een the two bearers,
who, bewildered and helpless in the sudden storm, were groping
slowly across the plain. With a shriek they dropped the handles, as
Hamilton flung himself suddenly on the chair; the lantern fell into
the sand and went out. The natives, thinking the devil, the actual
spirit of the storm, had overtaken them, fled howling into the
blackness, their cries swallowed up like whispers in the roar of
the wind. As the chair struck the sand, the woman within thrust her
head with a cry through the open side. Hamilton seized it by the
neck. Out! out of the sedan chair, through the burst-open door, he
pulled the wretched creature by her head, and then flung her with
all his force upon the sand.

The raging wind swept past them in sheets of dust, bellowing as it
went. He knelt on her body; his hands ground into her neck. Through
the darkness he saw beneath him the thin, white oval of the face,
with its eyes bulging, starting out of the head, its lips writhing
in agony; two white hands beat helplessly in the black air beside
him. He looked hard into her eyes, bending down to her close, very
near, as his hands sank deeper into her neck, his fingers locked
more tightly round it. In a few seconds the light of the eyes went
out, the hands ceased to beat the air. Saidie was avenged. With a
laugh that rang out into the noise of the storm, the man got up
from the limp body and stood by it, in the echoing darkness. Then
he kicked it, so that it rolled over, and the sand came up in
waves eager to bury it.

In an hour woman, sedan chair, lantern would all be beneath a level
plain of sand.

He turned back towards the bungalow. "Saidie," he murmured, and the
storm-wind seemed to rave "Saidie!" "Saidie!" round him, to whirl
the name upwards to the dim stars, glimmering one here and there,
far off and veiled in the heavens. He went back; the wind helped
him. On its wings he seemed borne back to his house, through the
tortured garden, through the gaping doorway, over the shattered
door he passed, and then up the stairs to their room.

After the inferno of the desert the inside of the house seemed
quiet, and in their room the lamps burned steadily, but low. Their
oil was used up, their life, like his, was nearly done. The bed
stood there and on its calm white stillness lay Saidie, waiting for
him, for him alone, as always.

He went up to her and stood there.

"Saidie?" but she did not answer. He lay down beside her gently,