Moments passed:—an hour:—and still Oman knelt by the bed. Suddenly it seemed as if the Rajah’s breath was coming a little more easily, a little less terribly. Quickly he lifted his head, and looked. There was a change. Bhavani looked older, grayer, more shrunken. But his eyes were half unclosed, and he seemed to be in less pain. While Oman gazed, unable to speak, scarcely to think, a shadowy smile crossed the Rajah’s lips, and he began to murmur a few unintelligible words. Oman bent to catch them, and Bhavani’s eyes rested on his face. “Fidá,” he whispered, low, but distinctly: “we played together—with Ahalya—” “Yes. Yes!” answered Oman, hoarsely. “Brave things. Let us play again. I always Arjuna. Thou, O Fidá, Yudishthir, the King.—Ahalya, the beautiful Draupadi. I have won her from all the rest. But now—we are marching away—from Hastinapur. We are seeking heaven. It is a long journey. We reach the sea. Dost thou remember all the places, Fidá? Agni stops us awhile; and then—we come into the plain that leads to Himavan. I have read it many times. See,—they are gone, all of them! Nakula and Bhima and Draupadi are dead in the desert. But I go on alone into the hills—and—yes, this time he is there!—Sakra—O God!—I come!—Behold, I come!” Smiling, gasping out these words of one of his childhood’s games, that was, in fact, an epic of the pilgrimage of life, Bhavani, holy among men, slipped away out of existence, perhaps ascending in Sakra’s own chariot, that had so often awaited him in his young imagination. Till long after he knew that Bhavani was gone from him, Oman knelt there, by the bed, gazing blindly on the still, waxen face. Presently he became aware that there were others in the room. Slaves crept in and out, and brought doctors and officials, and those who were to care for the high dead. Then, dazed and bowed down with his weight of grief, Oman rose and passed out, through the palace, between little knots of whispering men who made way for him and looked after him, longing but not daring to question. He left the palace behind and went on to the duty that was his. The heart in him bled. There were no thoughts of help or of comfort in his brain; yet he knew that none but him could tell the woman of their common woe. So he turned toward the water-palace, where he was always admitted without delay. Zenaide was in the wide, central court of her dwelling, lying on a pile of cushions placed beside the marble pool. In her hand she held a piece of millet cake, which she had been crumbling for the fishes in the water. At Oman’s entrance, however, she rose, and went to him, hastily. As she looked into his face, Oman, without speaking, watched her expression change from gayety to wonder, and so to fear, till he knew that there was not much to put into words. Now she reached out both her hands, and Oman took them into his own. “Tell me,” she said, faintly. “Dost thou not know?” he asked, his voice seeming to him to come from another world.