"Well——? Have you decided?"
"There was nothing to decide. I shall go on with it—whatever it is."
He heard the curtains fall. Throughout he had not looked at her. It was as though he withheld from her something which his eyes might have betrayed. When all was still again he took a book haphazard from the pompously crowded shelves and sat down beneath the light-bearing Venus to read. He sat very still, his dark eyes resting intently on a spot just above the page which was never turned.
The gold-faced clock on the table chimed ten o'clock. The thin, dulcet tones dropped into the quiet like pebbles into a still pool. They seemed to arouse the man beneath the lamplight. He got up and pulled the curtains across the windows. There was a door in the left-hand wall. It led into a room in which he kept his papers, and no one entered it but himself. He took a key from his pocket and unlocked it.
"You are safe now," he said in the native tongue.
Ayeshi came out slowly into the light. His eyes were dazed-looking, but rest and food had restored something of their old fire, and that very return of life accentuated the deeper change in him. It was not only the lines which disease and want had chiselled among his features. The one-time boyish beauty had been hardened and sharpened by something more subtle than physical privation. His eyes, as they grew accustomed to the light, were no longer clouded with mystic dreams, but were stern and penetrating. His very bearing was profoundly different. His dignity had been gracious and unconscious; it was now conscious and commanding.
"You have done me great service," he said in an undertone. "I shall not forget when the time comes for remembrance."
"You are rested sufficiently to go on your way?"
Ayeshi nodded. He glanced keenly into Barclay's impassive face.
"You use our tongue to me?"