Once before she had placed herself in his path, trusting to her skill, her daring, above all, her beauty. With laughter in her heart and cold-blooded coquetry she had chosen out the spot before the altar where the sunlight struck burnished gold from her waving hair and lent deeper, softening shades to her eyes. With cruel satisfaction, not unmixed with admiration, she had seen her power successful and the awe-struck wonder and veneration creep into his face. In the silence and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed and ruined. Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered doorway, holding out a hand which commanded, and obtained, a petrified, waiting silence from the armed horde whose faces glared hatred and the lust of slaughter in the narrow space behind. Whatever had been his resolution, whatever the detestation and contempt which had filled him, all sank now into an ocean of reborn pain.

"Why are you here?" he asked sternly. "Why have you not fled?"

"We are all here," she answered. "None of us has fled. Did you not know that?"

He looked about him. A flash of scorn rekindled in his somber eyes.

"You are alone. Have they deserted you?"

"They do not know that I am here. I crept back of my own free will—to speak with you, Nehal."

Both hands clasped upon his sword-hilt, erect, a proud figure of misfortune, he stood there and studied her, half-wonderingly, half-contemptuously. The restless forces at his back were forgotten. They were no more to him than the pawns with which his will played life and death. He was their god and their faith. They waited for his word to sweep out of his path the white-faced Englishwoman who held him checked in the full course of his victory. But he did not speak to them, but to her, in a low voice in which scorn still trembled.

"You are here, no doubt, to intercede for those others—or for yourself. You see, I have learned something in these two years. It is useless. No one can stop me now."

"No one?"

He smiled, and for the first time she saw a sneer disfigure his lips.

"Not even you, Miss Cary. You have done a great deal with me—enough perhaps to justify your wildest hopes—but you have touched the limits of your powers and of my gullibility. Or did you think there were no limits?"

"I do not recognize you when you talk like that!" she exclaimed.

"That is surprising, seeing that you have made me what I am," he answered. Then he made a quick gesture of apology. "Forgive me, that sounded like a reproach or a complaint. I make neither. That is not my purpose."

"And yet you have the right," she said, drawing a deep breath, "you have every right, Nehal. It does not matter what the others did to you. I know that does not count an atom in comparison to my responsibilities. You trusted me as you trusted no one else, and I deceived you. So you have the right to hate me as you hate no one else. And yet—is it not something, does it not mitigate my fault a little, that I deceived myself far, far more than I ever deceived you?" He raised his eyebrows. There was mockery in the movement, and she went on, desperately resolute: "I played at loving you, Nehal. I played a comedy with you for my own purposes. And one day it ceased to be a comedy. I did not know it. I did not know what was driving me to tell the truth, and reveal myself to you in the ugliest light I could. I only knew it was something in me stronger than any other impulse of my life. I know what it is now, and you must know, too. Can't you understand? If it had been no more than a comedy, you must have found me out—months ago. But you never found me out. It was I who told you what I had done and who I was—"

"Why did you tell me?" He took an involuntary step toward her. Something in his face relaxed beneath the force of an uncontrollable emotion. He was asking a question which had hammered at the gates of his mind day after day and in every waking hour. "Why?" he repeated.

"I have told you—because I had to. I had to speak the truth. I couldn't build up my new life on an old lie. You had to know. I had won your love by a trick. I had to show you the lowest and worst part of myself before the best in me could grow—the best in me, which is yours."

"You are raving!"

"I am not raving. You must see I am not. Look at me. I am calmer than you, though I face certain death. I knew when I came here that the chances were I should be killed before I even saw you, but I had to risk that. I had to win your trust back somehow, honestly and fairly. I can not live without your trust."

"Beatrice!" The name escaped him almost without his knowledge. He saw tears spring to her eyes.

"It is true. Your love and your trust have become my life. Then I was unworthy of both. I tried to make myself worthy. I did what I could. I told you the truth—I threw away the only thing that mattered to me. I could not hold your love any longer by a lie—I loved you too much!"

For that moment the passionate energy of her words, the sincerity and eloquence of her glance, swept back every thought of suspicion. He stood stupefied, almost overwhelmed. Mechanically his lips formed themselves to a few broken sentences.

"You can not know what you are saying. You are beside yourself. Once, in my ignorance, I believed it possible, but now I know that it could never be. Your race despises mine—"

"I do not care what you are nor to whom you belong!" she broke in, exulting. "You are the man who taught me to believe that there is something in this world that is good, that is worthy of veneration; who awoke in me what little good I have. I love you. If I could win you back—"

"What then?"

