here,” I replied. “I do not want to leave Maurice just now.”
“But why not now as well at another time? You often leave him with Walla for hours together.”
“I do not know. I have strange feelings about Maurice to-night. It seems to me that a change is at hand; that before many hours the monotony of our existence here, which has been so irksome to us both, will be broken. I cannot explain my feelings, but I am determined to remain where I am.”
He raised no objection. He seldom did that now to anything, but turned to Padma and translated my reply.
Nor had the old lama, rather to my surprise, any objection to offer.
“What I am about to do can as well be done here as elsewhere,” he answered. “I leave you now, but I shall return presently. Remain as you are and try and bring your minds into a state of perfect quiescence.”
Thus saying Padma retreated, leaving the Doctor and myself to discuss the best methods of becoming quiescent—rather a difficult matter under the circumstances.
Walla at the time was seated upon the sandy floor close to the shelf of rock where Maurice’s body lay. She seldom spoke in these days, but seemed to live only in the contemplation of those cold, white features. Sincerely I pitied the girl. Far better for her would it have been had she remained among her own people. The education which she had received had done nothing for her but to make her discontented with the sphere in which her lot was cast, and foster within her hopes and aspirations impossible of realization; for what could she ever be to Maurice or Maurice to her, even if the miracle we hoped for should be accomplished and that body rise again?
How little the best of us can comprehend the future. What spiritual relation Maurice bore to poor Walla, God alone can tell; that her work for him was to be of the utmost importance will be seen before my story is at an end.
In less than ten minutes Padma was back again, and with him came a young lama whose name I have striven in vain to remember. He carried in his arms a heap of argols—part of the stores of the caves—which he flung down upon the sand with a sigh of relief.
“Are the others not to be with us?” asked the Doctor.
