In the silvery light of a soft grey dawn, while morning's face was still gently veiled, two camels stood with heads towards Khartoum, and as the first rosy shaft of light quivered in the sky Regina came to the door of her tent and looked out with glad and joyous eyes. She was very pale from her long seclusion, but tall and straight and supple as always. Uninjured, undisfigured, with the power restored to her right arm, she stood on the golden sanded floor, under the high arched roof of the sky, rejoicing in the life given back to her.

That day they would commence the return journey by very easy stages, only travelling a little in the cool of the evening and the dawn so as not to fatigue her, and she looked out on the great sandy space over which they had to travel fearlessly, eager to brave its dangers and pierce its mysteries, and even as the desert stretched before her uncertain, unknown, full of radiant mist, so lay her future uncertain, unknown, but gleaming brightly, calling her to it. Her marriage at Khartoum, and then maternity, with all its complex pains and cares, but she dreaded nothing. She was ready always to meet life and wrestle with it, and she would always conquer, for of such stuff are life's conquerors made. Overhead the sky gleamed like the inner shell of an oyster, in marvellous tones of palest green and rose, iridescent like mother of pearl, and in slow magnificence, in dazzling gold, the sun appeared over the rim of the earth.

Just at that moment Everest came to the tent door and stood by her, and the east flung its glory over them both, irradiating their faces in glowing light.

"It is the springtime now," murmured Regina softly. "I wish we could be in the enchanted garden again together in a dawn like this."

"I do not mind where I am as long as you are with me," he answered, drawing her close to him. "Love like yours makes of the whole world an enchanted garden."

And as she heard his words the glory of the dawn was not greater than the glory in her eyes.