from others who had passed, but never like the power of this very old saint. His name was Rajananda.... Mostly it was a passing of world faces, Chinese and Tartars who pressed on, wanting something--their faces set with desire.... Sometimes it was all like a dream to her, the great rolling, burning desert--the moving dots becoming men and horses and camels, the men and horses and camels becoming dots again....

Thus she talked, breaking and toasting bread, pouring his tea. Romney's heart was like an upturned cup with listening. He ate but did not taste the food, drank but did not know that the tea was priceless. Night had closed upon the court. He heard the heavy breathing from an inner room, and horses somewhere outside clearing their nostrils from the dusty forage. The voices of the Chinese came in when he stopped to listen, an endless iteration of nothings.

The woman moved about--a sentence and a silence--cleansing the tea things. An hour passed. The place was bare as before. A plate of sweets was left upon the table, a pitcher of water with a cup beside it, a tin of tobacco and papers. She rolled a cigarette absently, standing by the table, still telling of the long road. She proffered the cigarette to him, suddenly recalling herself.

"I quite forgot," she said. "He taught me to do it for him." She looked at the shut door, from which the breathing issued.

Romney accepted the cigarette gratefully. He spoke very little and quietly, a deep hush upon him. He had been afraid to comment, lest she be aroused and hastily call in the fragments of her story. He was sensitive enough to know that she was easing some tragic ache from her heart. Her voice, her face and figure, the hands that served, the story itself, filled his imagination with pictures and a startling kind of power.

The sense now came to Romney that he could be himself at last. This woman was a flame that freed him. In the light of her, he dared be a full being. He did not feel less, nor was prompted in any way to act or cover. She did not make a slave of him, but called forth such as he had of humour and wisdom. He could see past the flash of her eyes. There had been at times such a surface dazzle in the eyes of the yellow-rug woman that he had not been able to see beyond it, but that dazzle was for him and the world. Nifton Bend doubtless encountered no such difficulty. It was but one of the perfectly appointed barriers that preserved the love-woman for her own.... There was a moment--it was the same that Romney fully realised that he was himself at last--in which the smooth-running levels of Anna Erivan's story changed to rush of a cataract:

"... I have been here a year--do you understand that--a year? I came from Odessa, four thousand miles, by train, by caravan, over mountain passes, across rivers, through wastes of sun and rock.... Days of fever heat, nights of perishing cold--thirst and suffering--four thousand miles, five hundred on the back of a camel.... My mother was just dead, yet all the way I dreamed of the bountiful heart of a big brother I had not seen for years. He was here. All the way from Odessa I came to him.

"The last fifty miles I travelled with Tartar merchants, and learned to know them well. They were not unreal. They were good to me. And yet, I was so frightened. They told me as I neared Nadiram on the road from Urga that their caravan had a thousand miles still to wander through the desert, past ruined cities and along dried-up river-beds to Peking.

"It was evening when we reached here--just as you reached here this evening. I had seen Nadiram spelled out on the maps; I had seen the post-mark on his yearly letter. I had pictured it so differently, and this is what I saw--sun-dried clay, and the low blowing desert and this court-yard with the Russian flag. I had expected him to come forth to meet me. All day I watched. I had started early for the journey's end. I entered the court, but saw no face. The merchants passed on, turning queerly. The door-way was heavy with dust, that door where you entered. I pushed it open, my arms ready to fling about him. I thought he must be busy or detained.

"This room was darkening. It was not as you found it, but sodden and evil--an evil odour. I called, and there was no answer. I was frightened. I had been frightened all day. One does not know what one can stand. That was but the beginning, and I thought I was close to death then.

"Do you know what I found? I will show you--"

She turned quickly to the door and opened it. Romney saw a great bear of a man, half sprawled over a wooden table, the candle sputtering near his head in the fresh pressure from the open door, the sharp fume of brandy issuing. The body seemed swollen, neck and ears, shoulders, abdomen, legs--all swollen, but the top of the head. That was small and sparsely covered with hair, the candle-light upon it. The lips were swollen and parted.

"That is what I found," she said.

*3*

Presently she shut the door of the forward room with quick hand--her face remorseful and tender.

