Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/265

 unmindful of the staring crowd, the princess put her slight arms about him.

“Al Nakia,” she whispered, “cousin mine—tell me! This foreign girl of whom the Babu spoke—is she …?”

Hector inclined his head without speaking. Dry eyed, vacant eyed, he stared at his feet.

“Cousin—cousin mine!”

Aziza Nurmahal did not say what she was going to say, perhaps did not know what she was going to say. She could not speak. Sympathy? To be sure, she felt sympathy with Hector. But she was too Oriental to attempt the impossible which a European would have tried: to grapple with another human's sentiments; to pronounce words of condolence or pity.

It would have seemed indelicate to her. For, in her psychology, grief and sorrow and pain were harsh things, lonely, cut-off things—invisible units of Fate which every man must bear alone, which no man can share; and typically Oriental, too, was she in her reactions, which were practically always mental, and not, as in a European, emotional.

Thus, when words finally came to her, they were soberly practical and constructive.

“The Babu spoke of two Afghans, one lean and the other fat. It is a wise thing to draw out the thorn in one's foot with the thorn in one's hand.”

“What dost thou mean?” asked Hector.

“That we have one of the—ah—'Afghans' here. The lean one, who turned out to be a Tamerlani, by the name of Abderrahman Yahiah Khan. Let us ask