"It's all over at last."

"Oh, thank God!" she exclaimed fervently, standing erect and drawing a
deep breath of cool air into her labouring lungs. "I thought I was going
to be smothered."

"It was a decidedly unpleasant experience and one I don't want to try
again. My throat is parched; I must have swallowed tons of sand. And
look at the state I'm in!"

He was powdered thick with it, clothes, hair, eyebrows, grey with it. It
had caked on his face damp with perspiration.

"Thanks to your jacket I've escaped pretty well, although I was almost
suffocated," she said. "Well, now that it is over surely someone will
come to look for us."

"Then we had better get up on our horses and move out into the open.
We'll be more visible," said Wargrave.

Yet he felt a strange reluctance to quit the spot; for the thought came
to him that their unpleasant experience in it would henceforth be a link
between them. A few hours before he had not known of this woman's
existence! and now he had held her to his breast and tried to protect
her against the forces of Nature. The same idea seemed born in her mind
at the same time; for, when he had brushed the dust off her saddle and
lifted her on to it, she turned to look with interest at the spot as
they rode away from it.