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“Money is on the lips of the liar,” cried Aziza Nurmahal, while the Sheik-ul-Islam murmured piously, clicking the wooden beads of his rosary, that money is an infidel sect and the pavement on the bitter, jagged road to damnation.

“Money is a most evil stench in the nostrils of man kind,” he added, with a Moslem's unblushing hypocrisy, “but it is sweet ambergris when handled by a wise and good priest, familiar with the lessons of the Koran.” He coughed, rather self-consciously, as he caught Koom Khan's stony eye.

The princess leaned forward. Her left hand clutched the scepter of the Gengizkhani, while her right was about the hilt of the straight, simple sword that had rested across the knees of the dead Ameer during the funeral procession, and the soul of the naked steel seemed to reach out and touch her own soul, to sluice it with an ancient and crunching energy.

“Right or wrong,” she said, “I have decided. I do not want to grant concessions. I do not want the money of the foreigners without the advice of the Itizad el-Dowleh. It is wicked money—money that fills our ears with the raucous clamor of strife …”

“Speaking about ears,” sententiously from the Armenian, “it has been said that a hungry belly has no ears.”

“Right,” said the governor of the eastern marches; “without money, I am a rogue; with money, I am God.”

“Thou art always a rogue—with money, or without,” gently opined his twin brother.