Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/76

 on the front page with a border all round of cards and dice and diaphanously dressed chorus girls and a jolly old headline about 'Younger Son of Earl of Dealle Implicated in Disgraceful Card Scandal.' I fancy you can imagine the rest. So I was rather thin-skinned. —how's that for Latin? Everything touched me on the raw, and I was more afraid of people's pity than of their contempt. You can sidestep contempt by shutting up. But pity … Why, it leaves you helpless.

“And then Ali Yusuf Khan's offer. As much money as I wanted, and yet it did not seem like charity. It seemed perfectly proper, and sort of on the cards, you see, preordained. Kismet, and all that, that at a moment's notice, at midnight, a few doors from Drury Lane, a mysterious incarnation out of the Arabian Nights whom I had never seen before should offer to lend me an exorbitant sum on a dusty old sword whose blade and hilt was inlaid with a blurred gold pattern. Rum, don't you think?”

“As much as you want, saheb,” repeated the old man. “It is for you to say.”

Hector was about to suggest fifty pounds, the amount that had dropped from his pocket, when he had a sudden revulsion of feeling. He took the blade from the other's hand.

“No!” he said, steadfastly. “Come what may, I shall not part with this. It would be like parting with …” he slurred and stopped; blushed slightly.

“Like parting with a piece of your soul?” the Asian gently suggested.