Every human mind, every human pride, every human courage; every human creature has its breaking point. Some may be spared ever reaching or knowing it. But always it is there. Lucilla Crespin had reached hers.
She threw herself down on the couch with a desperate cry. “My babies, my babies!” she sobbed.
Rukh winced. Give him his due—he was hurt for her grief. It did not budge him from his purpose. But for the moment, at least, his vengeance tasted sour in his mouth.
The billiard balls still clicked.
CHAPTER XXXIII
He let her weeping wear itself out.
At last as it almost ceased, and the woman’s sobs were but panted breath, he went a step nearer, and said earnestly, “I feel for you, Mrs. Crespin, I do indeed. I would do anything—”
She swung round where she sat, looked up at him, saw, though her smarting eyes were half blind from the tears they had shed, the sincerity in his eyes, as she had heard it in his voice. “Raja,” she cried, in a tone she had not used to him before, “if I write them a letter of farewell, will you give me your word of honor that it shall reach them?”
Rukh bit his lip. His hands were trembling a little. At that moment he came nearer loving a woman, with a passion worthy that word, than he ever had done—save for the so different love, the love apart, he had given his mother. He had thought when she turned to him that she was about to beg of him her own life, her freedom. And she had not. She had asked that a letter from her might go to her children. He had been in England when his mother had died. She had written him a letter when she knew that she was about to die. He had it yet. A rough lump gathered in the throat of Rukh’s Raja—and because his heart sickened at the refusal he must make—from his point of view he must—he steeled his voice, and spoke more stiffly than he felt.
“Ah, there, Madam,” he said crisply, “you must pardon me! I have already said that the last thing I desire is to attract the attention of the Government of India.”