"Peter!" she moaned. "Oh, I was so afraid!" She lowered her voice. "What is to become of us?"
He looked down at her and forced a smile to his lips.
"We who are about to die——" he began grimly.
She gave him a twisted smile as his arms tightened about her. He loved her for that courage.
With his arm at her waist he turned. He had observed that the Gray Dragon had spoken truly as regarded the armed coolie at his back.
Their captor bent forward and fixed upon them the most curious of glances. His merciless, green eyes ran from Eileen's tumbled chestnut hair to her small, tan boots—then he regarded Peter with the same intensity, and thereupon he seemed to be weighing the doomed lovers as a unit, or as an idea.
A devilish smile cracked his lips.
"So this is love?" he cackled. "This is the young woman to whom you have thrown your life away—after most splendid resistance—you, Peter the Brazen! Do you still love her?" He pointed a crooked forefinger at Eileen. "Tell me, would you desert him, in this first flush of your maiden love, for a handsomer man—and steal his gold, after he laid the earth at your feet? Would you do that?"
Methodically the talons stroked the sea-weed mustache.
"You are too anxious for death. You are romantic. Youth does have such ideas. Even I, Chuh-seng, have such notions. Death? Why does your little mind single out such simple punishment—you—lovers? Romantically you long for death, because in the next world you would come together again—in the lover's eternity of heaven.