“His father—oh, my master! my noble master! he is going, too! Come and see. Tsayah!”
“Who sent for me?”
“Your handmaid, sir.”
“Not the Sah-ya?”
The woman shook her head. “The agony was on him—he could not have sent, if he would.”
“But how dared you?”
There was a look such as might have been worn by the martyrs of old upon the woman’s face as she expressly answered, “God was here!”
In the next apartment lay the fine figure of the Sah-ya, stretched upon a couch, evidently in the last stage of the fearful disease—his pain all gone.
“It grieves me to meet you thus, my friend,” remarked the visitor, by way of testing the dying man’s consciousness.
The Sah-ya made a gesture of impatience. Then his fast stiffening lips stirred, but they were powerless to convey a sound; there was a feeble movement, as though he would have pointed at something, but his half-raised finger wavered and sunk back again; and a look of dissatisfaction amounting to anxiety passed over his countenance. Finally renewing the effort, he succeeded in laying his two hands together, and with some difficulty lifted them to his forehead; and then quietly and calmly closed his eyes.