It was some time past midnight when Fidá, baffled and exhausted, returned to his antechamber, and, wrapping himself in his white cloak, lay down on the floor. Weary as he was, he could not sleep at once, but lay for a little while thinking profitlessly on what he had done. Fate had twice given him that which he had not sought. But now, trying to circumvent Fate, he had been doubly defeated; for, had he been where he should that evening, Ahalya, in her reckless search, must have come upon him. This, happily, he did not know; but he was none the less unrighteously angry at his failure to find out something, even the smallest, of her habits. _Her_ habits! Reason, which he had persistently smothered, rose up against him, and began to lay before him certain grim truths. This woman, of whom his nearly every waking thought was now composed, was a Ranee—a queen, a wife. To her he was an outcast, and yet he had dared to lift his thoughts to her. Fool that he was, he had got himself into a state men called love! What love could be more unholy than his? She was a Ranee. But, argued his other self, he was himself a prince by birth, and the actual head of a great race. Nevertheless, this race of his was a strangely unhappy one; and he, Fidá, had, all his life till now, persistently avoided women; for to his family women were fatal. He had taken the highest pride in his reputation for coldness, for chastity, for temperance. At sixteen he had left Yemen to put himself under the guardianship of his uncle,—a power at the court of Delhi; and, upon his departure for India, he had vowed lifelong devotion to the extension of the Prophet’s power; and had determined to allow no human temptation to conquer him. This present matter, however, he protested, was no temptation. It was even most unlikely that he should see the woman again, considering the difference in their present stations. Nevertheless, after a little more chaotic thinking, Fidá took from a certain secure hiding-place in his vestment a tiny golden box, scarcely half an inch square, fastened by a minute spring. Without opening it, he clasped this box closely to his breast; and, as if it held some magic power, under its pressure he grew calm again, his brain ceased to throb, sleep stole upon him, and little by little his hold on it relaxed, till at last his hand fell from his breast and his treasure rolled upon the floor. Fidá’s awakening was sudden. The tones of a loud voice, calling confusedly, mingled themselves with his dreams. Then he sprang to his feet to find the Rajah standing over him, in a most dishevelled state, crying to him to bring drinking-water, instantly. And Fidá, startled and sleepy, hurried away on his errand.