I"Barring my pay," he said, ruefully, "I haven't a coin in the world." And for the moment, newly accepted lover as he was, his eyes actually left hers and wandered away to the reddening yellow of the sunset with a certain resentment at the limitations of his world. "Father has plenty!" she put in joyously. And for the moment her hand actually touched his in a new-born sense of appropriation and right of re-assurance which made her blush faintly. It also made his eyes return to hers, whereat she blushed furiously, and then tried to cover her confusion by a jest. "Well! he has. Hasn't he the best collection of coins in India?" "He wouldn't part with one of them, though, for love or money. And I doubt his parting with you--though I could pay a lot--in love." He had both her hands now, and the very newness of the position made her fence with the emotion it aroused. "He parted with duplicates." "But you aren't one--there isn't anyone like you in the wide, wide world. And I'm glad you're not. I don't want anyone else to be as lucky as I am." She retreated still further from realities into jesting. "Then he exchanges quite often, so, if you only set yourself to find something----" She broke off, and her face lit up. "Oh, Jim! I have such a delightful idea! You shall find the gold coin--you know the one I mean--with the date that is to settle, or unsettle, half the history of the world! Do you know, I really believe, if you helped him to confound all those German wiseacres, that father would be quite willing to exchange----" "His daughter for the ducat! Perhaps. But, unfortunately--and quite between ourselves--I have my doubts about the existence of that coin. Or if it does exist it is hopelessly hidden away for ever and ever and aye, like that blessed old buried city of his that we have all been hunting after this month past in the wilderness. I don't wish to be disrespectful to your father, Queenie, but I believe he dreamt of it--that is to say, if it didn't dream of him--one never knows which comes first----" He paused, arrested in the egoism, the absolute individualism of love by the mystery of the collective life which was part even of that love, and once more his eyes wandered to the sun setting. The sky had darkened on the horizon as the dust haze shadowed into purple, so that the distant edge of the low sand-hills, losing definite outline, seemed almost level. Yet far and near, from the feet of the lovers as they sat close together to that uncertain ending of their visible world, not a straight line was to be seen. Everything showed in curves--curves that told their unflinching tale of unseen circlings. The wrinkled ripples left by the last wind upon the sea of sand around them waved over the endless undulations of the desert, the sparse tussocks of coarse grass fell in fountains from their own centres, the stunted thorn-bushes were coiled and twisted on themselves like tangled skeins without a clue, the faint tracks of the sand-rats and the partridges wound snake-like in every direction, and even the footprints which had brought the two lovers in their present resting-place held the same hint of reference to unseen continuity, for, absorbed in Love's new world, they had wandered on aimlessly unheeding of the old one at their feet. The result stared them in the face, now, in a firm yet undecided trail that was by far the most salient feature in the indefinite landscape. Jim Forrester laughed as he directed her attention to it. "We seem to have gone round and round on our tracks; so the tents, and your respected father and civilisation generally must be--well! exactly where I would have sworn they were not. But that just bears out what I was saying. For all we know the whole thing may be a peculiarly vicious circle! The world may be going back when we think it is going forward, and all the fine new things we think we find, may only he ourselves again. You and I, and the buried city and the gold coin--everything that we dream of, or that dreams of us, may only be part of the hidden circle which belongs to the curve of a life which has no straight lines--My God! take care--what the devil is that?" That, if anything, was a straight line--straight as an arrow. And an arrow it was, still vibrating in the soft sand at their very feet. Jim Forrester stood up angrily and looked round for the archer who had drawn his bow at such an unpleasantly close venture. But no one was visible, so he stooped down and drew the arrow out of the sand. He had seen its like, or almost its like, before in those wild central tracts of sandy desert where the wandering tribes of goatherds still cling to the weapons of a past age. His companion, however, had not, and she bent to examine it curiously. The attitude made the fair coils of her hair, which were plaited round her head, look more than ever like a heavy gold crown. "It takes one back to another world altogether," she said, watching him as he balanced it critically to appraise the perfection of its poise. "To a world where it was made, perhaps--for it looks old, doesn't it! I wonder who----" She paused, becoming conscious that someone was standing behind her. Jim Forrester became conscious of the fact also, and showed it in such an aggressive way that she exclaimed hastily: "Don't be angry with him, please. It