"I don't know why I did that. It was hateful to do that--and before you. I don't know why I did it."

"You had to," he said. "I listened so intently, you had to tell me. You could not tell one more ready to understand and help you."

"But he is not always like that--not always like to-night and that night. There have been many days ... oh, but he is not what I expected--so different from when he left Odessa. But very kind, always kind. To-morrow morning he will be kind enough. Only such a desolation comes over me out of his soul. It is like the desert.... And nothing I can do changes him. I have ceased trying to change him, ceased trying, ceased hoping--"

"Some men can't stand the desert," Romney said. "One must bring a certain integration of force, a certain resistance, to stand it here. The Gobi saps the vitality of the weak; it often takes the sanity of men who do not drink.... Your brother does not know what comes over him. He feels himself going insane, that's all. A man drinks, when he feels that, if he's the kind that turns to drink.... You had to tell me. It's lucky I came. I wouldn't have failed to come--not for worlds. Perhaps I came to take you away--"

... Her fineness appeared only to one who had the grace to see. Romney, surprised at his own words, sensed vast reaches in her, depths that defied him, something of the newness of new Russia and hues of beauty ancient as Asia. Her eyes had widened, making her face the more fragile. Just then he saw the rising moon through a low pane behind her. It was in the full and still red from the horizon. The glass was poor, distorting the circle so that it was like a bulging grain bag.... She had not smiled, nor taken exception to his words. There was no coquetry in her. She waited for him to explain.

"You have seen all the terror and the oppression of the desert. You cannot have failed to see something of the rest," he suggested.

She paused and he added, "Something that has to do perhaps with that old Buddhist holy man you spoke of so kindly."

"I only know he brought me a strange peace," she replied. "As if living here with no one to talk or listen to, wasn't all of life, but just a little part, a hard part.... He was very little and old--but so kind! I am telling it very badly, but I got a sense from him, not through words, that I must take this hard part, day by day, and put it behind; that it had come to me because I deserved it, every day of it. And I do just that for hours, feeling courageous, but I cannot always hold it. The rebellion comes back; the darkness and squalor of it all come back."

"Does something like that peace ever come to you from the desert itself?"

She shivered. "No, it does not belong to me. I am here, because there could be no more terrible place. If I deserved suffering, the design is perfect. But I have whimpered enough. You see I was choking with it. I have _used_ you--to ease myself."

"I wonder if it is all illusion to me," he mused. "I have seen another side to the desert--nights like to-night when everything is softened in moonlight--the old civilisation--and all so clean. The Gobi is a mate of the moon's. I think it is almost as big as the moon. It starts the imagination because everything is finished. It has had its day, like the moon, and there is a wonderful story to be read if one could pass the aloofness. Even here in Nadiram we are but on the edge of its mystery. Hasn't the heart of the desert ever called to you?"

"Only when I wanted to die," she answered. "I don't know why men should love the past. Each day is enough conquest for me. I can face anything in the morning--_except yesterday_. Until noon I am brave, and feel that I can take what is to come from ahead; but I cannot turn back. The moon is dead. The Gobi is dead. I don't care for the cleanness of death. The death ahead for you and for me and for all--that's not so hard to face, but it seems to me sometimes that we are the products of many deaths and I dare not think of that.... How strange our talk! And you should rest from your journey. There is a room here for you. You will not need to go to the Rest House. Are your servants cared for?"

"Yes, thank you. I'll stay, if I may. The journey has not wearied me, but you are very tired. The day has been hard for you. I wish I could say something that would make you rest.... I wish I might say the words to make you sleep like a little child, forgetting the moon and the Gobi and all that is past--your face turned with a smile to to-morrow. There are such words, if I could think of them."

The smile had come to her face. Her lips parted. Romney had somehow helped her. He did not know just what word had done it, unless it was the mention of the little child.

"You have _fancy_," she said softly. "For ages here, no one has talked except of meat and smoke and fire and beds. Perhaps I shall rest. We do not often keep guests here. Perhaps that was why I asked you--so that I could rest--"

Still the smile remained. She added:

"Very rarely an American comes. We are fond of America in Russia."

