Chapter V: Part 5

She followed, obediently. He did not know the way to her room, but took her to the one he had used, pressed her to lie down. She covered her face in the pillow where he had lain. Romney feared she was not breathing and turned her face outward. There he knelt a moment. Her eyes were open, but did not seem to hold him. Moments passed and then he heard her words:

"You said you would go to him."

"Yes, but I thought you needed me more, just now," he said.

"You said you would go to him."

Romney left her.

The Russian's body was heavy and still hot. The silence of it was almost unbelievable, with the great damp chest still radiating heat. The weight was dead, but disgustingly soft. The American had a fear, with the feet dragging across the floor, that the body might break and cover the stones. He laid it upon the couch and listened again for the heart. It was still, as if pinned to the walls of the chest. Romney wiped his brow and found that there was a door into the street. He went forth quickly.

Bamban, so constantly in evidence, was queerly enough not so easy to find this time. He had to go to the Rest House and ask questions. At last he could not go further, but bid them to send his servant to him and hastened back. The face of Anna Erivan, as she had looked into the open door, was still held in his mind. Bamban was running behind him before he reached the Consulate. He understood quickly and took charge of affairs in the Forward Room....

She had not stirred. Romney shut the door and knelt beside her again. It was a moment before she realised his nearness.

"Did you go to him?" she asked.

"Yes."

"He is dead?"

"Yes. Everything is being done for him.... Anna Erivan, if I could only do everything for you! I suffer for your suffering. I feel it all--"

Her hand came out and touched his cheek, her eyelids closed.

"Dearest stranger," she whispered.... A moment later she repeated with a smile, "Stranger."

Her face changed. The unspeakable thing to Romney was that part of the smile lingered, though her eyes opened and white rays of purest horror shone in them. Her lips parted, the smile holding to them, as something holds to life, her fingers plucking his cheek.

"To-night--don't go away from me to-night! I will hear them. They always come when any one dies. I knew they would come for him, that he would die or go mad, and they would come.

"They are out in the rocks and sand, they come closer where death is.... And he was good as a boy; a good brother. I came to him and he was changed. I knew he would never go back. When I heard them the first time and saw how they affected him, I knew they would come for him."

Romney crushed her leaping fingers in his hand.

"Listen," he said sharply. "Tell me what you mean."

"Oh, have you not heard them laughing and sobbing at night?"

"The hyenas--"

She shuddered full length, hiding her face in his arms.

"I could not have spoken the word," she cried.

He repeated, "I shall be with you, I shall be with you--"

"They always come to the lonely," she whispered. "They would have come last night, only you were here. No one will ever know what they bring to me. They are the spirits of the waste-places. They are the darkness that moves around the night-fires. Where there is death, they come in. They cry so--where there is death. They know. They are living death. They are the spirit of the Gobi--"

"No," he said. "They are just fright-things, the saddest of all beasts, mere cowardly night-roamers. It is only human nerves that make them terrible. You and I, alone and well, could laugh at them, as at coyotes and jackals."

"You are but saying that. Have you seen them when the moon-light is upon the sand and rocks? They have passed death. They are going the other way. The yellow men understand, but they bring madness to those who are white. Have you heard that it is not food they want from a corpse? Have you heard that?"

"It is food that they want," he said softly. "I have seen that. Please don't think of them. I will be here--"

"Always when he drank, I seemed to see them around him. When he shut himself in there, I could hear them. Do you know what frightens me? It is not the poor body that they will find in the desert. They always find the bodies. One cannot dig so deep, or cover so heavily with stones, but they will find them. It is not that. I think the drink has brought something like them to his soul! Perhaps he is meeting them now. He feared them so, when he drank."

"Listen," said Romney. "He has done no great harm. The desert is too much for many men. He did the best he could. The desert was too hard for him. I think he has taken up already the old good that you knew, the good that you came out here to find in him."

"Oh, do you think that?" she whispered. "Or do you just say that for me? Tell me, if you really think that."

*7*

Anna Erivan had arisen. She moved about her work in the house, accepting the fresh ordeal, as one accustomed to darkness and difficulty. Romney, in the afternoon, saw the sudden triumph of her will after hours of utter prostration, an almost irresistible force of spirit. Bamban had done all that mortal yellow man could do. The day had been very still and hot; the town had shown an unreasoning curiosity. In the lull of evening they were very weary. The tea-table was drawn near the open door by the court. Shadows moved softly between them.

"To-morrow you must go on your journey," she said.

