"You are English?" he echoed. The fever in his blood was subsiding, but, like some great crisis, it was leaving him changed. It had swept him out of the world of languorous, enchanted dreams into a world of not less enchanted reality. "I fear I am presumptuous," she began again; "but are you not the Rajah? If so, I am certain you must be very, very angry. For the Rajah--so I have been told--does not love the English." She smiled again, meeting his unwavering gaze with a frank good-humor which for him was more wonderful even than her beauty. No woman--and for that matter, no man--had ever dared to look him in the eyes with such a laughing, fearless challenge. "Yes, I am the Rajah," he answered. Then, after a pause, he added with great simplicity, "You are very beautiful." She laughed outright, and the laugh, which rang like the peal of a silver bell through the vaulted chamber, filled him with a sudden sense of her danger. She stood with her back turned indifferently on the golden image, an Unbeliever whose shod feet were defiling the sacred precincts, an object, then, for hatred and revenge--not for him, truly. In his eyes she was still an emissary from Brahma, and thus in herself half sacred; but he knew well enough that such would not be the opinion of the few fierce priests who worshiped in the temple. "You are not safe here," he said, with an energy which was new to him. "Come!" He led her hurriedly out of the sanctuary into the great entrance hall. There he slackened speed and waited until she reached his side. "For a foreigner it is not safe to enter the temple," he explained. "Had any one but myself found you, I could not answer for the consequences." "They would have harmed me?" "It is possible." "That would have been terrible!" she said, glancing at him with eyes that expressed rather a daring courage than fear. "Most terrible," he assented earnestly. "Yet--you also, Your Highness, you have also the same reasons for anger. My intrusion, innocent though it was, must have been equally offensive to you." "No," he said. "That is quite different." He offered no further explanation, and together they passed out of the two immense gopuras into the evening sunshine. "I will bring you to the gates which lead on to the highroad," he went on. "Thence one of my servants will conduct you back to the town, where I trust you will find your friends." "You are most good," she answered gratefully.