He wanted hours more. He could have talked the night away. Yet there was something in his very passion to remain with her that forced him to rise, that long training that makes a man skeptical and impatient of the thing he wants most for himself.

She brought a candle and led the way to an inner room.

"Is there anything I can do for him to-night?" Romney asked, pointing to the forward room.

"No, there is a cot there. When he finds himself in darkness, he will feel his way to that. You will hear his fingers on the wall--but do not mind."

She swung open the single window of the little room. The stone-work was barred. She left him, but did not shut the door.

He stood waiting in the centre. There was just a cot with blankets and a table at the head, upon which the candle sat in solitude. He thought of his travel-bags just then, but she was bringing them and he hastened to the door, for they were heavy and the camel-reek was upon them. She left him again for a pitcher of water and a cup, very pleasing and graceful in her services.

"And now is there not something I can do for you?" he said.

"No--unless--" She laughed.

"Yes?"

"Unless you think of me sleeping like a little child, my face turned toward to-morrow--"

She was gone. Still she had not shut his door.

It was all a kind of blur to Romney until he lay down. Then the picture straightened and steadied. Could it be that he, Romney, had hypnotised himself--so that the first possible woman had fallen straight into his heart? He had reached the period of life when a man begins consciously to look for his woman. Does not such a search make the man blind? One cannot see clearly so long as he doesn't want anything. Was he so shallow and common as to be caught in a whirlwind of the artificial? It was not that he lowered Anna Erivan in this thought, but could she be the one woman in the world for him?

Then he thought of her from the first moment to the last, reviewed her every gesture and movement of face and hand. It was not what she said, though there was much in that for him, but her comprehension was so instantaneous. She had _fancy_. She loved the half-lights; she had passion; the whole strength of her had to do with that. Was her strength the strength of repression? She had beauty, but was it the kind of beauty that goes with terrible self-love? ... She seemed tender and brave and imaginative.

Romney sat up on the cot with a suddenness that made the whole fabric creak. And what of his task? The possibility of his penetrating to the heart of the great Gobi mystery seemed far and intolerable compared to the next morning, when she would come into the outer room.... Would she be there first and he emerge to join her, or would he be waiting?

He laughed. Even this simple question had absorbed him utterly, banishing the mystery of the desert. There could not be two missions. As for her beauty, it seemed as if he had created it in his own highest moments, touch by touch.... Might she not journey on with him, thrilled, too, by the strange thing he had set out to accomplish? This was madness. Even the physical dangers forbade that.... The task, whatever it was, looked little and fanatical beside her. The Big Three and Fai Ming seemed altered, their zeal misguided; his own former seriousness in relation to man's accomplishment, seemed absurdly young.... This is what a woman had done for him in one evening.

There could not be two missions. He must stay or go on.... Perhaps after reading the Nadiram documents he could tell her something of what he was out after, but it would change nothing. There could not be two tasks. He must cleave to the one and forsake the other....

Romney was sweating. It would not have been so hard, had she not made the whole business appear insignificant. Must he be a ghost-chaser, leaving this superb creature here? ... Wickedness in her? He could not find it anywhere. She might become a saint or a wanton, but there would be greatness in her giving in either case. In that she was like Moira Kelvin. Splendours flashed for his eyes about her repressions, and yet what had her repressions to do with him? She had merely talked with him, and she was dying to talk. She would have talked with any one who would listen and furnish understanding. After all, Romney relied upon the one fact that such meetings as he had known in the twilight in the court of the Consulate, did not in the nature of things rouse one heart alone. There was no magic in life, if meetings such as that did not contain magic. Still he had not won Moira Kelvin.... It may have been only a waver, a gleam to her, so far, yet he felt that if he remained, Anna Erivan would know something of this that had come to him in an instant.... There was a kind of bruise in his heart that all his old life had been lessened. Suppose she was destined to be only a passing face to him. Would the old zeal for the world come back? Did he want back anything that had been spoiled? A woman great enough to diminish everything else, even for a night, was great enough for any man. But the things he had set himself to do.... Romney's lip tightened with self-scorn. He could come to no decision. The episode was making him yellow already. He had hitherto prided himself upon his faculties for decision. He arose and paced the room in bare feet. The night cold came in....

