She refused to allow them to approach her at first, but her resistance was useless, and finding that without violence there were no means of overcoming their tolerably good-humoured pertinacity, she submitted, wearily telling them to do what they pleased, when one, the most friendly, insisted upon taking down her magnificent hair. "Only to make it more beautiful," she said. At this moment the other woman left the room. "Will you help me to escape?" said Helen, quickly, as soon as they were alone. "No; I dare not. Murad would have me killed." "Then will you send this paper by a messenger down to the station?" "Paper?" said the girl, wonderingly. "Yes, paper. I have written for help; send it by a messenger. Here are my rings and watch to pay him for going. Take them, and if you have any womanly feeling, help me now." "I cannot; I dare not," whispered the woman; but Helen forced paper and trinkets into her hand, just as the second attendant was heard coming, when her companion burst out into one of the minor songs of the country, and busied herself with her task. Helen's heart gave one great throb of hope, and raising her eyes to those of her attendant, she read there that her message would be sent. The second woman brought in a bunch of what seemed to be a kind of waxy yellow jasmine of an extremely powerful odour. These she proceeded to twine in and amongst Helen's magnificent dark hair; and when the prisoner shudderingly attempted to resist, feeling as she did that she was being decked out for, as it were, a sacrifice, the flower-bearer stormed at her angrily in the Malay tongue, and seemed to threaten her with some severe punishment if she persisted in tearing them out. "It would be childish to keep on opposing them," thought Helen, whose spirits were lighter now that she had found some means, as she hoped, of communicating with the station; and she resigned herself to her attendant's clever hands. As she sat back, listening languidly to the whistling, chattering noise of the parroquets that swarmed in the jungle, she felt a pang shoot through her, for very faintly heard there was a sound familiar to her ear--a sound that she had frequently listened to at her open window at the station. It was the plashing of oars coming from a distance, and she felt that at last the Rajah was approaching the place, to see his prisoner. Helen's teeth gritted together as she set them hard, calling upon herself for all her fortitude and strength of mind for what she knew must be a terrible ordeal. The scene at home on that morning when Murad had come to propose for her hand came back most vividly, and for the moment she trembled as she realised the evil she had done. She recovered herself though somewhat, and striving hard to be prepared for what was to come, sat listening and wondering whether Murad really was close at hand.