"I would follow you to the world's end!"

"As my wife?"

"As your wife!"

He held out his arms toward her, impulse rising like the sun high and splendid above the mists of distrust. It was an instant's forgetfulness, which passed as rapidly as it had come. His arms sank heavily to his side.

"Have you thought what that means? If you go with me, you must leave your people for ever."

"I would follow you gladly."

He shook his head.

"You do not understand. You must leave them now—now when I go against them."

"No!" she broke in roughly. "You can't, Nehal, you can't. You have the right to be bitter and angry; you have not the right to commit a crime. And it would be a crime. You are plunging thousands into bloodshed and ruin—" He lifted his hand, and the expression in his eyes checked her.

"So it is, after all, a bargain that you offer me!" he said. "You are trying to save them. You offer a high price, but I am not a merchant. I can not buy you, Beatrice."

"It is not a bargain!" For the first time she faltered, taken aback by the pitiless logic of his words. "Can't you see that? Can't you see that, however much I loved you, I could not act otherwise than implore you to turn back from a step that means destruction for those bound to me by blood and country? Could I do less?"

"No," he said slowly.

She held out her hands to him.

"Oh, Nehal, turn back while there is yet time! For my sake, for yours, for us all, turn back from a bloody, cruel revenge. The power is yours. Be generous. If we have wronged you, we have suffered and are ready to atone. I am ready to atone. I can atone, because I love you. I have spoken the truth to you. I have laid my soul bare to you as I have done to no other being. Won't you trust me?"

His eyes met hers with a somber, hopeless significance which cut her to the heart.

"I can't," he said. "I can't. That is what you have taught me—to distrust you—and every one."

She stood silent now, paralyzed by the finality of his words and gesture. It was as though the shadow of her heartless folly had risen before her and become an iron wall of unrelenting, measured retribution against which she beat herself in vain. He lifted his head higher, seeming to gather together his shaken powers of self-control.

"I can not trust you," he said again, "nor can I turn back. But there is one thing from the past which can not be changed. I love you. It seems that must remain through all my life. And because of that love I must save you from the death that awaits your countrymen." He smiled in faint self-contempt. "It is not for your sake that I shall save you; it is because I am too great a coward, and can not face the thought that anything so horrible should come near you." He turned to two native soldiers behind him and gave an order. When he faced Beatrice again he saw that she held a revolver in her hand.

"You do not understand," she said. "You say you mean to save me, but that is not in your power. It is in your power to save us all, but not one alone. I know what my people have resolved to do. There are weak, frightened women among them, but not one of them will fall into your hands alive. Whatever happens, I shall share their fate."

Though her tone was quiet and free from all bravado, he knew that she was not boasting. He knew, too, that she was desperate.

"You can not force me to kill you," he said sternly.

"I think it possible," she answered. She was breathing quickly, and her eyes were bright with a reckless, feverish excitement. But the hand that held the revolver pointed at the men behind him was steady—steadier than his own.

Nehal Singh motioned back the two natives who had advanced at his order.

"You play a dangerous game," he said, "and, as before, your strength lies in my weakness—in my folly. But this time you can not win. My word is given—to my people."

"I shall not plead with you," she returned steadily, "and you may be sure I shall not waver. I am not afraid to die. I had hoped to atone for all the wrong that has been done you with my love for you, Nehal. I had hoped that then you would turn away from this madness and become once more our friend. To this end I have not hesitated to trample on my dignity and pride. I have not spared myself. But you will not listen, you are determined to go on, and I"—she caught her breath sharply—"surely you can understand? I love you, and you have made yourself the enemy of my country. Death is the easiest, the kindest solution to it all."

Nehal Singh's brows knitted themselves in the anguish of a man who finds himself thwarted by his own nature. He tried not to believe her, and indeed, in all her words, though they had rung like music, his ear, tuned to suspicion, had heard the mocking undercurrent of laughter. She had laughed at him secretly through all those months when he had offered up to her the incense of an absolute faith, an unshared devotion. Even now she might be laughing at him, playing on that in him which nothing could destroy or conceal—his love for her. And yet—! Behind him he heard the uneasy stir of impatient feet, the hushed clash of arms. He stood between her and a certain, terrible death. One word from him, and it would be over—his path clear. But he could not speak that word. Treacherous and cruel as she had been, the halo of her first glory still hung about her. He saw her as he had first seen her—the golden image of pure womanhood—and, strange, unreasoning contradiction of the human heart, beneath the ashes of his old faith a new fire had kindled and with every moment burned more brightly. Unquenchable trust fought out a death struggle with distrust, and in that conflict her words recurred to him with poignant significance: "Death is the easiest, the kindest solution to it all." For him also there seemed no other escape. He pointed to the revolver.