Coldness and premonition came to the American. He had met her will before. This from her was a sort of "I have spoken." He seemed to recognise it in the silence as an old familiar. She had strength, an integrity terribly-earned and delivered in fulness and order. It was something hers so absolutely that even her lover could not impinge upon it. Perhaps it was the sacred thing about her; the essence of a character, rapidly unfolding to him in the twenty-four hours; a character that would meet all crises and that had formed itself by ancient acquaintance with grief.... In the stress of the moment, Romney tried to evade the issue, but realised the futility of that. His own volition was upstanding. Very rarely in his life had he felt its power as now. It was without variableness, too. There was no shadow of turning in his heart.

"I cannot leave you," he said.

She was very quiet. "I was weak this morning. It was so wonderful for you to come. When I think of your coming just at this time, I am in awe before life--the deepness and strangeness of life. We knew each other; we did not need words. I haunted and tempted you this morning. You were strong; you would have ridden away. I caught at your foot quite as a woman does. I asked you twice a question designed to make you linger. And I knew the answer before the question. I knew that you could not tell me, without showing how hard it was for you to go; that you had not trusted yourself to tell me. I knew it all. I loved your courage. I should have let you go. That was my failing--"

"You would have been here alone to-day, had I gone. You would have opened the door to the forward room and there would have been none to stand behind you--"

"Yes," she whispered.

They were silent. She looked out apprehensively at the creeping darkness.

"But that is past. Perhaps I was meant to have help this one day, but I cannot take more time from your journey. I think I must have kept some one from his quest--some time. I must have learned some terrible lesson that way, for it is so close to me! The price one pays, for keeping a man from his quest! It is untellable. You must not think of me. You must not think of staying with me now. When you have finished your mission, then you may come--quickly."

"I cannot leave you," he said.

"Don't say that again. That hurts me. I can never have a sense of innocence for my weakness this morning if you hold to that. Won't you give it back to me?"

"Do you think I would leave you here alone--a white woman in this place, to arrange your own journey of so many days to Europe, to pass the nights alone here, till you are ready, to start all alone?"

"I should not leave here for a journey to Europe till I am relieved. There should be a Russian to attend to all the papers here. The little but imperative work day by day--I have done most of that heretofore. There is no one but me to do it now.... I shall be safe enough here. At most, my part is a little thing. My fears at night-fall--they are not to be considered now. You are the one to be considered. Do you think I have failed to comprehend the significance of your mission?"

He followed her eyes into the darkness, thick upon the little court.

"It is not only that," he said. "You have comprehended everything. You always know before I finish a sentence. I could be with you years and never explain a meaning.... My mission does not call me to-night. If I were to go, I should never be able to see past your face, your frightened face, the face of you here alone at night-fall. I think I was guided here to be with you through these hard days. Many have said, 'Put love away,' but the greatest have said, 'Give all to love!'"

The night seemed heavy upon her; her words came from the heart of it:

"Can it be that you would lower the meaning of the great ones who say, 'Give all to love'? I'm afraid they do not mean the love of man and woman. Give all to the love _of the world_. Give all to the love of the weak and the little ones--that is the meaning of the great ones. No one knows that better than you. This is the place of meetings and partings. You know that. Was there ever a lingering together of lovers here that was proof against _ennui_, against satiety? It is only the weak who linger, who make their beds at the meeting-places. The great ones go on."

She had arisen. She was farther from him, but higher to his eyes.... And just then there came from out the darkness of the desert, a horrid puking laugh--like a jangling of stones in a thick glass bottle. It had nothing to do with distance. From near or far it reached them, and seemed to linger in the room like an evil odour.

It broke the woman for the moment. She caught him in her arms and cried out words that were like a command:

"... You cannot, you must not leave me now!"

*8*

It was not capitulation. The clinging of Anna Erivan was but momentary. Though they had already talked together almost from the first as if the relation of man and woman were old and established, nothing of the exterior obstacles had been removed. In each of the three days that followed, Anna Erivan asked him in a different way to continue his journey. He refused. They spoke little otherwise. There were occasional passages of kindness between them, when they seemed to touch the great yearning of heart for heart, but their emotions were not brought to words. Toward evening they would draw together a little, but separate early to their rooms. The second night, soon after he had entered his room, the laugh of the hyenas came again from the desert. He went to the living-room, and stood near her door.

He saw the knob turn from within--knew she was pressing against it--but the laugh was not repeated. She mastered her terror.... These nights were hard for him, for he slept little; and the days were hard. Though he was near her, the woman was very far away. He had the sense of carrying a broken courage; that he was a weakling remaining in camp with the women, while the warriors went forth for the hunt. He missed nothing of the pull of the task, but the holding of the woman was greater.

