"I wist not, woman, thou wert widow," he said sternly. "As a rule thy dress----"
Thinking he blamed her--and blame from him meant all things--she was quick in explanation. "The Most-Auspicious is right," she almost interrupted, "but he to whom I was wedded as a babe proved vile; so my father--praise be to the Gods!--withheld me from him utterly. Yet these few years past, that the man's evil body is dead, I come hither to ransom his soul."
The answer fitting so aptly with Akbar's previous thoughts roused his instant curiosity.
"Wherefore?" he asked, his keen face lighting up with interest as he seated himself once more. "Sit yonder, sister, at my feet and tell me, wherefore?"
"Because he was my husband," came the almost aggressively quick reply. "And a wife is bound to her husband in Life and in Death."
Akbar smiled--the foibles of his world always amused him. "Not in Death, nowadays, my good woman," he cried lightly. "Akbar hath forbidden Death. Would that he could forbid this also."
He touched a fold of her wet shroud with his finger. A shiver shot heartwards from the contact. Was it merely the chill to his flesh warmed by his heart's blood, or was it--something he had told himself he had forgotten? He drew back in resentment. She also; but from his touch on what to her, as to most Hindu women, was the dearest privilege of her sex--the right to burn!
"The Most Excellent is a mighty King," she commented sarcastically, "but even he cannot stay the immortal man in woman from following man in death. We are not all cowards like she who sent yonder râm-rucki to the Most High."
She pointed with scorn to a slender, silken cord, behung with coloured tassels which the King wore on his wrist, bracelet fashion.
Akbar frowned.