"Doomed?"
"Aye!" And there was real terror in her eyes and voice. "Doomed to sati. For, since I am a widow—since thou dost maintain thou art not my husband—then my face hath been looked upon by a man not of mine own people, and I am dishonoured. Fire alone can cleanse me of that defilement—the pyre and the death by flame!"
"Good God! you don't mean that! Surely that custom has perished!"
"Thou shouldst know that it dieth not. What to us women in whose bodies runs the blood of royalty, is an edict of your English Government? What, the Sirkar itself to us in Khandawar?" She laughed bitterly. "I am a Rohilla, a daughter of kings: my dishonour may be purged only by flame. Arre! that I should live to meet with such fate—I, Naraini, to perish in the flower of my beauty…. For I am beautiful, am I not?" She dropped the veil which instinctively she had caught across her face, and met his gaze with childish coquetry, torn though she seemed to be by fear and disappointment.
"Thou art assuredly most beautiful, Ranee," Amber told her, with a break in his voice, very compassionate. And he spoke simple truth. "Of thy kind there is none more lovely in the world …"
"There was tenderness then in your tone, my lord!" she caught him up quickly. "Is there no mercy in thy heart for me?… Who is this woman across the seas who hath won thy love?… Aye, even that I know—that thou dost love this fair daughter of the English. Didst thou not lose the picture of her that was taken with the magic-box of the sahibs?… Is it for her sake that thou dost deny me, O my husband? Is she more fair than I, are her lips more sweet?"
"I am not thy husband," he declared vehemently, appalled by her reversion to that delusion. "Till this hour I have never seen thee; nor is the sahiba of any concern to thee. Let me go, please."
But she had him fast and he could not have shaken her off but with violence. He had been a strong man indeed who had not been melted to tenderness by her beauty and her distress. She lifted her glorious face to him, pleading, insistent, and played upon him with her voice of gold. "Yet a moment gone thou didst tell me I was greatly gifted with beauty. Have I changed in thine eyes, O my king? Canst thou look upon this poor beauty and hear me tell thee of my love—and indeed I am altogether thine, Lalji!—and harden thy heart against me?… What though it be as thou hast said? What though thou art of a truth not of the house of Rutton, nor yet a Rajput? Let us say that this is so, however hard it be to credit: even so, am I not reward enough for thy renunciation?"
"I know not thy meaning, Ranee, I—"
"Come, then, and I will show thee, my king. Come thou with me…. Nay, why shouldst thou falter? There is naught for thee to fear—save me." She tugged at his hand and laughed low, in a voice that sang like smitten glasses. "Come, Beloved!"