“Faithless one,” she said, in a low, monotonous tone: “thou faithless, infinitely despised! Did I not give myself to thee, for thee committing the greatest sin? I loved thee, and my heart was true, and in thy long sickness by day and night I prayed to the gods for thee, vowing that, shouldst thou die, I would follow thee as becomes a widow; for in all ways I have considered myself thy true wife. And after thine illness, when I yearned unspeakably to comfort thee, didst thou come hither? didst send one word to me, that still live only in the thought of thee? Oh, tell me,” and her voice rose passionately, “who is thy new love? What is the name of her on whom thy traitor kisses fall? O thou wretched one—” her tone became a long, ungovernable wail, “O captive—O Fidá—hast thou forgotten me?” “For the soul of Allah, Ahalya, do not torture me! Ahalya, Ahalya—I am true to thee! Look at me!” Dropping his concealing cloak upon the floor, he stepped into the glow of light under the hanging-lamp, the pitiless rays of which fell directly across his emaciated and deathly face, out of which shone his eyes, glittering with fever. Ahalya gave a low exclamation, which he answered. “Yea, look upon my face. It is that of one that hath not much longer here. I have not told thee, thou beloved of my soul, of the curse that lies upon my race. That curse was given me by the Vindhyas on the last night that we loved. In my heart I know well that I am doomed. My strength is gone, and the weakness grows daily greater. Shall I bring this misery upon thee? Shall I—” But here he was stopped. Comprehending him at last, Ahalya, her eyes shining with new-found peace, went to him and put her arms about his wasted frame; and he, feeling no desire to resist, let himself be drawn down upon the divan, his head pillowed on her breast, her strong, young arms around him. “Beloved,” she murmured over him, and Fidá gave himself up to her. As he lay, passive, motionless, one of his hands wound in her curling hair, they talked together, scatteringly, of many things. Both of them understood that their burning days were forever at an end; that indeed of the quiet ones there were left not many. But, for the moment, Fidá could look upon the future without dread; and Ahalya was under the spell of too great a relief to face new calamity at once. Both knew, indeed, that the situation might have been infinitely worse. There might have come sudden parting:—death for one, for the other the torture of long waiting. Instead, the future was to be to them but a golden repetition of the golden past. And even now their companionship could be resumed, their love only growing the stronger as Fidá’s body became weak, since they were now bound by ties of truth and unselfishness that no misrepresentation or sorrow or suffering could break.