"Now am I frightened, lord of my heart! Lead me back to the garden, for I am but a woman and afraid. Who am I, Naraini, to see the Eye? What am I, a weak woman, to trespass upon the Mysteries? I am very much afraid. Do thou take me hence and comfort me, my king!" She drew his arm about her waist, firm, round, and slender, and held it so, her body yielding subtly to his, her head drooping wearily upon his shoulder.
They moved slowly from the turret and back along the lighted walks of the garden, the woman apparently content, Amber preoccupied—to tell the truth, more troubled than he would have been willing to confess. As for the intimacy of their attitude, he was temporarily careless of it; it meant less to him than the woman guessed. It seems likely that she inferred a conquest from his indifference, for when they had come back to the tank of the gold-fish beneath the banian she slipped from his embrace and confronted him with a face afire with elation.
"See now how thou art altogether controverted, Lalji!" she cried joyfully. "No longer canst thou persist that thou art other than thy true self, the lord of Naraini's heart, the king returned to his kingdom…. For who would dare give the lie to the Eye?… Indeed," she continued with a low, sighing laugh, "I myself had begun to doubt, my faith borne down and overcome by thy repeated denials; but now I know thee. Did not the Bell foretell that the Eye should be seen of men only when Har Dyal Rutton had returned to his kingdom, and then only when he wore the Token? Even as it was said, so has it been…. And now art thou prepared to go?"
"Whither?"
"To Kathiawar—even to the threshold of the Gateway?… There is yet time, before the dawn, and it were wise to go quickly, my king; but for one night more is the Gateway open to receive thee. Thou didst see the saddled stallions in the courtyard? They wait there for thee, to bear thee to Kathiawar…. Nay, it were better that thou shouldst wait, mayhap, for the hours be few before the rising of the sun. Go then to thy rest, heart of my heart, since thou must leave me; and this night we shall ride, thou and I, together to the Gateway."
"So be it," he assented, with a grave inclination of his head. Convinced of the thanklessness of any further attempt to convince the woman against her will, he gave it up, and was grateful for the respite promised him. In twelve or eighteen hours he might accomplish much—with the aid of Labertouche. At worst he would find some means to communicate with the Farrells and then seek safety for himself in flight or hiding until what he had come to term "that damned Gateway-thing" should be closed and he be free to resume his strange wooing. Some way, somehow, he could contrive to extricate himself and his beloved.
Therefore he told the woman: "Be it so, O Queen! Now, I go."
"And leave me," she pouted prettily, "with no word but that, my king?
Am I not worth a caress—not even when I beg for it?"
He smiled down at her, tolerant and amused, and impulsively caught her to him. "The point's well taken," he said. "Decidedly you're worth it, Naraini. And if you were not, the show was!"
And he kissed and left her, all in a breath.