must have been quite a chance--he couldn't have known we were here." Even without the plea it would have been difficult for the young Englishman to refuse the chance of explanation to the figure which had appeared so unexpectedly. For, though in all outward accessories it was only that of a wandering goatherd, there was a calm dignity about it which claimed consideration. The fillet which bound the hair, sun-ripened to a rich brown on its waves and curls, was only a knotted bit of goats'-hair string, but the head it encircled had a youthful buoyancy such as the Greek sculptors gave to the young Apollo, a resemblance enhanced by the statuesque folds of the rough goats'-hair blanketing which was sparsely draped over the bare, sinewy yet fine-drawn frame. The face, however, was faintly aquiline, and the eyes, deep set between prominent brow and cheek bone, had the mingled fire and softness which in India so often redeems an otherwise commonplace countenance. "I was stalking bustard, Huzoor," said the goatherd frankly, with a flash of very white teeth, "and being face down on the sand yonder behind the grasses saw nothing till the Presences stood up, but a glint of the sun on something." He spoke to the man, but his eyes were on the girl's golden crown of hair. Jim Forrester suddenly broke the arrow across his knee and threw the fragments from him into the sand ripples. "Hand me over the bow, too," he said, peremptorily, then paused. "Hullo! Where the deuce did you get that--it is very old--the oldest I've seen--with a looped string, too?" he added, handling it curiously. The goatherd smiled. "The Presence is welcome to keep it if he likes. I can get plenty more in the old city." Once again, in speaking to the man, his eyes, askance, were on the girl. She started. "In the old city," she echoed, "Jim! do you hear that--then you know where the old city is?" The goatherd almost laughed. "Wherefore not, malika sahiba (queen-lady). Have I not lived in it always?" "Lived in it! Then where is it?" He swept a bronze hand in a circle which clipped her and him and the distant horizon. "Here, queen-lady." "Here," echoed Jim Forrester, incredulously; "but there are absolutely no signs of a city here." "Plenty, Huzoor!" replied the goatherd, "if the Protector of the Poor will only use his eyes. Look yonder, how the ground rises to meet the curve of the sky; yonder, sahib, where the sunset red dyes deepest." The young Englishman looked and frowned, but the girl gave a quick exclamation, and laid a hasty, surprised touch on her lover's arm. "He is right, Jim," she said; "why didn't we notice it before? It stands out quite clear--an even rise all round centring on the unseen sun. How very curious! Ask him his name, Jim, and all that, so that father may be able to get hold of him. Fancy if we find the buried city--it would be as good almost as the gold coin, though somehow it makes me feel creepy." She gave a faint shiver as she spoke. "The queen-lady should not remain in the wilderness when the sun has set," came in swift warning from the goatherd; "there is a fever fiend lurks in it and brings strange dreams." Something almost of familiarity and command in the liquid yet vibrant voice made Jim Forrester frown again and say, shortly, "Yes; we must get back; it grows quite cold." The girl looked half bewildered first to one and then to the other of the two tall figures that stood between her and the fast-fading light, against which she still saw clearly that faint swelling domed blue shadow, as of some other world forcing its way through the crust of the visible one. So she stood silent, vaguely disturbed while the few questions necessary to identify the man who answered them were asked. She did not speak, indeed, until with faces set on the right path for their camp and civilisation generally, they paused on the top of the first sand-rippled wave to look back. The shadowy dome was still there, swelling towards the vanished sun, and from its side the figure of the young goatherd rose into the darkening dust haze. He was calling to his flock, and the words of his old-time chant were clearly audible: "O, seekers for Life's meat, "I hope he told us his real name!" she said, suddenly. II"My dear child, all your geese are swans--and so were your poor mother's before you," said her father. And then his eyes grew dreamy, perhaps over the intricacies of some new coins he was classifying; though, in truth, the memory of the young wife who had left him alone with a week-old baby in the days of his youth had somehow come harder to him during the last few happier, more home-like years since his daughter had returned to take her mother's place as mistress of the house; for the girl was very like the dead woman. She had brought her father his afternoon cup of tea to the office-tent, cleared for that brief recess of the cloud of clerks and witnesses, who through the wide canvas-wings, set open to let in the air, could be seen huddled in groups among the sparse shadows of the stunted kikar trees amid which the camp was pitched. They could be heard also, since in the limited leisure at their disposal they were hubble-hubbling away at their hookahs conscientiously; the noise in its rhythmic, intermittent insistency seemed like a distant snore from the sleepy