Part of his trouble lay in the sad knowledge of Bhavani’s state. The beloved of Mandu was afflicted with a mortal disease, slow in its fatal progress, but so sure that no man knew of a single prayer, a single sacrifice, that could prove efficacious. Zenaide and Oman, much depending on each other, did not scruple to speak of the inevitable: the shadow of death that hovered daily over them. Zenaide grew strong, now. It was that strength of despair that upholds us at the last. Even Oman, knowing, as he did, her inmost heart, marvelled sometimes at the calm that possessed her. She was no longer young; but, unlike most of her race and class, middle age had not made her ugly. She had lived too well for that. Beauty of spirit, gathered during her years of painful youth, the time of her sacrifice, brought its reward, clothing her with a dignity and a serene beauty that mere happiness cannot give. Bhavani’s wife was dead: had died as she had lived, among her embroideries and her trivialities, regretting to the last the zenana life in which she had been brought up. Bhavani, always reverent toward her in life, felt no acute sorrow at her decease, and, after her burial, returned to his usual way of life, affecting nothing. There were still those in Mandu who wondered if he would not take to wife the woman to whom he had been far more devoted than ever he was to the daughter of Dhár. But Bhavani never entertained a thought of marrying her who had been the greatest courtesan in Malwa. Nor did Zenaide herself regard marriage as a possibility. Youth had passed both from her and from him who, all unknown to her, had passionately loved her. The fire of youth, quenched in its height, had found another life, had been transmuted into a deep and holy affection that demanded no closer bond than that of friendship. If the thought of marriage ever came to the woman, it was only with the wish that, in the suffering he endured almost constantly, she might comfort him as only women can. But Bhavani preferred to die as he had lived: austerely and alone. If he was aware how closely his people watched him, he gave no sign. Oman sometimes wondered if the Rajah dreamed of the storm that his marriage with Zenaide would have raised among the people. Only Oman, from his constant intercourse with the lower classes, knew how blindly and how bitterly the woman of the water-palace was still hated. But Oman himself, had the two chosen to unite themselves, would have uttered not one word of remonstrance:—would, indeed, have given his life in their defence. So had time changed his earlier, rigid views.