"Look here, Guy!" She stopped in the middle of the road, and compelled him to turn and face her. "If you weren't such an old friend, and if I didn't know you were a good sort, I should never speak to you again. As it is, you must know we can't be on quite the same terms any more. But I should like you to understand, once and for all, that I love my husband, and because I love him it makes me wretched to think that I should have done anything to vex him. I have broken a promise and behaved like a senseless fool. Of course I shall tell him the whole thing, and I am not in the least afraid that he won't forgive me. But that doesn't make me feel any the less ashamed of myself." All the same, despite her brave words, Trixie was frightened as well as ashamed, and in her heart she knew that Guy had not only divined her fear, but that he shared it himself acutely. It was a blessed relief to them both to catch sight at this moment of a dark object moving slowly towards them along the road--Guy Greaves's trap, sent back by the rest of the party to meet them. In silence they got into the trap and jolted along the uneven road till they reached the metalled highway; then they spun swiftly, unhindered, towards the station. CHAPTER XI THE JUNGLE The sun beat fiercely down on the bed of the river, now dry save for streamlets meandering among the boulders, and encircling patches of sand that were dotted with birds of the long-shanked, long-billed brotherhood. It seemed hard to believe that a few weeks hence this arid, stone-strewn area would be swept by a mighty, tempestuous flood, rushing down from the hills in a volume so vast that nothing could stem its advance. Now the boulders shone round and smooth, and blinding white in the midday heat. They might have been cannon balls hurled by some Titan race in the ages past from the amphitheatre of hills at some foe in the valley beneath. The islets of sand sparkled like gold; indeed, gold dust was known to be mixed with their grains, though as yet whence it came was a secret no man had discovered; at least, if he had, the secret was kept by enchantment. There were stories of venturesome pilgrims, returning from far-away shrines in the mountains, found dead by the road that led back to the world, with nuggets of gold on their persons; no one had lived to return to the spot where he found them. The straggling line of elephants, lurching in leisurely progress across the bed of the river, showed like black blots among the boulders. The animals felt their footing with careful precision, splashing through narrow streams, avoiding the stretches of sand that might prove to be death-traps for ponderous beasts, tearing up wisps of scrub with their trunks and beating them free of dust before putting them into their mouths, or flinging them far in disdain.