desert of sand that stretched away to the horizon on all sides. "Of course," he went on, "you could hardly be expected to know--though really, my dear, you have all your mother's quickness of perception regarding people and places--but the mere fact of that goatherd fellow giving his name as Khesroo, and admitting he was low-caste, should have made you doubt his assertion. I confess I had little hope, for such knowledge as he professed to have is generally in the keeping of the priesthood only." "But Jim was there--I mean Mr. Forrester," she began. Her father coughed uneasily. "Because I call my personal assistant, whom I have known as a child, Jim, that is no reason, my dear Queenie, why you should contract the habit. I don't think your poor mother would have liked it. Besides, though he is an able young man--very much so, indeed, and when he grows older will make an excellent officer--Mr. Forrester--ahem!" (he made a violent effort over the name) "has no genius for antiquities. He utterly fails, for instance, to realise the far-reaching importance--for it would, of course, alter the whole chronology of the GrÆco-Bactrian era--of my contention concerning what Hausmann and the German school generally venture to designate a post-Vicramaditya. Yet some day, I feel sure, the gold coin of which Kapala gives so exact a description in B.C. 200, with the date under the legend and a double profile on the obverse, will turn up, and then the point will be settled, even if I do not live to see it." He was fairly off on his hobby and had risen to pace the tent, his hands behind his back. Many a time and oft she had listened to him patiently, almost eagerly, for the story of India's golden age always fired her imagination, but to-day she was thinking of other things--of her engagement for one, which she must break to him sooner or later. So she went up to him and tucked her arm into his coaxingly. "You may, father. It might be found any day. Do you know, I believe you would give almost anything--even your daughter--for that ducat. Wouldn't you?" Absolute jest as it was, her voice trembled over the trivial words, as voices often do unconsciously when Fate means to turn them to her own purposes. He smiled and patted her hand. "Undoubtedly, I would, my dear. But, nice as you are, no one is likely to offer me that exchange. To begin with, the coin, as a simple unique, would be worth a fortune, and then there is the fame. Think of it! Half the philologists, most of the historians, and all those German fellows routed on their own ground!" "Who knows?" she said, and then a frown dimmed the amusement in her eyes. "Though I can't understand," she added, "why that man Khesroo denied--as you say he did--having met Jim--I mean, us--yesterday. He can't be the wrong man, can he?" "Mr. Forrester thinks he is not. But you can see for yourself," replied her father, returning to his tea and his treasures, "for he is still over in the orderlies' tent. They had such trouble hunting him out of the jungles and persuading him to come here that they said they must keep him overnight, anyhow, in case he was wanted." An hour or so afterwards, therefore, a yellow-legged constable escorted the goatherd who had answered to the name of Khesroo into the verandah of the Miss-Sahiba's drawing-room tent. It, also, was set wide to the cool of the desert evening, and its easy-chairs and low, flower-decked tables strewn with books and magazines struck a curiously dissonant note from that sounded by the wilderness of sandy waste which on all sides hemmed in the little square of white-winged camp with a certain hungry emptiness. "He is the man, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone (for her father had come over from office and was seated within, reading the daily papers which the camel-post had just brought). "And yet--he looks different somehow--and so ill, too." He did look ill, with the languid yet harassed air which follows on malarial fever. The buoyancy of his carriage was replaced by an almost dejected air. Yet it was unmistakably the goatherd they had met the evening before, who, in obedience to a sign, squatted down midway, as it were, between the culture inside the tent and the savagery without it. "You look as if you had been having fever--have you?" asked the girl abruptly, for her years of authority had made her knowledgeable in such things. "The malika sahiba says right," replied Khesroo, indifferently. "I have had it much--this long while back." "And you had it yesterday or the day before?" "It was yesterday. I was put past by it all day. And yet----" here a vague perplexity came to the dulled yet anxious face as he looked first at the girl, then apologetically at Jim Forrester. "What the Presence said about meeting me is perhaps right after all. Yes! it is right. I did see the Huzoor. I have remembered from the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair." The young Englishman frowned angrily. "You work miracles in memory, my dear Queenie," he said, and there was quite an aggrieved tone in his voice as he turned shortly on the speaker. "Why on earth didn't you tell the truth before, then? And the old city? I suppose you remember all about that, too?" "The old city," echoed Khesroo, doubtfully. "No, Huzoor! What should I know about it beyond