'Hath not the Potter power over the Clay?'
Ah! if that was all the light amid the shadows of life, better far were darkness! If that he turned quickly, beset by uncontrolled, passionate contempt, uncontrolled, passionate desire for action, and beneath his shaking hand the lamp on the table flared out, smokily. A poor protest; yet the dark was better. Darkness and rest--if rest could come to one so tired as he was, as it had come to her. Not that it mattered if he were tired or not----
Five minutes after, the twinkling light, could it have reached so far, would have found him asleep, peaceful as a child, among the red cushions where she had slept. But even Azîzan's eyes, set keen as they were by devotion, could not pierce the darkness. For the light George had seen was in her hand, as she stood looking out from the yard towards the other bank of the canal.
'It hath gone out again,' she murmured; 'a servant likely, on no good errand; and the old man tells me the truth, I think. Another week ere he returns. I would it had been sooner, so that I might warn him. But there! 'tis the same! The task is mine in the end.'
As she crossed back to the hut, she paused an instant to look, by the light of the cresset she shaded with her thin fingers, on the figure of old Fuzl Elâhi asleep in the open beside his wheel.
'Poor fool,' she said softly, as if to the sleeper. And after that even the potter's light disappeared, leaving both sides of the sliding water to darkness.
The dawn came and went; the sun climbing into the sky turned it to brass--a brazen dome in which the sun itself seemed merged and lost. Yet still George slept on, undisturbed even by the water-carrier's cautious peepings through the chick.
'Lo! the Huzoor is young, and he was broken into pieces by thy bad animal,' he said to the camel man who was impatiently awaiting payment. 'Sleep is even as food and drink to him, and besides, ere he wakes, my wife's cousin, whom I have sent for, will be present to cook my lord's breakfast. There is great virtue in being majood (created), and the man who cooks one meal hath himself to blame if he cook not many. If thou art hurried, go. Who wants thee and thy evil-smelling brute?'
So George slept on, and when he woke at last it was to the confused, unreasoning consciousness of those who have been drugged. He stared round him incredulously, until out of the mist, as it were, the empty whisky bottle on the table grew clear, accusingly clear, and he sprang to his feet, becoming aware, as he did so, of a racking headache.
Undoubtedly he had taken more whisky than usual; not perhaps without excuse, he added, as memory began to return. The next instant he was at the door. Yellow haze and yellow heat, and through it a silver streak steering for the south!----