He turned aside impatiently beset once more by the desire for escape and struck across the plain; coming, after a time, on a footpath which he followed mechanically through the tamarisk bushes, until he emerged on an open space where a hoar frost of salt crystals glittered on rows and rows of tiny mounds. So pure, so white, that the eye might have sworn to a winter's night even while the other senses told of more than summer's heat; a deception increasing the unreality with which Philip recognised that his wandering steps had led him to a village grave-yard. A far cry from the marriage feast! He sat down on the pile of disordered bricks and stucco which marked the resting-place of the saint round whose bones the faithful had gathered, and asked himself what chance there was of standing out against the opinion of the many in life, if even in death it was always follow my leader? A quaint place it was; no enclosure, no token of hope or grief, no symbol of faith; nothing but the dead, clean forgotten and out of mind. Ah! but Belle had not forgotten him, and if he had remained dead she would have gone on giving him the best part of herself without reproach, without remorse. Was death then the only freedom from the body? He sat so long immersed in his own thoughts that the slow stars were wheeling to meet the dawn ere he rose, and threw out his arms cramped by long stillness. Dead, yet alive,--that was the old panacea. Was nothing else attainable? Must love be killed? Why? A rustle in the tamarisks beyond the open made him turn sharply, and make his way towards the corner whence it proceeded. As he did so a group of men defiled from the bushes, set down the burden they carried, and, without looking round, began to dig a grave. The hour, the absence of wailing, gave Philip a momentary thought that he might be assisting at the concealment of some crime, but his knowledge of the people reassured him. Yet as he approached, all the party--save a very old man mumbling his beads--scurried into the jungle, and so he judged it wiser to stop and give the orthodox salutation. The patriarch rose in feeble haste. "Allah be praised! we thought you were the ghost already. Come back; come back!" he cried in louder quavering voice. "'Tis only a Presence, seeking sport, doubtless. Come back, and get her under earth ere dawn, or 'twill be the worse for all."