Toward the middle of the summer, certain business interests called Dick
to North Dakota, and then life was duller than ever.
Therefore it was a not wholly unwelcome diversion when, late on an
August afternoon, she saw the thick laurels of the hedge near her part a
little and the form of Ram Juna stand in the cleft, snowy white from
turban to slippers save for the gleaming ruby and the polished bronze
face. He looked like the day itself, glowing, sultry, indolent.
"Pardon me, dear lady," he said, "that through the bush I spied you. I
was solitary. You are solitary. The heat suits not with the severer
thought. The weak body refuses to yield to the commands of mind. I fail
to write; and perhaps you fail to read."
"I guess your thinking is harder work than my reading. Won't you come
over and sit down?" said Lena cordially.
"Then you, like me, would welcome companionship?"
"Yes. Isn't this a nice shady place?" Lena answered. "The maid is just
bringing me some iced drinks, and I dare say they'll taste good to you
if you have been trying to write that wonderful book of yours in all
this blaze."
The Hindu pushed the hedge still farther asunder and swept with a sigh
of content over to a cushioned reclining chair.
"If one's heart were set on the things that fade, what greater
satisfaction? Shadow, deep shadow from the heat, cool drafts, the voice
of a fair woman."
"You must not count me among the things that fade, though," laughed
Lena, as she handed him a tall glass of clinking fragrance. "I shan't
like you a bit if you do."
"Everything fades, the rose, the lady, even thought, which is after all
but a grub on the tree of truth. All, all fade."
"I wish you wouldn't talk that way," objected Lena. "You make me feel
quite creepy."
"Ah," said Ram Juna, "you love the things of to-day. To me the thought
that all is transitory is bliss. Is it not so?"
"Yes," said Lena, "I'm sure I like roses and jewels and iced minty stuff
to drink. And Ram Juna, I wish you would tell me the really-truly
history of your ruby. I've heard so many stories about it." He put up
his hand, detached the great jewel from its place and laid it in her
small outstretched palm.
"That is a mark of my confiding," he said. "There are few to whom I
would give to handle my treasure. It may truly be called a stone of
blood. Such angry storms of greed and passion, such murders of father by
son and husband by wife link their story to it. And now it rests at last
on the head of a man of peace. For how long? For how long?" Lena looked
at it with the eyes of fascination as it lay in her open hand.