The rays of the setting sun, darting under the spreading branches, rested on the white-robed figure sitting with head thrown back in stiff dignity, on the thin hands moving uneasily, and on the stolid face with its eyelids dropped over the destroyed eyeballs; a face set into the immobility of a plaster cast yellowed by age.
"Is the sun near its setting ?" asked Omar, in a dull voice.
"Very near," answered Babalatchi.
"Where am I?
Why have I been taken away from the place which I knew--where I, blind, could move without fear?
It is like black night to those who see.

And the sun is near its setting--and I have not heard the sound of her footsteps since the morning! Twice a strange hand has given me my food to-day.

Why?
Why?
Where is she ?" "She is near," said Babalatchi.
"And he ?" went on Omar, with sudden eagerness, and a drop in his voice.
"Where is he?
Not here.

Not here!" he repeated, turning his head from side to side as if in deliberate attempt to see.
"No! He is not here now," said Babalatchi, soothingly.

Then, after a pause, he added very low, "But he shall soon return." "Return! O crafty one! Will he return?
I have cursed him three times," exclaimed Omar, with weak violence.
"He is--no doubt--accursed," assented Babalatchi, in a conciliating manner--"and yet he will be here before very long--I know!" "You are crafty and faithless.