His will did not change. Nadiram was all that was sinister and detestable. He could not leave her there alone. Sometimes he yearned for the mission, the perils of it, subtle and open, the worst that it could bring in exposure and famine and fear. Her presence haunted him with every beauty and mystery. He found himself dwelling for many rapt moments on the scenes of their meeting--the first night and morning. Sometimes he felt that this was only a door that was shut between them; that all the love was there, waiting for one will to break. Sometimes again he was in the utter darkness that came from the conviction that he had forfeited everything by remaining. In the main, she gave no sign.

It was a very still place in his life. He had no thought of food, though to pass the time he explored the town to purchase little delicacies for the table and comforts for the house. He did not go near the Rest House. In the sight of the resting camels was something both indolent and insolent. Bamban was ever within call--apparently true and uncritical, though sometimes Romney fancied a reproach. The forward room where the brother had lain, was opened and clear. The few callers were received there, the woman attending.

Romney ate little or nothing. He thought he would see more clearly, and all his inclinations were against food. On the third day, though she did not speak, he saw that he was making her suffer. The fear came that she might think he was trying for her pity--that nauseated him. He fell to--and perceived her relief.

"I thought it was a good chance. A man ought to fast occasionally," he explained. "Especially a man who does not work, should not eat."

"A woman sees something personal in a man's fasting," she said with a trace of a smile.

They laboured again that third night at the old subject--but all had been covered. Their eyes were weary. She would lift her eyes to him, saying that his mission awaited; and he could only reply that he would not leave her.... The fourth night something hard and resolute was in her eyes. He knew that she would speak when the tea was poured. He waited, more afraid than he had ever been before:

"Do you know," she said steadily, "it is not just the thing for you to be here with me. I am alone. One does not live alone in a house with a man--"

Her finger was tapping the table. She saw that he regarded it and dropped her hand to her knee. It was the hardest moment since their first trial together. It did not seem to belong to her. They had needed no laws. They were human adults. They were a universe apart in the same house. It hurt him to the core--such words from her. Many times of late the sense of his own smallness had come, but he had never fallen so little that he could not ignore a sham of this kind.

"I did not think of that. We seemed to be under a law of our own--"

"But the others," she said steadily.

"You mean Nadiram?"

"Yes--you see I have the office--"

"Ah, yes--the office.... I shall go to the Rest House, of course. Shall I go to-night--or to-morrow morning?"

"To-morrow morning."

"Very well."

She was whiter than ever. There was no word at all at breakfast. Bamban came for the bags.

"Please," he said, as he was leaving, "don't fail to use me. We are not enemies. Do you know--it is hard for us to remember--that all there is between us is a difference of opinion--each for the other's good. We cannot go far astray that way. Please use me. The days are so long."

Her lips moved. They moved again into a smile. It was one of the bravest smiles.

"Of course, I shall try to think of something--"

That night he came to her court a little before sundown. There was a stone there by the west wall, and he sat and smoked until long after full darkness. As a rule the hyenas were heard early in the evening, when they were near Nadiram. She came to the door several times before dusk, smiled and waved to him. When he turned away in the full night, it was as if there was some part of him that refused to leave; and when he pushed on, straightening his shoulders, this part tore loose from him with numbing pain.

Bamban sat on the floor across the room at the Rest House. Bamban's eyes gleamed.

"Since there are no orders here, and to-morrow is the fifth day, it might be well for the messenger and his servant to push on to Wampli tomorrow."

"It might be well," said Romney, "But I don't think I shall be able to clear to-morrow. Your country and your countrymen have taught me how to wait, Bamban.... I recall Tushi-kow when I was very impatient and the delightful Fai Ming would not let us even talk about the matter of our journey for nearly as many days as we have waited here in Nadiram--"

"Might it not be well for the messenger's servant to travel on to Wampli alone if the interval of waiting is still to be extended, in order to ascertain the orders there, or to be there if orders come?"

"Would orders be delivered to the messenger's servant?" Romney asked.

"In case the messenger is unavoidably detained."

There was no longer any doubt in the American's mind that Minglapo had given him more than a servant.

"I may think more about that," said he.

But he didn't. He thought about the woman. His faith was shaken now, and his pride was harshly wounded. The devotion he had come to know was a madness and a martyrdom. Compared to it, all the things that men do with their boundaries, ambitions, conspiracies, and sundry national businesses, belonged to a lower dimension of life. He saw all his activities of the past as little and lesser movements. He could not have lived through them had he known how futile they were, how empty his heart was.

The great burden now was this meeting of the old world in her heart--her sending him away because they were man and woman alone. Man and woman, as he had thought, in the strangest and deepest moments of their lives. He loved the quest spirit in her eyes; he loved her capacity to sacrifice; he loved her mighty will for him to go and the cry of her most human heart for him to stay in the fright from the hyenas. He loved her now with this taint of the old upon her--that was the torturing truth. But he was disappointed.

