"What mean you?" Jadgor half rose from his seat.
"Nay—" Suddenly Robur faltered, he seemed disturbed, abashed. He lowered his eyes. "Nay, my father, I spoke in haste. What says the maiden herself? Did not my uncle speak with her the prior sun?"
"She holds to her promise as she has held since the beginning," Jadgor replied. "She refuses to leave the Gayana until she has speech with the sleeper himself."
"Nor will she leave ever, should Abbu's words and Zud's judgment prove true," Lakkon said with a twitching face. "Virgin is she in all save the love she has given to him she knew as Jasor. Failing its consummation, she becomes Gayana herself."
"Nay, by Zitu!" Robur cried a savage protest. "My father and uncle, of this thing there lies some explanation. He who I, too, knew as Jasor, won not the full love of my cousin for any such sterile fate. Himself, he told me that all he did was by Zitu's grace; and of all that he did was not this too a part?"
A part—rather the all—the motive, the object of what he had done, thought Croft, as he once more thrilled to the sturdy, unyielding quality of Robur's partizanship.
Then as Jadgor made no immediate answer, and Lakkon sat with troubled countenance, lost as it appeared in the prospective fate of the daughter whom he loved with an almost adoring devotion, and now saw embrace the life of a vestal as escape from what, by Tamarizian custom, must otherwise amount to a technical disgrace, Robur went on. "Wherefore, as said before, who are we to judge the Hupor Jasor or the Mouthpiece of Zitu, be he what he may, ere he awakes? Like to my cousin, Naia, I would ask him to speak for himself."
Jadgor gave him a glance. "For that waking we have waited many suns."
"Yet, perhaps he wakes even now," Lakkon suggested quickly, his manner that of a man who grasps at straws.
"Aye," said Jadgor, "perhaps. And—since we are met for the purpose, rather than useless discussion, let us seek the pyramid at once. He rose, a commanding figure in his glistening cuirass and moved toward the curtained door.