what all know--that there was a city, and that it is lost? Such as I know only what the wise tell them----" he paused, and even to his deprecation came a half-resigned self-assertion, "And yet I had more chance than most, seeing that my mother was twice-born." "She was, was she?" put in his hearer, and then looked round towards his chief. "Do you hear that, sir? His mother was a Brahmani--that may account for his profile, which you said this morning puzzled you in a low-caste man." "I said it was Scythic in type, and so it is," was the answer, as the speaker laid down his paper and came forward for further inspection. "So your mother was twice-born," he continued, addressing the goatherd; "a child-widow, I suppose?" Khesroo stretched his hand out, the fingers wide-spread in a dignified assent, which suited him better than his former almost cringing humility. "Huzoor, yes! Her people, however, did not find her till I was nigh six; but after that, of course, I was alone." A hush fell on the group, for--to those three listeners who understood them--the simple words told of a common enough tragedy in India; of a life denied all natural outlet, of unworthy love, of outraged pride of race followed by sure, if slow, revenge. "And your father--who was he?" Kresroo shook his head. "I had no one but my mother, Huzoor." There was another hush, on which the girl's voice rose clear with a curious thrill in it. "And she was very beautiful, was she not?" "Her son is a good-looking fellow, at any rate," remarked Jim Forrester, coolly, and moving away, he took up the newspaper, conscious of a certain irritation, and began to read the latest report of wireless telegraphy with the unsuspicious and unquestioning assent which we of these latter days reserve for the marvels of matter only. Her father having gone back to his papers also, the girl and the goatherd were left alone midway between civilisation and savagery. Huddled in his coarse blanketing, his bare arms crossed over his bare knees, there was nothing distinctive or unusual in Khesroo's figure, behind which the background of shadowy desert was fast fading into shadowy sky, except the haggardness of the aquiline face, the hollowness of the dark eyes. These struck her, and she stretched out her hand to feel his. "Have you fever now? No, you are quite cool." He shivered slightly at her touch, and his eyes, passing hers, seemed to rest on the plaits of her hair. "No, Huzoor," he replied, "it is a thief fever--it is hard to catch." She smiled. "I think quinine will manage it." He shook his head. "Nothing catches that which robs us of life at its own time. It will leave me none some day." He spoke unconcernedly, as if the fact were beyond question. "Then why do you wear that amulet if it is of no use?" she said, pointing to the little leathern bag, such as the wild tribes use for the carrying of charms, which was tied round his arm. Khesroo shook his head again, but smiled this time, and the flash of his white teeth must have removed any doubt of his identity, had such doubt existed. "The queen-lady mistakes," he said. "It does not contain a charm. It is my photongrar." "Your what?" she echoed, uncomprehending. "Photongrar. The picture, Huzoor, that the sun holds always of all things it has ever seen in the world. It showed this to a memsahiba long ago when I was little, and she showed it to my mother." "You mean your photograph?" "Huzoor, yes! Perhaps the queen-lady might care to see it, since it is like my mother as she was--before they found her!" Perhaps it was the thought of what the poor woman must have been like after that finding which made the English girl feel a vague oppression as she took the tight roll of paper that Khesroo unfolded from a piece of red rag. "I was five, Huzoor," he said simply, "and my mother loved me much." Small wonder, was the girl's first thought as she looked at the sedate, yet childish face, half-concealed by the high turban, which had evidently been borrowed for the occasion, at the quaint dignity of the childish figure huddled into finery too large for it, and holding a flower in its hand as if it had been a sceptre. But as she looked, a startled expression came over her face; she stood up and hurried to her father, with appeal in her voice. "Oh, father! do look here! How very curious! This photograph of Khesroo when he was a child--I think mother must have taken it, for I am almost sure there is one like it in her diary--in the volume you gave me to read the other day, because we were camping through the same country. Stay! I'll fetch it----" She was back in a moment with an unclasped book in her hand, and fluttered hastily through pages and sketches, almost to the end. "There!" she cried, suddenly, "I was sure of it!" Her father laid the one photograph beside the other, and Jim Forrester, looking over his shoulder curiously, compared them also. They were identical. But underneath the one pasted into the book a woman's hand had written: "The Son of a King!" The title fitted the picture, and reminded the girl of something in Khesroo which had struck her yesterday and which was absent to-day. She turned over the page, but beyond it all was blank. Those words were the last in the diary. "I think I remember something about it now, my dear," said her father, taking