Romney could not feel his real life. The pain across his chest had returned. At intervals he talked with the _boy_, who answered patiently, but could give no more than has been said. The white man felt the repetitions, halted in shame, remembering suddenly that he had asked in regard to certain matters many times before—yet his mind would come up from its black depth with the same question again. At times he was childish. He would have taken Bamban’s hand if it were night. He thought often of Nadiram as a safe place. It would be heaven to ride on to Wampli—if Anna Erivan were safely back in the Consulate. He had not been strong enough to leave her there! ... Now Anna Erivan was in the hands of the Dugpas, at the mercy of a desert band—carried away by dark men who frothed at the lips.... Often his face turned back. Once he broke out laughing. It was toward the end of the day.... Bamban talked to him after that—told the story again and again without questions, making him listen. Their little band halted for the evening. They meant to reach Wampli the next afternoon. The sun was down, but the sky filled with afterglow—the south still brazen, the east dull, the west ablaze, the north a cool blue-green of pasture-lands. Many times Bamban asked his master to sip the tea. Food was not to be thought of. At last the servant followed the white man’s eyes, which were lost in the south. "What do you see?" Bamban whispered. "It has the look of a low-flying swan to me." Bamban saw the flash of white against the sky. It was like developing a plate. A superb camel cleared in the heightening glow, all shadows and distances falling away—a mighty dromedary, pure white, lean and tall in dull gold trappings. Bamban could only think of the words of his master—a low-flying swan. The Dugpas arose in strange formation. Straight to them that long snarling head—then the voice from the basket, the halt, the kneeling.... It was a huge round basket like a bowl. The driver touched his forehead to the ground before them, then toward the east, then toward the camel. He arose and, stepping lightly with bare foot upon the shoulder of the dromedary, glanced with deepest reverence over the rim of the basket. At that moment, Romney saw again the shrunken, shaven skull—touched with evening now, the eyes lifting dully from deep sleep. "It’s Rajananda," eagerly whispered Bamban. "It’s quite all right now for us. It’s as I thought—he is the master of all in these parts!" "Rajananda—" Romney repeated. The driver, still standing upon the camel’s shoulder, caught the hem of the great yellow robe in his hand and beckoned the American to stand beside him and take the other. It was thus that Rajananda was lowered to the ground in his blanket—very gentle that delivery, as two storks would perform upon unsuspecting parents in the stillest hour.