Page:Talbot Mundy - Eye of Zeitoon.djvu/103

Rh and creeping things—and of man, who is lord of all of them, and woman, who is lord of man—man setting naked foot on naked earth and glorying with the thrill of life, new, good, and wonderful.

One of the Turk's seven sons produced a saz toward the end—a little Turkish drum, and accompanied with swift, staccato stabs of sound that spurred her like the goads of overtaking time toward the peak of full expression—faster and faster—wilder and wilder—freer and freer of all limits, until suddenly she left the thing unfinished, and the drum-taps died away alone.

That was art—plain art. No human woman could have finished it. It was innate abhorrence of the anticlimax that sent her, having looked into the eyes of the unattainable, to lie sobbing for short breath in her corner in the dark, leaving us to imagine the ending if we could.

And instead of anticlimax second climax came. Almost before the echoes of the drum-taps died among the dancing shadows overhead a voice cried from the roof in Armenian, and Kagig rose to his feet.

"Let us climb to the roof and see, effendim," he said, pulling on his tattered goat-skin coat.

"See what, Ermenie?" demanded Rustum Khan. The Rajput's eyes were still ablaze with pagan flame, from watching Maga.

"To see whether thou hast manhood behind that swagger!" answered Kagig, and led the way. No man ever yet explained the racial aversions.

"Kopek!—dog, thou!" growled the Rajput, but Kagig took no notice and led on, followed by Monty and the rest of us. Maga and the gipsies came last, swarming behind us up the ladder through a hole among the beams, and clambering on to the roof over boxes piled in the