"But your hair—your harness—even your figure belies your claim."
She laughed gayly. That, I was to find later, was one of her chiefest charms—that she could laugh so easily, yet never to wound.
"My voice betrayed me," she said. "It is too bad."
"Why is it too bad?" I asked.
"Because you would have felt better with a fighting man as a companion, whereas now you feel that you have only a burden."
"A light one," I replied, recalling how easily I had lifted her to the thoat's back. "But tell me who you are and why you are masquerading as a boy."
"I am a slave girl," she said; "just a slave girl who has run away from her master. Perhaps that will make a difference," she added a little sadly. "Perhaps you will be sorry that you have defended just a slave girl."
"No," I said, "that makes no difference. I, myself, am only a poor padwar, not rich enough to afford a slave. Perhaps you are the one to be sorry that you were not rescued by a rich man."
She laughed. "I ran away from the richest man in the world," she said. "At least I guess he must have been the richest man in the world, for who could be richer than Tul Axtar, Jeddak of Jahar?"
"You belong to Tul Axtar, Jeddak of Jahar?" I exclaimed.