He thought of journeying with her in the evenings together on the dromedary--she sitting forward, sun and moon and sand, the deep drinking at evening, the fire on the desert, the tents--the tent.

He had stopped in the centre of the room and now paced on again. He was not quite the same after that last. He wished for the day. He tried the cot again, but could not stay; paced the room, longing for the day. At last he thought of papers given him to be opened at this stage of the journey.

*4*

There was much to read from the Peking papers, and something was made clear at last regarding the purpose of his travel. His work though political was imposing. It was of China yet above China. Full knowledge of his undertaking was promised at the next point of his journey, Wampli, but Romney had enough now to understand that there was no illusion about the bigness of the thing he was called upon to do. For a time he was lifted a little from the intensity of the present episode--at least, from what the world would have called madness in connection with it.

That was Romney's longest night. When the dawn came in, cold and yellowish gray, he felt that much which had been his the night before, was gone from him. He arose quietly and went forth. The outer room was empty, the house, even the forward room, still. Outside the chill was leaving, a day of bright heat promised. No one was abroad. He located the Rest House with difficulty, and finally touched Bamban's shoulder.

"Find the camel drivers," he said. "Get the party ready as soon as you can. We start for Wampli at once."

Bamban looked up quickly--the nearest thing to a start that his master had ever noted. In ordinary course, there would have been a halt of several days in Nadiram, and even under the pressure of speed, the camels would have been permitted to rest for one day. Moreover, it meant passage alone to Wampli, since the three Tartar merchants were now to continue by a northeastward trail to the Post Road. Romney laughed at his own sensitiveness in feeling so keenly the surprise of the little man. He did not hasten back to the Consulate, yet it was impossible to loiter. Turning into the gate of the court he saw a movement of the woman within. It was very early. The feeding and saddling of the camels and the procuring of stores would require at least an hour.... Anna Erivan came to the door. He saw something of her morning joyousness fade as she glanced into his face. This numbed him further.

"How early you rise," she said. "I heard your step and made haste to join you, but you had gone.... You have been gone a long time. The tea is ready."

"Thanks," he said briefly.

There was no sound from the forward room. She stood behind his chair waiting for him to be seated. He glanced at her. There was a hard thing in his breast; it seemed as if his breath did not go lower than his throat. He sat down to the table. The woman brought a covered dish hot from the fire, placed it before him and poured tea. She cleared her voice before speaking:

"Did you rest?"

Something gray had come into her face.

"No. Did you?"

She winced. Yet there had been something in her mind to say. She let it forth, but the gladness was gone.

"It was as we said last night--a strange and sweet kind of rest at first. I went to sleep like a little child--drifting away so pleasantly. But it didn't last. Something awoke me--some change. I could not have slept an hour. Since then, I have been waiting for the day."

They were like two melancholy strangers meeting on a strange road, each having lost his way, debating vaguely.

She ate nothing. Just as he was about to remind her, she suggested to him that he try the contents of the dish before him. He put the spoon into it and discovered that he was forced to follow each movement with his mind lest his hand stop; that he must give separate thought to each gesture, the placing of food upon her plate and upon his own, then a thought for each morsel that he lifted--a thought even to taste it. If he did not keep up the thinking, movement stopped altogether. His eyes were called to her face. The gray widened there, her eyes very large.

He heard Bamban bring in the camels to the court at last. The voice of the driver with him was like a voice from the pit. Anna Erivan cleared her throat:

"Are you going at once?"

"Yes."

"But my brother.... You see, I did not call him because every moment of sleep helps him--like this. I shall get him--"

Her dismay was rending to him.

"Don't trouble. What I had to say isn't vital. It will hold until I come back from Wampli if--"

Her throat was like a flower. This that she wore at the throat was black. He could see her hand clearly and her throat. Above was enveloped in the pervading grayness, all but the eyes. Always as the face cleared, the low voice of Bamban, or the voice of that camel-driver from the pit, blurred it. Again Romney began to think of the food, morsel by morsel. One spoonful remained on his plate. It seemed as if he could never come to the end. And now he saw the tea. He drank it eagerly. That seemed to help her, too, as if something of life had come into the room--something human and grippable. She took his cup and thankfully refilled it. He drank this more slowly, because it had not cooled.

