"Does my liege forget," she said and her voice was calmness itself, "that it is not yet Dawn? That to destroy that paper is failure?--that the King's enemies will triumph? It is not yet Dawn and that"--she pointed to what he held--"belongs to To-day."
There was an awful silence. Akbar stood blinded by the truth. It was as she had said; to annul the death-warrant was to confess failure.
So, after a time his voice--or was it not his voice--sounded through the tent.
"It is not sealed. Thou hadst the ring--therefore it doth not count"
She had taken a step or two nearer to him as if to beg the paper of him, now she shrank back as from a snake, frozen with fear.
"What!" she whispered and her voice was close on tears. "Shall Kingship stoop to Craft--Leave that to the King's enemies."
But Akbar was past reproach; passion had mastered him and his hands instinct mobile with fierce life, met and parted again and again until the death-warrant torn to shreds lay in his clasp a mere handful of waste paper. "Lo!" he cried joyfully, "Let Kingship go! Jalâl-ud-din is man--he will reap man's harvest of love."
He flung what he held from him with the action of a sower who sows. The light scraps of paper hung in the air for a second then fell steadily, softly, like seed grains. Some of them fell on Âtma's white star-sewn skirts.
She stooped slowly to raise one and hold it up menacingly.
"Not a grain of the sheaves of life is stored by one who has trod
The furrows and fallows of passion, and sown no seed for God."