Vanamee stood by during the ceremony, but half conscious of what was going forward.

At the last moment he had stepped forward, looked long into the dead face framed in its plaits of gold hair, the hair that made three-cornered the round, white forehead; looked again at the closed eyes, with their perplexing upward slant toward the temples, oriental, bizarre; at the lips with their Egyptian fulness; at the sweet, slender neck; the long, slim hands; then abruptly turned about.

The last clods were filling the grave at a time when he was already far away, his horse's head turned toward the desert.
For two years no syllable was heard of him.

It was believed that he had killed himself.

But Vanamee had no thought of that.