"The Gaekwar of Baroda," announced the woman, pointing to the card on the inside of the lid. "This is the Star of the Deccan."
She clasped a necklace of diamonds about her throat, and the stones trembled against her skin like spiders of fire.
"Do not they look well about my neck?" she asked in a repressed voice, a voice that shook. Then she laughed, but he did not like the symptoms that underlay it. He gripped himself. The muscles of his throat stood out, and there was about him the air of a man preparing to do battle.
Sarojini Nanjee returned the diamonds to the chest. Gems rattled. She lifted what seemed a fabric of the spun brilliance of the universe—and a flame swept into Trent's brain. This amazing dazzle, as of cascading stars, was born of a rug made entirely of pearls, with central and corner figures of diamonds; a rug that coruscated and blazed as though its weaver had threaded the shuttle with flame and woven a carpet for the gods; a rug whose gems were multi-hued little serpents that coiled about Trent's brain and sank their fangs into his reason.
The carpet slipped from Sarojini Nanjee's hands and lay in a quivering heap on the edge of the chest. The fire in her eyes matched that of the rug.
"Millions!" she murmured in a husky voice. "Millions!"
... As one in a dream, Trent saw her hands stretch out to him; felt them on his arms. The touch sent a shock of warning through his frame. Involuntarily he stiffened and took a step backward—but the perfume of her hair, the scent of bruised sandalwood, was in his nostrils and on his lips and face, like the fragrant breath of the sirocco ... and the hot mystery of her eyes challenged him to take the caress that her lips offered. (Of the earth always, this Sarojini Nanjee, with earth's gifts for men.) A deadly languor locked about him. He was in some fever-breeding jungle, and she was there, this golden woman, very close to him....
A small incident saved him from Attila's fate.
There came a sound, a gentle rattle and patter, like cool rain upon his thirsty thoughts. Something seemed to snap in his brain, and he moved back a pace—and out of the danger zone. He perceived, then, that the jewel-carpet had slipped from the chest to the floor, thus rescuing him from the very web that it had contrived.
Sarojini, too, drew back. Chagrin smothered the fire from her eyes. Concupiscence in him—her chief weapon—was broken. She saw by the set of his features that control had returned, and knew that having once been so close to defeat, he would be thrice as wary as before. She had lost in this first campaign. She smiled cynically.