Romney brooded long. He could feel the world a little—the different pulse that the Gobi had made him forget. He felt his relation to the Big Three and the world at large once more. The timeless repetitions of Rajananda came and went in his brain like the sounding of breakers; the letter from Nifton Bend contained intrinsically the fervour and courage that he held most dear from men of the world. He was called to a longer view of life than this present pit afforded. The great plan of it appeared. Out of the sorriest fall of his life had come the great meeting with his own woman. He pictured the wastrel in flapping white clothing that had sunk into the stoke-hold of the _John Dividend_ in Manila Harbour. Upon that day and that ship depended the night of the Cross in Nadiram and the night of the Crown in the desert—upon that darkest of beings, McLean, hung an issue of starry light, for had he not borrowed five pounds from that fence-faced marine, he would have been sent to Japan instead of the desert, where his woman waited. It was only the Terrible Now.... Romney slept. Anna Erivan came and went in his dreams. Once she was singing her _magnificat_ in the hill-country.... The next day, Romney told the story of his mission to Rajananda. For many hours they sat together on the mud-floor of the clay-walled and palm-thatched hut in Wampli. Rajananda lay covered in his yellow robe and listened, marking the symbols of God and the Holy Breath upon the dirt of the floor with a finger-nail like a twisted kernel of dried corn. Toward evening they broke their fast together, and Romney covered his face in his hands as he listened: "My son, you are strong. Yesterday you wanted death, but knew too much to die in the midst of gray hate and red desire. All is well with you to-day. Your eyes hold the light that sees afar off. That which you bring to me from the capital of the Empire is too great for the like of Rajananda whose thoughts are of God and not of men.... I see strange things. I see the empire of brotherhood as your white master envisions it, but it is not so near as he thinks—and his figure is not in the midst of it. We will journey on and place our story at the feet of Tsing Hsia, my stern brother in Rhadassim—a journey of five camel days into the west. Your heart is strong, my son. Your woman waits for you—" Five camel days.... There was an instant in which Romney almost asked for mercy. He would have done this the day before, but somehow he had turned back from the last ditch once more, clutching the very substance to live on from the Unseen—a bigger and silenter man than went out from Nadiram.... He asked the stars if his woman still lived. The next morning as the sun came up, he saw himself in the tin water basin—a darkly-wasted face, beaked like a Hindu of caste, and the eyes asked the same question.