Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/176



“I say, tell me what all this drivel about swords and prophecies signifies—there's a dear!”

But the freedom and comradeship of the open road had ceased the moment she had set foot in the palace of the Gengizkhani, and once more she had become the Oriental princess, hedged in by ancient customs, submitting to the traditions of purdah and harem, of veil and woman's seclusion, putting aside the former only when she was surrounded by her servants and eunuchs, and never seeing him without palace officials and courtiers hovering about—and listening.

Thus Hector had never an opportunity of asking her, and found himself in the awkward and, from his straight-grained English point of view distasteful, predicament of forever playing a rôle, forever, silently, indirectly, admitting that he was perfectly familiar with a mystery of which in reality he hardly under stood the outer fringes.

Tamerlanistan accepted him and though, naturally, amongst the older generation there were many who grumbled a little, who criticized, who compared him, of course unfavorably, with Hajji Akhbar Khan, Itizad el-Dowleh, the younger men praised the superior wisdom of the new prime minister, Al Nakia, the Sadr Azem.

He was not one of those cocksure Europeans and Americans who, delegated by circumstance to rule over Asiatics, decide immediately that all their traditions and customs are wrong and must therefore be promptly changed.

He knew that the thing which the Oriental dislikes