“It was only to tell you how I loved you.  I always loved you.  From the first I was a different man when I was with you.  But of course it was absurd, I knew that well enough.  I never said anything, but I tried not to make myself ridiculous.  But I just want you to know about it now that it can’t matter one way or the other.  You’ll understand that I really do love you when I tell you that, if it were not that I knew you were frightened and unhappy, these last two days in which we have been always together would have been infinitely the happiest of my life.”

The girl sat pale and silent, looking down with wondering eyes at his upturned face.  She did not know what to do or say in the solemn presence of this love which burned so brightly under the shadow of death.  To her child’s heart it seemed incomprehensible—­and yet she understood that it was sweet and beautiful also.

“I won’t say any more,” said he; “I can see that it only bothers you.  But I wanted you to know, and now you do know, so it is all right.  Thank you for listening so patiently and gently.  Good-bye, little Sadie!  I can’t put my hand up.  Will you put yours down?”

She did so and Stephens kissed it.  Then he turned and took his place once more between Belmont and Fardet.  In his whole life of struggle and success he had never felt such a glow of quiet contentment as suffused him at that instant when the grip of death was closing upon him.  There is no arguing about love.  It is the innermost fact of life—­the one which obscures and changes all the others, the only one which is absolutely satisfying and complete.  Pain is pleasure, and want is comfort, and death is sweetness when once that golden mist is round it.  So it was that Stephens could have sung with joy as he faced his murderers.  He really had not time to think about them.  The important, all-engrossing, delightful thing was that she could not look upon him as a casual acquaintance any more.  Through all her life she would think of him—­she would know.

Colonel Cochrane’s camel was at one side, and the old soldier, whose wrists had been freed, had been looking down upon the scene, and wondering in his tenacious way whether all hope must really be abandoned.  It was evident that the Arabs who were grouped round the victims were to remain behind with them, while the others who were mounted would guard the three women and himself.  He could not understand why the throats of his companions had not been already cut, unless it were that with an Eastern refinement of cruelty this rearguard would wait until the Egyptians were close to them, so that the warm bodies of their victims might be an insult to the pursuers.  No doubt that was the right explanation.  The Colonel had heard of such a trick before.