Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/150

 I was quite certain that you were an angel. Didn't you wear a gold halo?"

Edith thought of the lamp that Mahmoud had held close to her hair, and for the first time in many days she laughed—from sheer amusement touched with real pleasure. "You worried me at first," she admitted—"talking about spirits. Indeed, I'm nothing at all angelic: I'm quite alive and real. I've told you my name, to prove it—Edith Rand."

"You are Edith Rand?" Donovan looked up in quick surprise. "Of course, I remember now you told me the name, part of it" He was silent, occupied with his thoughts. At such times, as the girl was beginning to notice, he seemed to forget her entirely. "But you are too young. Strange—I thought you were dead."

This remark startled her and she wondered if her patient was really free from fever. "Perhaps you are thinking of my mother," she responded gently. "She had my name and she left us many years ago. But she was never in India."

"Fate plays strange tricks," he said, and was silent again.

At this point Edith ended the talk by the simple expedient of leaving the couch.

It was the next day that Aravang brought an offering—the box containing the kit of Donovan. He set it down by the couch and departed. Edith had not thought to ask for the box—did not know, in fact, that it had reached Yakka Arik.

Donovan surveyed it curiously. It was a bright, sunny day and the fresh breeze swept the room, bearing with it the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle mingled with the fragrance of the pines. Something of