Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/260

 the Gengizkhani, had driven him across the world!

English out of Sussex he was. Yet this land, too, was his! This land—and its destinies!

Instinctively, he had taken the princess' hand. Now he dropped it, letting the softly clinging fingers slip from his own, as, clear through the other thoughts, cut a minor thought, disturbing, disconcerting.

“Why didn't the Hajji explain the prophecy to me?” he asked. “Why did he let me go—oh—blindfolded?”

The princess shook her head.

“I don't know, Al Nakia,” she replied. “But, doubtless, his reasons were good and wise. Whatever they were, they were just. For, always, has the lamp of his knowledge made clear the path from hearth stone to byre. And to-day—see!—the prophecy of my clan has been fulfilled, all but …” she smiled a little self-consciously, slurred and stopped.

Hector, too, smiled—a frankly boyish smile.

“Thou meanest that about the—wooing of the swords?”

“Yes.”

“Too bad,” he rejoined, uncompromisingly English for all his Persian phraseology. “Too bad that thy heart, Aziza Nurmahal, and mine are not hushed in the same sweet dream, that my heaven is not fulfilled in thy soul and body, nor thy heaven in mine.”

“Then,” asked the princess, just a little mischievously, “thou lovest—somebody else?”