So, as Marrion stood, trying to realise her position, it seemed impossible, unreal that she should be within touch of Marmaduke--if he were still there--if he were not dead. An indefinable sense of tragedy impending--tragedy that was not all grief, but which, by very excess of joy, of glory, of intensity, transcended the normal and so became almost fearful, seemed to hang round her. She ate the Turkish supper provided for her by the large fat shrill-voiced woman she found in charge; she lay down in the Turkish quilt arranged for her on a wooden bed and tried to leave all questionings for the morrow; but she could not sleep. The cry of the _muezzin_ from a minaret hard by divided the night into set portions. She lay and listened to it.
She knew what it meant--"Prayer is better than sleep." But she seemed unable to do either the one or the other.
Mercifully, again, the night was not long. Far away over the sea in the east the dawn began to break golden. It lit up the scarped hills above the woody slopes and slowly, like a white curtain, the mists of the valley lifted, showing the shiny levels of the inland lakes. Below her, at her feet, beyond the vine pergola set with purpling bunches of grapes that jutted against the blue distance, lay the town, a packed mass of red-tiled roofs and shingled outhouses, incoherent, barely cognisable. There lay her work; not over yonder where, like little heaps of lime, the white bell-tents outlined every hill.
Hark, the world was waking! From every side sounded the réveillé, echoing and re-echoing among the hills.
How many men had died that night whose ears would never more hear the call to duty! Was Marmaduke one of them?
Yes, the shadow of death lay on everything; but at least they were together in it.