his hand away from the book gently; "it may have been the last she took, for I was camping round here as assistant just before--before you were born. And she was always taking children and giving pictures to the mothers; not that I remember that particular one--you see it must be fifteen years ago--at least." "Nearer five-and-twenty, dear," she said, softly, and as she realised the impotence of what the world counts as time to touch the smallest thing that once has been, the utter irrelevance of days and weeks and years in connection with a single thought, the photographs before her grew dim to her eyes, the fine feminine writing with its verdict, "The Son of a King," became invisible. So through her tears she saw only--blurred and indistinct--the wondering face of Khesroo the goatherd. "Look!" she said, in sudden impulse. "The sun must have held two pictures of you." He stared at the duplicate stupidly. "I did not steal it," he began, uneasily. "Of course you didn't," she replied, smiling now. "It was my mother who took the picture, and gave it to yours--she was the mem-sahiba you spoke of--perhaps you remember her?" A look almost of relief came to the goatherd's haggard, anxious face. "Yes! Perhaps your slave remembers, and that is why he thought he recollected the graciousness of the queen-lady and the gold crown of her hair. That will be it, and your slave did not lie to the Huzoor." He looked apologetically towards the young Englishman; but the latter had once more an aggrieved tone in his voice as he said shortly in English: "Whether he did or did not doesn't much matter. There isn't anything to be got out of him apparently, so perhaps you had better tell the orderly to take him back to the tent and see that he takes the quinine you send--as I suppose you will." III"I meant to tell him yesterday, Jim," said the girl, in an undertone, glancing with almost maternal solicitude at her father, who was writing within, his grey, somewhat bald head shining out in the light of the lamp by which he was working, against the intense shadowy darkness of the tent walls, "but that disappointment about the lost city, wasn't, so to say, propitious. And to-day there was that letter from Hausmann about the coin somebody has discovered, which has quite upset him. Poor father," she added, turning to her lover again, "it will be hard on him. Did you notice how he said it was but fifteen years ..." She broke off and looked out into the night. The stars were showing overhead through the fine fret of the kikar trees, though the horizon still held a hint of the day that was dead. Against this paler background she fancied she could see--itself a shadow, yet half hidden by shadow--that curving dome as of a new world forcing its way through the crust of the old, or an old one through the new. "It was odd about those photographs, wasn't it?" she said, irrelevantly. "He must be five years older than I am." "His age is honoured by the comparison." "My dear Jim," she interrupted, opening her eyes, "this unfortunate goatherd seems----" "I said he was fortunate, I think. But I admit hating things I don't quite understand." "Then you must hate me--now don't be angry," she added: "I mean no blame. I very often don't understand myself." "I know that--and that is why I want this business settled and clear--you--you seem so far off sometimes." There was a passion in his voice; he stretched his hands out to her as she stood apart, her filmy dinner dress looking ghostly and elusive seen half in the dark, half by the feeble light from within the tent. She stretched out her hands also, but there was all the world between his almost pathetic appeal and her almost amused repulse. "You must make haste and find the ducat, Jim. I feel sure that without it--and especially in his present mood--father will never consent----" He certainly did not seem in a consenting frame of mind as he came out to them with the offending letter from Hausmann in his hand. "I've answered it," he said, sternly, "but as the man is an ass, he will most likely miss the point, which is, of course, Kapala's description of this coin. He says distinctly that it has one profile superimposed on another with the legend beneath, and the date below the flower on the obverse. Really, child, I think I will get you to figure it for me, since Hausmann seems unable to understand words." "You could use the handsome goatherd as a model, you know," remarked Jim Forrester, vaguely surprised at his own irritation; "your father said his features were Scythic." "Yes!" assented the numismatist, abstractedly, as he tried to re-read part of the offending missive by the distant light of the lamp; "rather an uncommon type in India, nowadays, though one sees it elsewhere. Queenie has it partly--your mother had Russian blood in her, you know." "Perhaps that is why I feel so interested in Khesroo," said the girl, looking coldly askance at her lover. "Oh, by the way," put in her father, breaking in on his own indignation and the silence which ensued between those two who loved each other--a silence which both felt to be at once incomprehensible yet inevitable, intolerable yet in a way rascinating--"that reminds me. The orderlies reported he was bad with fever to-night. Send him over some more quinine." "I'll take it, if you