"What!"
"If it will save you."
"Child, let me rot here. What! Would you trust him, knowing his false heart as you do? The moment you married him would be my death warrant. No, no! If you weaken now I shall curse you, curse you, my Kit! There has been horror enough. I can die."
"Well, and so can I, father."
Silence. After a cockatoo shrilled; a laugh came faintly through the window, and later the tinkle of music. Up above the world was going on the same as usual. Trains were hurrying to and fro; the great ships were going down the sapphire seas; children were at play, and the world wide marts were busying with the daily affairs of men.
"Jewels!" she murmured, gazing at the sky beyond the grilled window. Was there ever a precious stone that lay not in the shadow of blood and misery? Poor, poor, foolish father! As if jewels were in beauty a tithe of the misery they begot!
"Ay, Kit, jewels; sapphires and rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls and moonstones. And I wanted them for my pretty cubs! Umballa knew that I would return for them and laid his plans. But were they not mine?"
"Yes, if you intended to rule these people; no, if you thought to take them away. Do you not know that to Winnie and me a hair of your head is more precious than the Koh-i-noor? We must put our heads together and plan some way to get out."
She dropped her arms from his shoulders and walked about the cell, searching every stone. Their only hope lay in the window, and that appeared impossible since she had no means of filing through her father's chains and the bars of the window. She returned and sat down beside her father and rested her aching head on her knees, thinking, thinking.
Bruce, struggling with the soldiers (and long since their fat flesh had been stung into such activity!) saw Umballa appear in the corridor.