“You promised me—” she began, and her voice and her face shook.
“That it should be burnt,” Rukh assented. “I will keep my promise. For a white foe’s body to lie at the foot of an Asian god, honors not dishonors it! I regret, if it pains you. But, you see, I had three, brothers—a head for a head.” He bowed slightly and passed slowly into the inner chamber from which he had come, and his priests, waiting till now by the curtains before the throne, clustered about him, and followed him.
But a guard remained. He waited by the now rebolted door they had been carried through; he took no step towards them—but he watched.
Lucilla sank down on the broad base of a pillar—her legs were trembling, and her heart felt queer and sick.
Traherne could not speak to her yet.
“So this is the end!” she said in a hard, toneless voice. She was not dressed for sacrifice—Rukh’s orders had spared her that—and she waited her butchery in the tweed in which she had landed.
“What offer did that devil make you?” he asked through stiffened lips.
“Oh,” she replied after a moment, “I didn’t mean to tell you, but I may as well. He is an ingenious tormentor,” she said with a pitiful shrug. “He offered yesterday to let me live, and to kidnap the children, and bring them here to me—you know on what terms.”
“To bring the children here?” Dr. Traherne said oddly, his eyes scanning her wonderingly, his hands crunched together.
“He said,” she went on, and her voice broke on her words a little, “in a month I might have them in my arms. Think of it! Ronny and Iris in my arms!”