“Hanani,” she said, “I don’t quite understand everything.  How did you get me here?”

Hanani’s veiled head was bent.  She turned it towards her slowly, almost reluctantly it seemed to Stella.

“I carried you, mem-sahib,” she said.

“You—­carried—­me!” Stella repeated the word incredulously.  “But it is a long way—­a very long way—­from Kurrumpore.”

Hanani was silent for a moment or two, as though irresolute.  Then:  “I brought you by a way unknown to you, mem-sahib,” she said.  “Hafiz—­you know Hafiz?—­he helped me.”

“Hafiz!” Stella frowned a little.  Yes, by sight she knew him well.  Hafiz the crafty, was her private name for him.

“How did he help you?” she asked.

Again Hanani seemed to hesitate as one reluctant to give away a secret.  “From the shop of Hafiz—­that is the shop of Rustam Karin in the bazaar,” she said at length, and Stella quivered at the name, “there is a passage that leads under the ground into the jungle.  To those who know, the way is easy.  It was thus, mem-sahib, that I brought you hither.”

“But how did you get me to the bazaar?” questioned Stella, still hardly believing.

“It was very dark, mem-sahib; and the budmashes were scattered.  They would not touch an old woman such as Hanani.  And you, my mem-sahib, were wrapped in a saree.  With old Hanani you were safe.”

“Ah, why should you take all that trouble to save my life?” Stella said, a little quiver of passion in her voice.  “Do you think life is so precious to me—­now?”

Hanani made a protesting gesture with one arm.  “Lo, it is yet night, mem-sahib,” she said.  “But is it not written in the sacred Book that with the dawn comes joy?”

“There can never be any joy for me again,” Stella said.

Hanani leaned slowly forward.  “Then will my mem-sahib have missed the meaning of life,” she said.  “Listen then—­listen to old Hanani—­who knows!  It is true that the baba cannot return to the mem-sahib, but would she call him back to pain?  Have I not read in her eyes night after night the silent prayer that he might go in peace?  Now that the God of gods has answered that prayer—­now that the baba is in peace—­would my mem-sahib have it otherwise?  Would she call that loved one back?  Would she not rather thank the God of spirits for His great mercy—­and so go her way rejoicing?”

Again the utterance was too full of tenderness to give her pain.  It sank deep into Stella’s heart, stilling for a space the anguish.  She looked at the strange, draped figure beside her that spoke those husky words of comfort with a dawning sense of reverence.  She had a curious feeling as of one being guided through a holy place.