Akbar had been awaiting this it seemed to him for hours. Now that it had come he would have delayed, if he could.
The tent was still dark, but as the outer screen was lifted something paler, grayer than murk-night showed in faint square, grew blurred with moving shades, then disappeared altogether. The cresset light scarce reached into the shadowy corners of the tent, where hung faint clouds of scented smoke; but Akbar's keen eyes pierced the gloom clearly.
"What? Have they bound thee? I meant not so," He stepped to the tall dim figure and unloosed the cord with which its hands were tied.
"Come hither, woman."
The kindly office done, he was back on the throne, his face showing stern in the cresset light. As she came forward she stumbled slightly in her walk. They must have tied her feet also, when they were bringing her to the camp and she was numb and stiff. His heart went out to her in swift pity, then returned to him in swifter justice.
"The ring, woman! The signet that I gave thee," he said peremptorily. Until that was gone from her finger, even he could not touch her for harm. She held it out to him without a word, then sinking to her knees crouched at his feet. The folds of her star-set skirts clung round her closely, the saffron, pearl-sewn veil hardly hid her beauty of strong supple curves. She had begged to be allowed to die in the steel hauberk of the Châran, but they had jeered at her, saying the race was well quit of such representatives as she. So in her final arraignment she stood as simple woman.
Perhaps by so doing she gained advantage. Anyhow, Akbar who had meant to be sternly judicial, felt, now they were alone together, that this was no question of Culprit and Judge, but of a man and a woman. And with the feeling came, to his surprise, a sense of keen personal injury.
"Why hast thou done this thing?" he asked bitterly.
The long tension of the night, the sight of the man she knew she loved, the very touch of his hands as he undid the knot which had bound her, and now the regret, the pain of his voice, all conspired against calmness, though she fought for it desperately. There was but one refuge--the refuge of race.
"I--I did it for the King," she said mechanically, not realising the full meaning of her words.