"Or if the Council should spare thee—as is unlikely? The patience of the Body is as the patience of Kings—scant; and its mercy is like unto its patience…. But say thou art spared: what then? How long art thou prepared to wait until the Members of the Body shall again be in such complete accord as now? When again shall all Hindustan be ripe for revolt?… Aho! Thou wouldst have sweet patience in the waiting, Salig Singh!… Let matters rest as they be, my lord"—this a trace imperiously. "Leave the man to me: I stand sponsor for him until the Gateway shall have received him and—and perhaps for a little afterwards."
"Thou art right as ever." He lifted his gaze to meet hers and his eyes flamed. "I leave my life on your knees, Naraini. I love thee and … by all the gods, thou art altogether a woman!"
"And thou … a man, your Highness?" she countered provokingly. "Nay!" she continued, evading him with a supple squirm, "be content until this affair be consummated. Wait until the time when an empress shall reign over all Bharuta and thou, my lord, shall be her Minister of State."
The man's voice shook. "That hour is not far off, my queen. Thou wilt not keep me waiting longer?"
She gave him the quick promise of her eyes. "Thou shouldst know—thou of all men, my lord…. But see!" It was necessary to distract him and she seized hastily upon the first pretext. "The last day of the old order dawns … and the dawn is crimson, my lord, as with blood!" Her soft scarlet lips curled thirstily and showed her teeth, small, sharp and white as pearls. "I think," she added with somber conviction, "this omen is propitious!"
She swept away from him, toward the parapet. He took a single step in pursuit and halted, following her with a glance that was at once a caress and a threat.
She paused only when she could go no further, and stood in silent waiting.
Deep down in the valley the city was stirring from its sleep; the dull and peaceful humming of its hived hordes rose to her, pulsating in the still air. Above the eastern ridge the sky was hot and angry, banded with magenta, scarlet, and cadmium, and shot with expanding shafts of fierce radiance, like ribs of a fan of fire. In a long and breathless instant of suspense the hilltops blushed with the glare and threw down the light to the night mists swimming in the valley, rendering them opalescent, as with a heart of flame.
With eyes half-veiled by long languorous lashes the woman threw back her head until her swelling throat was tense. She raised her arms and stretched them wide. The sun, soaring suddenly, a crimson disk above the ridge, seemed to strike fire from her strange, savage beauty as from a jewel. Bathed in its ruddy glare she seemed to embody in her frail, slight form all that was singular to that cruel, passionate land of fire and steel. Her face became suffused, her blood leaping in response to the ardour of the sun.
Her parted lips moved, but the man, who had drawn near enough to hear, caught two words only.