Traherne turned away from her, as she crouched huddled and broken in her grief and hunger.
He could not look at her.
He stood so for some time—his back to her.
The populace screamed and shrieked. They did not hear them.
At last, still his back to her, Dr. Traherne said in a low and unsteady voice, “Are you sure you did right to refuse?”
CHAPTER XLII
All through the last night’s torture it had been his fear and his agony that, if no help came to them, she might not die. Until now—here in the very presence of their impending murder, his and hers, he had doubted that the Raja of Rukh would not accomplish by absolute force the purpose which he, Traherne, perfectly understood. But now, the death-preparations seemed too complete, the death-stroke too near, and he was convinced that as the sun sank to the Himalayan crests that head, bent in agony in an English mother’s trembling grief as he’d turned away from the sight of her, would roll in the dirt—between his and the severed head of Crespin’s corpse—at the feet of that monstrous idol out there, while the demonized people danced and shrieked about it—spat on it perhaps.
Should she let it come to that?
Was the price she must pay for life, ultimate escape to come after a time, perhaps, hideous, unspeakable as it was, not a price she ought to pay? Would not her very abhorrence of it make it clean, a sacrificial holiness rather than defilement?
It was a terrible question.