like," said Jim Forrester, faintly penitent. She looked at the two men with disdainful tolerance. "I will see him first. One never knows what these people call fever--it may be pneumonia." She moved off as she spoke, into the night, meaning to cross over towards the orderlies' tent, then paused to glance back at the figure--which followed. "Are you coming, too?" she said, curtly. "I can manage all right." "Of course I am coming!" replied Jim Forrester. "It is pitch dark, to begin with, and I can at least help you to find your patient. I think you had better keep outside the camp, so as to avoid the tent-ropes--it isn't any longer, really." It was, if anything, shorter, but it brought them instantly into the grip, as it were, of the desert, which crept hungrily upon the camp on all sides; so that, ere they had gone five steps beyond the canvas wings of the tent, they seemed as much alone, as far from conventional twentieth-century life, as they had been two days before, when they first sat together as betrothed lovers in the sunset of a world of curves telling the tale of eternal, of unseen circlings. Even so much of Life's secret was invisible now. All they saw was a darkness they knew to be wilderness, a dim outline of themselves, close together, hand in hand. For with the knowledge that they were alone--perhaps with the memory of the wilderness--they had clasped hands instinctively, and for the time the sense of stress and strain had passed. It returned again, however, with curious vividness, as, right in their path, a shadow, dim as their own, showed suddenly. She knew who it was instinctively before it spoke. "I thought you had fever," she said. "Why are you here?" "I have been waiting the graciousness of the queen-lady," came the reply, and the voice was buoyant with joyous vitality. "I have to tell her my dreams--the fever always brings dreams, and I remember now! Yea! I remember all things from the beginning. So, if she will come, I will show her the lost city where we lived, and she will dream the dream also." Dimly, in the darkness, she fancied she could see the shining of his eyes, see his beckoning hand. What her lover saw was a movement of the shadow towards the wilderness: what he felt was a faint increase in the distance between his hand and hers which made him claim it again. "Queenie!" he cried, "what are you thinking of? You can't possibly go now. The man is delirious with fever--surely you hear that in his voice. You had better come back to the tent and let me send someone to take him into shelter and look after him." For an instant no one spoke, and then it seemed almost a bodiless voice from the desert which broke the silence, for in his desire to detain her, Jim Forrester had drawn the girl back a pace or two, so that the darkness lay deeper between their two shadows and that third one nearer the wilderness. "Let the queen-lady decide for herself. If she comes, I will show her all forgotten things--the golden crown that is not plaited hair, the golden coin that was made for the lovers----" "Jim," she whispered, almost fiercely, "do you hear? It is the gold coin--it is waiting to be found. I must go----" "This is pure folly," protested the young Englishman. "If anyone has to go, I will, of course. But what hurry is there? Why not wait till to-morrow--now, do be reasonable, Queenie, and consider----" She ceased trying to release her hand, and when she spoke again it was in a natural tone. "Yes. I forgot that. Khesroo, I will come with you to-morrow. It will be easier by daylight. Go back to the orderlies' tent now, and I will send you over some more medicine, and when the fever has gone----" "The dreams will have gone, too," came the voice out of the night; but it, also, was more natural, more like that of Khesroo the goatherd. "I shall forget again, and then the gold coin that was struck for her and her lover----" "For her and her lover," echoed the girl, softly. "Did you hear, Jim? I must go and get it for you." "Long--long ago----" came the voice again. She echoed the words almost inaudibly this time, and Jim Forrester drew her closer as he said sharply: "If anyone goes, I will; but I don't see----" The voice interrupted him. "But the queen-lady sees. She is like her mother; she sees pictures in the sun. Of course, the Huzoor can come; but if the queen-lady really wants this thing--if she believes--if she trusts----" "Let me go, Jim! let me go!" "You shall not," he cried, seizing her round the waist in swift antagonism to some unseen influence, in sudden consciousness of conflict. And so to both him and her in the darkness and stillness of the desert, within a few steps only of quiet, comfortable, commonplace civilisation, came like a whirlwind a perfect tumult of bewildering emotions, and all the deathless forces which never slumber or sleep in their work of moulding the soul of man, leapt from silence into speech. Love, jealousy, hatred, resolve, high courage--all these seemed to sweep through their every fibre of mind and body, leaving them breathless, wondering, uncertain if they were awake or dreaming, if they were real or mere shadows of a reality which Time cannot touch or alter. For an instant only they were conscious of all this--but the instant might have been an hour in its suggestion of infinite