Part 34 (1/2)
even as I am thine, if thou wilt take do back her head and uorous beneath their heavy silken lashes ”Yea, I a! Wilt thou cast me aside, then, who am faint with love for thee? Never hast thou dreamed of love such as the love that I bear for thee How could it be otherwise, when thou hast passed thy days in the chill exile of the North? O ether and stood away ”Madam,” he said with an absurdly formal bow, ”I am not your husband”
She opened her arms with infinite allure ”It is so little that is asked of thee--only to ascend thy father's throne and be honoured of all Bharuta, only to wield the sceptre that is thine by right, only to reign an undisputed king in two kingdoms--Khandawar and thy Naraini's heart!”
”I am very sorry,” he returned with the same preciseness ”It is quite iether out of your calculations It may not have occurred to you that the Supre to say about the conterin, and the look she flashed to his face was anything but kind and tender ”_Arre!_” she laughed derisively ”And of what account is this frail, tottering Sirkar's will besides the Will of the Body? Of what avail its dicta against the rulings of the Bell? Thou knowest--”
”Pardon, I know nothing I have told thee, Ranee, that I am not Har Dyal Rutton”
She was ht to a standstill on the one line of attack, she diverged to another without the quiver of an eyelash to betray her discomfiture
”Yea, thou hast told me,” she purred ”But I, Naraini, _I_ knohat I know Thou dost deny thyself even as thou dost deny ?”
”If you've anyuse of it, Ranee”
”There is the test of the Token, _Lalji_”
”I a that was brought to thee, the signet of thy House Surely thou hast it with thee?”
Since that night in Calcutta A the Token in the chaiven him for a special purpose, which had been frustrated by the death of Dhola Baksh, so that he had no further use for it, he decided against the counsels of prudence ”What's the odds,” he asked hi--it's broughtbut trouble, thus far” And he thrust a hand within his shi+rt and brought forth the emerald ”Here it is,” he told the woer--so, even upon thy little finger, as was thy father's ith it Now lift up thine arm, so, and turn the stone to the west, toward Kathiapur”
Without coht ar the emerald to the quarter indicated by Naraini
The hour had drawn close upon dawn A cold air breathed down the valley and was chill to the towards the rilobe of dull silver, upon the ridge of a far, dark hill As they watched it dropped out of sight and everything was suddenly very bleak and black
And a curious thing happened
Naraini cried out sharply--”_Aho_!”--as if unable to contain her excite boomed like thunder
A pause ensued, disturbed only by the fluttering of the wo happened Then Naraini's fingers closed like bands of steel about Amber's left wrist
”See!” she cried in a voice of ahile the bracelets shi+vered and clashed upon her outstretched ar, the Eye!”
Amber shut his teeth upon an exclae, uncannily brilliant in the void of the pale, ht, winking and stabbing the darkness with shafts of see, lord--look! The Token!”
The great eht Naraini called the Eye; in the stone's depths an infernal fire leaped and died and leaped again, now luridly blazing, now fitfully a-quiver as though about to vanish, again strong and steady: even as the light of the strange eh the night
Naraini shuddered and cried out guardedly for very fear ”By Indur, it is even as the Voice foretold! Nay, Heaven-born”--she caught his sleeve and forcibly pulled down his hand--”tempt not the Unseen further And put away this Token, lest abefall us There be mysteries that even we of the initiate may not comprehend, my lord It is not well to er now and the wo it into his coat-pocket with tremulous hands And where the Eye had shone, the sky was blank They stood in darkness, A to his arhtened, lord of arden, for I am but a woman and afraid Who am I, Naraini, to see the Eye? What am I, a oman, to trespass upon the Mysteries? I am very much afraid
Do thou take !” She drew his arm about her waist, fir subtly to his, her head drooping wearily upon his shoulder
They hted walks of the garden, the woman apparently content, Amber preoccupied--to tell the truth,to confess As for the intimacy of their attitude, he was temporarily careless of it; it uessed It seems likely that she inferred a conquest from his indifference, for when they had coold-fish beneath the banian she slipped from his embrace and confronted him with a face afire with elation