Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/134

 matters. Had it not been for this racial inhibition, this artificial, typically Anglo-Saxon restraint, he would have told himself that, the very moment he saw Aziza Nurmahal, the very moment he heard her fantastic, incongruous greeting, the impression came to him that he had lived through all this before and that the answer to it was not in the princess' life, not in his own, not in any one individual's puny, negligible existence, but in the throbbing, eternal life of Asia.

He would have told himself that which, sub-psychically, he knew to be the truth: namely, that this Asia was not a mere Continent, steaming and flaunting and sweating beneath the coppery sun of the tropics, not a mere geographical or political term, but a Being; a giant Being, with pulses and feelings and motley ambitions of its own; and that he, Hector Wade, Englishman out of Sussex, and reputed card-cheater, was an integral part of this Being.

Thus his subconscious thoughts, those thoughts which he was ashamed to shape even in the secrecy and close intimacy of his own soul; while the princess clapped her hands and, a moment later, a tall, elderly Moslem, green turbaned, simply dressed, came into the room. There was something about him, less an actual, physical resemblance, than in his easy charm of manner and the strange, attractive mingling of kindliness and shrewdness that glistened in his eyes and played about his lips, which reminded Hector of Ali Yusuf Khan.

Aziza Nurmahal ran up to him, and took both his hands in hers.