He had been so far from the truck of convention, that he had neglected to speak of this point first. Had he spoken of it, he would have expected her to deny any cause for his changing from the Consulate to the Rest House in so far as a convention was concerned.... He felt himself in the old madness. These were the days of Hankow again, with all the added forces and energies of his life making hell for him. He was like an engine thrashing itself to pieces with its own power, because she had cut herself from him. He saw ahead a redder rending than he had known before, and which had brought him close to death.

He felt at rage with the world; capable even of telling Anna Erivan how vindictive was this hurt for a man who would die for her. But Romney unfrequently spoke in his rage. It came very seldom, and he had made it a law to laugh and speak of other things until it passed.

"Bamban," he said, "you Chinese men do not consider a woman."

"Ah, yes," said the wise little man.

"You do not consider the interests of the heart of man or woman comparable to the interests of one's country or business--"

"We keep them apart."

"That does not answer. If one's country or business demand the man, the woman must wait--"

"Yes."

Romney laughed. Bamban waited for him to speak.

"You keep them behind lattices. You do not give them the breath of life. You feel that they belong to a man's weakness rather than his strength. You do not see that the girl is equal to the boy; that the two are one so far as the future is concerned. You think that all women are wanton, unless they are repressed."

"We do not consider that women belong to the larger affairs of man's life," said Bamban.

Romney laughed again.

"That's why as a nation, the Chinese Empire is ninety-seven hundredths putrified," said he.

There was not a look in Bamban's clearly-formed face to denote if the depth and delicacy of his regard were shaken.

"You are the messenger of our country," he said.

"Hardly that--a messenger of the remaining three per cent," said Romney.

*9*

The next morning he went to the court of the Consulate, without anything in his hands. The night had been so rough for him that he was uncentred enough to seek the woman for a moment--just to look upon her, to ease off the mighty ache across his chest. He had become very humble from wanting her. Last night he had been touched with the coldness and hatred that seemed close to destroying the attraction between them, but the emptiness and irony of all life without her, had come in the hours following the talk with Bamban. The thing that he had called a taint diminished to one of the minor mysteries of womanhood, and Anna Erivan, brave enough not to quibble about the wonder of their meeting, and of spiritual force to forget her own longing and passion, stood forth with augmented light and lure.

As he waited a mere moment within the gate of the court, it seemed that he would die if she did not come quickly. The pain that he had learned to identify with her in moments of their separation in presence or thought--a pain that began in the pit of his left arm and stretched to the centre of his breast--awakened to burning and agony in that moment before he heard her step. Words were on his lips to say that he loved her, that nothing mattered but that to him, that he wanted to die if he could not have her, that her own terms were his, that he could not take his thoughts much less his presence again from the place where she abode--a rush of confession and revelation altogether unlike the man that others knew or that he had hitherto known himself.

She had been in the Forward Room. He heard the door and her step in the living-room; then at last she came to the door of the court, and all that he could say was:

"Are you all right?"

"Yes."

She looked so white that he was awed by the frailness of her life. He could not speak, and the sense of hanging there, impotent, presently prevailed upon his pride, and he went away. During the day Bamban twice mentioned the town of Wampli, and each time Romney turned away and smiled.

Always when driven to the last ditch, he smiled. One can best survey the humour of the world from the last ditch. And this day moved on, hour by hour, the slowest caravan in the reach of mortal conception--hours to the dusk, deadly, crawling. And when the dusk came on, he went to the court of the Consulate and sat upon a stone by the west wall, and smoked there, waiting for the full night. Once the woman came to the doorway and waved at him. And that night, leaving, he was torn again. As he stretched out on his blankets, Bamban brought a candle.

... Romney suddenly reached for the yellow hand. At the touch of it, a sob came from him, and for an hour he apologised. Still an hour later he awoke, sweating, with a start, dreaming that the laugh had come. Bamban was still sitting by the candle.

"Was that the hyenas?" the American asked.

"No, there has been silence. You were dreaming."

"Ah, yes."

Bamban watched him for a time.

"You do not eat. You do not sleep. You are losing strength for your journey. Will not the woman wait for you?"

"I feel as if I needed some new power," Romney said strangely. "I feel the need of a master."

"When that comes to a man, the master is near," Bamban said quietly.

"What do you mean? You see I have stopped talking to you as a servant."

"I am your servant," Bamban responded simply.

"But what did you mean about the master being near?"

"It is a saying among the Buddhists that the master is ready when the man is; but I wonder if he will find his disciple with great joy, when that disciple delays his mission for a woman. Remember I am talking still as your servant."

"I appreciate you, Bamban."

