while scarcely realizing what she did. But for the most part she
remained in that state of awful quiescence, the inertia of one about
whom the toils of a pitiless Fate were closely woven. There was no
escape for her. She knew that there could be no escape. She had been
caught trespassing in a forbidden paradise, and she was about to be
thrust forth without mercy.

High up on a shelf of naked rock their guide stood and waited--a ragged,
incongruous figure against the purity of the new day. The early sun had
barely topped the highest mountains, but a great gap between two mighty
peaks revealed it. As Stella pressed forward, she came suddenly into the
splendour of the morning.

It affected her strangely. She felt as Moses must have felt when the
Glory of God was revealed to him. The brightness was intolerable. It
seemed to pierce her through and through. She was not able to look upon
it.

"Excellency," the stranger said, "it was here."

She moved forward and stood beside him. Quiveringly, in a voice she
hardly recognized as her own, she spoke. "You were with him. You brought
him here."

He made a gesture as of one who repudiates responsibility. "I,
excellency, I am the servant of the Holy Ones," he said. "I had a
message for him. I knew that the Holy Ones were angry. It was written
that the white _sahib_ should not tread the sacred ground. I warned him,
excellency, and then I left him. And now the Holy Ones have worked their
will upon him, and lo, he is gone."