In the open door was sunlight. It was not like the sun of yesterday, yet it was sunshine. This brought him a swift picture of the day's journey, a long and full day's passage, then nightfall. Every league, every mile, every camel-pace would take him farther away from this room.... He heard her voice.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"I said your face looked gray," she answered.

The horror of the journey held his mind again, twelve hours in swift passage, and two more like it to Wampli--every camel-pace away from this room.

She cleared her voice. He turned to her.

"Your camels should have rested."

"They are good," he said.

And now he was debating if there remained strength enough for him to rise and depart. All he could say was good-bye and the lie about Wampli, that he would come again. He was not sure of his limbs. He was very tired and her hands were so near--just across the little board. His eyes lifted from them to her throat, and he felt the burn of her eyes, without really looking higher. Back to her hands again. They were never still--lovely quick hands, waiting now to fill his cup.

A queer thought came to him--that he should some time bring her a yellow rose, and she would hold it in the arch of her hand, her thumb beneath.... He arose. He could stand. He turned from her to locate the door, so that he would make no mistake after he spoke. He did not know what he said--some huddled, unintelligible phrase. All that he knew well was that he took her hand, that he had to leave it almost instantly or fail, since a mist came over him--even over the single madness that he held to. It was madness to leave her, yet it was the one strong prevailing thing.

His feet stumbled on the way to the door. In the bright light of the court, his camel was already kneeling. Bamban stood there ready to take his ankle. He reached the seat. The camel arose.... Voices of the pit in his ears, and now he saw her there below. She had come forth into the light. Her face was clear. He saw her hand below on the leather near his foot, her lips forming to speak. He bent to them.

"Why don't you _tell_ me?" she said softly.

Romney brushed his hand across his eyes and bent again.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Why don't you tell me?" she repeated.

Romney glanced about till he found Bamban.

"Tell the driver to bring this camel down," he said.

The beast knelt obediently.

Romney stood before her in the court. He brushed his hand across his eyes again, then turned to Bamban:

"Tell the drivers to put the beasts away. It's a long journey and they had better rest for to-day."

"What have I done?" she asked. "I would not delay you. Oh, no, I would not hold any one from his journey--"

"Don't make it harder," he said abruptly. "Let us go in."

"But--nothing but misery comes to a woman for holding a man from his journey."

"How do you know that?" he asked hoarsely.

*5*

The second camel sprawled out of the court. He looked elongated like a dog that stretches as he walks. The man and the woman went in and took their former places at the table. It did not occur to them to move the chairs.

"I had been thinking only of myself," he said at last.

She smiled faintly, as if she had met that from men for ages and ages. Then the gray cold came again to her face.

"It's a fact," he repeated, "I was thinking only of myself--I didn't know I was like that."

"It has always been man's way to forget woman's part in a crisis--and woman's to turn to man. You don't know me at all."

"But I do know you," he said. "You must have seen that. In fact, never before did I know so much from a first meeting--"

"But man always believes that a woman is at war with his work. I have always said that I should not care to be the rival of a man's work."

"And yet, you said--'Why don't you tell me?' ... Anna Erivan, I shall always hear that question. I am going to tell you."

She did not help him to begin. There was a kind of core of silence from the forward room, which was as distracting as the sound of breathing had been. He had to organise himself repeatedly.

"... I was sent out here because I had _fancy_."

He laughed a little harshly. "Because you have that you will understand. I have been forwarded from Peking somewhat like a valuable package. My next point is Wampli, as you know. I had looked forward to the real desert from this point. It would have been desert right enough had I gone on this morning."

Her eyes gleamed at him.

"I can't tell you all--not even all I know--I pick up my orders on the way; but this much I can tell you, and it mainly became known to me from papers read only last night, for they were not to be opened until I reached Nadiram--"

He told her hastily, something of the world-crisis, of the parties of China, of the Japanese danger, and of the big dream of the truly great men of the Empire, and something of his own relation with Nifton Bend, Minglapo and Ti Kung.

