"Loh!" he said in scorn. "What a woman's word! Thank the Gods I was not born one."
The taunt bit deep, and Tara drew herself up angrily. So the brother and sister stood face to face, strangely alike.
"Wast not?" she retorted bitterly. "The Gods know. Is there not woman in man, and man in woman, among those born at a birth? Soma! for the sake of that--do this for me----" It was her last appeal; she had kept it for the last, and now her somber eyes were ablaze with passionate entreaty. "See, brother! I claim it of you as a right. Thou didst take my sainthood from me once. Count this as giving it back again."
"Back again?" echoed Soma thickly. "What fool's talk is this?"
"Let it be fool's talk, brother," she interrupted, with a strange intensity in her voice. "I care not--thou dost not know; I cannot tell thee. But--but this will be counted to thee in restitution. Soma! think of it as my sainthood! Sure thou dost owe me it! Somal for the sake of the hand which lay in thine."
In her excitement she moved a step forward, and he shrank back instinctively. True, she was a saint in another way if those scars were true; but--at the moment, being angry with her, he chose to doubt, to remember. "Stand back!" he cried roughly, unsteadily. "What do I owe thee? What claim hast thou?"
The question, the gesture outraged her utterly. The memory of a whole life of vain struggling after self-respect surged to her brain, bringing that almost insane light to her eyes. "What?" she echoed fiercely--"this!" Ere he could prevent it, her hand was in his, gripping it like a vice.
"So in the beginning--so in the end!" she gasped, as he struggled with her madly. "Tara and Soma hand in hand. Nay! I am strong as thou."
She spoke truth, for his nerve and muscle were slack with opium; yet he fought wildly, striking at her with his left hand, until in a supreme effort she lost her footing, they both staggered, and he--as she loosed her hold--fell backward, striking his head against a projecting brick in the ruined wall.
"Soma!" she whispered to his prostrate figure, "art hurt, brother? Speak to me!"