as about.

There followed a few breathless moments of headlong galloping, during
which they swayed perilously from side to side, and were many times on
the verge of being overturned. Then, the ground rising steeply, the
mare's wild pace became modified, developed into a spasmodic canter,
became a difficult trot, finally slowed to a walk.

Fletcher pulled up altogether, and turned to the silent woman beside
him. "Mrs. Denvers, you are splendid!" he said simply.

She laughed rather tremulously. The tension over, she was feeling very
weak.

The _saice_ was already at the mare's head, and Fletcher let the reins
go. He dismounted without another word and went round to her side. Still
silent, he held up his hands to her and lifted her down as though she
had been a child. He was smiling a little, but he was still very pale.

As for Beryl, the moment her feet touched the ground she felt as if the
whole world had turned to liquid and were swimming around her in a
gigantic whirlpool of floating impressions.

"Ah, you are faint!" she heard him say.

And she made a desperate and quite futile effort to assure him that she
was nothing of the sort. But she knew that no more than a blur of sound
came from her lips, and even while she strove to make herself
intelligible the floating world became a dream, and darkness fell upon
her.

V

Gradually, very gradually, the mists cleared from Beryl's brain, and she
opened her eyes dreamily, and stared about her with a feeling that she
had been asleep for years. She was lying propped upon carriage-cushions
in the shade of an immense boulder, and as she discovered this fact,
memory flashed swiftly back upon her. She had fainted, of course, in her
foolish, weak, womanly fashion. But where was Major Fletcher? The heat
was intense, so intense that breathing in that prone position seemed
impossible. Gasping, she raised herself. Surely she was not absolutely
alone in this arid wilderness!

She was not. In an instant she realised this, and wonder rather than
fear possessed her.

There, squatting on his haunches, not ten paces from her, was the old
snake-charmer. His basket was by his side; his _chuddah_ drooped low
over his face; he sat quite motionless, save for a certain palsied
quivering, which she had observed before. He looked as if he had been in
that place and attitude for many years.

Beryl leaned her head upon her hand and closed her eyes. She was feeling
spent and sick