"You are the chosen one. I wait for you to remember your mission, and to have done with the lesser drawing principle--"

Romney laughed. "It's a clash of the East and West," he said.

"But they thought you were of the East. They are waiting now in Peking--in the conviction of your loyalty--"

Romney turned away as if to sleep again.

The next morning when he shaved he cut himself twice, for his face was all unfamiliar with bone; and that evening he sat on the stone by the west wall of the court. There was no sound. The full moonless night came over him. The woman waved in the doorway. He arose at last and went out of the court, for there was no sound from the desert.

It was exactly so the next night, and during neither of these two days did he see Anna Erivan. On the third night he arose and left the court as usual, but there was a light speeding foot behind him, and her hand touched his sleeve.

"Oh, come back--send Bamban for your bags and come back!"

"My God--why?" he stammered.

"Do as I say--"

"But what have I done?"

"Oh, I cannot let you live another hour with the thought that I was afraid of what they would think--of your being here. That is a lie. You must have known I care nothing for that. I thought that sending you away would make you start on your mission--I used that. It has almost killed us.... Come in.... Since you will not go--come in to the house with me."

She brought the candle to his face. "Oh, you poor--poor--"

She seemed not to know whether to say _boy_ or _man_--"how you have suffered--and for me! ... I do not understand it. It seemed weak for you to stay. It has been my greatest anguish that I caused you to stay.... And yet, there is something deathless about it--something I do not understand."

*10*

There was something about it also that Romney did not understand. Nor could he speak. He watched her in the light of the single candle. Again and again, the face of flesh that he knew, faded into a kind of dream before the intentness of his regard. It was she, and yet another face might have been painted upon it without changing the real identity. And all about it was a vapoury white, different from lamp-light. It was like a visitation from the other side. Out of it her words came to him, but he did not answer at once. The fact is Romney had banked his fires of late in such a heavy and draughtless fashion, that they were in danger of going out.

And queerly enough now, certain hardly remembered passages of strangers through Nadiram recurred to mind: wild nomads from the Khingan Mountains driving their scanty flocks to the sparse pastures of the south; Tartars, the true descendants of Genghis Kahn; Buddhist holy men gaunt from their days of fasting in the solitudes; once a skeleton troop of Cossacks that stole in on a mysterious errand and vanished; and the merchants, the everlasting wigglebrows--all strangers on the long road through the days of wasting heat and nights of drawing cold.

... She came to him because he did not speak. There seemed a movement around the room above her head; and the face in the centre of the faint white ray was at his knees. He felt vaguely that if he spoke, the face and all would vanish.

"There is something greater than I knew about your waiting," she whispered. "It belongs to the future ... as all that I thought I knew belongs to the past.... I see it differently ... not that you should stay for my sake, but that you felt a woman's need and remained.... Won't you speak?"

His head swung to and fro like one to whom breathing is a burden. His hand had gone out to her. He could not be sure, but he felt that his hand touched her throat, that her chin nestled in his palm for a second.... There was a step in the court--Bamban coming with the bags. Oddly enough, this aroused Romney from the lulling presence of the woman. Alone in the room with her now he had found it irresistible. It was as if he had come home after incredible travail.... The fact is he had treated himself rather badly; there had been many hours of self-hatred. He had felt the whole outer world, (which he cared for second to her)--arousing itself in scorn for him.... He would have been unconscious before her, had not his servant come.

"Bamban," he muttered, "help me into that room. I am to stay--to stay here, I believe."

At the door of the room, Romney's back turned, Bamban stood before the woman a moment. She bowed her head until the servant passed on. Then she moved swiftly to the fire, stirred it into flame and put on the kettle.... Through the open door in the candle-light, she saw the man struggle with his shoe. He seemed unable to see, and his body swayed weakly as his head bent forward. He gave it up for a moment and sank back on the cot. She went in to help him. He tried to push her away, but she resisted:

"Please, I must help you--"

A picture of her brother in the Forward Room had come before him, hunched and helpless, and he would not.

"Just sit down--if you will," he panted. "Just a little while--so I can be sure. I am better--"

There was silence.

"... I was leaving the court," he said in an expectant tone, as if ready to be corrected. "You came after me--"

"You came three nights to be near me at the time of the hyenas--"

"Yes.... And this is the Consulate--the room I first slept in, and you are here."

"Yes."

"And why did you ask me here? ... Or did you tell me already? ... You see, I wasn't quite all here for a minute."

"I asked you to come, because I was torn with the faith and the will you have shown. It seemed to me suddenly as great as the quest--something modern, added to the old dream of going forth--as if you knew that the quest was _nearest_--"

"I didn't know anything like that. I only knew I loved you," he said rigidly.