"This new party in China is not great enough to have a large following," he said, "and yet, though there are some things about it that trouble, possibly because I am a bit of an Occidental still, it seems to me that the power and the vision of the men I have met in it must become a terrific constructive force in the future of Asia and the world. You see Japan threatens to become a Japanese Asia, if it is not met with vision and force. The two older Chinese parties have neither. At the heart of any Empire is its religion, and it happens that the centre of the religion of the Chinese Empire is yonder in this desert--the Inner Temple, even the great Lohan himself--"

"You are sent to that Inner Temple?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yes."

"To bring forth a sign for the people of Young China?"

"Come to think of it--it is something like that."

"And you let me delay you this morning?"

"I had not thought of it as a bringing forth a sign," he mused, watching her, "but that is really what it amounts to. If the new social order in China is recognised by the Inner Temple; if its dream of progress and power is found to be a true dream by the Holy Men of the Inner Temple--don't you see, the support of all the people touched by this religion will be turned from the old to the new?"

"They chose a white man, an American, for this mission--and I am delaying him?"

Still Romney evaded the issue.

"I always thought it queer that they chose me," he said. "These Holy Men are free from racial prejudice. They are said to be super-national. Our leaders in Peking felt that if they sent a Chinese, the Holy Men might see in him one nation's ambition, but if they chose an Occidental who was called to the struggle of New China because he had found it the purest dream for all Asia; one also who could place before the wise men the position relatively of other nations--"

"What an equipment!"

"I'm afraid it sounds more than it is," he said hastily. "You see they did not have many foreign adherents to choose from. Nifton Bend would have accomplished the mission far more wisely than I, but he is the Centre--needed every hour in Peking."

"I'm afraid you can't make me see anything insignificant now--about your being here. They thought you pure enough--real priest enough--to enter the Inner Temple and bring forth a sign to the many. You know the many always demand a sign. They did in Judea--"

He did not look above her hands. They were tightly shut.

"I asked you last night--if you ever had any sense about the Gobi, other than that of its terror and menace," he said, in an effort that he knew was vain to lift her from her part in keeping him from the journey. "The Chinese believe that the heart of the desert is a spirit-haunted land; that the Inner Pavilion holds all the ancient writings, all the seeds of wisdom and magic out of the past, the essence of truths gathered by forgotten civilisations.

"In fact, the myths and legends which surround this country make the stories of Peru and Central America seem paltry and commonplace. There are forests, it is said, in which no white man has penetrated, buried gold and statuary and all that--" Romney smiled.

"You do not need to be afraid of me," she whispered. "I love to believe such things."

"Ten years away from America--perhaps I am too ready to believe," Romney finished. "Anyway the Chinese leaders say there are wise men, whom the world never hears of as persons, doing the great constructive tasks behind the scenes, and that the central pavilion of these wise men is in the heart of the Gobi, and not in Thibet.... But all these things belonged to yesterday. I know now that there are meeting-places in a man's life, and that in the hours of meeting he cannot reckon even with missions of mercy.... This--last night--here in the court--has taken me almost like death takes a man--as the cups have taken him in there--something resistless--"

He saw one hand leave the table between them. It was held out to him, palm outward, as if trying to stop his words. Her eyes were wide with terror.... Now a change came. She turned to the forward room, listening.

"Hush," she whispered.

Strangeness was all about them. Romney came down from his story, with the sense that he had not done well. The silence crowded in again, as if from the desert.

"Perhaps he is awake," she said quietly. "Go on."

"That's all. I learned a great deal last night."

"You say that a day or two would make no difference, and yet this morning you were up very early. You ordered the camels--"

"I thought only of myself."

"You thought it would be easier to go to-day--though the camels needed rest--"

"I could not hold it in the night that the meeting meant anything to you."

"You were out on the quest and I appeared in the way--" she smiled and added, "a dragon to be overcome."

"I have not imagination enough to make you that--"

"A dragon to test the courage of the quester. A man must never forget his mission--must remember first of all the little ones, the many little ones, who require a sign."

In spite of the tearing-down, it was a pinnacle moment to Romney. She was lovely as he had not seen her before. Her swift and absolute understanding liberated his whole nature upon her. Had she chosen to captivate him, there could not have been conceived a more perfect design. Had she met him level-eyed, weakness for weakness, it would have sounded, temporarily, at least, the knell for his infatuation. Had she clung or pressed him to linger, it would have become a mere episode.