experience. Then Time claimed them once more, time and trivialities and commonsense, so that ten minutes afterwards, Jim Forrester, having made his preparations for a tramp into the desert, was stooping to say good-night to his betrothed and to assure her of his speedy return. The moon would rise in half-an-hour, the distance to the place where they had first met Khesroo could not be over three miles, he would be back by midnight. Meanwhile, she could tell her father he had turned in, but if she chose herself to sit up--well ... As their lips met lingeringly, a little breeze that had wandered from the desert shifted a ripple or two on the sand-waves about their feet, and died away like a sigh in the fine fret of the kikar trees above the unseen tents. IVIt was an hour before dawn. The desert itself could scarcely have been stiller than the camp. In the white moonlight the white tents looked like some shrouded city of the dead, forgotten yet unburied; for, here and there, some out in the moonlit open, other flecked with the fine shadow of the kikar trees, lay corpse-like figures swathed in sheets, as if waiting for their graves. There was no sound, no sign of life, not even where the moonlight, slanting through the still, wide-set wings of the drawing-room tent, showed the folds of a woman's dress, the daintiness of a high-heeled shoe. The rest of the figure was in shadow, though the light, in its last effort against the darkness of the tent, claimed the pages of the open book which lay on the sleeping girl's lap, and turned one of them into a silver framing for the photograph of a child. So vivid was the light that even the fine feminine writing beneath it showed in the dead woman's verdict: "The Son of a King!" For the girl had been pondering over the strange chance which had brought her, in her turn, within the influence of this nameless kingship when, as she waited for her lover's return, she had fallen asleep in her chair. And yet, as she had sat there, thinking, watching, she had felt very wide awake indeed. Not with anxiety, however; that had passed. In fact, as she followed in her mind what had gone before Jim Forrester's quite prosaic start to walk three or four miles into the wilderness on a moonlight night to be shown the bearings of a buried city and possibly to be given proof positive that there were ruins beneath the sand, she had been in grave doubt as to what had actually occurred. Had there been conflict? Had love and jealousy and hatred and resolve risen up and claimed them all? Surely not. Why, indeed, should it be so? Though, doubtless, in her, in her lover, in the goatherd, there was something held, as it were, in common, yet which had struggled to be individual, separate. And this had been most marked between the young Englishman and the goatherd. Unaccountable as it was, she felt that in some mysterious fundamental mind of hers these two were associated indissolubly--that they stood towards her on the same plane. Nay, more! that it was the consciousness of this which kept her calm, which overbore the possibility of future danger, the memory of past conflict. What harm could happen to the Son of a King or with the Son of a King? The phrase had been on her lips as she fell asleep. It was on them as she awoke and stood up suddenly, the open book sliding soundless from her lap into the soft sand. But the phrase brought no comfort with it now. Had she been asleep for long! Had her lover returned? Was it past midnight? The anxious questions surged up through the crust of calm before she was half awake, and instinctively she was outside the tent in a moment on her way towards her lover's, her rapid feet, shod in the dainty high-heeled slippers, dimpling the shifting sand. The coming dawn had sent cloud heralds to the west, and an advanced pursuivant, drifting across the moon, shadowed all things faintly and seemed to increase the silence. She called softly; there was no reply, so she looked in. A glance told her that her lover had not returned, and the light stealing in through the uplifted screen showed her by the travelling-clock hung to the tent-pole that it was already past three o'clock. Three! What had happened--and what was to be done? For an instant the ordinary inrush of anxiety made her think of rousing the camp, of sending out search-parties; but the next brought her a curious conviction that in this case danger lay in seeking outside help: a certainty that in this matter she must stand alone, that in this crisis--whatever it was--there must be but three alone--if, indeed, there were three--herself, her lover, and this nameless Son of a King. So, almost without a pause, the dimples left by her rapid feet were curving towards the highest sand-wave within sight of the camp. Thence she could watch the desert sea, and perhaps find him, even now, close at hand. But once there, the next sand-wave attracted her as being a better point of vantage, and so from wave to wave she flitted in her white dress like some desert bird, leaving behind her a curved track of dimples in the sliding sand, until a little wind, the herald blast of the hurrying clouds overhead, crept low down over the world and swept the dimples back into the old ripples. "Khesroo!" she called, suddenly, for a shadow seemed beside hers in that empty