"You felt a woman's need and remained," she said. "Against her will, and all."

"It was not a woman's need," he muttered. "Everything is out of me, but naked truth. I loved you--that changed all. I had work. You made me forget it. You held to the dream. My dream turned to you. It is you now.... I think I shall not pass this way again. If there is something more important here below than this love--very well. Let them have it, who say so. As for me, I love you. I think the great man who said, 'Give all to love,' meant me."

"Wait--"

She went to the fire, her eyes gleaming. The thing there was not finished. She brought water to him in a basin.

"No--let me," she said, as he would have arisen. "I want to.... It will make me happier."

He sank back and closed his eyes. The figure of her brother fled from his mind, as the cool cloth laved his forehead. Bamban had kept his clothing in order. He had never come to the court at evening other than as a man who comes to see a maiden. Her will now was to serve him. There was a magic in the ministry that sent him to the borderlands again.... Then she brought food, and would not let him help himself.

"I shall be with you to-night.... When you sleep I shall be here. When you wake you shall find me here.... You must rest ... and every little while you must have food. You have not taken care of yourself since you left me--"

The splendour had to do with the spontaneity of it all. Her every movement was an improvisation. He heard her words separately and as a whole. He weighed and looked at them--as at coloured lights, studying the background and distances between them, in that strange altering of time that one who touches the dream-border knows. Then more words came:

"I shall always serve you now. My will is not broken. It is blent with yours. I am proud and glad--for yours was greater than mine. It should be so. But I should have seen it before--"

He was wondering what he would say; at times afraid lest it break some words of hers; at times unable to think of words.

"Don't try to speak," she whispered.

The old wonder of her understanding recurred to him. It would always be so.... Two or three times the thought came, almost the words, to ask her not to lose her rest; that he would do very well now--replenished as he was, and absolutely comfortable. She left him presently to bring another sup of the hot liquid hastily prepared; and then it was as if he had spoken, though he could not remember. Her answer remained in mind:

"You would not deny me the joy of helping you back to strength--you who have given me so much--"

... Once he opened his eyes and knew by the candle that he had slept.

"I think I must have been looking at you and woke you up," she whispered. "I won't look at you that way again. Wait--"

She brought something different, hot and in a cup.

... Then long after he heard her say "Yes?" questioningly, and opened his eyes.

Her head bent toward him. "Were you dreaming?" she asked.... "I answered because you said, 'Anna Erivan, Anna Erivan.'"

Another candle was upon the table....

Again, much time elapsed, when he started up hearing the hyenas, but her face was calm and untroubled.

"I must have been dreaming," he said.

"Your dreams should be peaceful. All is well. You must rest, rest."

His hand was taken. After that he did not sleep at once, though his eyes were closed. He felt his strength coming back into his veins, new life creeping through him, a resuming of interests in living; all interests centring in the woman and yet radiating far from her, out into the world. He thought of the whole story since the night of their meeting.

It unfolded like a wonderful flower, his mind at peace, his breathing steady.... And now he knew that the new life was coming to him from her hand--rare essence of vitality, something finer than he had known. His mind was full of unfoldings. There was a vision of days ahead--desert mid-days, desert evenings, with her beside him, the superb magnetism of her hand and presence. He would not take her strength as to-night; he would be strength to her. She said her will had blent with his, and yet in the days to come he would make her will his law.... The position of her hand did not change and yet she was nearer. The huge blanket that had overhung from the cot to the floor was lifted to cover her knees. Then he thought the candle expired, but it was only shielded from his eyes. The warmth of her was healing and fragrant.... There was a touch upon his cheek, and it was day.

*11*

Romney washed and shaved, listening to her step outside. It gave him a joy that he had never known before. The morning sun was bright and warm, and the wind that came steadily through seemed less of the arid Gobi than on other mornings, having for his replenished heart the freshness of grass and fruitful valleys.... Her step--the step of a man's woman in the house. He laughed at himself; no one could understand but the man. It would sound banal if he tried to tell what it meant to him--the step so light and swift and for him. Presently he made haste; was quite concerned about moments that continued to pass apart from her, so that his hand trembled in the last small tasks.

The little table was spread in white; the kettle steamed; the sunlight crossed the stone flags almost to the fireplace. She was standing by the table, her shoulder bent a little to the right, something shy in her smile. He moved closer and she turned--the way free between them. Romney's arm lifted but fell again. That other old moment bewildered him--the moment he took her and it was not right. He had said that she must hold out her arms. It was from this mental turning that the big thought came....

"You are better," she said.

"I shall be ready to travel to-morrow," he answered.

She turned away and he was close to her shoulder, but behind.

