Five minutes after, trembling half with weakness, half from sheer hurry, Azîzan was on her way through the village wrapped in a white sheet snatched from the hut. What she was going to do she scarcely knew, just as she scarcely knew whither she was going. Though within a stone's-throw of her birthplace, the path down which she stumbled was as unfamiliar to her feet as the tempest of emotion was to her mind. A fever of excitement, anger, mistrust of everything and everybody surged through her veins. The road was silent, deserted; but even had it been thronged, the girl would not have hesitated. Amid all the confusion, but one thing was certain: Chândni must tell the truth; she must be found and made to tell the truth. But where? Yonder was the Mori gate; she had seen that before through the lattice, and that, at any rate, was a landmark. She would go there first and see. As she came within ear-shot of the tunnelled causeway, a woman's voice rang out in shrill laughter from the dark recesses to the right. Her first instinct was to pause; then second-thought made her keep straight on her way as if to pass through, till at the farther end of the causeway she turned suddenly to the left and sank down behind a plinth. It was as if a shadow had disappeared. A minute to regain her breath, and then she crept farther into the darkness, where, unless some belated gossipers should choose that side of the arch, she was secure. From over the way a clash of anklets and a low full voice, contrasting strangely with those high trills of laughter assured her that she had come straight upon her quarry. The rest was patience, till, sooner or later, the woman would be left alone. Sooner or later the laugh must cease; sooner or later even wickedness must tire and turn to sleep. So the girl sat crouched into herself in the curiously impassive attitude of her race, her thin arms round the thin knees whereon her small chin rested. Not a very startling sight outwardly; though, to describe what lay within is wellnigh an impossible task with an audience of Western ears; for Azîzan's knowledge would be to such ears incompatible with her ignorance, her jealousy and passion with her patience. Such an audience must remember an upbringing foreign to all their experience, and imagine her, still as a statue, though the blood raced like liquid fire in her limbs and throbbed like sledge-hammers in her temples. The moon, sinking slowly, sent a slanting yellow light through the dust-haze, visible beyond the arched causeway; the village dogs ceased one by one the nightly challenge to their fellows; yet, still the laugh went on. Would wickedness never tire? The wonder, and her own heart-beats lulled the girl to a drowsier patience. She woke to silence, and, standing up, strained eyes and ears into the shadows. Not a sound. She stole softly across the causeway, slipped into the recesses at the right, and listened again. A low breathing from one corner made her feel a way