They set forward again, and went on for many hours at a rate of progress terribly slow to the young rajah's excited nerves. He was on the strain of expectation. Over and over again he would pull Bâl Narîn up short and make him listen to the mysterious whisperings and flutterings that he had heard himself. But the experienced guide could explain them all. He said, moreover, that it was impossible they could be found here. Not even an Aswalia could have his dwelling in the midst of such a region. And Tom tried to control himself. It was immeasurably hard. All day long--and never so much as now--he was haunted by a sick dread of that failure at the very moment of what might, with a little foresight, have been transcendent success which makes uncertain enterprises so nerve-harrowing. If she were near him and he passed her by--if, from her hiding-place, she could hear the very tramp of their horses, and, thinking they were enemies, plunge more deeply into the jungle! For so it might be. There was no argument of Bâl Narîn, to whom he poured out his fears, which could persuade him that he was cherishing a phantom fear. Then sometimes, as I have heard, it would come over him with sharp throbbing of pain that he was wrong, and that these were right. It was madness--nay, it was the very insanity of folly--to imagine that, wandering in this haphazard way without chart or compass, he would ever succeed in finding her. She was dead! dead! dead! And if he were near her, or if he were far away, what could it matter? The dead hold no commune with the living. By day and by night the awful word rang in his ears. Bâl Narîn heard him repeating it. Dead! Grace was dead--all her loveliness and sweetness--all her heroism and patience--with the love and passion and tenderness unutterable that she had inspired in the hearts of others--gone!--lost to the earth for ever and ever and ever! There were moments in those awful days when his soul went out beyond the limits of its own despair, and when abysses of sorrow--fathomless as the graves in which our beloved be buried--would seem to open out before his feet. Mad! Was he mad? No, he would say to himself: it was the world--dull of eye and ear--insensible--suffering itself to be shrouded with the veil of spiritual blindness which nature throws round her human children, as she woos them softly to fulfil her behests--the world was mad--he was sane. To him, in his anguish, the anguish of the universe had been revealed--a pandemonium of woe that made him sicken and tremble and cry out for Death, even the Death of eternity, to release him from the torturing memory. But, miserable as his thoughts were, they did not delay his steps. Guided by Bâl Narîn he plodded on quietly hour after hour.