The hour was advancing. The line of clouds above the northeast hills changed from pale pink to a fiery rose-color that shed a glow over the whole plateau, and haloed the man who stood, with his white-clothed arms upraised, drinking in the purity around him. When at last the sun pushed its edge over the horizon, it was invisible to Fidá; but he knew, from the gradual disappearance of the delicate vapors, from the sudden quieting of the birds, the _sense_ of day, that the mystic dawn was over. Then, at last, Fidá realized suddenly that he was faint with weariness and parched with thirst. Slowly he took his way back to the palace, thinking not at all, only passively longing for rest. His walk over, he stopped for a moment at the well, then went at once to his own room, and, thankfully remembering that every one would rise late to-day, threw himself on his bed and sank into another stupor-like sleep. How long it was before he regained a vague consciousness, he did not know; but he found two men standing over him, and one he recognized as the Rajah. The sight of his face caused Fidá a dull surprise; but he returned into the stupor without having uttered a word. After that his rest seemed to be broken by various dire sensations and many monstrous dreams. When his eyes opened, he always found Ahmed, and sometimes Churi, near at hand; and, comforted by their presence, realizing that, with them, delirium would be safe, he resigned himself. He knew that he was very ill. Every one else knew it. Churi was exerting his utmost skill; though he never once thought of the ruby. It did not remotely occur to him to try that as a remedy. Three or four weeks passed away, and then the fever abated a little, and gradually it came to be understood that the Rajah’s favorite slave would live. By degrees his strength, wofully depleted by the reckless strain he had put upon it for so long, came back; and by the end of January he made a feeble appearance again. He soon discovered that his sickness had not been thought unusual by any one, since in his ravings he had betrayed the fact that he had spent a night on the ground near the water palace. Indeed, it would have been strange if the fever that lurks in all damp night mists in western India had not made him a victim of his own imprudence.