wilderness; but there was no answer. "Jim!" she called again, uncertainly; but there was no reply. Yet she was not frightened. She knew now, in that mysterious fundamental mind of hers, that she alone was responsible, that she, and she only, could solve the riddle. Khesroo had been right. If she wanted this thing, if she had believed, if she had trusted, she would have gone before. And now she must hurry, or it would be too late--wherefore or for what she scarcely considered. "Khesroo!" she called once more, and this time there was a faint inflection of fear in her voice; for was that figure Khesroo, the goatherd, or was it her lover? Or was it neither; but someone only of whom she had dreamt as the Son of a King? Should she go back? The wish struck her keenly, but she ignored it, and went on. She must, she knew, have left the camp far behind her, and, if she had kept the right direction, would soon be close on the spot where that straight line of an arrow had startled her by its intrusion into her dream of love. If she had kept it! And surely she had, for behind her the east was faintly lightening with the dawn. Yonder, therefore, in the dark of the heralding clouds which had huddled upon the western horizon must lie the domed shadows of the buried city. "Khesroo!" she cried, instinctively, the very soul of her speaking, "show it to me! For the sake of the woman who died, as women die for a life of love, a love of life, show it to me!" And then, behind her, she heard a voice chanting, as Khesroo, the goatherd, had chanted, the call of guidance for the wanderers in the desert. Yet the words were different; for these were they: "Seekers for sleep, arise! Desire dies." Listening, she turned to look, then realised that in her searching she must once more have circled back on her own footsteps, for behind and not before her, dark, clear, unmistakable, the domed shadow of the lost city lay against the lightening east. And on its swelling side, as Khesroo had stood before, he stood again. Was it the rising sun which turned the fillet of knotted cord about his head to gold?--which dyed the coarse blanketing to royal purple, and transformed the wearer into the perfect kingliness of buoyant youth and beauty? She never knew. She only felt that something stronger than herself caught her, held her, clasped her, and yet drew her on, so that with hands outstretched she ran towards it, crying between smiles and tears: "The Son of a King! The Son of a King!" The next instant she had tripped and fallen heavily on her face over a tangled tuft of grass concealing an unusually deep descent of a desert wave. As she picked herself up, confused, somewhat dazed, and paused to free her eyes from the sand grains which clouded them, something almost at her feet brought her back to realities, and she gave a quick exclamation. For in the hollow beneath the wave, where he had evidently sought shelter deliberately, Jim Forrester lay curled up comfortably, fast asleep. At least, so it seemed, though Khesroo's quaint old bow must surely make rather an uncomfortable pillow. She stooped over the sleeping man, and for an instant her face whitened; she bent lower to listen to his breathing. And as she listened a couple of startled sand-chaffs fled from a neighbouring thorn bush, their chuckling cry echoing over the desert like an evil laugh. But a minute afterwards, in answer to her touch, Jim Forrester was staring at her trying to collect his sleep-scattered senses. "Hullo!" he said, slowly. "How on earth did I--Ah! I remember. That brute of a goatherd played the garden ass and I lost him, so after wandering about for hours, I turned in till daylight. But you--my dearest dear----" He started to his feet as he realised her presence there, and held out both his hands to her. As he did so, something dropped from them and lay glittering on the sand at his feet. It was a gold coin. They looked at each other, amazed; then she stooped and picked it up. "A double profile," she said slowly, holding it so as to catch the growing sunlight, "and the legend round"--she spelt it out from the Greek lettering--"'Basileus Basileon.'" "And the date," he cried, "the date!" "Yes, the date is there," she replied, still more slowly turning to the obverse, "the bird and the date--it is all right--but I was thinking of the other----" "What other?" "Basileus Basileon--'the King of Kings,'" she said softly, and looked out towards the sunrise. But the light had claimed the whole world and sent all shadows flying. So happily, prosaically, they went home to breakfast. Yet there was one thing which she never told anyone, perhaps because it might have stood in the way of the popular explanation of the whole affair--namely, that Khesroo had happened on the coin and must have put it in Jim Forrester's hand after the latter fell asleep. So, not even when her father proudly pointed out to admirers that the double profile was that of a man and a woman, and that the latter, curiously enough, might almost be a portrait of his married daughter, did she ever say that when she found her husband asleep in the sand that morning, the looped bowstring of Khesroo the goatherd's bow was loose about his neck. But she often wonders if it would have been drawn tighter had she not gone to seek for what she wanted. |