She leaned against him. "Wherever I go, trouble follows. Haven't you noticed it? It seems as if--as if--whichever way I turn--a flaming sword is stretched out, barring the way." Her voice suddenly quivered. "I know why,--oh, yes, I know why. It is because once--like the man without a wedding-garment, I found my way into a forbidden paradise. They hurled me out, Everard. I was flung into a desert of ashes. And now--now that I have dared to approach by another way--the sentence has gone forth that wherever I pass, something shall die. That dreadful man--told me on the day that Ralph was taken away from me--that the Holy Ones were angry. And--my dear--he was right. I shall never be pardoned until I have--somehow--expiated my sin." "Stella! Stella!" He broke in upon her sharply. "You are talking wildly. Your sin, as you call it, was at the most no more than a bad mistake. Can't you put it from you?--get above it? Have you no faith? I thought all women had that." She looked at him strangely. "I wasn't brought up to believe in God," she said. "At least not personally, not intimately. Were you?" "Yes," he said. "Ah!" Her eyes widened a little. "And you still believe in Him--still believe He really cares--even when things go hopelessly wrong?" "Yes," he said again. "I can't talk about Him. But I know He's there." She still regarded him with wonder. "Oh, my dear," she said finally, "are you behind me, or a very, very long way in front?" He smiled faintly, grimly. "Probably a thousand miles behind," he said. "But I have been given long sight, that's all." She rose to her feet with a sigh. "And I," she said very sadly, "am blind." Down by the gate the blue jay laughed again, laughed and flew away. CHAPTER III THE BEAST OF PREY In a darkened room Netta Ermsted lay, trembling and unnerved. As usual in cases of adversity, Mrs. Ralston had taken charge of her; but there was very little that she could do. It was more a matter for her husband's skill than for hers, and he could only prescribe absolute quiet. For Netta was utterly broken. Since the fatal moment when she had returned from a call in her 'rickshaw to find Major Burton awaiting her with the news that Ermsted had been shot on the jungle-road while riding home from Khanmulla, she had been as one distraught. They had restrained her almost forcibly from rushing forth to fling herself upon his dead body, and now that it was all over, now that the man who had loved her and whom she had never loved was in his grave, she lay prostrate, refusing all comfort. Tessa, wide-eyed and speculative, was in the care of Mrs. Burton, alternately quarrelling vigorously with little Cedric Burton whose intellectual leanings provoked her most ardent contempt, and teasing the luckless Scooter out of sheer boredom till all the animal's ideas in life centred in a desperate desire to escape.