"I'm strong enough for anything--after last night," he added. "I suppose we must put our house in order now."

She went to the fireplace and returned, pouring the boiling water on the tea. They sat down together.

"No one goes to Wampli from here," she said at last.

"It's the orders I received--three days into the west--"

"But the desert tribes--"

"I have certain credentials and money to pay their tariffs--"

"Life is terrible," she said strangely. "Sometimes I am afraid of the intensity of life. I saw your face last night--white it seemed in the dusk--and suddenly I found myself running after you and all I had thought before looked wrong. I think we were dying because we were apart in this thing.... Isn't it strange? We have spoken none of the little things, that lead up to these deeper revelations between man and woman.... Running to you, I felt something great and new in your holding for my sake. I could hardly breathe until I told you that the sick and hated convention was a lie. I think now a lie is always wrong. Yesterday I thought it a good and worthy thing if it were powerful enough to help you on to your journey."

He leaned forward listening. She had so many things to say, the order was slow in coming to them.

"Now I see that a lie is always wrong. The truth would have sent you forth before this. It is the truth that makes you ready now. And yet last night I did not change in order to make you go."

Romney spoke slowly:

"It did not come to me until just now. You have said it. We are given just so much intensity--then there is a rest. It was like reaching the top of a mountain--last night--"

"But we have to begin all over again to-day," she said dully. "The truth starts you on your journey. Yesterday I wanted you to start. It seemed a test. I could not see the truth I wanted about you--with your staying on here. I felt that I was the cause, and that some ancient wickedness must adhere to me. I did everything to make you go--but first of all I made you stay--clung to your stirrup that first morning. I do not understand myself--"

"That first morning held a very real moment to me," Romney said.

"But that's not all," she went on, appearing not to hear.

"What more?"

"Now again, I want--oh, it's hard to have you go."

Romney was silent.

"Must we always be apart?" she asked in the same dull way. "Last night it all looked different. You said such an incomparable thing to a woman. You said that you had turned from your work to me--that your dream had become me. I never shall forget your face--dazed, not realising hardly that I had brought you back into this house. It was as if you were on a ridge between heaven and hell, and but one true thing remained for you to say.... 'I think I shall not pass this way again. If there is something more important here below than this love--very well. Let them have it who say so. As for me, I love you. I think the great man who said, "Give all to love," meant me.'"

"A thousand times I have re-pictured that night coming into the court," he told her. "Who would have thought of such a meeting in the Gobi? I once heard that it wasn't a matter of place, but of time--"

The thought of Moira Kelvin had hardly recurred with her in the room, and there was something strange about this, considering the proneness of the human mind to make contrasts. Moira Kelvin had been his master--perhaps that was the secret of her falling away so cleanly from his heart. His first thought that her capacity of appeal was so largely histrionic, scarcely recurred in the later days of their fortnight, and left only a memory. There had been an early sense of her ruthlessness, but that had not lived out their period. He held her to splendour. Finding her with Nifton Bend fastened it forever in his mind. Her quest was the certain spirit of a man--and yet he remembered the passion of her. He felt that great natures are built upon such passions, and considered it nothing at all to his credit that he had held her passion sacred since she had nothing else for him.

She had shown him in a thousand ways that there is a new order of conduct in the love-relations of the world--that man in general is very much in need of learning to wait, to hold and to serve. He held Moira Kelvin as a great friend now--one to reverence and to rely upon among the rarest passages of his life. All that she had said had proven true. He had brought Anna Erivan a different treasure because of that meeting. It had proved an initiation, and the one dark moment of Nadiram was his taking Anna Erivan in his arms at the wrong moment. He would pay for that in good measure....

She had been silent, and spoke now as if the words escaped: "Do you think that because you were so ready--because you had been waiting and had pictured the one woman--that I more or less fell into it?"

He leaned forward longingly. Her shyness in asking such a question quickened her attraction.

"That first night--that night of fighting--I thought there must be something insane about me--to let you take hold so utterly. Why, it was as if everything else were done--a new era entered on. The whole world would say I'm yellow to stick here--instead of pushing on for that which I was sent. I sat in the court during those nights apart from you--or thinking I was apart on that conventional thing--and felt Bamban, Nadiram, the Big Three and all of New China pouring scorn upon me. Yet what hurt me more was being apart from you. You see, that seemed a difference we couldn't overcome."

She seemed to be looking into his heart and finding something there which had little to do with his words. She felt the silence again, and it was plain to him when she spoke that she had taken up some secondary matter less hard to broach.

"I have sometimes felt that you were not sure of the work you were on--as if you doubted, perhaps, since you were out here, the wisdom or the goodness of those who sent you."

