The young prince stood in the curtained doorway, dressed as though he had just returned from riding. He was dusty and travel-stained and, in spite of his energetic, upright bearing, he looked exhausted. There were heavy lines under the keen eyes, and Travers noticed for the first time that his cheeks were slightly hollow, giving his whole appearance an air of haggard weariness. He lifted his hand in return to Travers' salute, and came forward with a welcoming smile.
"My servants told me I should find you here," he said. "I hope the time of waiting has not been too long?"
"Indeed, no!" Travers returned, as he descended the throne steps. "I have been amusing myself right royally. You have surely the most perfect collection of stones in India."
"They are well enough," Nehal answered, his smile deepening. "Have you been calculating how many rupees they will bring in?"
The remark, which at another time would have called a frank laugh of agreement from Travers, caused him instead a faint feeling of annoyance.
"Perhaps I have," he said, not without a suggestion of bitterness, "but I am still sufficiently alive to beauty to be able to appreciate it apart from its intrinsic value."
Nehal Singh motioned him to take his seat at the low table which a servant had at that moment brought in.
"Forgive me," he said. "I fear my remark hurt you. I thought as a business man you had only one standpoint from which you judged—you told me as much."
"Yes, and I told you the truth," Travers said, after a moment, in which he bent frowningly over his cup of coffee. "I am a business man, Rajah, and for a business man who wants to make any sort of success of his life there must be only one standpoint. If he has another side to his nature, as I have—the purely artistic and emotional side—he must crush it out of sight, if not out of existence, as I do." He looked up with a sudden return of his old tranquil humor. "You must not count it as anything if the beauty of these surroundings for a moment lifted the unpractical side of me uppermost," he said, laughing. "It was purely pro tem., and I am once more my normal, hard-headed self, at your disposal, Rajah."
Nehal Singh nodded absently.