"For whom is that?" he asked.

"I do not know—but I will make them kill me."

"Why do you not shoot me, then?" he demanded, between despair and bitterness. "That would save you all. If I fell, they would turn and fly. They think I am Vishnu. Haven't you thought of that? I am in your power. Why don't you make yourself the benefactress of your country? Why don't you shoot her enemy?"

She made no answer, but her eyes met his steadily and calmly. He turned away, groaning. In vain he fought against it, in vain stung himself to action by the memory of all that she had done to him. His love remained triumphant. In that supreme moment his faith burst through the darkness, and again he believed in her, believed in her against reason, against the world, against the ineffaceable past, and against himself. And it was too late. He no longer stood alone. His word was given.

"Have pity on me!" he said, once more facing her. "Let me save you!"

"I should despise myself, and you would despise me—even more than you do now. I can not do less than share the fate of those whose lives my folly has jeopardized."

"At least go back to them—do not stay here. Beatrice, for God's sake!—I can not turn back. You have made me suffer enough—." He stood before her now as an incoherent pleader, and her heart burned with an exultation in which the thought of life and death played no part. She knew that he still loved her. It seemed for the moment all that mattered.

"I can not," she said.

"Beatrice, do not deceive yourself. Though my life is nothing to me—though I would give it a dozen times to save you—I can not do otherwise than go on. I may be weak, but I shall be stronger than my weakness. My word is given!"

He spoke with the tempestuous energy of despair. The minutes were passing with terrible swiftness, and any moment the sea behind him might burst its dam and sweep her and him to destruction. Already in the distance he heard the dull clamour of voices raised in angry remonstrance at the delay. Only those immediately about him were held in awed silence by the power of his personality. Again Beatrice shook her head. She stood in the doorway which opened out into the garden where the besieged had taken refuge. There was no other way. He advanced toward her. Instantly she raised her revolver and pointed it at the first man behind him.

"If I fire," she said, "not even you will be able to hold them back."

It seemed to her that she stood like a frail wall between two overwhelming forces—on the one side, Nehal with his thousands; on the other, Nicholson—alone, truly, but armed with a set and pitiless resolve. A single sentence, which had fallen upon her ears months before, rose now out of an ocean of half-forgotten memories: "Nicholson is the best shot in India," some one had said: "he never misses." And still Nehal advanced. His jaws were locked, his eyes had a red fire in them. She knew then that the hour of hesitation was over, and that in that desperate struggle she had indeed lost. Uncontrollable words of warning rushed to her lips.

"Nehal—turn back! Turn back!"

He did not understand her. He thought she was still pleading with him.

"I can not—God have pity on us both!"

Then she too set her lips. She could not betray the last hope of that heroic handful of men and women behind her. He must go to his death—and she to hers. She fired,—whether with success or not, she never knew. In that same instant another sound broke upon their ears—the sound of distant firing, the rattle of drums and the high clear call of a trumpet. Nehal Singh swung around. She caught a glimpse of his face through the smoke, and she saw something written there which she could not understand. She only knew that his features seemed to bear a new familiarity, as though a mask had been torn from them, revealing the face of another man, of a man whom she had seen before, when and where she could not tell. She had no time to analyze her emotions nor the sense of violent shock which passed over her. She heard Nehal Singh giving sharp, rapid orders in Hindustani. The room emptied. She saw him follow the retreating natives. At the door he turned and looked back at her. At no time had his love for her revealed itself more clearly than in that last glance.

"The English regiment has come to help you," he said. "Fate has intervened between us this time. May we never meet again!"

He passed out through the shattered doorway, but she stood where he had left her, motionless, almost unconscious. It was thus Nicholson and the Colonel found her when, a moment later, they entered the room by the verandah. Colonel Carmichael's passionate reproaches died away as he saw her face.

"You must not stop here," he said. "You have frightened us all terribly. The regiment has come and is attacking. There will be some desperate fighting. We must all stick together."

She caught Nicholson's eyes resting on her. She thought she read pity and sympathy in their steady depths, and wondered if he guessed what she had tried to do. But he said nothing, and she followed the two men blindly and indifferently back to the bungalow.