Romney was startled at the foreignness of the observation at this moment. Nothing seemed normal that had not to do with their story. He found himself telling her hastily of the suspicion he had encountered in regard to New China's idea of waging war--if she were called to war; and also of the incident of the Japanese spy.

"That was hard to take," he added. "I thought I was pretty well orientalised, but the old western training cropped up. I tried to make myself believe that I wasn't responsible for his capture, but I didn't make a very good job of that. I had run him down. Perhaps they would have got him, but the fact is, they got him where they did because of my efforts. It broke me for a moment--the little man being put out that way at my feet--"

"You speak of things as they happened--not making them less to save yourself," she said.

"That would be short-sighted and unsatisfactory."

"What must you have thought of me for telling you an untruth to make you go on?"

"I didn't think of it as an untruth. You wanted me to go for the good of others--and that way came to you--"

"But you would not have descended to such a trick--"

"Trick!" he said impatiently; "don't speak of it that way. Who am I to forget what you said--about the little ones needing a voice and a sign? ... And I want to add about the men who have sent me: they are pure. They hold their own lives as cheap as those whom they find necessary to put out of the way.

"They loved the little spy, too. They have a dream of a purer world. I don't think anywhere on earth the dream is so close to coming true as it is in the minds of those men. I am proud to serve them."

"I cannot see you running after the little spy, through the streets--"

"I'm sorry you have to see it at all."

"I had to ask, as if its presence in your mind made me draw it forth. I will help you forget it--"

"There's something very dear to me in that," he answered. "You--yes, you can make me forget it."

There was a pause, and Romney laughed. "I show you things I never could show any one before," he said. "Why, a man doesn't talk of such compunctions. I think we go about the world without telling each other--I mean the men we meet--any more than the foam of reality. A man's woman takes everything--"

"A man's woman," she repeated. "There's something primitive in that--and something that is ahead, too.... I don't know exactly what thrilled me so last night as I ran after you. I believe that the patience and wonder of your staying and coming to the court each night had something to do with that primitive thing which 'a man's woman' suggests.... And also with the big stories of men and women as they will be lived in the future. The wonder does not pass. The thought was with me all night--as I watched near you. It made me want to ask something else--"

"What--?"

"It may make me seem less to you--"

"That cannot be."

"I never thought I would feel like this--but I seem to feel her about you--some woman you must have loved greatly--"

*12*

Romney forgot the Gobi. Rarely were they altogether out of its influence in Nadiram and this room, but the story that was called stirred him to the old beat of the world. He felt distantly as he had during his tests in the house of Minglapo. This killed out instantly any idea of policy. The truth was all he knew, but the truth here was a different affair from dealing with Chinese who might take or leave what he had to offer according to their whim. Here was a tense face of a woman who had crushed her pride to ask such a question.... He told her how the big devils and virtues had opened in him from the encounter with Moira Kelvin, what he had been before the meeting on the deck of the _Sungkiang_--and what he had been since.

He told her in ten minutes how he had cast all into the Great Drift, and had been spared in spite of himself--how the thrall of Moira Kelvin had gone out of his heart, and how he had met her again in the presence of her mate.

"She made me know that there can be no doubt in a great love-story," he added. "She made me know that there is no such thing as a triangle; that a man or a woman in doubt between two, loves neither as the world shall presently know love. She made me know that love cannot be altogether on one side--that mine could not hold because she had not the same for me. The mystery of its falling from me in the Great Drift revealed that. She opened my heart for the woman I was to find. I did not believe when she told me that, but I have come to believe it. After I saw her behind the low shoulders of Nifton Bend--I knew that my heart's desire was still a-field, and that all she had said was truth. The power of this truth was opened to me the night I rode into this little court--"

Her eyes were turned out to the sunlight.

"It seemed that I had come home that moment," he added. "I did not want to leave you that night. I never did a harder thing than to call for the camels the next morning. And when you put your hand on the leather at my foot--it was not until then that I knew what our meeting meant to you. Realising that--the transaction was finished, so far as I was concerned."

"I never thought I would feel like this," she repeated.

"It was like a review of all the hells," he said, meaning the Drift. "I look at the years before that as a kind of semi-sleep. I moved about only partly conscious--studying, watching, laughing at things, fancying I was somebody, thinking I had done something when I got into the pulse of China. The fact is, the Romney of those days wasn't ready to come into the court of this little Consulate--"

Her face was still turned away. Very quickly the flaw appeared in his last sentences. He was making very light of a wastrel period--a period without will and organised manhood of any kind.

"Don't think I fail to see the other side," he said hastily. "Something of quiet and power has seemed to come out of it, but it was abandonment. It was weak. A better man would not have thought of letting go as I 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."