He arose, his lips smiling, his eyes burning with tributes to her--moved about the table, placed his hands upon her shoulders and bent his lips to hers.

"Won't you come with me?" he whispered.... "We will go to the Temple together. We will bring forth a sign to the people."

... Her fingers closed gently upon his wrists, lifting his hands outward from her shoulders and letting them fall. Then she arose and looked at him tenderly.

"You are dear--I think you could not be so dear if you were not bewildered. These meetings are wonderful, but don't you see--that you are dreaming? Don't you see that a man must travel alone on his quest? It's like the old stories--he must slay the dragon that stands between. A man does not take a woman to the Inner Temple. A man who passes the threshold of the Inner Temple cannot have a woman in his eyes or heart. They would say, 'Why, this is a mere mortal. He cannot enter here.' Do you not see, do you not see?"

"Anna Erivan."

She smiled and put down his hands that lifted to her.

"You are the quest," he said intensely. "It was our meeting. The Gobi--why, it was but a means of bringing me to you. Last night, as I stood in the court, I knew that. Today, when in a sentence you made all the meanings of my life clear, taking up my story and completing it briefly--today, just now, I saw that I could never look beyond you--"

"Don't say that. I should not have let you say that. We are asked to renounce nothing that lasts. You must not fail through me. This is not a good beginning for our story. You know this. You are only bewildered."

Romney began to understand her strength. She had risen above him. Her vision was clearer. In getting down from the camel he had become altogether human. The fury of his ardour was for the woman. Because he was moved with desire, he was not at his best. He took her in his arms, the tempest of emotions blinding him....

Women with a touch of the savage left in them, may be captured with strength, but he had given her a dream of greater days than these.

She did not resist, but the wonder of their first kiss did not come again. Instead, through his mind, crippling his arms, flashed the picture of his own red passion--and that in his arms chilled him to the heart. Utterly passive, she had allowed him to wound himself in a way that would never be forgotten.

He felt suddenly small and altered before her. He drew back, lowering his eyes from her face, his hand reaching behind him until he found the arm of his chair. He sat down, covering his face.

Presently she came and touched his hands, whispering:

"Do not grieve--I was thinking of something. Do not grieve. I do not care for you less. A woman loves the boy--the boy-tumult in a man--"

"You were in my arms--and yet I was alone," he said strangely. "I never knew such a sudden loneliness--all that I had for you--flung back to me--"

"I would not have hurt you so. But suddenly as you held me--I thought of the many little ones waiting for a sign--"

He was still shocked at the lifelessness which had confronted his passion. The shame of his untimely bestowal did not pass.

His life had seemed full of perfect gifts for her, and a sudden desire had blinded him, bringing down upon his head a rebuke more magic than any blow.

"You have made me afraid," he said dully. "It could never happen again. I could not go to you so again--unless you held out your arms--"

"After you have entered the Inner Temple," she whispered.

The seven words numbered and registered themselves in his consciousness. He looked up at her and there was something endless in her beauty.

"You must not be hurt," she said tenderly. "It is the man in you that is wounded. You must know that you cannot really be wounded, unless I am wounded, too--and oh, a woman is not wounded by loving, by passion--that's why we are women. It was only the others I thought of. Believe me, all is well--"

"Would you have me go to-day--now--into the desert?" he asked.

"Wait," she answered. "I do not hear him. It would seem that he would be about--now that we hear him no longer--"

*6*

Romney arose, but did not follow her to the door. He watched her as she opened it, a breeze seeming to take it from her hands. He saw her hands lift quietly, tighten and press across her lips. She seemed to become less in height. She ran to him, and for the briefest instant touched her forehead to his breast--the queerest murmuring little cry from her throat. Something of the picture in the other room had come to him from her mind. They did not speak. He did not draw her closely, merely sustained her.

Romney saw it on the floor, the face flattened against the stone, the arms out. His hand went out to her and pressed upon her breast to keep the shock from rending her--as if she were carrying a child. The look of her face frightened him so that he drew her away; yet all the time he had the sense that the tragedy had somehow set them free.

"You will let me take care of him--come," he whispered.