enough breath even to question the girl. Nor had she, it seemed, fully regained consciousness, for hardly had she opened her eyes than she wearily closed them again. Ramesh found, however, on examination, that her breathing was unimpeded. For a long time he sat gazing at her in the pale moonlight. It was a strange environment for their first real meeting, this deserted spot between land and water, as it were between life and death.
Who had said that Susila was not good looking? The moonlight flooded the landscape with a glorious effulgence and the overarching sky seemed inimitably vast, yet all Nature's magnificence was in Ramesh's eyes but a setting for one little sleeper's face.
Everything else was forgotten. "I am glad now," reflected Ramesh, "that I did not look at her in the bustle and turmoil of the wedding. I should never have had a chance to see her as I see her now. By bringing her back to life I have made her mine much more effectually than by repeating the prescribed formulas of the marriage rite. By reciting the formulas I should merely have made her mine in the sight of men, whereas now I have taken her as the special gift of a kindly Providence!"
The girl recovered consciousness and sat up. She pulled her disordered clothing round her and drew the veil over her head.
"Do you know at all what happened to the others in your boat?" asked Ramesh.
She shook her head without a word.
"Would you mind being left alone for a few minutes while I go and search for them?" Ramesh went on. The girl did not answer but her shrinking body said plainer than words, "Don't leave me alone here!"
Ramesh understood her mute appeal. He stood up and gazed round him but there was no sign of life on the glistening waste of sand. He called to each of
