Hours passed. Every little while, through the piling cumulus of disorder, would flash the reality, and for the interval he ceased to breathe.... To think of looking up from some half-delirium and discovering her face! To feel the touch of her hand--this woman--attuned to respond to every vibration of his voice and brain and heart.... Sometimes he fell into a heresy of manhood and demanded of himself what significance had England, the world, compared with the rest of his days with Noreen Cardinegh, in the glory of their union which formed a trinity--man and woman and happiness.... He laughed bitterly at the starry distances. “It would be a fitting end for a man who is supposed to have betrayed the country he served--to allow a woman to share such fortunes as mine, and take up the trail of an outcast.” Routledge rose to go to the Rest House, but reflected that it must be nearer dawn than midnight. He was curiously disinclined to seek his room at this hour. With his face to the doorway, he sank down upon the matting and rested his chin in his palms.... The touch of Rawder’s hand awoke him, and he stared in wonder at the _chela_, his own eyes stinging from the East. The figure of a woman was prone before him. “Routledge, my brother, here is work for you. I found her far out on the road. She was crawling into Rydamphur, carrying the child. I could not leave her. She is close to death. Sekar waits for me, and so again, good-by.” Rawder had turned with a quick hand-clasp, and hurried away in the dawn-light to his master. It was all over quickly and strangely--as some psychic visitation. Routledge was already weary of the pitiless day. The blazing temple of dawn had shone full upon his eyelids as he slept, and there was an ache deep in his brain from the light.... The woman raised her head from the ground waveringly, like a crushed serpent, and plucked at his garments. There was a still, white-lipped babe at her breast. Her voice was like dried sticks rubbing together. He held the cup of water to her lips. “I am the widow of Madan Das, who is dead since the drouth,” she told him. “The white holy man carried me here, leaving the other on the road. This is my son--the son of Madan Das. There were two others, both girls, but they are dead since the drouth. Also the brother of my husband, who was a leper. My husband worked, but there has been no work since the drouth. First we sold the cow----” “My good mother, don’t try to talk,” Routledge said, as he lifted her into the hut, but she could not understand. As soon as he had placed her upon the matting, she took up the tale, thinking that she must tell it all. Her face was like dusty paper; her lips dried and stretched apart. Her hair had fallen away in patches, and her throat was like an aged wrist.